Maoris, and South African races, would be regarded by some students as
a proof that all these tribes had a common origin, or had borrowed the
instrument from each other. But this theory is quite unnecessary. The
bull-roarer is a very simple invention. Any one might find out that a
bit of sharpened wood, tied to a string, makes, when whirred, a
roaring noise. Supposing that discovery made, it is soon turned to
practical use. All tribes have their mysteries. All want a signal to
summon the right persons together, and warn the wrong persons to keep
out of the way. The church bell does as much for us, so did the shaken
_seistrum_ for the Egyptians. People with neither bells nor _seistra_
find the bull-roarer, with its mysterious sound, serve their turn. The
hiding of the instrument from women is natural enough. It merely makes
the alarm and absence of the curious sex doubly sure. The stories of
supernatural consequences to follow if a woman sees the turndun lend a
sanction. This is not a random theory, without basis. In Brazil the
natives have no bull-roarer, but they have mysteries, and the presence
of the women at the mysteries of the men is a terrible impiety. To
warn away the women the Brazilians make loud 'devil-music' on what are
called 'jurupari pipes.' Now, just as in Australia, _the women may not
see the jurupari pipes on pain of death_. When the sound of the
jurupari pipes is heard, as when the turndun is heard in Australia,
every woman flees and hides herself. The women are always executed if
they see the pipes. Mr. Alfred Wallace bought a pair of these pipes,
but he had to embark them at a distance from the village where they
were procured. The seller was afraid that some unknown misfortune
would occur if the women of his village set eyes on the juruparis.[30]
The conclusion from all these facts seems obvious. The bull-roarer is
an instrument easily invented by savages, and easily adopted into the
ritual of savage mysteries. If we find the bull-roarer used in the
mysteries of the most civilised of ancient peoples, the most probable
explanation is, that the Greeks retained both the mysteries, the
bull-roarer, the habit of bedaubing the initiate, the torturing of
boys, the sacred obscenities, the antics with serpents, the dances,
and the like, from the time when their ancestors were in the savage
condition. That more refined and religious ideas were afterwards
introduced into the mysteries seems certain, but the rites were in
many cases simply savage. Unintelligible (except as survivals) when
found among Hellenes, they become intelligible enough among savages,
because they correspond to the intellectual condition and magical
fancies of the lower barbarism. The same sort of comparison, the same
kind of explanation, will account, as we shall see, for the savage
myths as well as for the savage customs which survived among the
Greeks.
FOOTNOTES:
[16] Pausanias, iii. 15. When the boys were being cruelly scourged,
the priestess of Artemis Orthia held an ancient barbaric wooden image
of the goddess in her hands. If the boys were spared, the image grew
heavy; the more they were tortured, the lighter grew the image. In
Samoa the image (shark's teeth) of the god Taema is consulted before
battle. 'If it felt heavy, that was a bad omen; if light, the sign was
good'--the god was pleased (Turner's _Samoa_, p. 55).
[17] _Kamilaroi and Kurnai_, p. 268.
[18] Fison, _Journal Anthrop. Soc._, Nov., 1883.
[19] Taylor's _New Zealand_, p. 181.
[20] This is not the view of le Pere Lafitau, a learned Jesuit
missionary in North America, who wrote (1724) a work on savage
manners, compared with the manners of heathen antiquity. Lafitau, who
was greatly struck with the resemblances between Greek and Iroquois or
Carib initiations, takes Servius's other explanation of the _mystica
vannus_, 'an osier vessel containing rural offerings of first fruits.'
This exactly answers, says Lafitau, to the Carib _Matoutou_, on which
they offer sacred cassava cakes.
[21] _The Century Magazine_, May, 1883.
[22] A minute account of the mysteries of Pueblo Indians, and their
use of the bull-roarer, will be found in Captain Bourke's _Snake Dance
of the Moquis_.
[23] ~Konos xylarion hou exeptai to spartion kai en tais teletais
edoneito hina rhoize.~ Lobeck, _Aglaophamus_ (i. p. 700).
[24] _De Corona_, p. 313.
[25] _Savage Africa._ Captain Smith, the friend of Pocahontas,
mentions the custom in his work on Virginia, pp. 245-248.
[26] Brough Smyth, i. 60, using evidence of Howitt, Taplin, Thomas and
Wilhelmi.
