Custom and Myth 6

Custom and Myth 6

Here we conclude, having traced parallels to Cupid and Psyche in many non-

Aryan lands. Our theory of the myth does not rest on etymology. We have

seen that the most renowned scholars, Max Muller, Kuhn, Roth, all analyse

the names Urvasi and Pururavas in different ways, and extract different

interpretations. We have found the story where these names were probably

never heard of. We interpret it as a tale of the intercourse between

mortal men and immortal maids, or between men and metamorphosed animals,

as in India and North America. We explain the separation of the lovers

as the result of breaking a taboo, or law of etiquette, binding among men

and women, as well as between men and fairies.

 

* * * * *

 

The taboos are, to see the beloved unveiled, to utter his or her name, to

touch her with a metal 'terrible to ghosts and spirits,' or to do some

action which will revive the associations of a former life. We have

shown that rules of nuptial etiquette resembling these in character do

exist, and have existed, even among Greeks--as where the Milesian, like

the Zulu, women made a law not to utter their husbands' names. Finally,

we think it a reasonable hypothesis that tales on the pattern of 'Cupid

and Psyche' might have been evolved wherever a curious nuptial taboo

required to be sanctioned, or explained, by a myth. On this hypothesis,

the stories may have been separately invented in different lands; but

there is also a chance that they have been transmitted from people to

people in the unknown past of our scattered and wandering race. This

theory seems at least as probable as the hypothesis that the meaning of

an Aryan proverbial statement about sun and dawn was forgotten, and was

altered unconsciously into a tale which is found among various non-Aryan

tribes. That hypothesis again, learned and ingenious as it is, has the

misfortune to be opposed by other scholarly hypotheses not less ingenious

and learned.

 

* * * * *

 

As for the sun-frog, we may hope that he has sunk for ever beneath the

western wave.

 

 

 

 

A FAR-TRAVELLED TALE.

 

 

A modern novelist has boasted that her books are read 'from Tobolsk to

Tangiers.' This is a wide circulation, but the widest circulation in the

world has probably been achieved by a story whose author, unlike Ouida,

will never be known to fame. The tale which we are about to examine is,

perhaps, of all myths the most widely diffused, yet there is no ready way

of accounting for its extraordinary popularity. Any true 'nature-myth,'

any myth which accounts for the processes of nature or the aspects of

natural phenomena, may conceivably have been invented separately,

wherever men in an early state of thought observed the same facts, and

attempted to explain them by telling a story. Thus we have seen that the

earlier part of the Myth of Cronus is a nature-myth, setting forth the

cause of the separation of Heaven and Earth. Star-myths again, are

everywhere similar, because men who believed all nature to be animated

and personal, accounted for the grouping of constellations in accordance

with these crude beliefs. {87} Once more, if a story like that of 'Cupid

and Psyche' be found among the most diverse races, the distribution

becomes intelligible if the myth was invented to illustrate or enforce a

widely prevalent custom. But in the following story no such explanation

is even provisionally acceptable.

 

The gist of the tale (which has many different 'openings,' and

conclusions in different places) may be stated thus: A young man is

brought to the home of a hostile animal, a giant, cannibal, wizard, or a

malevolent king. He is put by his unfriendly host to various severe

trials, in which it is hoped that he will perish. In each trial he is

assisted by the daughter of his host. After achieving the adventures, he

elopes with the girl, and is pursued by her father. The runaway pair

throw various common objects behind them, which are changed into magical

obstacles and check the pursuit of the father. The myth has various

endings, usually happy, in various places. Another form of the narrative

is known, in which the visitors to the home of the hostile being are, not

wooers of his daughter, but brothers of his wife. {88} The incidents of

the flight, in this variant, are still of the same character. Finally,

when the flight is that of a brother from his sister's malevolent ghost,

in Hades (Japan), or of two sisters from a cannibal mother or step-mother

(Zulu and Samoyed), the events of the flight and the magical aids to

escape remain little altered. We shall afterwards see that attempts have

been made to interpret one of these narratives as a nature-myth; but the

attempts seem unsuccessful. We are therefore at a loss to account for

the wide diffusion of this tale, unless it has been transmitted slowly

from people to people, in the immense unknown prehistoric past of the

human race.

