MEMNON AND MIMIR. II. 331 Phoibos and Helios, is yet regarded as the ruler of mortal Lykians, CHAP. and his cairn is raised high to keep alive his name amongst his people. With Memnon the myth has not gone so far. He is so transparently the son of Eôs that he must rise again. Like Zeus, Eôs weeps tears of dew at the death of her child, but her prayers avail to bring him back, like Adonis or Tammuz, from the shadowy region, to dwell always in Olympos. If again Sarpêdôn is king of the land of light (Lykia), Memnôn rules over the glistening country of Aithiopia (Ethiopia), the ever youthful child of Tithônos, the sun whose couch Eôs leaves daily to bring back morning to the earth. Nay, so clear is the meaning of the story, that he is by some called the child of Hêmera, the day; and his gleaming armour, like that of Achilleus, is wrought by the fire-god Hephaistos. When Memnôn falls in atonement for the slaughter of Antilochos, the son of Nestor, his comrades are so plunged in grief that they are changed into birds, which yearly visit his tomb to water the ground with their tears. Not less obvious is the meaning of another story, which brings before us the battle of the clouds over the body of the dead sun-a fight which we see in a darker form in the desperate struggle of the Achaians and Trojans over the body of Achilleus. To comfort Eôs, Zeus makes two flocks of birds (the swan maidens or winged clouds of Teutonic folk-lore) meet in the air and fight over Memnon's funeral sacrifice, until some of them fall as victims on the altar. Of Memnon's head the tale was told that it retained the prophetic power of the living Helios, a story which is found in the myth of the Teutonic Mimir, and which might also have been related of Kephalos, the head of the sun. and Eôs. Like Minos and Sarpêdôn, Kephalos is assigned in different Kephalos versions of the myth to different parents, whose names denote, however, the same idea; but there is no other reason for dividing him into two persons. In the one account he is a son of Hermes and Hersê, the morning breeze and the dew, and by him Eôs becomes the mother of Tithônos or, as others said, of Phaethôn. In the other he is the son of the Phokian Deion, and Hersê appears as the wife of Erechtheus, and the mother of his wife Prokris or Proknê, who is only the dew under another name.1 Nor is the whole story 1 Preller, Gr. Myth. ii. 145, is content to regard the name as an abbreviated form of ἡ προκεκριμένη, alleging the use of πρόκριν for πρόκρισιν by Hesiod, a fact which, if proved, is but a slender warrant for the other. But Hersê, the mother of Prokris, is confessedly the dew, and Proknê, the other form of Prokris, cannot be referred to II. BOOK anything more than a series of pictures which exhibit the dew as lovingly reflecting the rays of the sun, who is also loved by the morning, until at last his fiery rays dry up the last drops which still lurk in the deep thicket. Hence we have at once the groundwork of the jealousy of Eôs for Prokris, as of Hêrê for Iô or Eurôpê. But the dew reflects many images of the same sun; and thus the phrase ran that Kephalos came back in disguise to Prokris, who, though faithless to her troth, yet gave her love to her old lover, as Korônis welcomed in Ischys the reflection of Phoibos Apollôn. All that was needed now was to represent Eôs as tempting Kephalos to test the fidelity of Prokris, and to introduce into the legend some portion of the machinery of every solar tale. The presents which Eôs bestows on Kephalos to lure Prokris to her ruin are the riches of Ixîôn, on which his wife Dia cannot look and live; and when Prokris awakes to a sense of her shame, her flight to Crete and her refuge in the arms of Artemis denote the departure of the dew from the sunscorched hills to the cool regions on which the moon looks down. But Artemis Hekatê, like her brother Hekatos, is a being whose rays have a magic power, and she bestows on Prokris a hound which never fails to bring down its prey, and the spear which never misses its mark. Prokris now appears disguised before the faithless Kephalos, who has given himself to Eôs; but no entreaty can prevail on her to yield up the gifts of Artemis except in return for his love. The compact is made, and Prokris stands revealed in all her ancient loveliness. Eôs for the time is baffled; but Prokris still feels some fear of her rival's power, and as from a thicket she watches Kephalos hunting, in other words, chasing the clouds along the blue fields of heaven, she is smitten by the unerring spear and dies, like the last drop of dew lingering in the nook where it had hoped to outlive the day. The same mythical necessity which made Delos, Ortygia, or Lykia, the birthplace and home of Phoibos and Artemis, localised the story of Prokris in the land of the dawn-goddess Athênê, and then carried Kephalos away on his westward journey, toiling and suffering, like Heraklês, or Apollôn, or Kadmos. He must aid Amphitryon in hunting the dog which, sent by Poseidon or Dionysos, like the Marathonian bull, ravaged the plain of Thebes; he must go against the Teleboans, the sea-robbers of the Akarnanian coast; and finally, wearied out with his toil, he must fall from the Leukadian or glisten its phenomena; and Prokris is not connexion of Prokris and Proknê with the Greek pat, a dewdrop, and the cognate words which with it are referred to the root prish. BALDUR AND HÖDR. 333 ing cape into the sea, as the sun, greeting the rosy cliffs, sinks CHAP. beneath the waters.1 II. SECTION XI. TEUTONIC SUN-GODS AND HEROES. In Cadmon and the epic of Beowulf the word baldor, bealdor, is Baldur found in the sense of prince or chief, as mägða bealdor, virginum and Brond. princeps. Hence the name Baldr