[27] _Kamilaroi and Kurnai_, p. 241.
[28] ~Peri orcheseos~, c. 15.
[29] _Cape Monthly Magazine_, July, 1874.
[30] Wallace, _Travels on the Amazon_, p. 349.
_THE MYTH OF CRONUS._
In a Maori pah, when a little boy behaves rudely to his parents, he is
sometimes warned that he is 'as bad as cruel Tutenganahau.' If he asks
who Tutenganahau was, he is told the following story:--
'In the beginning, the Heaven, Rangi, and the Earth, Papa, were the
father and mother of all things. "In these days the Heaven lay upon
the Earth, and all was darkness. They had never been separated."
Heaven and Earth had children, who grew up and lived in this thick
night, and they were unhappy because they could not see. Between the
bodies of their parents they were imprisoned, and there was no light.
The names of the children were Tumatuenga, Tane Mahuta, Tutenganahau,
and some others. So they all consulted as to what should be done with
their parents, Rangi and Papa. "Shall we slay them, or shall we
separate them?" "Go to," said Tumatuenga, "let us slay them." "No,"
cried Tane Mahuta, "let us rather separate them. Let one go upwards,
and become a stranger to us; let the other remain below, and be a
parent to us." Only Tawhiri Matea (the wind) had pity on his own
father and mother. Then the fruit-gods, and the war-god, and the
sea-god (for all the children of Papa and Rangi were gods) tried to
rend their parents asunder. Last rose the forest-god, cruel
Tutenganahau. He severed the sinews which united Heaven and Earth,
Rangi and Papa. Then he pushed hard with his head and feet. Then
wailed Heaven and exclaimed Earth, "Wherefore this murder? Why this
great sin? Why destroy us? Why separate us?" But Tane pushed and
pushed: Rangi was driven far away into the air. "_They became visible,
who had hitherto been concealed between the hollows of their parents'
breasts._" Only the storm-god differed from his brethren: he arose and
followed his father, Rangi, and abode with him in the open spaces of
the sky.'
This is the Maori story of the severing of the wedded Heaven and
Earth. The cutting of them asunder was the work of Tutenganahau and
his brethren, and the conduct of Tutenganahau is still held up as an
example of filial impiety.[31] The story is preserved in sacred hymns
of very great antiquity, and many of the myths are common to the other
peoples of the Pacific.[32]
Now let us turn from New Zealand to Athens, as she was in the days of
Pericles. Socrates is sitting in the porch of the King Archon, when
Euthyphro comes up and enters into conversation with the philosopher.
After some talk, Euthyphro says, 'You will think me mad when I tell
you whom I am prosecuting and pursuing!' 'Why, has the fugitive
wings?' asks Socrates. 'Nay, he is not very volatile at his time of
life!' 'Who is he?' 'My father.' 'Good heavens! you don't mean that.
What is he accused of?' 'Murder, Socrates.' Then Euthyphro explains
the case, which quaintly illustrates Greek civilisation. Euthyphro's
father had an agricultural labourer at Naxos. One day this man, in a
drunken passion, killed a slave. Euthyphro's father seized the
labourer, bound him, threw him into a ditch, 'and then sent to Athens
to ask a diviner what should be done with him.' Before the answer of
the diviner arrived, the labourer literally 'died in a ditch' of
hunger and cold. For this offence, Euthyphro was prosecuting his own
father. Socrates shows that he disapproves, and Euthyphro thus defends
the piety of his own conduct: 'The impious, whoever he may be, ought
not to go unpunished. For do not men regard Zeus as the best and most
righteous of gods? Yet even they admit that Zeus bound his own father
Cronus, because he wickedly devoured his sons; and that Cronus, too,
had punished his own father, Uranus, for a similar reason, in a
nameless manner. And yet when _I_ proceed against _my_ father, people
are angry with me. This is their inconsistent way of talking, when the
gods are concerned, and when I am concerned.'
