THEORY OF THE IMPORTATION OF MYTHS. method which has disclosed so many secrets. For most other tales the work is done. There is absolutely nothing left for further analysis in the stories of Orpheus and Eurydikê, of Kephalos and Prokris, of Sélenê and Endymion, Niobê and Lêtô, Dêmêtêr and Persephonê, Daphne and Apollôn. Not an incident remains unexplained in the legends of Heraklês, of Althaia and the burning brand, of Phaethôn, Memnôn, and Bellerophôn. If there are bypaths in the stories of Ariadnê, Eurôpê, Medeia, Semelê, Prometheus, or of the cows of the Sun in the Odyssey, they have been followed up to the point from which they all diverge. CHAP. 55 If then in the vast mass of stories which make up the mythology Growth of popular of the Aryan nations there seems to be evidence showing that in traditions. some cases the legend has been brought by direct importation from the East to the West or from West to East, the presumption of conscious borrowing cannot with any fairness be extended to tales for which such evidence is not forthcoming. The great epic poems of the Aryan race sprung into existence in the ages which followed the dispersion of the tribes, and during which all intercourse between them was an impossibility; yet these epic poems exhibit an identical framework, with resemblances in detail which even defy the influences of climate and scenery. But many of the actors in these great dramas reappear in the popular stories of the Aryan tribes, with subtle points of likeness and difference, which can be accounted for by conscious borrowing only on the supposition that the traditions of one country were as intimately known to the people of another country as the traditions of many, if not most, of the Aryan nations are now known to us through the long toil and vast researches of comparative mythologists, aided by the mighty machinery of the printing press. In truth, the more that we examine this hypothesis of importation as affecting the general stock of mythical tradition in any country, the more scanty and less conclusive will the evidence appear; and in the issue we shall find ourselves driven practically to reject it altogether, or to suppose that the impulse of borrowing amounted to a universal and irresistible mania. The dynastic legends of Thebes do but reproduce those of Argos; the legends of both alike do but repeat the career of Achilleus or of Sigurd; and the great heroes of those tales reappear as the Boots and the disguised beggar of Teutonic and Hindu folklore. The supposition of any deliberate borrowing attributes to Greeks, Teutons, Scandinavians, and Hindus, a poverty of invention not less amazing than their skill in destroying the evidence of the theft, and in wearing borrowed plumage as with an inborn grace. Unless we are I. BOOK prepared to say that the borrowing was wholesale, and to determine the source of this exhaustless store of wealth, it is more prudent and more philosophical to admit that in every country the myths which have their roots in phrases relating to physical phenomena have been kept alive by independent tradition from the times of the first dispersion. Aryan folklore. Legends seemingly not resolv able into phrases relating to physical pheno mena. But if the story of Achilleus, as told in the Iliad, is only another form of the legend which relates the career of the Ithakan chief in the Odyssey; if this tale reappears in the Saga of the Volsungs and the Nibelungen Lied, in the epical cycles of Arthur and Charlemagne, in the lay of Beowulf and the Shahnameh of Firdusi, and if further all these streams of popular poetry can be traced back to a common source in phrases which described the sights and sounds of the outward world, the resemblances thus traced are nevertheless by no means so astonishing as the likeness which runs through a vast number of the popular tales of Germany and Scandinavia, of Greece and Rome, of Persia and Hindustan. On the hypothesis of a form of thought which attributed conscious life to all physical objects, we must at once admit that the growth of a vast number of cognate legends was inevitable. Nor is there anything bewildering in the fact, that phrases which denoted at first the death of the dawn, or her desertion by the sun as he rose in the heavens, or the stealing away of the evening light by the powers of darkness, should give birth to the legends of Helen and Guenevere, of Brynhild and Gudrun, of Paris and of Lancelot, of Achilleus and Sigurd. All that this theory involves is that certain races of mankind, or certain tribes of the same race, were separated from each other while their language still invested all sensible things with a personal life, and that when the meaning of the old words was either wholly or in part forgotten, the phenomena of the earth and the heavens reappeared as beings human or divine, and the Pani, or Night, which sought to lure Saramâ, the Dawn, into his dismal cave, became the Paris who beguiled Helen to Troy, and the Lancelot who corrupted the faith of the wife of Arthur. The wonder becomes greater when from the necessary outgrowth of certain conditions of thought and speech we turn to popular stories which appear at first sight as if they could not be brought within this class of epical legends, and which yet exhibit, in spite of differences of detail and local colouring, a closeness of resemblance which establishes their substantial identity. If, among the stories which Hindu, Persian, Greek, or Teutonic mothers recounted to their children, we find tales which turn on the same incidents, and in their most delicate touches betray the influence of precisely the STORIES OF THE MASTER THIEF. same feelings, we must conclude either that these legends were passed from the one tribe or clan to the other, or that before these tribes separated from their common home they not only possessed in mythical phrases relating to physical phenomena the germs of the future epics of Europe and Asia, but had framed a number of stories which cannot be traced back to such phrases, which seem to point rather to a storehouse of moral proverbs, and which cannot be accounted for on any hypothesis of conscious borrowing by one distinct people from another. It would, indeed, be safer to affirm of any given story that it has not been thus borrowed than to say that it cannot be traced back to the one source from which have sprung the great epic poems of the world. CHAP. V. Brahman The story of the Master Thief is a case in point. It looks at first The sight as though it had nothing to do with the legends of the great and the Norse or Hellenic heroes, and the resemblance of some of its incidents goat. to those of a story told in the Hitopadesa suggests the