 

* * * * *

 

Before comparing the various forms of the myth in its first shape--that

which tells of the mortal lover and the giant's or wizard's daughter--let

us give the Scottish version of the story. This version was written down

for me, many years ago, by an aged lady in Morayshire. I published it in

the 'Revue Celtique'; but it is probably new to story-comparers, in its

broad Scotch variant.

 

 

 

NICHT NOUGHT NOTHING.

 

 

There once lived a king and a queen. They were long married and had

no bairns; but at last the queen had a bairn, when the king was away

in far countries. The queen would not christen the bairn till the

king came back, and she said, 'We will just call him Nicht Nought

Nothing until his father comes home.' But it was long before he came

home, and the boy had grown a nice little laddie. At length the king

was on his way back; but he had a big river to cross, and there was a

spate, and he could not get over the water. But a giant came up to

him, and said, 'If you will give me Nicht Nought Nothing, I will carry

you over the water on my back.' The king had never heard that his son

was called Nicht Nought Nothing, and so he promised him. When the

king got home again, he was very happy to see his wife again, and his

young son. She told him that she had not given the child any name but

Nicht Nought Nothing, until he should come home again himself. The

poor king was in a terrible case. He said, 'What have I done? I

promised to give the giant who carried me over the river on his back,

Nicht Nought Nothing.' The king and the queen were sad and sorry, but

they said, 'When the giant comes we will give him the hen-wife's

bairn; he will never know the difference.' The next day the giant

came to claim the king's promise, and he sent for the hen-wife's

bairn; and the giant went away with the bairn on his back. He

travelled till he came to a big stone, and there he sat down to rest.

He said,

 

'Hidge, Hodge, on my back, what time of day is it?' The poor little

bairn said, 'It is the time that my mother, the hen-wife, takes up the

eggs for the queen's breakfast.'

 

The giant was very angry, and dashed the bairn on the stone and killed

it.

 

. . . . .

 

The same adventure is repeated with the gardener's son.

 

. . . . .

 

Then the giant went back to the king's house, and said he would

destroy them all if they did not give him Nicht Nought Nothing this

time. They had to do it; and when he came to the big stone, the giant

said, 'What time of day is it?' Nicht Nought Nothing said, 'It is the

time that my father the king will be sitting down to supper.' The

giant said, 'I've got the richt ane noo;' and took Nicht Nought

Nothing to his own house and brought him up till he was a man.

 

The giant had a bonny dochter, and she and the lad grew very fond of

each other. The giant said one day to Nicht Nought Nothing, 'I've

work for you to-morrow. There is a stable seven miles long and seven

miles broad, and it has not been cleaned for seven years, and you must

clean it to-morrow, or I will have you for my supper.'

 

The giant's dochter went out next morning with the lad's breakfast,

and found him in a terrible state, for aye as he cleaned out a bit, it

aye fell in again. The giant's dochter said she would help him, and

she cried a' the beasts of the field, and a' the fowls o' the air, and

in a minute they a' came, and carried awa' everything that was in the

stable and made a' clean before the giant came home. He said, 'Shame

for the wit that helped you; but I have a worse job for you

to-morrow.' Then he told Nicht Nought Nothing that there was a loch

seven miles long, and seven miles deep, and seven miles broad, and he

must drain it the next day, or else he would have him for his supper.

