Myths and Dreams — Reading Notes

d egg, of which the white is the ocean, the yolk the sun, the arched shell the sky, and the darker portions the clouds; and of the Polynesians that the universe is the hollow of a vast cocoa-nut shell, at the tapering bottom of which is the root of all things, are to us so grotesque that it is not easy to regard them as explanations seriously invented by the human mind. Yet these, together with the notions of the two halves of the shell of Brahma’s egg, and of the two calabashes which form the heaven and the earth in African myth, find their correspondences in the widespread conception of the over-arching firmament as a hard and solid thing,[11] with holes (or windows[12]) to let the rain through, with gates through which angels descend,[13] or through which prophets peer into celestial mysteries;[14] a firmament outside which other people live, as instanced by the Polynesian term for strangers, “papalangi,” or “heaven-bursters.” In Esthonian myth Ilmarine hammers steel into a vault which he strained like a tent over the earth, nailing thereon the silver stars and moon, and suspending the sun from the roof of the tent with machinery to lift it up and let it down. The like achievement is recorded of Ilmarinen in the _Kalevala_, the cosmogony of which corresponds to that of the Esthonian _Kalevipöeg_.

These are the less refined forms of myths which have held their ground from pre-scientific times till now, and the rude analogies of which are justified by the appearances of things as presented by the senses. Man’s intellectual history is the history of his escape from the illusions of the senses, it is the slow and often tardily accepted discovery that nature is quite other than that which it seems to be. And this variance between appearances and realities remained hidden until the intellect challenged the report about phenomena which the sense-perceptions brought. For in the ages when feeling was dominant, and the judgment scarce awakened, the simple explanations in venerable legends sung by bard or told by aged crone--legends to which age had given sanctity which finally placed them among the world’s sacred literatures--were received without doubt or question. But, as belief in causality spread, men were not content to rest in the naïve explanations of an uncritical age. What man had guessed about nature gave place to what nature had to say about herself, and with the classifying of experience science had its birth.

Meanwhile, until this quite recent stage in man’s progress was reached, the senses told their blundering tale of an earth flat and fixed, with sun, moon, and stars as its ministering servants, while gods or beasts upbore it, and mighty pillars supported the massive firmament In Hindu myth the tortoise which upholds the earth rests upon an elephant, whose legs _reach all the way down_! In Bogotà the culture-god Bochica punishes a lesser and offending deity by compelling him to sustain the part of Atlas, and it is in shifting his burden from shoulder to shoulder that earthquakes are caused. The natives of Celebes say that these are due to the world-supporting Hog as he rubs himself against a tree; the Thascaltecs that they occur when the deities who hold up the world relieve one another; the Japanese think that they are caused by huge dragons wriggling underground, an idea probably confirmed by the discovery of monster fossil bones. In Algonquin myth the mighty man Earthquake “can pass along under the ground, and make all things shake and tremble by his power.”

As the myths about earth-bearers prevail in the regions of earthquakes, so do those about subterranean beings in the neighbourhood of volcanoes. The superstitions which mountainous countries especially foster are intensified when the mountains themselves cast forth their awful and devastating progeny, “red ruin” and the other children born of them. Man in his dread, “caring in no wise for the external world, except as it influenced his own destiny; honouring the lightning because it could strike him, the sea because it could drown him,”[15] could do naught else than people them with maleficent beings, and conceive of their sulphur-exhaling mouths as the jaws of a bottomless pit.

