Aryans and savages. But we have probably brought forward enough for
our purpose, and have expressly chosen instances from the most widely
separated peoples. These instances, it will perhaps be admitted,
suggest, if they do not prove, that the Greeks had received from
tradition precisely the same sort of legends about the heavenly bodies
as are current among Eskimo and Bushmen, New Zealanders and Iowas. As
much, indeed, might be inferred from our own astronomical
nomenclature. We now give to newly discovered stars names derived from
distinguished people, as _Georgium Sidus_, or _Herschel_; or, again,
merely technical appellatives, as _Alpha_, _Beta_, and the rest. We
should never think when 'some new planet swims into our ken' of
calling it _Kangaroo_, or _Rabbit_, or after the name of some hero of
romance, as _Rob Roy_, or _Count Fosco_. But the names of stars which
we inherit from Greek mythology--the _Bear_, the _Pleiades_, _Castor_
and _Pollux_, and so forth--are such as no people in our mental
condition would originally think of bestowing. When Callimachus and
the courtly astronomers of Alexandria pretended that the golden locks
of Berenice were raised to the heavens, that was a mere piece of
flattery constructed on the inherited model of legends about the
crown (_Corona_) of Ariadne. It seems evident enough that the older
Greek names of stars are derived from a time when the ancestors of the
Greeks were in the mental and imaginative condition of Iowas, Kanekas,
Bushmen, Murri, and New Zealanders. All these, and all other savage
peoples, believe in a kind of equality and intercommunion among all
things animate and inanimate. Stones are supposed in the Pacific
Islands to be male and female and to propagate their species. Animals
are believed to have human or superhuman intelligence, and speech, if
they choose to exercise the gift. Stars are just on the same footing,
and their movements are explained by the same ready system of
universal anthropomorphism. Stars, fishes, gods, heroes, men, trees,
clouds, and animals, all play their equal part in the confused dramas
of savage thought and savage mythology. Even in practical life the
change of a sorcerer into an animal is accepted as a familiar
phenomenon, and the power of soaring among the stars is one on which
the Australian Biraark, or the Eskimo Shaman, most plumes himself. It
is not wonderful that things which are held possible in daily practice
should be frequent features of mythology. Hence the ready invention
and belief of star-legends, which in their turn fix the names of the
heavenly bodies. Nothing more, except the extreme tenacity of
tradition and the inconvenience of changing a widely accepted name, is
needed to account for the human and animal names of the stars. The
Greeks received from the dateless past of savage intellect the myths,
and the names of the constellations, and we have taken them, without
inquiry, from the Greeks. Thus it happens that our celestial globes
are just as queer menageries as any globes could be that were
illustrated by Australians or American Indians, by Bushmen or Peruvian
aborigines, or Eskimo. It was savages, we may be tolerably certain,
who first handed to science the names of the constellations, and
provided Greece with the raw material of her astronomical myths--as
Bacon prettily says, that we listen to the harsh ideas of earlier
peoples 'blown softly through the flutes of the Grecians.'
This position has been disputed by Mr. Brown, in a work called _The
Law of Kosmic Order_. Mr. Brown's theory is that the early Accadians
named the zodiacal signs after certain myths and festivals connected
with the months. Thus the crab is a figure of 'the darkness power'
which seized the Accadian solar hero, Dumuzi, and 'which is constantly
represented in monstrous and drakontic form.' The bull, again, is
connected with night and darkness, 'in relation to the horned moon,'
and is, for other reasons, 'a nocturnal potency.' Few stars, to tell
the truth, are diurnal potencies. Mr. Brown's explanations appear to
me far-fetched and unconvincing. But, granting that the zodiacal signs
reached Greece from Chaldaea, Mr. Brown will hardly maintain that
Australians, Melanesians, Iowas, Amazon Indians, Eskimo, and the rest,
borrowed their human and animal stars from 'Akkadia.' The belief in
animal and human stars is practically universal among savages who have
not attained the 'Akkadian' degree of culture. The belief, as Mr.
Tylor has shown,[154] is a natural result of savage ideas. We
therefore infer that the 'Akkadians,' too, probably fell back for
star-names on what they inherited from the savage past. If the Greeks
borrowed certain star-names from the 'Akkadians,' they also, like the
Aryans of India, retained plenty of savage star-myths of their own,
fables derived from the earliest astronomical guesses of early
thought.