Nicht Nought Nothing began early next morning and tried to lave the

water with his pail, but the loch was never getting any less, and he

did no ken what to do; but the giant's dochter called on all the fish

in the sea to come and drink the water, and very soon they drank it

dry. When the giant saw the work done he was in a rage, and said,

'I've a worse job for you to-morrow; there is a tree seven miles high,

and no branch on it, till you get to the top, and there is a nest, and

you must bring down the eggs without breaking one, or else I will have

you for my supper.' At first the giant's dochter did not know how to

help Nicht Nought Nothing; but she cut off first her fingers and then

her toes, and made steps of them, and he clomb the tree, and got all

the eggs safe till he came to the bottom, and then one was broken. The

giant's dochter advised him to run away, and she would follow him. So

he travelled till he came to a king's palace, and the king and queen

took him in and were very kind to him. The giant's dochter left her

father's house, and he pursued her and was drowned. Then she came to

the king's palace where Nicht Nought Nothing was. And she went up

into a tree to watch for him. The gardener's dochter, going to draw

water in the well, saw the shadow of the lady in the water, and

thought it was herself, and said, 'If I'm so bonny, if I'm so brave,

do you send me to draw water?' The gardener's wife went out, and she

said the same thing. Then the gardener went himself, and brought the

lady from the tree, and led her in. And he told her that a stranger

was to marry the king's dochter, and showed her the man: and it was

Nicht Nought Nothing asleep in a chair. And she saw him, and cried to

him, 'Waken, waken, and speak to me!' But he would not waken, and

syne she cried,

 

'I cleaned the stable, I laved the loch, and I clamb the tree,

And all for the love of thee,

And thou wilt not waken and speak to me.'

 

The king and the queen heard this, and came to the bonny young lady,

and she said,

 

'I canna get Nicht Nought Nothing to speak to me for all that I can

do.'

 

Then were they greatly astonished when she spoke of Nicht Nought

Nothing, and asked where he was, and she said, 'He that sits there in

the chair.' Then they ran to him and kissed him and called him their

own dear son, and he wakened, and told them all that the giant's

dochter had done for him, and of all her kindness. Then they took her

in their arms and kissed her, and said she should now be their

dochter, for their son should marry her.

 

And they lived happy all their days.

 

In this variant of the story, which we may use as our text, it is to be

noticed that a lacuna exists. The narrative of the flight omits to

mention that the runaways threw things behind them which became obstacles

in the giant's way. One of these objects probably turned into a lake, in

which the giant was drowned. {92} A common incident is the throwing

behind of a comb, which changes into a thicket. The formula of leaving

obstacles behind occurs in the Indian collection, the 'Kathasarit sagara'

(vii. xxxix.). The 'Battle of the Birds,' in Campbell's 'Tales of the

West Highlands,' is a very copious Gaelic variant. Russian parallels are

'Vasilissa the Wise and the Water King,' and 'The King Bear.' {93a} The

incident of the flight and the magical obstacles is found in Japanese

mythology. {93b} The 'ugly woman of Hades' is sent to pursue the hero.

He casts down his black head-dress, and it is instantly turned into

grapes; he fled while she was eating them. Again, 'he cast down his

multitudinous and close-toothed comb, and it instantly turned into bamboo

sprouts.' In the Gaelic version, the pursuer is detained by talkative

objects which the pursued leave at home, and this marvel recurs in

Zululand, and is found among the Bushmen. The Zulu versions are

numerous. {93c} Oddly enough, in the last variant, the girl performs no

magic feat, but merely throws sesamum on the ground to delay the

cannibals, for cannibals are very fond of sesamum. {93d}

 

* * * * *

 

Here, then, we have the remarkable details of the flight, in Zulu,

Gaelic, Norse, Malagasy, {93e} Russian, Italian, Japanese. Of all

incidents in the myth, the incidents of the flight are most widely known.

But the whole connected series of events--the coming of the wooer; the

love of the hostile being's daughter; the tasks imposed on the wooer; the

aid rendered by the daughter; the flight of the pair; the defeat or

destruction of the hostile being--all these, or most of these, are

extant, in due sequence, among the following races. The Greeks have the

tale, the people of Madagascar have it, the Lowland Scotch, the Celts,

the Russians, the Italians, the Algonquins, the Finns, and the Samoans

have it. Now if the story were confined to the Aryan race, we might

account for its diffusion, by supposing it to be the common heritage of

the Indo-European peoples, carried everywhere with them in their

wanderings. But when the tale is found in Madagascar, North America,

Samoa, and among the Finns, while many scattered incidents occur in even

more widely severed races, such as Zulus, Bushmen, Japanese, Eskimo,

Samoyeds, the Aryan hypothesis becomes inadequate.

 

To show how closely, all things considered, the Aryan and non-Aryan

possessors of the tale agree, let us first examine the myth of Jason.