Here Socrates breaks in. He 'cannot away with these stories about the
gods,' and so he has just been accused of impiety, the charge for
which he died. Socrates cannot believe that a god, Cronus, mutilated
his father Uranus, but Euthyphro believes the whole affair: 'I can
tell you many other things about the gods which would quite amaze
you.'[33]
* * * * *
We have here a typical example of the way in which mythology puzzled
the early philosophers of Greece. Socrates was anxious to be pious,
and to respect the most ancient traditions of the gods. Yet at the
very outset of sacred history he was met by tales of gods who
mutilated and bound their own parents. Not only were such tales
hateful to him, but they were of positively evil example to people
like Euthyphro. The problem remained, how did the fathers of the
Athenians ever come to tell such myths?
* * * * *
Let us now examine the myth of Cronus, and the explanations which have
been given by scholars. Near the beginning of things, according to
Hesiod (whose cosmogony was accepted in Greece), Earth gave birth to
Heaven. Later, Heaven, Uranus, became the husband of Gaea, Earth. Just
as Rangi and Papa, in New Zealand, had many children, so had Uranus
and Gaea. As in New Zealand, some of these children were gods of the
various elements. Among them were Oceanus, the deep, and Hyperion, the
sun--as among the children of Earth and Heaven, in New Zealand, were
the Wind and the Sea. The youngest child of the Greek Heaven and Earth
was 'Cronus of crooked counsel, who ever hated his mighty sire.' Now
even as the children of the Maori Heaven and Earth were 'concealed
between the hollows of their parents' breasts,' so the Greek Heaven
used to 'hide his children from the light in the hollows of Earth.'
Both Earth and her children resented this, and, as in New Zealand, the
children conspired against Heaven, taking Earth, however, into their
counsels. Thereupon Earth produced iron, and bade her children avenge
their wrongs.[34] Now fear fell on all of them, except Cronus, who,
like Tutenganahau, was all for action. Cronus determined to end the
embraces of Heaven and Earth. But, while the Maori myth conceives of
Heaven and Earth as of two beings which have never been separated
before, Hesiod makes Heaven amorously approach his wife from a
distance. Then Cronus stretched out his hand, armed with a sickle of
iron, or steel, and mutilated Uranus. Thus were Heaven and Earth
practically divorced. But as in the Maori myth one of the children of
Heaven clave to his sire, so, in Greek, Oceanus remained faithful to
his father.[35]
This is the first portion of the myth of Cronus. Can it be denied that
the story is well illustrated and explained by the New Zealand
parallel, the myth of the cruelty of Tutenganahau? By means of this
comparison, the meaning of the myth is made clear enough. Just as the
New Zealanders had conceived of Heaven and Earth as at one time
united, to the prejudice of their children, so the ancestors of the
Greeks had believed in an ancient union of Heaven and Earth. Both by
Greeks and Maoris, Heaven and Earth were thought of as living persons,
with human parts and passions. Their union was prejudicial to their
children, and so the children violently separated the parents. This
conduct is regarded as impious, and as an awful example to be avoided,
in Maori pahs. In Naxos, on the other hand, Euthyphro deemed that the
conduct of Cronus deserved imitation. If ever the Maoris had reached a
high civilisation, they would probably have been revolted, like
Socrates, by the myth which survived from their period of savagery.
Mr. Tylor well says,[36] 'Just as the adzes of polished jade, and the
cloaks of tied flax-fibre, which these New Zealanders were using but
yesterday, are older in their place in history than the bronze
battle-axes and linen mummy-cloths of ancient Egypt, so the Maori
poet's shaping of nature into nature-myth belongs to a stage of
intellectual history which was passing away in Greece five-and-twenty
centuries ago. The myth-maker's fancy of Heaven and Earth as father
and mother of all things naturally suggested the legend that they in
old days abode together, but have since been torn asunder.'
* * * * *
That this view of Heaven and Earth is natural to early minds, Mr.
Tylor proves by the presence of the myth of the union and violent
divorce of the pair in China.[37] Puang-ku is the Chinese Cronus, or
Tutenganahau. In India,[38] Dyaus and Prithivi, Heaven and Earth, were
once united, and were severed by Indra, their own child.
This, then, is our interpretation of the exploit of Cronus. It is an
old surviving nature-myth of the severance of Heaven and Earth, a myth
found in China, India, New Zealand, as well as in Greece. Of course it
is not pretended that Chinese and Maoris borrowed from Indians and
Greeks, or came originally of the same stock. Similar phenomena,
presenting themselves to be explained by human minds in a similar
stage of fancy and of ignorance, will account for the parallel myths.