conclusion that it found its way into Europe through the Arabic translation known as the Kalila and Dimna. Professor Max Müller, plainly avowing this belief, says that "the story of the Master Thief is told in the Hitopadesa." The Sanskrit tale is that of the Brahman who, on hearing from three thieves in succession that the goat which he carried on his back was a dog, throws the animal down and leaves it as a booty for the rogues who had hit upon this mode of cheating him. "The gist of the story," adds Professor Müller, "is that a man will believe almost anything, if he is told the same by three different people." But, while a far greater resemblance to the Egyptian tale is exhibited by the Hindu version of the Master Thief as told by Somadeva Bhatta, presently to be noticed, it may fairly be asked whether this is either the story or the moral of the European "Master Thief." In the Teutonic version we find no incidents resembling those of the Sanskrit tale. The Norse story exhibits some points of likeness, together with differences which rather force us to think that it cannot have been suggested by the Eastern fable. Master In the latter the Brahman is directly deceived by others; in the The Norse legend the peasant deceives himself, and the moral seems Thief. to be, not that a man can be brought to believe anything if he hears it asserted by several seemingly independent witnesses, but that experience is thrown away on one who will put his hand into the fire after he has been burnt. In the Norse tale, the farmer intends to drive one of his three oxen to market, and the youth, who is a postulant for the novitiate in the worshipful order of 1 Chips from a German Workshop, ii. 229. 57 I. BOOK thieves, is told that his desire shall be granted if he can steal this ox on the road, without the owner's knowledge and without doing him any harm. The lad accordingly puts a silver-buckled shoe in the way. The man admires it, but passes on without picking it up, as an odd shoe would be of little use. Presently he sees before him the same shoe, which the thief, having run by another way, has again cast on the road, and tying up his ox hastens back to pick up the fellow, while the lad goes away with the beast. Determined to test him further, the fraternity tell the boy that he shall be as good as any one of them if, under the same conditions, he can steal the second ox, which the man was now driving to market. As he goes along, the peasant sees a lad hung under the armpits to a tree, but passes on with little concern until he sees as he supposes another lad in the same position on another tree. Still not caring to give any help, he plods onwards until the thief hangs himself up for the third time on his road. The man, thinking that he is bewitched, resolves to go back and see whether the other two still hang where he saw them, and the ox which he leaves tied up is the second sacrifice. The thieves now tell the youth that if he can steal the third ox he shall be their master. So he places himself in a thicket, and as the man draws near with his last beast, imitates the bellowing of cattle; and the peasant, his wits even more flustered than before, hurries away to catch the lost oxen, leaving his third animal a prey to the thief.1 At this point the resemblance of the Norse to the Brahman story ceases; but the career of the Master Thief is as yet scarcely begun. He has yet to overreach the society over which he now presides. The thieves set out to see whether they cannot do something surpassing all that he had done; and the lad, taking advantage of their absence to drive the three oxen into the road to the great delight of their owner, who sees them return to the farm, carries off all the precious things which formed the common store of the robbers. Thus far the Norse story agrees in its main features with the Scottish tale of the Shifty Lad,a although even here the points of difference are so great as to preclude the idea that the one was derived from the other. The sequel of the Norse tale is substantially the same as the Teutonic story of the Master Thief. This story has, therefore, really nothing to do with the fable of the Brahman and the goat, and it may fairly be doubted whether, on the supposition that the idea was gained from the Hitopadesa, "nothing was easier than to invent the three varia1 Dasent, Norse Tales, "The Master Thief," 268. Campbell, Popular Tales of the West Highlands, vol. i. p. 320. RHAMPSINITOS AND THE MASTER THIEF. 59 V. tions which we find in the Norse Master Thief" and the Shifty Lad CHAP. of Highland tradition. Professor Max Müller adds that "the case would be different if the same story occurred in Herodotos." of Rham "At the time of Herodotos," he continues, "the translations of The legend the Hitopadesa had not yet reached Europe, and we should be psinitos. obliged to include the Master Thief within the most primitive stock of Aryan lore. But there is nothing in the story of the two sons of the architect who robbed the treasury of Rhampsinitos which turns on the trick of the Master Thief. There were thieves, more or less clever, in Egypt as well as in India, and some of their stratagems were possibly the same at all times. But there is a keen and welldefined humour in the story of the Brahman and his deference to public opinion. Of this there is no trace in the anecdote told by Herodotos. That anecdote deals with mere matter of fact, whether imaginary or historical. The story of Rhampsinitos did enter into the popular literature of Europe, but through a different channel. We find it in the "Gesta Romanorum," where Octavianus has taken the place of Rhampsinitos, and we can hardly doubt that there it came originally from Herodotos." 1 But what are really the facts of the case? The evidence which proves that the Herodotean story was reproduced in the "Gesta Romanorum" cannot be taken as of itself establishing the same origin for the Norse, the Teutonic, and the Irish legend. The incident of the Brahman and the goat may be left on one side, as only distantly resembling a very subordinate part of the Norse version; but the real story of the Master Thief's career is precisely the story of the architect's son in the legend of Rhampsinitos. The possible affinity of thievish stratagems in all countries can scarcely account for a series of extraordinary incidents and astounding tricks following each other in the same order, although utterly different in their outward garb and colouring. Strangely enough, the Highland version, which agrees with the Norse tale in making the young thief cheat his master, agrees most closely with the Egyptian myth. In the latter, the younger of the two sons who wealth of Rhampsinitos as amassed by |