BOOK II. Iduna. The stu Then Hermes, at the bidding of Zeus, enters the dismal under world, and Polydegmôn consents to the return of Persephonê, who leaps with delight for the joy that is coming. Still he cannot altogether give up his bride, and Persephonê finds that she has unwittingly eaten the pomegranate seed,' and must come back to Aidôneus again. But even with this condition the joy of the meeting is scarcely lessened. A third part only of the year she must be queen in Hades; through all the other months she is to be once more the beautiful maiden who sported on the plains of Nysa. The wrath of Dêmêter has departed with her grief, the air is filled with fragrance, and the cornfields wave with the ripening grain. In Teutonic tradition Persephonê is represented by Iduna, the beautiful, whom Loki brings back in the shape of a quail (Wachtel), a myth which cannot fail to remind us of Artemis Ortygia. Loki here distinctly plays the part of Perseus, for the giants of cold hasten after him as he bears away Iduna, as the Gorgon sisters chase Perseus on his way to the Hyperborean gardens. This myth in Bunsen's belief "is an exact counterpart of the earliest myth of Heraklês, who falls into the sleep of winter and lies there stiff and stark till Iolaus wakes him by holding a quail to his nose." This idea of the palsied or feeble sun is reproduced in the Egyptian Harp-i-chruti (the Grecised Harpokrates), the sun regarded as an infant, the lame child of Isis, the earth,—a phrase which carries us to that wide class of legends, which speak of the sun, or the wind, or the light, as weak, if not impotent, in their first manifestations. Osiris can be avenged only by Horos, the full-grown sun, after the vernal equinox. Although with the mythical history of Persephonê are mingled pifying Narcissus. some institutional legends explaining the ritual of the Eleusinian. mysteries, the myth itself is so transparent as to need but little interpretation. The stupifying narcissus with its hundred flowers springing from single stem is in the opinion of Colonel Mure a monstrous hyperbole; yet that must be a narcotic which lulls to sleep the vegetation of nature in the bright yet sad autumn days when heaven and earth smile with the beauty of the dying year, and the myth necessarily "Am häufigsten ward der Granatapfel als Symbol des Zeugung und Empfängniss verwendet, was wohl davon herrührt dass er, weil seine Kerne zugleich Samenkerne sind, Samenbehältniss ist; und insofern diese Kerne in zahlreicher Menge in ihm enthalten sind, diente er sehr passend zum Symbol des Geschlechtsverhaltnisses. ... In den Mythen erscheint der Granatbaum als entsprossen aus dem auf die Erde geflossenen Blute eines des Zeugegliedes beraubten Gottes und Nana, die Tochter des Flussgotts Sangarus, wurde schon dadurch schwanger, weil sie einen Granatapfel in ihren Schoos gelegt hatte (Arnob. adv. Gent. 5)."-Nork, s. v. Apfel. 2 God in History, ii. 488. THE SUMMER CHILD. VIII. 513 chose the flower whose name denoted this dreamy lethargy. Even CHAP. in her gloomy nether abode the character of the maiden is not wholly changed. She is still not the fierce queen who delights in death, but the daughter yearning to be clasped once more in her mother's arms. That mother is carefully nursing the child of Keleos, the seed which grows without food or drink, except the nourishment of the dew and of the heat which still lurks in the bosom of the winter-smitten earth. But while she is engaged in this task, she is mourning still for the daughter who has been taken away from her, and the dreary time which passes before they meet again is the reign of the gloomy winter, which keeps the leaves off the trees and condemns the tillers of the soil to unwilling idleness. The sequel of the hymn simply depicts the joy of returning spring and summer, when the mourning mother is exalted in glory to the everlasting halls of Olympos. Hence, so far as the meaning of the myth is concerned, it matters little whether Dêmêtêr be herself the earth grieving for the lost treasures of summer, or the dawn-mother mourning for the desolation of the earth which she loves.1 of Winter. This story is naturally found in all lands where the difference The Sleep between summer and winter is sufficiently marked to leave on the mind the impression of death and resurrection. Its forms of course vary indefinitely, but it is in fact repeated virtually in every solar legend. The beautiful earth laughing amidst the summer flowers is as truly the bride of the sun as is the blushing dawn with its violet tints. The grief of Dêmêtêr for Korê is the sorrow of Apollôn when bereft of Daphnê, as its