(_d._) _Storm and Lightning, etc._

If in freeing ourselves from the tyranny of the “solar” theory we shackled ourselves with some other, we should certainly prefer that which is known as the “meteorological,” and which, in the person of Kuhn and other supporters, finds a more rational and persistent source of myth in phenomena which are fitful and startling, such as hurricane and tempest, earthquake and volcanic outburst. Sunrises and sunsets happen with a regularity which failed to excite any strong emotion or stimulate curiosity, and the remotest ancestor of the primitive Aryan soon shook off the habit--if, indeed, he ever acquired it--of going to bed in fear and trembling lest the sun should not come back again. Nature, in her softer aspects and her gracious bounties, in the spring-time with its promise, the summer with its glory, the autumn with its gifts, has moved the heart of man to song and festival and procession; as, by contrast, the frosts that nipped the early buds and the fierce heat that withered the approaching harvest gave occasion for plaintive ditty and sombre ceremony. It is in the fierce play and passionate outbursts of the elements, in the storm, the lightning, and the thunder, that the feelings are aroused and that the terror-stricken fancy sees the strife of wrathful deities, or depicts their dire work amongst men. Hence, all the world over, the storm-god and the wind-god have played a mighty part.

To the savage, the wind, blowing as it listeth, its whence and whither unknown, itself invisible, yet the sweep and force of its power manifest and felt, must have ranked amongst the most striking phenomena. And, as will be seen hereafter, the correspondences between wind and breath, and the connection between breath and life, added their quota of mystery in man’s effort to account for the impalpable element. Of this personification of the elements the following Ojibway folk-tale, cited by Dorman, gives poetic illustration:--“There were spirits from all parts of the country. Some came with crashing steps and roaring voice, who directed the whirlwinds which were in the habit of raging about the neighbouring country. Then glided in gently a sweet little spirit, which blew the summer gale. Then came in the old sand-spirit, who blew the sand-squalls in the sand-buttes toward the west. He was a great speech-maker, and shook the lodge with his deep-throated voice, as he addressed the spirits of the cataracts and waterfalls, and those of the islands who wore beautiful green blankets.”

In the legends of the Quiches, the mysterious creative power is Hurakan (whence _hurricane_), among the Choctaws the original word for Deity is Hushtoli, the storm-wind, and in Peru to kiss the air was the commonest and simplest sign of adoration of the collective divinities. The Guayacuans of South America, when a storm arose and there was much thunder or wind, all went out in troops, as it were to battle, shaking their clubs in the air, shooting flights of arrows in that direction whence the storm came.[16]

The Araucanians thought that gales and thunderstorms were the battles fought between the spirits of the dead and their foes.

Turning to the literatures of higher races, we find in the prose _Edda_, when Gangler asks whence comes the wind, that Ha answers him: “Thou must know that at the northernmost point in the heavens sits a giant,

“In the guise of an eagle; And the winds, it is said, Rush down on the earth From his outspreading pinions.”

In Finnish myth the north wind Pulmri, father of the frost, is sometimes imaged as an eagle.

“The Indians believe in a great bird called by them _Wochowsen_ or _Wuchowsen_, meaning Wind-Blow or the Wind-Blower, who lives far to the north, and sits upon a great rock at the end of the sky. And it is because whenever he moves his wings the wind blows they of old times called him that.” And in another Algonquin myth: “Ga-oh is the Spirit of the Winds. He moves the winds, but he is chained to a rock. The winds trouble him, and he tries very hard to get free. When he struggles the winds are forced away from him, and they blow upon the earth. Sometimes he suffers terrible pain, and then his struggles are violent. This makes the winds wild, and they do damage on the earth. Then he feels better and goes to sleep, and the winds become quiet also.”[17]

In the _Veda_ the Maruts or Storm-gods, to whom many of the hymns are addressed, “make the rocks to tremble and tear asunder the kings of the forest,” like Hermes in his violence and like Boreas in his rage. Whether or no they become in Scandinavian legend the grim and fearful Ogres swiftly sailing in their cloud-ships, we may see in them the “crushers” and “grinders,”[18] as their name imports, the types of northern deities like Odin, long degraded into the Wild Huntsman and his phantom crew, whose uncouth yells the peasant hears in the midnight air.[19] Among the Aztecs Cuculkan, the bird-serpent, was a personification of the wind, especially of the east wind, as bringer of the rain. It was at one of his shrines, to which pilgrimages were made from great distances, that the Spaniards first saw to their surprise a cross surmounting the temple of this god of the wind, whence arose a legend that the Apostle Thomas had evangelised America. But, in fact, the pagan cross of Central America and Mexico was the symbol of the four cardinal points.

