Custom and Myth 9

Custom and Myth 9

This position has been disputed by Mr. Brown, in a work rather komically

called 'The Law of Kosmic Order.' Mr. Brown's theory is that the early

Accadians named the zodiacal signs after certain myths and festivals

connected with the months. Thus the crab is a figure of 'the darkness

power' which seized the Akkadian solar hero, Dumuzi, and 'which is

constantly represented in monstrous and drakontic form.' The bull,

again, is connected with night and darkness, 'in relation to the horned

moon,' and is, for other reasons, 'a nocturnal potency.' Few stars, to

tell the truth, are diurnal potencies. Mr. Brown's explanations appear

to me far-fetched and unconvincing. But, granting that the zodiacal

signs reached Greece from Chaldaea, Mr. Brown will hardly maintain that

Australians, Melanesians, Iowas, Amazon Indians, Eskimo, and the rest,

borrowed their human and animal stars from 'Akkadia.' The belief in

animal and human stars is practically universal among savages who have

not attained the 'Akkadian' degree of culture. The belief, as Mr. Tylor

has shown, {137} is a natural result of savage ideas. We therefore infer

that the 'Akkadians,' too, probably fell back for star-names on what they

inherited from the savage past. If the Greeks borrowed certain

star-names from the Akkadians, they also, like the Aryans of India,

retained plenty of savage star-myths of their own, fables derived from

the earliest astronomical guesses of early thought.

 

The first moment in astronomical science arrives when the savage, looking

at a star, says, like the child in the nursery poem, 'How I wonder what

you are!' The next moment comes when the savage has made his first rough

practical observations of the movements of the heavenly body. His third

step is to explain these to himself. Now science cannot offer any but a

fanciful explanation beyond the sphere of experience. The experience of

the savage is limited to the narrow world of his tribe, and of the

beasts, birds, and fishes of his district. His philosophy, therefore,

accounts for all phenomena on the supposition that the laws of the

animate nature he observes are working everywhere. But his observations,

misguided by his crude magical superstitions, have led him to believe in

a state of equality and kinship between men and animals, and even

inorganic things. He often worships the very beasts he slays; he

addresses them as if they understood him; he believes himself to be

descended from the animals, and of their kindred. These confused ideas

he applies to the stars, and recognises in them men like himself, or

beasts like those with which he conceives himself to be in such close

human relations. There is scarcely a bird or beast but the Red Indian or

the Australian will explain its peculiarities by a myth, like a page from

Ovid's 'Metamorphoses.' It was once a man or a woman, and has been

changed to bird or beast by a god or a magician. Men, again, have

originally been beasts, in his philosophy, and are descended from wolves,

frogs or serpents, or monkeys. The heavenly bodies are traced to

precisely the same sort of origin; and hence, we conclude, come their

strange animal names, and the strange myths about them which appear in

all ancient poetry. These names, in turn, have curiously affected human

beliefs. Astrology is based on the opinion that a man's character and

fate are determined by the stars under which he is born. And the nature

of these stars is deduced from their names, so that the bear should have

been found in the horoscope of Dr. Johnson. When Giordano Bruno wrote

his satire against religion, the famous 'Spaccio della bestia

trionfante,' he proposed to banish not only the gods but the beasts from

heaven. He would call the stars, not the Bear, or the Swan, or the

Pleiads, but Truth, Mercy, Justice, and so forth, that men might be born,

not under bestial, but moral influences. But the beasts have had too

long possession of the stars to be easily dislodged, and the tenure of

the Bear and the Swan will probably last as long as there is a science of

Astronomy. Their names are not likely again to delude a philosopher into

the opinion of Aristotle that the stars are animated.

 

This argument had been worked out to the writer's satisfaction when he

chanced to light on Mr. Max Muller's explanation of the name of the Great

Bear. We have explained that name as only one out of countless similar

appellations which men of every race give to the stars. These names,

again, we have accounted for as the result of savage philosophy, which

takes no great distinction between man and the things in the world, and

looks on stars, beasts, birds, fishes, flowers, and trees as men and

women in disguise. Mr. Muller's theory is based on philological

considerations. He thinks that the name of the Great Bear is the result

of a mistake as to the meaning of words. There was in Sanskrit, he says,

{140} a root ark, or arch, meaning 'to be bright.' The stars are called

riksha, that is, bright ones, in the Veda. 'The constellations here

called the Rikshas, in the sense of the "bright ones," would be

homonymous in Sanskrit with the Bears. Remember also that, apparently

without rhyme or reason, the same constellation is called by Greeks and

Romans the Bear. . . . There is not the shadow of a likeness with a

bear. You will now perceive the influence of words on thought, or the

spontaneous growth of mythology. The name Riksha was applied to the bear

in the sense of the bright fuscous animal, and in that sense it became

most popular in the later Sanskrit, and in Greek and Latin. The same

name, "in the sense of the bright ones," had been applied by the Vedic

poets to the stars in general, and more particularly to that

constellation which in the northern parts of India was the most

prominent. The etymological meaning, "the bright stars," was forgotten;

