quote six further versions of the saga of the Knight with the Swan.
Certain fairy tales of the Grimm Brothers, such as “The Six Swans” (No.
49), “The Twelve Brothers” (No. 9), and the “Seven Ravens” (No. 25),
with their parallels and variations, mentioned in the 3d volume of the
“Kinder-und Hausmärchen,” also belong to the same mythological cycle.
Further material from this cycle may be found in Leo’s “Beowulf,” and
in Görre’s “Introduction to Lohengrin” (Heidelberg, 1813).
[73] The ancient Longobard tale of the exposure of King Lamissio,
related by Paulus Diaconus (L, 15), gives a similar incident. A public
woman had thrown her seven newborn infants into a fish pond. King
Agelmund passed by, and looked curiously at the children, turning them
around with his spear. But when one of the children took hold of the
spear, the king considered this as of good augury; he ordered this boy
to be taken out of the pond, and to be given to a wet nurse. As he had
taken him from the pond, which in his language is called “lama,” he
named the boy Lamissio. He grew up into a stalwart champion, and after
Agelmund’s death, became king of the Longobards.
[74] Scaf is the high German “Schaffing” (barrel), which leads Leo to
assume, in connection with Scild’s being called Scefing, that he had no
father Sceaf or Schaf at all, but was himself the boy cast ashore by
the waves, who was named the “son of the barrel” (Schaffing). The name
Beowulf itself, explained by Grimm as Bienen-wolf (bee-wolf), seems to
mean originally (according to Wolzogen) Bärwelf, namely Jungbär (bear
cub or whelp), which is suggestive of the saga of the origin of the
Guelphs (Ursprung der Welfen, Grimm, II, 233), where the boys are to be
thrown into the water as “whelps.”
[75] The possibility of further specification of separate items of this
schedule will be seen from the compilation as given by H. Lessmann, at
the conclusion of his work on “The Kyros Saga in Europe.”
[76] See also Wundt, who psychologically interprets the hero as a
projection of human desires and aspirations (loc. cit., p. 48).
[77] Compare Freud, “Hysterical Fancies, and their Relation to
Bisexuality,” with references to the literature on this subject. This
contribution is contained in the second series of the “Collection of
Short Articles on the Neurosis Doctrine,” Vienna and Leipsic, 1909.
[78] For the idealizing of the parents by the children, compare
Maeder’s comments (Jahrb. f. Psychoanalyse, p. 152, and Centralblatt f.
Psychoanalyse, I, p. 51) on Varendonk’s essay, “Les idéals d’enfant,”
Tome VII, 1908.
[79] Dream Interpretation (Traumdeutung), II ed., p. 200. See Brill’s
Translation, Macmillan & Co., 1913.
[80] Compare the “birth dreams” in Freud’s “Traumdeutung” (see Brill’s
translation, Macmillan & Co., p. 207 et seq.), also the examples quoted
by the author in the “Lohengrin saga” (p. 27 et seq.).
[81] In fairy tales, which are adapted to infantile ideation, and
especially to the infantile sexual theories (compare Freud in the
December number of Sexuelle Probleme), the birth of man is frequently
represented as a lifting of the child from a well or a lake (Thimme,
_l. c._, p. 157). The story of “Dame Holle’s Pond” (Grimm, Deutsche
Sagen, I, 7) relates that the newborn children come from her well,
whence she brings them forth. The same interpretation is apparently
expressed in certain national rites; for example, when a Celt had
reason to doubt his paternity, he placed the newborn child on a large
shield and put it adrift in the nearest river. If the waves carried it
ashore, it was considered as legitimate, but if the child was drowned,
this was proof of the contrary and the mother was also put to death
(see Franz Helbing, “History of Feminine Infidelity”). Additional
ethnological material from folklore has been compiled by the author in
his “Lohengrin saga” (p. 20 et seq.).
[82] The “box” in certain myths is represented by the _cave_, which
also distinctly symbolizes the womb; aside from statements in Abraham,
Ion, and others, especially in case of Zeus, who is born in a cave
of the Ida mountains, and nourished by the goat Amalthea, his mother
concealing him for fear of her husband, Kronos. According to Homer’s
Iliad (XVIII, 396, et seq.), Hephaistos is also cast into the water
by his mother, on account of his lameness, and remains hidden, for
nine years, in a cave surrounded by water. By exchanging the reversal,
the birth (the fall into the water) is here plainly represented
as the termination of the nine months of the intrauterine life.