In his valuable book on the _Myths of the Red Race_ Dr. Brinton has brought together a mass of evidence in support of a theory that the sanctity in which the number four is held by the American races is due to the adoration of the cardinal points, which are identified with the four winds, who in hero-myths are the four ancestors of the human race. The illustrations with which the argument is supported are numerous and valuable, but the argument itself is made to rest too strongly on an assumed primitive symbolism, whereas it suffices to show how the early notion of the flat world, as also square, would lead to the myth of the four winds blowing from the four corners, a myth often illustrated in ancient maps with an angel at each corner from whose mouth the wind issues. The official title of the Incas was “Lord of the four quarters of the earth,” and the number appears in all sorts of combinations, but the theory may be pushed to extremes in compelling every fact to square with it.[20] As the illustrations given above show, we are some steps nearer to the primitive myth when we find the wind conceived of as a mighty bird, which indeed is in both old and new world mythology a common symbol of thunder and lightning also. On this matter Dr. Brinton’s remarks bear quoting.

Like the wind the bird sweeps through the aërial spaces, sings in the forests, and rustles on its course; like the cloud it floats in mid-air, and casts its shadow on the earth; like the lightning it darts from heaven to earth to strike its unsuspecting prey. These tropes were truths to savage nations, and led on by that law of language which forced them to conceive everything as animate or inanimate, itself the product of a deeper law of thought which urges us to ascribe life to whatever has motion, they found no animal so appropriate for their purpose here as the bird. Therefore the Algonquins say that birds always make the winds, that they create the waterspouts, and that the clouds are the spreading and agitation of their wings; the Navajos that at each cardinal point stands a white swan, who is the spirit of the blasts; so also the Dakotas frequently explain the thunder as the sound of the cloud-bird flapping his wings; the lightning as the fire that flashes from his tracks, like the sparks which the buffalo scatters when he scours over a stony plain.

Estimates differ much as to the size of the Thunder-Bird. In one tradition an Indian found its nest, and secured a feather which was above two hundred feet long, while in another tradition the bird is said to be no bigger than one’s little finger. But among the Western Indians he is an immense eagle. “When this aërial monster flaps his wings loud peals of thunder roll over the prairie; when he winks his eye it lightens; when he wags his tail the waters of the lake which he carries on his back overflow and produce rain.” Mixcoatl, the Mexican Cloud-Serpent, as well as Jove, carries his bundle of arrows or thunderbolts, which in the hand of Thor are represented by his mighty club or hammer. The old and universal belief that stones were hurled by the Thunder-God is not so far-fetched as we, in our pride of science, might think, for the flints which are mistaken for thunderbolts, and which become objects of adoration as well as charms, produce a flash when struck by the lightning. In the lightning flash man would see the descent of fire from heaven for his needs. That he should regard it, like water, as a living creature, with power to hurt or help him, is in keeping with attribution of life to all that moved. Its apparent connection with the great source of heat would foster the feeling which expressed itself in fire-worship, with its curious survivals to modern times. No element was more calculated to excite awe in its seeming unrelation to the objects which produced it. Once secured, to guard it from extinction or theft was a serious duty, and everything from which it issued, trees as its hiding-place, since it came from the wood when rubbed, stones also, since sparks shot from them when struck, were held sacred. In the manifold myths about its origin one feature is common, that its seed was stolen, the chief agents (probably as the messengers between earth and sky) being birds, or men assuming the form of birds. The Sioux Indians say that their first ancestor procured his fire from the sparks which a panther struck from the rocks as he bounded up a hill. But of examples from the lower culture, forerunners of the Zeus-defying Prometheus, Mr. Gill’s _Myths of the South Pacific_ supplies one which may be taken as a sample of the rest. Maui, a famous South Sea hero, finding some cooked food in a basket brought by Buataranga from the nether world, and relishing it more than raw food, determines to steal the fire, and flying to the Buataranga’s realm frightens the fire-god by threats and blows into revealing the secret. Then wresting the fire-sticks from him he sets the under-world in flames, and returns with his prize to the upper-world; thenceforth “all the dwellers there used fire-sticks, and enjoyed the luxuries of light and of cooked food.”