the popular meaning of Riksha (bear) was known to everyone. And thus it

happened that, when the Greeks had left their central home and settled in

Europe, they retained the name of Arktos for the same unchanging stars;

but, not knowing why those stars had originally received that name, they

ceased to speak of them as arktoi, or many bears, and spoke of them as

the Bear.'

 

This is a very good example of the philological way of explaining a myth.

If once we admit that ark, or arch, in the sense of 'bright' and of

'bear,' existed, not only in Sanskrit, but in the undivided Aryan tongue,

and that the name Riksha, bear, 'became in that sense most popular in

Greek and Latin,' this theory seems more than plausible. But the

explanation does not look so well if we examine, not only the Aryan, but

all the known myths and names of the Bear and the other stars. Professor

Sayce, a distinguished philologist, says we may not compare non-Aryan

with Aryan myths. We have ventured to do so, however, in this paper, and

have shown that the most widely severed races give the stars animal

names, of which the Bear is one example. Now, if the philologists wish

to persuade us that it was decaying and half-forgotten language which

caused men to give the names of animals to the stars, they must prove

their case on an immense collection of instances--on Iowa, Kaneka, Murri,

Maori, Brazilian, Peruvian, Mexican, Egyptian, Eskimo, instances. It

would be the most amazing coincidence in the world if forgetfulness of

the meaning of their own speech compelled tribes of every tongue and race

to recognise men and beasts, cranes, cockatoos, serpents, monkeys, bears,

and so forth, in the heavens. How came the misunderstood words always to

be misunderstood in the same way? Does the philological explanation

account for the enormous majority of the phenomena? If it fails, we may

at least doubt whether it solves the one isolated case of the Great Bear

among the Greeks and Romans. It must be observed that the philological

explanation of Mr. Muller does not clear up the Arcadian story of their

own descent from a she-bear who is now a star. Yet similar stories of

the descent of tribes from animals are so widespread that it would be

difficult to name the race or the quarter of the globe where they are not

found. Are they all derived from misunderstood words meaning 'bright'?

These considerations appear to be a strong argument for comparing not

only Aryan, but all attainable myths. We shall often find, if we take a

wide view, that the philological explanation which seemed plausible in a

single case is hopelessly narrow when applied to a large collection of

parallel cases in languages of various families.

 

Finally, in dealing with star myths, we adhere to the hypothesis of Mr.

Tylor: 'From savagery up to civilisation,' Akkadian, Greek, or English,

'there may be traced in the mythology of the stars a course of thought,

changed, indeed, in application, yet never broken in its evident

connection from first to last. The savage sees individual stars as

animate beings, or combines star-groups into living celestial creatures,

or limbs of them, or objects connected with them; while at the other

extremity of the scale of civilisation the modern astronomer keeps up

just such ancient fancies, turning them to account in useful survival, as

a means of mapping out the celestial globe.'

 

 

 

 

MOLY AND MANDRAGORA.

 

 

'I have found out a new cure for rheumatism,' said the lady beside whom

it was my privilege to sit at dinner. 'You carry a potato about in your

pocket!'

 

Some one has written an amusing account of the behaviour of a man who is

finishing a book. He takes his ideas everywhere with him and broods over

them, even at dinner, in the pauses of conversation. But here was a lady

who kindly contributed to my studies and offered me folklore and

survivals in cultivated Kensington.

 

My mind had strayed from the potato cure to the New Zealand habit of

carrying a baked yam at night to frighten away ghosts, and to the old

English belief that a bit of bread kept in the pocket was sovereign

against evil spirits. Why should ghosts dread the food of mortals when

it is the custom of most races of mortals to feed ancestral ghosts? The

human mind works pretty rapidly, and all this had passed through my brain

while I replied, in tones of curiosity: 'A potato!'