or Baldur might be referred to the Gothic balss, our bold, and stress might be laid on the origin of the name of Baldur's wife Nanna from a verb nenna, to dare. But Grimm remarks that the Anglo-Saxon genealogies speak of the son of Odin not as Baldur but as Bäldäg, Beldeg, a form which would lead us to look for an Old High German Paltac. Although this is not found, we have Paltar. Either then Bäldäg and Bealdor are only forms of the same word, as Regintac and Reginari, Sigitac and Sighar, or they are compounds in which bäl must be separated from dag; and thus the word might be connected with the Sclavonic Bjelbog, Belbog, the white shining god, the bringer of the day, the benignant Phoibos. Such an inference seems to be strengthened by the fact that the Anglo-Saxon theogony gives him a son Brond, who is also the torch or light of day. Baldur, however, was also known as Phol, a fact which Grimm establishes with abundant evidence of local names; and thus the identity of Baldr and Bjelbog seems forced upon us. Forseti, or Fosite, is reckoned among the Æsir as a son of Baldur and Nanna, a name which Grimm compares with the Old High German forasizo, præses, princeps. The being by whom Baldur is slain is Hödr, a blind god of enormous strength, whose name may be traced in the forms Hadupracht, Hadufians, &c., to the Chatumerus of Tacitus, and may possibly be akin to the Greek Hades. He is simply the power of darkness triumphing over the lord of light; and hence there were, as we might expect, Another account made the dog of Prokris a work of Hephaistos, like the golden statues of Alkinoos, and spoke of it as a gift from Zeus to Europe, who gave it to Minos, and as bestowed by Minos on Prokris, who at last gives it to Kephalos. Prokris is also a bride of Minos, whom she delivers from the spells of a magician who acts by the counsels of Pasiphaê, who is also called a wife of Minos. The name may be further traced in the Latin pallidus, and through the English and German pale and bleich, to blank, blanch, blench, and lastly to black. In the Slavonic mythology, the 3 Deutsche Myth. 212. In this case these names would seem to contain the same root with the Latin odi, odium, hate, hatred. BOOK II. The dream of Baldur. two forms of the myth, one of which left Baldur dead, like Sarpêdôn, another which brought him back from the unseen world, like Memnon and Adonis.1 But the essence of the myth lies in his death, the cause of which is set forth in a poem of the elder Edda, entitled Baldur's dream, a poem so beautiful and so true to the old myth that I may be forgiven for citing it in full. The gods have hastened all to the assembly, The goddesses gathered all to the council; Then uprose Odin the all-creator And flung the saddle on Sleipnir's back, Spotted with blood on his front and chest, But Odin rode on to its eastern portal, Where well he knew was the Völa's mound; "What man among men, one whom I know not, 66 Causes me trouble and breaks my rest? The snow hath enwrapped me, the rain beat upon me, The dews have drenched me, for I was long dead." Wegtam my name is, Waltam's son am I ; Speak thou of the under world, I of the upper; For whom are these seats thus decked with rings, "The mead is prepared for Baldur here, The gleaming draught covered o'er with the shield; "Close not thy lips yet, I must ask further, Till I know all things. And this will I know. "Hödur will strike down the Mighty, the Famed one, 1 The glory of Baldur is reflected in Mythology, 298; and Popular Romances of the Middle Ages, 372. THE DYING YEAR. "Close not thy lips yet, I must ask further, Till I know all things. And this will I know; Who will accomplish vengeance on Hodur, And bring to the scaffold the murderer of Baldur?" "Rindur in the west hath won the prize Who shall slay in one night all Odin's heirs. His hands he shall wash not: his locks he doth comb not, "Close not thy lips yet, I will ask further, Till I know all things. And this will I know; "Thou art not Wegtam as erst I deemed thee, But thou art Odin the all-creator." "And thou art not Völa, no wise woman thou, "Ride home, O Odin, and make thy boast, And the twilight of gods brings the end of all things." 335 CHAP. II. of Baldur. Some features in this legend obviously reproduce incidents in The death Greek mythology. The hound of hell who confronts the Father of Song is the dog of Yamen, the Kerberos who bars the way to Orpheus until he is lulled to sleep by his harping; while the errand of Odin which has for its object the saving of Baldur answers to the mission of Orpheus to recover Eurydikê. Odin, again, coming as Wegtam1 the wanderer reminds us at once of Odysseus the far-journeying and long-enduring. The ride of Odin is as ineffectual as the pilgrimage of Orpheus. All created things have been made to take an oath that they will not hurt the beautiful Baldur: but the mistletoe has been forgotten, and of this plant Loki puts a twig into the hand of Baldur's blind brother Hödr, who uses it as an arrow and unwittingly slays Baldur while the gods are practising archery with his body as a mark. Soon, however, Ali (or Wali) is born, a brother to Baldur, who avenges his death, but who can do so only by slaying the unlucky Hödr. The mode in which this catastrophe is brought about cannot fail The avenging to suggest a comparison with the myth which offers Sarpêdôn as a of Baldur. mark for the arrows of his uncles, and with the stories of golden apples shot from the heads of blooming youths, whether by William Tell, or William of Cloudeslee, or any others. In short, the gods are here in conclave, aiming their weapons at the sun, who is drawing "Wag-tame," broken into the road," gnarus viæ."-Grimm, Teutonic Mythology, Stallybrass, i. 314. |