The first moment in astronomical science arrives when the savage,
looking at a star, says, like the child in the nursery poem, 'How I
wonder what you are!' The next moment comes when the savage has made
his first rough practical observations of the movements of the
heavenly body. His third step is to explain these to himself. Now
science cannot offer any but a fanciful explanation beyond the sphere
of experience. The experience of the savage is limited to the narrow
world of his tribe, and of the beasts, birds, and fishes of his
district. His philosophy, therefore, accounts for all phenomena on the
supposition that the laws of the animate nature he observes are
working everywhere. But his observations, misguided by his crude
magical superstitions, have led him to believe in a state of equality
and kinship between men and animals, and even inorganic things. He
often worships the very beasts he slays; he addresses them as if they
understood him; he believes himself to be descended from the animals,
and of their kindred. These confused ideas he applies to the stars,
and recognises in them men like himself, or beasts like those with
which he conceives himself to be in such close human relations. There
is scarcely a bird or beast but the Red Indian or the Australian will
explain its peculiarities by a myth, like a page from Ovid's
_Metamorphoses_. It was once a man or a woman, and has been changed to
bird or beast by a god or a magician. Men, again, have originally been
beasts, in his philosophy, and are descended from wolves, frogs, or
serpents, or monkeys. The heavenly bodies are traced to precisely the
same sort of origin; and hence, we conclude, come their strange animal
names, and the strange myths about them which appear in all ancient
poetry. These names, in turn, have curiously affected human beliefs.
Astrology is based on the opinion that a man's character and fate are
determined by the stars under which he is born. And the nature of
these stars is deduced from their names, so that the bear should have
been found in the horoscope of Dr. Johnson. When Giordano Bruno wrote
his satire against religion, the famous 'Spaccio della bestia
trionfante,' he proposed to banish not only the gods but the beasts
from heaven. He would call the stars, not the _Bear_, or the _Swan_,
or the _Pleiades_, but Truth, Mercy, Justice, and so forth, that men
might be born, not under bestial, but moral influences. But the beasts
have had too long possession of the stars to be easily dislodged, and
the tenure of the _Bear_ and the _Swan_ will probably last as long as
there is a science of Astronomy. Their names are not likely again to
delude a philosopher into the opinion of Aristotle that the stars are
animated.
This argument had been worked out to the writer's satisfaction when he
chanced to light on Mr. Max Mueller's explanation of the name of the
_Great Bear_. We have explained that name as only one out of
countless similar appellations which men of every race give to the
stars. These names, again, we have accounted for as the result of
savage philosophy, which takes no great distinction between man and
the things in the world, and looks on stars, beasts, birds, fishes,
flowers, and trees as men and women in disguise. Mr. Mueller's theory
is based on philological considerations. He thinks that the name of
the _Great Bear_ is the result of a mistake as to the meaning of
words. There was in Sanskrit, he says,[155] a root _ark_, or _arch_,
meaning 'to be bright.' She-stars are called _riksha_, that is, bright
ones, in the Veda. 'The constellations here called the Rikshas, in the
sense of the "bright ones," would be homonymous in Sanskrit with the
Bears. Remember also that, apparently without rhyme or reason, the
same constellation is called by Greeks and Romans the Bear.... There
is not the shadow of a likeness with a bear. You will now perceive the
influence of words on thought, or the spontaneous growth of mythology.
The name _Riksha_ was applied to the bear in the sense of the bright
fuscous animal, and in that sense it became most popular in the later
Sanskrit, and in Greek and Latin. The same name, "in the sense of the
bright ones," had been applied by the Vedic poets to the stars in
general, and more particularly to that constellation which in the
northern parts of India was the most prominent. The etymological
meaning, "the bright stars," was forgotten; the popular meaning of
Riksha (bear) was known to every one. And thus it happened that, when
the Greeks had left their central home and settled in Europe, they
retained the name of Arktos for the same unchanging stars; but, not
knowing why those stars had originally received that name, they ceased
to speak of them as _arktoi_, or many bears, and spoke of them as the
Bear.'
This is a very good example of the philological way of explaining a
myth. If once we admit that _ark_, or _arch_, in the sense of 'bright'
and of 'bear,' existed, not only in Sanskrit, but in the undivided
Aryan tongue, and that the name Riksha, bear, 'became in that sense
most popular in Greek and Latin,' this theory seems more than
plausible. But the explanation does not look so well if we examine,
not only the Aryan, but all the known myths and names of the Bear and
the other stars. Professor Sayce, a distinguished philologist, says we
may not compare non-Aryan with Aryan myths. We have ventured to do so,
however, in this paper, and have shown that the most widely severed
races give the stars animal names, of which the _Bear_ is one example.
Now, if the philologists wish to persuade us that it was decaying and
half-forgotten language which caused men to give the names of animals
to the stars, they must prove their case on an immense collection of
instances--on Iowa, Kaneka, Murri, Maori, Brazilian, Peruvian,
Mexican, Egyptian, Eskimo, instances. It would be the most amazing
coincidence in the world if forgetfulness of the meaning of their own
speech compelled tribes of every tongue and race to recognise men and
beasts, cranes, cockatoos, serpents, monkeys, bears, and so forth in
the heavens. How came the misunderstood words always to be
misunderstood in the same way? Does the philological explanation
account for the enormous majority of the phenomena? If it fails, we
may at least doubt whether it solves the one isolated case of the
Great Bear among the Greeks and Romans. It must be observed that the
philological explanation of Mr. Mueller does not clear up the Arcadian
story of their own descent from a she-bear who is now a star. Yet
similar stories of the descent of tribes from animals are so
widespread that it would be difficult to name the race or the quarter
of the globe where they are not found. Are they all derived from
misunderstood words meaning 'bright'? These considerations appear to
be a strong argument for comparing not only Aryan, but all attainable
myths. We shall often find, if we take a wide view, that the
philological explanation which seemed plausible in a single case is
hopelessly narrow when applied to a large collection of parallel cases
in language of various families.