The second part of the myth of Cronus was, like the first, a
stumbling-block to the orthodox in Greece. Of the second part we offer
no explanation beyond the fact that the incidents in the myth are
almost universally found among savages, and that, therefore, in Greece
they are probably survivals from savagery. The sequel of the myth
appears to account for nothing, as the first part accounts for the
severance of Heaven and Earth. In the sequel a world-wide _Maerchen_,
or tale, seems to have been attached to Cronus, or attracted into the
cycle of which he is centre, without any particular reason, beyond the
law which makes detached myths crystallise round any celebrated name.
To look further is, perhaps, _chercher raison ou il n'y en a pas_.
The conclusion of the story of Cronus runs thus: He wedded his sister,
Rhea, and begat children--Demeter, Hera, Hades, Poseidon, and, lastly,
Zeus. 'And mighty Cronus swallowed down each of them, each that came
to their mother's knees from her holy womb, with this intent, that
none other of the proud children of Uranus should hold kingly sway
among the Immortals.' Cronus showed a ruling father's usual jealousy
of his heirs. It was a case of Friedrich Wilhelm and Friedrich. But
Cronus (acting in a way natural in a story perhaps first invented by
cannibals) swallowed his children instead of merely imprisoning them.
Heaven and Earth had warned him to beware of his heirs, and he could
think of no safer plan than that which he adopted. When Rhea was about
to become the mother of Zeus, she fled to Crete. Here Zeus was born,
and when Cronus (in pursuit of his usual policy) asked for the baby,
he was presented with a stone wrapped up in swaddling bands. After
swallowing the stone, Cronus was easy in his mind; but Zeus grew up,
administered a dose to his father, and compelled him to disgorge. 'The
stone came forth first, as he had swallowed it last.'[39] The other
children also emerged, all alive and well. Zeus fixed the stone at
Delphi, where, long after the Christian era, Pausanias saw it.[40] It
was not a large stone, Pausanias tells us, and the Delphians used to
anoint it with oil and wrap it up in wool on feast-days. All Greek
temples had their fetich-stones, and each stone had its legend. This
was the story of the Delphian stone, and of the fetichism which
survived the early years of Christianity. A very pretty story it is.
Savages more frequently smear their fetich-stones with red paint than
daub them with oil, but the latter, as we learn from Theophrastus'
account of the 'superstitious man,' was the Greek ritual.
* * * * *
This anecdote about Cronus was the stumbling-block of the orthodox
Greek, the jest of the sceptic, and the butt of the early Christian
controversialists. Found among Bushmen or Australians the narrative
might seem rather wild, but it astonishes us still more when it occurs
in the holy legends of Greece. Our explanation of its presence there
is simple enough. Like the erratic blocks in a modern plain, like the
flint-heads in a meadow, the story is a relic of a very distant past.
The glacial age left the boulders on the plain, the savage tribes of
long ago left the arrow-heads, the period of savage fancy left the
story of Cronus and the rites of the fetich-stone. Similar rites are
still notoriously practised in the South Sea Islands, in Siberia, in
India and Africa and Melanesia, by savages. And by savages similar
tales are still told.