converse is the mourning of Psychê for Eros or Selênê for Endymiôn. But there is hope for all. Sarpêdôn, Adonis, Memnôn, Arethousa, shall all rise again,-but only when the time is come to join the being who has loved them, or who has the power to rouse them from their sleep. The utter barrenness of the earth, so long as the wrath of Dêmêtêr lasts, answers to the locking up of the treasures in Teutonic folk-lore; but the awakening of spring may be said to be the result of the return, not only of the maiden from the under world, but of the sun from the far-off regions to which he had departed. In the former case the divine messenger comes to summon the daughter from the unseen land; in the other 1 Professor Max Müller prefers the latter explanation and refers the name to the Sanskrit dyâvâmatar.-Lectures, second series, 517. If Dêmêtêr, or Dêô, as she also styles herself, be only a name for the earth, then Gaia stands to Dêmêtêr in the relation of Nereus to Poseidon or Helios to Apollôn. Gaia The II. BOOK the sleeper rests unawakened until she feels the magic touch of the only being who can rouse her. With either of these ideas it was possible and easy to work out the myth into an infinite variety of detail; and thus in the northern story Persephonê becomes the maiden Brynhild who sleeps within the flaming walls, as the heroine of the Hindu tales lies in a palace of glass surrounded by seven hedges of spears. But she must sleep until the knight arrives who is to slay the dragon, and the successful exploit of Sigurd would suggest the failure of weaker men who had made the same attempt before him. Thus we have the germ of those countless tales in which the father promises to bestow his daughter on the man who can either leap over the wall of spears or work his way through the hedge of thorns, or slay the monster who guards her dwelling, death being the penalty for all who try and fail. The victorious knight is the sun when it has gained sufficient strength to break the chains of winter and set the maiden free; the luckless beings who precede him are the suns which rise and set, making vain efforts in the first bleak days of spring to rouse nature from her deathlike slumbers. This is the simple tale of Dornroschen or Briar Rose, who pricks her finger with a spindle and falls into a sleep of a hundred years, the spindle answering here to the stupifying narcissus in the myth of Persephonê. This sudden touch of winter, arresting all the life and activity of nature, followed in some climates by a return of spring scarcely less sudden, would naturally suggest the idea of human sleepers resuming their tasks at the precise point at which they were interrupted; and thus when, after many princes who had died while trying to force their way through the hedge of briars, the king's son arrives at the end of the fated time and finds the way open, an air of burlesque is given to the tale (scarcely more extravagant, however, than that which Euripides has imparted to the deliverer of Alkêstis), and the cook on his waking gives the scullion boy a blow which he had raised his hand to strike a hundred years ago. story of Rapunzel. This myth of the stealing away of the summer-child is told in Grimm's story of Rapunzel, where the witch's garden is the earth with its fertilising powers pent up within high walls. Rapunzel herself is Korê, the maiden, the Rose of the Alhambra, while the witch is the icy Fredegonda, whose story Washington Irving has told with marvellous but unconscious fidelity. The maiden is shut up, like Danaê, in a high tower, but the sequel reverses the Argive legend. It is not Zeus who comes in the form of a golden shower, but the prince who ascends on the long golden locks which stream to the earth from the head of Rapunzel. In the story of the Dwarfs Perse THE WINTER PRISON. phonê is the maiden who eats a golden apple (the narkissos), and thereupon sinks a hundred fathoms deep into the earth, where the prince (Heraklês) finds her with the nine-headed dragon resting on her lap. The return of Persephonê is strangely set forth in the story of the House in the Wood, which in other stories is the house or case of ice in which the seemingly dead princess is laid. This house breaks up, like the ice, at the return of spring. The sides crack. "The doors were slammed back against the walls; the beams groaned as if they were being riven away from their fastenings; the stairs fell down, and at last it seemed as if the whole roof fell in." 1 On waking from her sleep the maiden finds herself in a splendid palace, surrounded by regal luxuries. Persephonê has returned from the dreary abode of Hades to the green couch of the life-giving mother. 