More common than the cave birth is the exposure in a box, which is
likewise told in the Babylonian Marduk-Tammuz myth, as well as in
the Egyptian-Phoenician Osiris-Adonis myth (compare Winckler, “Die
Weltanschauung des alten Orients, Ex Oriente Lux” I, 1, p. 43, and
Jeremias, loc. cit., p. 41). Bacchus, according to Paus, III, 24, is
also removed from the persecution of the king, through exposure in a
chest on the Nile, and is saved at the age of three months by a king’s
daughter, which is remarkably suggestive of the Moses legend. A similar
story is told of Tennes, the son of Kyknos, who has been mentioned in
another connection (Siecke: Hermes, p. 48, annotation), and of many
others.
The occurrence of the same symbolic representation among the aborigines
is illustrated by the following examples: Stucken relates the New
Zealand tale of the Polynesian Fire (and Seed) Robber, Mani-tiki-tiki,
who is exposed directly after his birth, his mother throwing him into
the sea, wrapped in an apron (chest, box). A similar story is reported
by Frobenius (_loc. cit._, p. 379) from Betsimisaraka, where the child
is exposed on the water, and is found and raised by a rich childless
woman, but finally resolves to discover his actual parents. According
to a report of Bab (_Zeitschrift für Ethnologie_, 1906, p. 281) the
wife of the Raja Besurjay was presented with a child floating on a
bubble of water-foam (from Singapore).
[83] The before-mentioned work of Abraham, “Dreams and Myths,” pp.
22, 23, English translation, Monograph Series, No. 15, contains the
analysis of a very similar although more complicated birth dream,
corresponding to the actual conditions; the dreamer, a young pregnant
woman, who was awaiting her delivery, not without fear, dreamed of the
birth of her son, and the water appeared directly as the amniotic fluid.
[84] This phantasy of an enormous water is extremely suggestive of the
large and widespread group of the Flood Myths, which actually seem to
be no more than the universal expression of the exposure myth. The
hero is here represented by humanity at large. The wrathful father is
the god; the destruction as well as the rescue of humanity likewise
follow one another in immediate succession. In this parallelization,
it is of interest to note that the ark, or pitched house, in which
Noah floats upon the water is designated in the Old Testament by the
same word (_tebah_) as the receptacle in which the infant Moses is
exposed (_Jeremias_, loc. cit., p. 250). For the motive of the great
flood, compare Jeremias, p. 226, and Lessmann, at the close of his
treatise on the Kyros saga in Europe, where the flood is described as a
possible digression of the exposure in the water. A transition instance
is illustrated by the flood saga told by Bader, in his Badensian folk
legends. When the Sunken Valley was inundated once upon a time by a
cloudburst, a little boy was seen floating upon the waters in a cradle,
who was miraculously saved by a cat (Gustav Friedrichs, loc. cit., p.
265).
The author has endeavored to explain the psychological relations
between the exposure-myth, the flood legend, and the devouring myth,
in his article on the “Overlying Symbols in Dream Awakening, and
Their Recurrence in Mythical Ideation” (“Die Symbolschichtung in
Wecktraum und ihre Wiederkehr im mythischen Denken” _Jahrbuch für
Psychoanalyse_, V, 1912).
[85] Compare the same reversal of the meanings in Winckler’s
interpretation of the etymology of the name of Moses (p. 13).
[86] The same conditions remain in the formation of dreams and in
the transformation of hysterical phantasies into seizures (compare
“Traumdeutung,” p. 238, and the annotation in the same place),
also, Freud, “Allgemeines über den hysterischen Anfall” (“General
Remarks on Hysterical Seizures”) in _Sammlung kleiner Schriften zur
Neurosenlehre_, 2 Series, p. 146 et seq.
[87] According to a pointed remark of Jung’s, this reversal in its
further mythical sublimation permits the approximation of the hero’s
life to the solar cycle (“Wandlungen und Symbole der Libido,” II Part,
_Jahrb. f. Psychoanalyse_, V, 1912, p. 253).
[88] The second item of the schedule here enters into consideration:
the voluntary continence or prolonged separation of the parents, which
naturally induces the miraculous conception and virgin birth of the
mother. The abortion phantasies, which are especially distinct in the
Zoroaster legend, also belong under this heading.
