To roar of beast in wild-wood still,
To thunder-roll, to bugle-trill,
To maiden singing on the hill,
To every sound
Thy voice, responsive, straight doth fill
The air around.
Thou hearkenest when the storm-blasts blow,
To thunder peal, to billow's flow,
And shepherd's call from hamlet low,
Replying straight;
But _thee_ nought answers ... Even so,
Poet, thy fate!
* * * * *
There are few things more curious than to observe how universally the
same legends are to be found in the popular traditions of very distant
ages and nations, under circumstances which render it extremely
difficult for the most acute investigator to trace how, when, and where
they were communicated, or even to give any plausible account of the
origin of the legend itself. So difficult indeed is this task, that we
are almost driven to account for so singular a phenomenon, by
attributing to the human mind an exceedingly small endowment of
originality; and by supposing that, however the details of these ancient
traditions may have been modified and adapted to suit the peculiar
nature, the scenery of each particular country, or the manners, customs,
and character of its inhabitants--the fundamental idea, and the leading
incident, remaining the same under the most dissimilar conditions of
time and place, must have a common and a single origin. This doctrine,
if carried to its legitimate consequences, would lead us to consider the
number of the original legends common to all times and many races, as
singularly limited; and that a very short list indeed might be made to
embrace the _root-stories_--the _uhrsagen_, as a German might call them.
And really when we reflect that many of the most threadbare jests which
figure in the recondite tomes of Mr Joseph Miller are to be found,
crystallized in attic salt, in the pages of Hierocles, and represented
as forming part of the "Hundred merye Talis and Jeastis" which
delectated the citizens of ancient Greece; when we reflect, we repeat,
that the same buffooneries, still retailed by after-dinner cits in the
Sunday shades of Clapham or Camden-Town, may have raised the easy laugh
of the merry Greek beneath the portico and in the Agora; it makes us
entertain a very humble idea respecting the amount of creative power
given to man, even for the production of so small a matter as a
pleasantry, not to speak of pleasantries so very small as some of these
mysterious and time-honoured jokes. If we remember, still further, that
the pedigree of these trifling insects of the brain, these children of
the quip, does not stop even in the venerable pages of Hierocles--that
Greek "Joe"--but loses itself, like a Welsh genealogy in the darkest
gloom of antiquity, we ought not to be surprised that ancient legends,
being often shattered fragments and dim shadowings-forth of mystic and
hierophantic philosophy, should be found, with many of their principal
features unaltered, in the popular traditions of different ages and
countries.
The tale embodied in the "Lay of Oleg the Wise," is identical in all its
essentials with the legend still extant upon the tomb of an ancient
Kentish family, in the church of (we believe) Minster, in the Isle of
Sheppey. The inimitable Ingoldsby has made the adventure the subject of
one of his charming "Legends," and has shown how the Knight came by his
death in consequence of wounding his foot in the act of contemptuously
kicking the fatal horse's skull, thus accomplishing the prophecy many
years after the death of the faithful steed. The reader will perceive,
that in the Russian form of the legend the hero dies by the bite of a
serpent, and not by the less imposing consequences of mortification in
the toe; but the identity of the leading idea in the two versions of the
old tale, is too striking not to be remarked. It is only necessary to
observe that Oleg is still one of the popular heroes of Russian
legendary lore, and that the feast, to which allusion is made at the end
of the poem, is the funeral banquet customary among the ancient Slavons
at the burial of their heroes; and resembling the funeral games of the
heroic age in Greece. The Slavonians, however, had the habit, on such
occasions, of sacrificing a horse over the tumulus or barrow of the
departed brave. The _Perun_ mentioned in the stanzas was the War-God of
this ancient people.