 

'Yes; but it is not every potato that will do. I heard of the cure in

the country, and when we came up to town, and my husband was complaining

of rheumatism, I told one of the servants to get me a potato for Mr.

Johnson's rheumatism. "Yes, ma'am," said the man; "but it must be a

_stolen_ potato." I had forgotten that. Well, one can't ask one's

servants to steal potatoes. It is easy in the country, where you can

pick one out of anybody's field.' 'And what did you do?' I asked. 'Oh,

I drove to Covent Garden and ordered a lot of fruit and flowers. While

the man was not looking, I stole a potato--a very little one. I don't

think there was any harm in it.' 'And did Mr. Johnson try the potato

cure?' 'Yes, he carried it in his pocket, and now he is quite well. I

told the doctor, and he says he knows of the cure, but he dares not

recommend it.'

 

How oddly superstitions survive! The central idea of this modern folly

about the potato is that you must pilfer the root. Let us work the idea

of the healing or magical herb backwards, from Kensington to European

folklore, and thence to classical times, to Homer, and to the Hottentots.

Turning first to Germany, we note the beliefs, not about the potato, but

about another vegetable, the mandrake. Of all roots, in German

superstition, the Alraun, or mandrake, is the most famous. The herb was

conceived of, in the savage fashion, as a living human person, a kind of

old witch-wife. {144}

 

Again, the root has a human shape. 'If a hereditary thief who has

preserved his chastity gets hung,' the broad-leafed, yellow-flowered

mandrake grows up, in his likeness, beneath the gallows from which he is

suspended. The mandrake, like the moly, the magical herb of the Odyssey,

is 'hard for men to dig.' He who desires to possess a mandrake must stop

his ears with wax, so that he may not hear the deathly yells which the

plant utters as it is being dragged out of the earth. Then before

sunrise, on a Friday, the amateur goes out with a dog, 'all black,' makes

three crosses round the mandrake, loosens the soil about the root, ties

the root to the dog's tail, and offers the beast a piece of bread. The

dog runs at the bread, drags out the mandrake root, and falls dead,

killed by the horrible yell of the plant. The root is now taken up,

washed with wine, wrapped in silk, laid in a casket, bathed every Friday,

'and clothed in a little new white smock every new moon.' The mandrake

acts, if thus considerately treated, as a kind of familiar spirit. 'Every

piece of coin put to her over night is found doubled in the morning.'

Gipsy folklore, and the folklore of American children, keep this belief

in doubling deposits. The gipsies use the notion in what they call 'The

Great Trick.' Some foolish rustic makes up his money in a parcel which

he gives to the gipsy. The latter, after various ceremonies performed,

returns the parcel, which is to be buried. The money will be found

doubled by a certain date. Of course when the owner unburies the parcel

he finds nothing in it but brass buttons. In the same way, and with

pious confidence, the American boy buries a marble in a hollow log,

uttering the formula, 'What hasn't come here, _come_! what's here, _stay_

here!' and expects to find all the marbles he has ever lost. {145} Let

us follow the belief in magical roots into the old Pagan world.

 

The ancients knew mandragora and the superstitions connected with it very

well. Dioscorides mentions mandragorus, or antimelon, or dircaea, or

Circaea, and says the Egyptians call it apemoum, and Pythagoras

'anthropomorphon.' In digging the root, Pliny says, 'there are some

ceremonies observed, first they that goe about this worke, look

especially to this that the wind be not in their face, but blow upon

their backs. Then with the point of a sword they draw three circles

round about the plant, which don, they dig it up afterwards with their

face unto the west.' Pliny says nothing of the fetich qualities of the

plant, as credited in modern and mediaeval Germany, but mentions

'sufficient it is with some bodies to cast them into sleep with the smel

of mandrago.' This is like Shakespeare's 'poppy and mandragora, and all

the drowsy syrups of the world.' Plato and Demosthenes {146a} also speak

of mandragora as a soporific. It is more to the purpose of magic that

Columella mentions 'the _half-human_ mandragora.' Here we touch the

origin of the mandrake superstitions. The roots have a kind of fantastic

resemblance to the human shape; Pliny describes them as being 'of a

fleshy substance and tender.' Now it is one of the recognised principles

in magic, that things like each other, however superficially, affect each

other in a mystic way, and possess identical properties. Thus, in

Melanesia, according to Mr. Codrington, {146b} 'a stone in the shape of a

pig, of a bread-fruit, of a yam, was a most valuable find,' because it

made pigs prolific, and fertilised bread-fruit trees and yam-plots. In

Scotland, too, 'stones were called by the names of the limbs they

resembled, as "eye-stane," "head-stane." A patient washed the affected

part of his body, and rubbed it well with the stone corresponding.'