[89] The comparison of birth with a shipwreck, by the Roman poet
Lucretius, seems to be in perfect harmony with this symbolism: “Behold
the infant: Like a shipwrecked sailor, cast ashore by the fury of the
billows, the poor child lies naked on the ground, bereft of all means
for existence, after Nature has dragged him in pain from the mother’s
womb. With plaintive wailing he filleth the place of his birth, and
he is right, for many evils await him in life” (Lucretius, “De Nature
Rerum,” V, 222-227). Similarly, the first version of Schiller’s
“Robbers,” in speaking of Nature, says: “She endowed us with the spirit
of invention, when she exposed us naked and helpless on the shore of
the great Ocean, the World. Let him swim who may, and let the clumsy
perish!”
[90] Compare the representation of this relation and its psychic
consequences, in Freud’s Significance of Dreams.
[91] Some myths convey the impression as if the love relation with
the mother had been removed, as being too objectionable to the
consciousness of certain periods or peoples. Traces of this suppression
are still evident in a comparison of different myths or different
versions of the same myth. For example, in the version of Herodotus,
Kyros is a son of the daughter of Astyages, but according to the report
of Ktesias, he makes the daughter of Astyages, whom he conquers, his
wife, and kills her husband, who in the rendering of Herodotus is his
father. Compare Hüsing, “Contributions to the Kyros Legend,” XI. Also
a comparison of the saga of Darab, with the very similar legend of St.
Gregory, serves to show that in the Darab story the incest with the
mother is simply omitted, which otherwise precedes the recognition
of the son; here, on the contrary, the recognition prevents the
incest. This attenuation may be studied in the nascent state, as
it were, in the myth of Telephos, where the hero is married to his
mother, but recognizes her before the consummation of the incest. The
fairy-tale-like setting of the Tristan legend, which makes Isolde draw
the little Tristan from the water (_i.e._, give him birth), thereby
suggests the fundamental incest theme, which is likewise manifested in
the adultery with the wife of the uncle.
The reader is referred to Rank’s paper, “Das Inzest Motiv in Dichtung
und Sage” (“The incest motive in fiction and legend”), in which the
incest theme, which is here merely mentioned, is discussed in detail,
picking up the many threads which lead to this theme, but which have
been dropped at the present time.
[92] The mechanism of this defense is discussed in Freud’s “Hamlet
Analysis” (“Traumdeutung,” p. 183, annotation); also by Jones, _Am. Jl.
of Psychology_, 1911.
[93] In regard to further meanings of the grandfather, compare
Freud, “Analysis of the Phobia of a 5-year-old Boy” (_Jahrbuch f.
Psychoanalyse_, I, 1909, p. 7378); also the contributions by Jones,
Abraham and Ferenzi (_Internat. Zeitschrift f. ärzt. Psychoanalyse_,
Vol. I, 1913, March number).
[94] A similar identification of the father with God (heavenly
father, etc.) occurs, according to Freud, with the same regularity
in the fantasies of normal and pathological psychic activity as the
identification of the emperor with the father. It is also noteworthy in
this connection that almost all peoples derive their origin from their
god (Abraham, “Dream and Myth,” Monograph Series, No. 15).
[95] An amusing example of unconscious humor in children recently ran
through the daily press: A politician had explained to his little
son that a tyrant is a man who forces others to do what he commands,
without heeding their wishes in the matter. “Well,” said the child,
“then you and mamma are also tyrants!”
[96] See Max Müller, “Essais,” Vol. II (Leipzig, 1869), p. 20 et seq.
Concerning the various psychological contingencies of this setting,
compare p. 83 _et al._ of the author’s “Incest Book.”
[97] Compare E. Meyer (_Bericht d. Kgl. preuss. Akad. d. Wiss._, XXXI,
1905, p. 640). The Moses legends and the Levites: “Presumably Moses
was originally the son of the tyrant’s daughter (who is now his foster
mother), and probably of divine origin.” The subsequent elaboration
into the present form is probably referable to national motives.
[98] This idea which is derived from the knowledge of the neurotic
fantasy and symptom construction, was applied by Professor Freud to the
interpretation of the romantic and mythical work of poetic imagination,
in a lecture entitled: “Der Dichter und das Phantasieren” (Poets and
Imaginings) (Reprint, 2d series of Collected Short Articles), p. 1970.
[99] For ethno-psychologic parallels and other infantile sexual
theories which throw some light upon the supplementary myth of the
hero’s procreation compare the author’s treatise in _Zentralblatt für
Psychoanalyse_, II, 1911, pp. 392-425.