* * * * *
We cannot go much lower than the Bushmen, and among Bushman divine
myths is room for the 'swallowing trick' attributed to Cronus by
Hesiod. The chief divine character in Bushman myth is the Mantis
insect. His adopted daughter is the child of Kwai Hemm, a supernatural
character, 'the all-devourer.' The Mantis gets his adopted daughter to
call the swallower to his aid; but Kwai Hemm swallows the Mantis, the
god-insect. As Zeus made his own wife change herself into an insect,
for the convenience of swallowing her, there is not much difference
between Bushman and early Greek mythology. Kwai Hemm is killed by a
stratagem, and all the animals whom he has got outside of, in a long
and voracious career, troop forth from him alive and well, like the
swallowed gods from the maw of Cronus.[41] Now, story for story, the
Bushman version is much less offensive than that of Hesiod. But the
Bushman story is just the sort of story we expect from Bushmen,
whereas the Hesiodic story is not at all the kind of tale we look for
from Greeks. The explanation is, that the Greeks had advanced out of a
savage state of mind and society, but had retained their old myths,
myths evolved in the savage stage, and in harmony with that condition
of fancy. Among the Kaffirs[42] we find the same 'swallow-myth.' The
Igongqongqo swallows all and sundry; a woman cuts the swallower with a
knife, and 'people came out, and cattle, and dogs.' In Australia, a
god is swallowed. As in the myth preserved by Aristophanes in the
'Birds,' the Australians believe that birds were the original gods,
and the eagle, especially, is a great creative power. The Moon was a
mischievous being, who walked about the world, doing what evil he
could. One day he swallowed the eagle-god. The wives of the eagle came
up, and the Moon asked them where he might find a well. They pointed
out a well, and, as he drank, they hit the Moon with a stone tomahawk,
and out flew the eagle.[43] This is oddly like Grimm's tale of 'The
Wolf and the Kids.' The wolf swallowed the kids, their mother cut a
hole in the wolf, let out the kids, stuffed the wolf with stones, and
sewed him up again. The wolf went to the well to drink, the weight of
the stones pulled him in, and he was drowned. Similar stories are
common among the Red Indians, and Mr. Im Thurn has found them in
Guiana. How savages all over the world got the idea that men and
beasts could be swallowed and disgorged alive, and why they fashioned
the idea into a divine myth, it is hard to say. Mr. Tylor, in
_Primitive Culture_,[44] adds many examples of the narrative. The
Basutos have it; it occurs some five times in Callaway's _Zula Nursery
Tales_. In Greenland the Eskimo have a shape of the incident, and we
have all heard of the escape of Jonah.
It has been suggested that night, covering up the world, gave the
first idea of the swallowing myth. Now in some of the stories the
night is obviously conceived of as a big beast which swallows all
things. The notion that night is an animal is entirely in harmony with
savage metaphysics. In the opinion of the savage speculator, all
things are men and animals. 'Ils se persuadent que non seulement les
hommes et les autres animaux, mais aussi que toutes les autres choses
sont animees,' says one of the old Jesuit missionaries in Canada.[45]
'The wind was formerly a person; he became a bird,' say the Bushmen.
_G' ooe ka! Kui_ (a very respectable Bushman, whose name seems a little
hard to pronounce) once saw the wind-person at Haarfontein.
Savages, then, are persuaded that night, sky, cloud, fire, and so
forth, are only the _schein_, or sensuous appearance, of things that,
in essence, are men or animals. A good example is the bringing of
Night to Vanua Lava, by Qat, the 'culture-hero' of Melanesia. At
first it was always day, and people tired of it. Qat heard that Night
was at the Torres Islands, and he set forth to get some. Qong (Night)
received Qat well, blackened his eyebrows, showed him Sleep, and sent
him off with fowls to bring Dawn after the arrival of Night should
make Dawn a necessity. Next day Qat's brothers saw the sun crawl away
west, and presently Night came creeping up from the sea. 'What is
this?' cried the brothers. 'It is Night,' said Qat; 'sit down, and
when you feel something in your eyes, lie down and keep quiet.' So
they went to sleep. 'When Night had lasted long enough, Qat took a
piece of red obsidian, and cut the darkness, and the Dawn came
out.'[46]
Night is more or less personal in this tale, and solid enough to be
cut, so as to let the Dawn out. This savage conception of Night, as
the swallower and disgorger, might start the notion of other
swallowing and disgorging beings. Again the Bushmen, and other savage
peoples, account for certain celestial phenomena by saying that 'a big
star has swallowed his daughter, and spit her out again.' While
natural phenomena, explained on savage principles, might give the data
of the swallow-myth, we must not conclude that all beings to whom the
story is attached are, therefore, the Night. On this principle Cronus
would be the Night, and so would the wolf in Grimm. For our purposes
it is enough that the feat of Cronus is a feat congenial to the savage
fancy and repugnant to the civilised Greeks who found themselves in
possession of the myth. Beyond this, and beyond the inference that the
Cronus myth was first evolved by people to whom it seemed quite
natural, that is, by savages, we do not pretend to go in our
interpretation.
* * * * *
To end our examination of the myth of Cronus, we may compare the
solutions offered by scholars. As a rule, these solutions are based on
the philological analysis of the names in the story. It will be seen
that very various and absolutely inconsistent etymologies and meanings
of Cronus are suggested by philologists of the highest authority.
These contradictions are, unfortunately, rather the rule than the
exception in the etymological interpretation of myths.
* * * * *