{147a} In precisely the same way, the mandrake root, being thought to

resemble the human body, was credited with human and superhuman powers.

Josephus mentions {147b} a plant 'not easily caught, which slips away

from them that wish to gather it, and never stands still' till certain

repulsive rites are performed. These rites cannot well be reported here,

but they are quite familiar to Red Indian and to Bushman magic. Another

way to dig the plant spoken of by Josephus is by aid of the dog, as in

the German superstition quoted from Grimm. AElian also recommends the

use of the dog to pluck the herb aglaophotis, which shines at night.

{147c} When the dog has dragged up the root, and died of terror, his

body is to be buried on the spot with religious honours and secret sacred

rites.

 

So much for mandragora, which, like the healing potato, has to be

acquired stealthily and with peril. Now let us examine the Homeric herb

moly. The plant is thus introduced by Homer: In the tenth book of the

'Odyssey,' Circe has turned Odysseus's men into swine. He sets forth to

rescue them, trusting only to his sword. The god Hermes meets him, and

offers him 'a charmed herb,' 'this herb of grace' ([Greek]) whereby he

may subdue the magic wiles of Circe.

 

The plant is described by Homer with some minuteness. 'It was black at

the root, but the flower was like to milk. "Moly," the gods call it, but

it is hard for mortal men to dig, howbeit with the gods all things are

possible.' The etymologies given of 'moly' are almost as numerous as the

etymologists. One derivation, from the old 'Turanian' tongue of Accadia,

will be examined later. The Scholiast offers the derivation '[Greek], to

make charms of no avail'; but this is exactly like Professor Blackie's

etymological discovery that Erinys is derived from [Greek]: 'he might as

well derive critic from criticise.' {148} The Scholiast adds that moly

caused death to the person who dragged it out of the ground. This

identification of moly with mandrake is probably based on Homer's remark

that moly is 'hard to dig.' The black root and white flower of moly are

quite unlike the yellow flower and white fleshy root ascribed by Pliny to

mandrake. Only confusion is caused by regarding the two magical herbs as

identical.

 

But why are any herbs or roots magical? While some scholars, like De

Gubernatis, seek an explanation in supposed myths about clouds and stars,

it is enough for our purpose to observe that herbs really have medicinal

properties, and that untutored people invariably confound medicine with

magic. A plant or root is thought to possess virtue, not only when

swallowed in powder or decoction, but when carried in the hand. St.

John's wort and rowan berries, like the Homeric moly, still 'make evil

charms of none avail;'

 

Rowan, ash, and red threed

Keep the devils from their speed,

 

says the Scotch rhyme. Any fanciful resemblance of leaf or flower or

root to a portion of the human body, any analogy based on colour, will

give a plant reputation for magical virtues. This habit of mind survives

from the savage condition. The Hottentots are great herbalists. Like

the Greeks, like the Germans, they expect supernatural aid from plants

and roots. Mr. Hahn, in his 'Tsui Goam, the Supreme Being of the Khoi

Khoi' (p. 82), gives the following examples:--

 

Dapper, in his description of Africa, p. 621, tells us:--'Some of them

wear round the neck roots, which they find far inland, in rivers, and

being on a journey they light them in a fire or chew them, if they

must sleep the night out in the field. They believe that these roots

keep off the wild animals. The roots they chew are spit out around

the spot where they encamp for the night; and in a similar way if they

set the roots alight, they blow the smoke and ashes about, believing

that the smell will keep the wild animals off.

 

I had often occasion to observe the practice of these superstitious

ceremonies, especially when we were in a part of the country where we

heard the roaring of the lions, or had the day previously met with the

footprints of the king of the beasts.

 

The Korannas also have these roots as safeguards with them. If a

Commando (a warlike expedition) goes out, every man will put such

roots in his pockets and in the pouch where he keeps his bullets,

believing that the arrows or bullets of the enemy have no effect, but

that his own bullets will surely kill the enemy. And also before they

lie down to sleep, they set these roots alight, and murmur, 'My

grandfather's root, bring sleep on the eyes of the lion and leopard

and the hyena. Make them blind, that they cannot find us, and cover

their noses, that they cannot smell us out.' Also, if they have

carried off large booty, or stolen cattle of the enemy, they light

these roots and say: 'We thank thee, our grandfather's root, that thou

hast given us cattle to eat. Let the enemy sleep, and lead him on the

wrong track, that he may not follow us until we have safely escaped.'