[100] The fairy tales, which have been left out of consideration in
the context, precisely on account of these complications, include
especially: “The Devil with the Three Golden Hairs” (Grimm, No. 29),
and the very similar “Saga of Emperor Henry III” (Grimm, Deutsche
Sagen, II, p. 177), “Water-Peter,” with numerous variations (Grimm,
III, p. 103), “Fundevogel,” No. 51, “The Three Birdies” (No. 96),
“The King of the Golden Mountain” (No. 92), with its parallels, as
well as some foreign fairy tales, which are quoted by Bauer, at the
end of his article. Compare also, in Hahn, “Greek and Albanese Fairy
Tales” (Leipsic, 1864), the review of the exposure stories and myths,
especially 20 and 69.
[101] A connection is here supplied with the motive of the twins, in
which we seem to recognize the two boys born at the same time, one of
which dies for the sake of the other, be it directly after birth, or
later, and whose parents appear divided in our myths into two or more
parent couples. Concerning the probable significance of this shadowy
twin-brother as the after-birth, compare the author’s discussion in his
Incest Book (p. 457, etc.).
[102] The early history of Sigurd, as it is related in the Völsunga
Saga (compare Rassmann, I, 99), closely resembles the Ktesian version
of the Kyros saga, giving us the tradition of another hero’s wonderful
career, together with its rational rearrangement. For particulars, see
Bauer, p. 554. Also the biblical history of Joseph (1 Moses, 37, et
seq.), with the exposure, the animal sacrifice, the dreams, the sketchy
brethren, and the fabulous career of this hero, seem to belong to this
type of myth.
[103] In order to avoid misunderstandings, it appears necessary to
emphasize at this point the historical nucleus of certain hero-myths.
Kyros, as is shown by the inscriptions which have been discovered
(compare Duncker, p. 289, Bauer, p. 498), was descended from an
old hereditary royal house. It could not be the object of the myth
to elevate the descent of Kyros, nor must the above interpretation
be regarded as an attempt to establish a lowly descent of Kyros.
Similar conditions prevail in the case of Sargon, whose royal father
is also known (compare Jeremias, p. 410, annotation). Nevertheless,
an historian writes about Sargon as follows (Ungnad, “Die Anfänge
der Staatenbildung in Babylonien” (Beginnings of State Formation in
Babylonia), _Deutsche Rundschau_, July, 1905): “He was evidently
not of noble descent, or no such saga could have been woven about
his birth and his youth.” It would be a gross error to consider our
interpretation as an argument in this sense. Again, the apparent
contradiction which might be held up against our explanation, under
another mode of interpretation, becomes the proof of its correctness,
through the reflection that it is not the hero, but the average man
who makes the myth, and wishes to vindicate himself in the same. The
people imagine the hero in this manner, investing him with their own
infantile fantasies, irrespective of their actual compatibility or
incompatibility with historical facts. This also serves to explain the
transference of the typical motives, be it to several generations of
the same hero family, or be it to historical personalities in general
(concerning Cæsar, Augustus and others, compare Usener, Rhein. Mus. LV,
p. 271).
[104] This identification of the families is carried through to the
minutest detail in certain myths, as for example in the Œdipus myth,
where one royal couple is offset by another, and where even the
herdsman who receives the infant for exposure has his exact counterpart
in the herdsman to whom he entrusts the rescue of the boy.
[105] Compare Gubernatis, Zoological Mythology, London, 1872 (In German
by Hartmann: Die Tiere in der indogermanischen Mythologie. Leipzig,
1874). Concerning the significance of animals in exposure myths, see
also the contributions by Bauer (p. 574 et seq.), Goldziher (p. 274)
and Liebrecht: Zur Volkskunde (Romulus und die Welfen) (Folk Lore,
Romulus and the Whelps), Heilbronn, 1879.
[106] Compare Freud’s article on The Infantile Recurrence of Totemism
(Imago, Vol. II, 1913). Concerning the totemistic foundation of the
Roman she-wolf, compare Jones’ Nightmare (Alptraum), p. 59 et seq. The
woodpecker of the Romulus saga was discussed by Jung (_loc. cit._, p.
382 et seq.).
[107] The stork is known also in mythology as the bringer of children.