515 CHAP. VIII. The gradual lengthening of the days after the winter solstice is The lengthensingularly seen in Grimm's story of the Nix of the Mill Pond. In ing days. this tale, the dawn-bride, severed from her husband, betakes herself to an old woman, who comforts her and bids her comb her long hair by the water-side and see what would happen. As she plies her golden comb, a wave rolling to the bank carries it away. Presently the waters began to bubble and the head of the huntsman (Alpheios) "He did not speak, but looked at his wife sorrowfully, and at the same moment another wave rolled on and covered his head." A second time she goes to the old woman, who gives her a flute, and this time there "appeared not only the head, but half the body of the man, who stretched out his arms towards his wife; but at the same moment a wave came and covering his head drew him down again." The third time she comes with a spinning-wheel of gold (the wheel of Ixîôn), and the huntsman leaping out of the waters hurries away with his wife from the demons who seek to seize them. In the story of Jungfrau Maleen (Korê), the princess and her maid are shut up in a dark tower, and are constrained to scrape a hole through the wall in order to let in the light. When they are able to peep out they see a blue sky, but everything on the earth is desolate as at the close of a northern winter, and like Cinderella, the maiden is obliged to take the cook's place in the king's palace, where at length, as in other stories, With this may be compared the Slavonic account of the transition from winter into spring. "In the spring, according to a White-Russian tradition, Perun goes forth in his fiery car, and crushes with his blazing darts the demons from whose wounds the blood is sometimes described as streaming forth. That is to say, the lightning pierces the clouds at that season of the year and BOOK The illtempered Princess. Story of she becomes the bride of the prince. The Norse tale of the Old Dame and her Hen repeats the same myth. Here the maiden who falls down into the cave within the hill is disconsolate because she cannot get back to her mother, "who is hard pinched, she knows, for meat and drink, and has no one with her," a true picture of the lonely Dêmêtêr on the Eleusinian plain. The Rinkrank (Hades) of the German story is here a Troll, who is cheated in the same way, the sisters whom the Maiden sends back to the upper world before herself being the less genial spring-days which precede the return of the true summer. In the Spanish story Jungfrau Maleen assumes a less attractive form. She is here the ill-tempered princess, who is shut up in a castle which has no door. To this stronghold comes a poor young knight in search of adventures, the Odysseus, Sigurd, Boots, or Beggar, of Greek and Teutonic legends; and he and his three companions for a long time strive in vain to make a breach in the wall. The grip of winter is too strong to be overcome, and the hill of ice cannot yet be scaled. At last they hear a cry which seems to come from an old well overgrown with creeping plants; but on opening the cover of the well, they find that the hole seems to go down to the very depths of the earth, in short, to Hades. They then set to work to twist a rope by which to descend for the rescue of the maiden who is imprisoned in this dismal dungeon; but when it is ready, his companions draw off from further share in the enterprise. Sigurd alone can ride through the flames to awaken Brynhild, and the young knight alone has the courage to go down into the black abyss. The maiden who has been carried off by a horned demon becomes, of course, the knight's wife. For awhile she behaves fairly, but at length her illtemper so far gets the better of her that the knight is heartily glad when the demon takes her away once more. In other words, the worn-out summer puts on the sorry garb of autumn, and is again carried away into the winter-land. But far more noteworthy is the Hindu story of Little Sûryâ Bai, or the sun-child, as exhibiting a developement of the myth far more elaborate than that of either Hellenic or Teutonic legends. This beautiful child, the daughter of a poor milkwoman, is stolen by two eagles, who bear her to a nest made of wood hooped with iron, and having seven doors. Here, having lavished upon her all the costliest treasures of the earth, they leave her, to go and fetch a diamond ring for her little finger. While they are still away, the fire in the nest, without which the maiden could not cook her food, is put out; and 1 Patrañas, or Spanish Stories, legendary and traditional, |