 

* * * * *

 

The earliest literary reference to the myth of Jason is in the 'Iliad'

(vii. 467, xxiii. 747). Here we read of Euneos, a son whom Hypsipyle

bore to Jason in Lemnos. Already, even in the 'Iliad,' the legend of

Argo's voyage has been fitted into certain well-known geographical

localities. A reference in the 'Odyssey' (xii. 72) has a more antique

ring: we are told that of all barques Argo alone escaped the jaws of the

Rocks Wandering, which clashed together and destroyed ships. Argo

escaped, it is said, 'because Jason was dear to Hera.' It is plain, from

various fragmentary notices, that Hesiod was familiar with several of the

adventures in the legend of Jason. In the 'Theogony' (993-998) Hesiod

mentions the essential facts of the legend: how Jason carried off from

AEetes his daughter, 'after achieving the adventures, many and grievous,'

which were laid upon him. At what period the home of AEetes was placed

in Colchis, it is not easy to determine. Mimnermus, a contemporary of

Solon, makes the home of AEetes lie 'on the brink of ocean,' a very vague

description. {95} Pindar, on the other hand, in the splendid Fourth

Pythian Ode, already knows Colchis as the scene of the loves and flight

of Jason and Medea.

 

* * * *

 

'Long were it for me to go by the beaten track,' says Pindar, 'and I know

a certain short path.' Like Pindar, we may abridge the tale of Jason. He

seeks the golden fleece in Colchis: AEetes offers it to him as a prize

for success in certain labours. By the aid of Medea, the daughter of

AEetes, the wizard-king, Jason tames the fire-breathing oxen, yokes them

to the plough, and drives a furrow. By Medea's help he conquers the

children of the teeth of the dragon, subdues the snake that guards the

fleece of gold, and escapes, but is pursued by AEetes. To detain AEetes,

Medea throws behind the mangled remains of her own brother, Apsyrtos, and

the Colchians pursue no further than the scene of this bloody deed. The

savagery of this act survives even in the work of a poet so late as

Apollonius Rhodius (iv. 477), where we read how Jason performed a rite of

savage magic, mutilating the body of Apsyrtos in a manner which was

believed to appease the avenging ghost of the slain. 'Thrice he tasted

the blood, thrice spat it out between his teeth,' a passage which the

Scholiast says contains the description of an archaic custom popular

among murderers.

 

Beyond Tomi, where a popular etymology fixed the 'cutting up' of

Apsyrtos, we need not follow the fortunes of Jason and Medea. We have

already seen the wooer come to the hostile being, win his daughter's

love, achieve the adventures by her aid, and flee in her company,

delaying, by a horrible device, the advance of the pursuers. To these

incidents in the tale we confine our attention.

 

Many explanations of the Jason myth have been given by Scholars who

thought they recognised elemental phenomena in the characters. As usual

these explanations differ widely. Whenever a myth has to be interpreted,

it is certain that one set of Scholars will discover the sun and the

dawn, where another set will see the thunder-cloud and lightning. The

moon is thrown in at pleasure. Sir G. W. Cox determines {96} 'that the

name Jason (Iason) must be classed with the many others, Iasion, Iamus,

Iolaus, Iaso, belonging to the same root.' Well, what is the root?

Apparently the root is 'the root i, as denoting a crying colour, that is,

a loud colour' (ii. 81). Seemingly (i. 229) violet is a loud colour,

and, wherever you have the root i, you have 'the violet-tinted morning

from which the sun is born.' Medea is 'the daughter of the sun,' and

most likely, in her 'beneficent aspect,' is the dawn. But (ii. 81, note)

ios has another meaning, 'which, as a spear, represents the far-darting

ray of the sun'; so that, in one way or another, Jason is connected with

the violet-tinted morning or with the sun's rays. This is the gist of

the theory of Sir George Cox.

 

Preller {97a} is another Scholar, with another set of etymologies. Jason

is derived, he thinks, from [Greek], to heal, because Jason studied

medicine under the Centaur Chiron. This is the view of the Scholiast on

Apollonius Rhodius (i. 554). Jason, to Preller's mind, is a form of

Asclepius, 'a spirit of the spring with its soft suns and fertile rains.'

Medea is the moon. Medea, on the other hand, is a lightning goddess, in

the opinion of Schwartz. {97b} No philological reason is offered.