 

Another sort of shrub is called abib. Herdsmen, especially, carry

pieces of its wood as charms, and if cattle or sheep have gone astray,

they burn a piece of it in the fire, that the wild animals may not

destroy them. And they believe that the cattle remain safe until they

can be found the next morning.

 

Schweinfurth found the same belief in magic herbs and roots among the

Bongoes and Niam Niams in 'The Heart of Africa.' The Bongoes believe,

like the Homeric Greeks, that 'certain roots ward off the evil influences

of spirits.' Like the German amateurs of the mandrake, they assert that

'there is no other resource for obtaining communication with spirits,

except by means of certain roots' (i. 306).

 

Our position is that the English magical potato, the German mandrake, the

Greek moly, are all survivals from a condition of mind like that in which

the Hottentots still pray to roots.

 

Now that we have brought mandragora and moly into connection with the

ordinary magical superstitions of savage peoples, let us see what is made

of the subject by another method. Mr. R. Brown, the learned and

industrious author of 'The Great Dionysiak Myth,' has investigated the

traditions about the Homeric moly. He first {151} 'turns to Aryan

philology.' Many guesses at the etymology of 'moly' have been made.

Curtius suggests [Greek], akin to [Greek], 'soft.' This does not suit

Mr. Brown, who, to begin with, is persuaded that the herb is not a

magical herb, sans phrase, like those which the Hottentots use, but that

the basis of the myth 'is simply the effect of night upon the world of

day.' Now, as moly is a name in use among the gods, Mr. Brown thinks 'we

may fairly examine the hypothesis of a foreign origin of the term.'

Anyone who holds that certain Greek gods were borrowed from abroad, may

be allowed to believe that the gods used foreign words, and, as Mr. Brown

points out, there are foreign elements in various Homeric names of

imported articles, peoples, persons, and so forth. Where, then, is a

foreign word like moly, which might have reached Homer? By a long

process of research, Mr. Brown finds his word in ancient 'Akkadian.' From

Professor Sayce he borrows a reference to Apuleius Barbarus, about whose

life nothing is known, and whose date is vague. Apuleius Barbarus may

have lived about four centuries after our era, and _he_ says that 'wild

rue was called moly by the Cappadocians.' Rue, like rosemary, and indeed

like most herbs, has its magical repute, and if we supposed that Homer's

moly was rue, there would be some interest in the knowledge. Rue was

called 'herb of grace' in English, holy water was sprinkled with it, and

the name is a translation of Homer's [Greek]. Perhaps rue was used in

sprinkling, because in pre-Christian times rue had, by itself, power

against sprites and powers of evil. Our ancestors may have thought it as

well to combine the old charm of rue and the new Christian potency of

holy water. Thus there would be a distinct analogy between Homeric moly

and English 'herb of grace.'

 

'Euphrasy and rue' were employed to purge and purify mortal eyes. Pliny

is very learned about the magical virtues of rue. Just as the stolen

potato is sovran for rheumatism, so 'rue stolen thriveth the best.' The

Samoans think that their most valued vegetables were stolen from heaven

by a Samoan visitor. {152a} It is remarkable that rue, according to

Pliny, is killed by the touch of a woman in the same way as, according to

Josephus, the mandrake is tamed. {152b} These passages prove that the

classical peoples had the same extraordinary superstitions about women as

the Bushmen and Red Indians. Indeed Pliny {152c} describes a magical

manner of defending the crops from blight, by aid of women, which is

actually practised in America by the Red Men. {152d}

 

Here, then, are proofs enough that rue was magical outside of Cappadocia.

But this is not an argument on Mr. Brown's lines. The Cappadocians

called rue 'moly'; what language, he asks, was spoken by the

Cappadocians? Prof. Sayce (who knows so many tongues) says that 'we know

next to nothing of the language of the Cappadocians, or of the Moschi who

lived in the same locality.' But where Prof. Sayce is, the Hittites, if

we may say so respectfully, are not very far off. In this case he thinks

the Moschi (though he admits we know next to nothing about it) 'seem to

have spoken a language allied to that of the Cappadocians and Hittites.'

That is to say, it is not impossible that the language of the Moschi,

about which next to nothing is known, may have been allied to that of the