Siecke (Liebesgesch. d. Himmels, p. 26) points out the swan as the
player of this part in certain regions and countries. The rescue and
further protection of the hero by a bird is not uncommon; compare
Gilgamos, Zal and Kyknos, who is exposed by his mother near the sea and
is nourished by a swan, while his son Tennes floats in a chest upon
the water. The interpretation of the leading motive of the Lohengrin
saga also enters into present consideration. Its most important motives
belong to this mythical cycle: Lohengrin floats in a skiff upon the
water, and is brought ashore by a swan. No one may ask whence he has
come: the sexual mystery of the origin of man must not be revealed
but it is replaced by the suggestion of the stork fable: the children
are fished from the water by the swan and are taken to the parents
in a box. Corresponding to the prohibition of all enquiries in the
Lohengrin saga, we find in other myths (for example, the Œdipus myth),
a _command to investigate_, or a riddle which must be _solved_. For
the psychological significance of the stork fable, compare Freud,
Infantile Sexual Theories. Concerning the Hero Myth, compare the
author’s extensive contribution to the elaboration of the motives and
the interpretation of the Lohengrin saga (Heft 13 of this collection,
Vienna and Leipzig, 1911).
[108] Compare Freud: Analysis of the Phobia of a five year old Boy.
_Jahrbuch f. psychoanalyt. u. psychopath. Forschungen_, Vol. I, 1909.
[109] Usener (Stoff des griechischen Epos, S. 53—Subject Matter of
Greek Epics, p. 53) says that the controversy between the earlier and
the later Greek sagas concerning the mother of a divinity is usually
reconciled by the formula that the mother of the general Greek saga is
recognized as such while the mother of the local tradition is lowered
to the rank of a nurse. There may therefore be unhesitatingly regarded
as the mother, not merely the nurse of the god Ares.
[110] Abraham, _loc. cit._, p. 40; Riklin, _loc. cit._, p. 74.
[111] Brief mention is made of a case concerning a Mrs. v. Hervay,
because of a few subtle psychological comments upon the same, by A.
Berger (Feuilleton der Neue Freie Presse, Nov. 6, 1904, No. 14,441)
which in part touch upon our interpretation of the hero myth. Berger
writes as follows: “I am convinced that she seriously believes herself
to be the illegitimate daughter of an aristocratic Russian lady. The
desire to belong through birth to more distinguished and brilliant
circles than her own surroundings probably dates back to her early
years; and her wish to be a princess gave rise to the delusion that she
was not the daughter of her parents, but the child of a noblewoman who
had concealed her illegitimate offspring from the world by letting her
grow up as the daughter of a sleight-of-hand man. Having once become
entangled in these fancies, it was natural for her to interpret any
harsh word that offended her, or any accidental ambiguous remark that
she happened to hear, but especially her reluctance to be the daughter
of this couple, as a confirmation of her romantic delusion. She
therefore made it the task of her life to regain the social position of
which she felt herself to have been defrauded. Her biography manifests
the strenuous insistence upon this idea, with a tragic outcome.”
The female type of the family romance, as it confronts us in this case
from the a-social side, has also been transmitted as a hero myth in
isolated instances. The story goes of the later Queen Semiramis (in
Diodos, II, 4) that her mother, the goddess Derketo, being ashamed of
her, exposed the child in a barren and rocky land, where she was fed
by doves and found by shepherds, who gave the infant to the overseer
of the royal flocks, the childless Simmas, who raised her as his own
daughter. He named her Semiramis, which means Dove in the Syrian
language. Her further career, up to her autocratic rulership, thanks to
her masculine energy, is a matter of history.
Other exposure myths are told of Atalante, Kybele, and Aërope (v.
Roscher).
[112] Freud: Three Contributions to the Sexual Theory, Nervous
and Mental Disease Monograph, No. 7. Also: Psychopathologie des
Altagslebens, II ed., Berlin, 1909. Also: Hysterische Phantasien und
ihre Beziehung zur Bisexualität.
[113] This is especially evident in the myths of the Greek gods, where
the son (Kronos, Zeus) must first remove the father, before he can
enter upon his rulership. The form of the removal, namely through
castration, obviously the strongest expression of the revolt against
the father, is at the same time the proof of its sexual provenance.
Concerning the revenge character of this castration, as well as the
infantile significance of the entire complex, compare Freud, Infantile
Sexual Theories and Analysis of the Phobia of a five year old Boy
(Jahrbuch f. Psychoanalyse).
[114] Compare the contrast between Tell and Parricida, in Schiller’s
Wilhelm Tell, which is discussed in detail in the author’s Incest Book.
[115] Compare in this connection the unsuccessful homicidal attempt of
Tatjana Leontiew, and its subtle psychological illumination in Wittels:
Die sexuelle Not (Vienna and Leipzig, 1909).