Meanwhile, in Sir George Cox's system, the equivalent of Medea, 'in her

beneficent aspect,' is the dawn.

 

We must suppose, it seems, that either the soft spring rains and the

moon, or the dawn and the sun, or the lightning and the thunder-cloud, in

one arrangement or another, irresistibly suggested, to early Aryan minds,

the picture of a wooer, arriving in a hostile home, winning a maiden's

love, achieving adventures by her aid, fleeing with her from her angry

father and delaying his pursuit by various devices. Why the spring, the

moon, the lightning, the dawn--any of them or all of them--should have

suggested such a tale, let Scholars determine when they have reconciled

their own differences. It is more to our purpose to follow the myth

among Samoans, Algonquins, and Finns. None of these races speak an Aryan

language, and none can have been beguiled into telling the same sort of

tale by a disease of Aryan speech.

 

Samoa, where we find our story, is the name of a group of volcanic

islands in Central Polynesia. They are about 3,000 miles from Sidney,

were first observed by Europeans in 1722, and are as far removed as most

spots from direct Aryan influences. Our position is, however, that in

the shiftings and migrations of peoples, the Jason tale has somehow been

swept, like a piece of drift-wood, on to the coasts of Samoa. In the

islands, the tale has an epical form, and is chanted in a poem of twenty-

six stanzas. There is something Greek in the free and happy life of the

Samoans--something Greek, too, in this myth of theirs. There was once a

youth, Siati, famous for his singing, a young Thamyris of Samoa. But as,

according to Homer, 'the Muses met Thamyris the Thracian, and made an end

of his singing, for he boasted and said that he would vanquish even the

Muses if he sang against them,' so did the Samoan god of song envy Siati.

The god and the mortal sang a match: the daughter of the god was to be

the mortal's prize if he proved victorious. Siati won, and he set off,

riding on a shark, as Arion rode the dolphin, to seek the home of the

defeated deity. At length he reached the shores divine, and thither

strayed Puapae, daughter of the god, looking for her comb which she had

lost. 'Siati,' said she, 'how camest thou hither?' 'I am come to seek

the song-god, and to wed his daughter.' 'My father,' said the maiden,

'is more a god than a man; eat nothing he hands you, never sit on a high

seat, lest death follow.' So they were united in marriage. But the god,

like AEetes, was wroth, and began to set Siati upon perilous tasks:

'Build me a house, and let it be finished this very day, else death and

the oven await thee.' {99a}

 

Siati wept, but the god's daughter had the house built by the evening.

The other adventures were to fight a fierce dog, and to find a ring lost

at sea. Just as the Scotch giant's daughter cut off her fingers to help

her lover, so the Samoan god's daughter bade Siati cut her body into

pieces and cast her into the sea. There she became a fish, and recovered

the ring. They set off to the god's house, but met him pursuing them,

with the help of his other daughter. 'Puapae and Siati threw down the

comb, and it became a bush of thorns in the way to intercept the god and

Puanli,' the other daughter. Next they threw down a bottle of earth

which became a mountain; 'and then followed their bottle of water, and

that became a sea, and drowned the god and Puanli.' {99b}

 

This old Samoan song contains nearly the closest savage parallel to the

various household tales which find their heroic and artistic shape in the

Jason saga. Still more surprising in its resemblances is the Malagasy

version of the narrative. In the Malagasy story, the conclusion is

almost identical with the winding up of the Scotch fairy tale. The girl

hides in a tree; her face, seen reflected in a well, is mistaken by women

for their own faces, and the recognition follows in due course. {99c}

 

Like most Red Indian versions of popular tales, the Algonquin form of the

Jason saga is strongly marked with the peculiarities of the race. The

story is recognisable, and that is all.

 

The opening, as usual, differs from other openings. Two children are

deserted in the wilderness, and grow up to manhood. One of them loses an

arrow in the water; the elder brother, Panigwun, wades after it. A

magical canoe flies past: an old magician, who is alone in the canoe,

seizes Panigwun and carries him off. The canoe fleets along, like the

barques of the Phaeacians, at the will of the magician, and reaches the

isle where, like the Samoan god of song, he dwells with his two