(_e._) _Light and Darkness._

As in the conflict raging in the sky during gale or tempest, when the light and the darkness alternately prevail, the barbaric mind sees war waged between the heroes of the spirit-land who have carried their unsettled blood feuds thither, so in many myths the lightning is no comrade of the thunder, but its foe, the battle of bird with serpent. The resemblance of the lightning flash to the sharp, sudden, zigzag movements of the serpent, a creature so mysterious to barbaric man in its unlikeness to the beasts of the field, accounts for a myth the influence of which as a terrorising agent on human conduct is in course of rapid decay. Its importance in the history of belief in the supernatural is too far-reaching to be passed over, and in tracing its course it is necessary to show its connection with the group of storm-myths and sun-myths of the Aryan race in the battles between Indra and Vritra, Ormuzd and Ahriman, Thor and Midgard, Hercules and Cacus, Apollo and Pythôn, and St. George and the Dragon.

All the Aryan nations have among their legends, often exalted into epic themes, the story of a battle between a hero and a monster. In each case the hero conquers, and releases treasures, or in some way renders succour to man, through his victory. In Hindu myth this battle is fought between Indra and Vritra.

Indra, one of the Vedic gods, comes, according to Professor Max Müller, from the same root as the Sanskrit _indu_, drop, sap, but the etymology is doubtful. What is not doubtful is that he is the god of the bright sky, and although, like the other gods invoked in the hymns of the _Rig-Veda_, a departmental or tribal deity, he is a sort of _primus inter pares_, of whose many titles, Vritrahan or “Vritra-slayer” is the pre-eminent one. The benefits showered by him upon mortals caused the attribution of moral qualities to him, and he was adored as “lord of the virtues,” while the juice of the sacred soma plant was offered in his honour, for which reason he is also called Somapâ or “soma-drinker.” It is his struggle with Vritra which is a constant theme of the Vedic hymns, the burden of which remind us of the praises offered in the Psalms to Yahweh as a man of war, as mighty in battle. “The gods do not reach thee, nor men, thou overcomest all creatures in strength.... Thou thunderer, hast shattered with thy bolt the broad and massive cloud into fragments, and has sent down the waters that were confined in it to flow at will; verily thou alone possessest all power.” The primitive physical meaning of the myth is clear. Indra is the sun-god, armed with spears and arrows, for such did the solar rays sometimes appear to barbaric fancy. The rain-clouds are imprisoned in dungeons or caverns by Vritra, the “enveloper,” the thief, serpent, wolf, wild boar, as he is severally styled in the _Rig-Veda_. Indra attacks him, hurls his darts at him, they pierce the cloud-caverns, the waters are released, and drop upon the earth as rain.

This explanation, which has many parallels in savage myth, is self-consistent as fitting into crude philosophy of personal life and volition in sun and cloud, and is fraught with deep truth of meaning in regions like the Punjaub, where drought brought famine in its train.

The Aryans were a pastoral people, their wealth being in flocks and herds.[21] The cow yielded milk for the household; her dung fertilised the soil; her young multiplied the wealth of the family at an ever-increasing rate, and she naturally became the symbol of fruitfulness and prosperity, ultimately an object of veneration; while, for the functions which the bull performed, he was the type of strength. The Aryan’s enemy was he who stole or injured the cattle; the Aryan’s friend was he who saved them from the robber’s clutch.