Finally, in dealing with star-myths, we adhere to the hypothesis of
Mr. Tylor: 'From savagery up to civilisation,' Akkadian, Greek, or
English, 'there may be traced in the mythology of the stars a course
of thought, changed, indeed, in application, yet never broken in its
evident connection from first to last. The savage sees individual
stars as animate beings, or combines star-groups into living celestial
creatures, or limbs of them, or objects connected with them; while at
the other extremity of the scale of civilisation the modern astronomer
keeps up just such ancient fancies, turning them to account in useful
survival, as a means of mapping out the celestial globe.'[156]
FOOTNOTES:
[142] The attempt is not to explain the origin of each separate name,
but only of the general habit of giving animal or human names to
stars.
[143] Mr. Herbert Spencer believes that the Australians were once more
civilised than at present. But there has never been found a trace of
pottery on the Australian continent, which says little for their
civilisation in the past.
[144] See C. O. Mueller (_Prolog. zur Mythol._, Engl. transl., p. 17):
'Callisto is just nothing else than Artemis and her sacred animal
comprehended in one idea.' See also pp. 201-4. Mueller (C. O.) very
nearly made the discovery that the gods of Greece may in some cases
have a bestial ancestry.
[145] Brugsch, _History of Egypt_, i. 32.
[146] Brough Smyth.
[147] _Amazonian Tortoise Myths_, p. 39.
[148] Sahagun, vii. 3.
[149] Grimm, _D. M._, Engl. transl., p. 716.
[150] Hartt, _op. cit._, p. 40. For a modern sun-man and his myth in
the Cyclades, see J. T. Bent, in the _Athenaeum_, Jan. 17, 1885.
[151] Kaegi, _Der Rig Veda_, p. 217.
[152] _Mainjo-i-Khard_, 49, 22, ed. West.
[153] _Op. cit._, p. 98.
[154] _Prim. Cult._, i. 357.
[155] _Lectures on Language_, pp. 359, 362.
[156] Ideler (_Untersuchungen ueber den Ursprung der Sternnamen_) may
also be consulted.
_MOLY AND MANDRAGORA._
'I have found out a new cure for rheumatism,' said the lady beside
whom it was my privilege to sit at dinner. 'You carry a potato about
in your pocket!'
Some one has written an amusing account of the behaviour of a man who
is finishing a book. He takes his ideas everywhere with him and broods
over them, even at dinner, in the pauses of conversation. But here was
a lady who kindly contributed to my studies and offered me folklore
and survivals in cultivated Kensington.
My mind had strayed from the potato cure to the New Zealand habit of
carrying a baked yam at night to frighten away ghosts, and to the old
English belief that a bit of bread kept in the pocket was sovereign
against evil spirits. Why should ghosts dread the food of mortals when
it is the custom of most races of mortals to feed ancestral ghosts?
The human mind works pretty rapidly, and all this had passed through
my brain while I replied, in tones of curiosity: 'A potato!'
'Yes; but it is not every potato that will do. I heard of the cure in
the country, and when we came up to town, and my husband was
complaining of rheumatism, I told one of the servants to get me a
potato for Mr. Johnson's rheumatism. "Yes, ma'am," said the man; "but
it must be a _stolen_ potato." I had forgotten that. Well, one can't
ask one's servants to steal potatoes. It is easy in the country, where
you can pick one out of anybody's field.' 'And what did you do?' I
asked. 'Oh, I drove to Covent Garden and ordered a lot of fruit and
flowers. While the man was not looking, I stole a potato--a very
little one. I don't think there was any harm in it.' 'And did Mr.
Johnson try the potato cure?' 'Yes, he carried it in his pocket, and
now he is quite well. I told the doctor, and he says he knows of the
cure, but he dares not recommend it.'
How oddly superstitions survive! The central idea of this modern folly
about the potato is that you must pilfer the root. Let us work the
idea of the healing of magical herb backwards, from Kensington to
European folklore, and thence to classical times, to Homer, and to the
Hottentots. Turning first to Germany, we note the beliefs, not about
the potato, but about another vegetable, the mandrake. Of all roots,
in German superstition, the Alraun, or mandrake is the most famous.
The herb was conceived of, in the savage fashion, as a living human
person, a kind of old witch-wife.[157]
Again, the root has a human shape. 'If a hereditary thief who has
preserved his chastity gets hung,' the broad-leafed, yellow-flowered
mandrake grows up, in his likeness, beneath the gallows from which he
is suspended. The mandrake, like the moly, the magical herb of the
Odyssey, is 'hard for men to dig.' He who desires to possess a
mandrake must stop his ears with wax, so that he may not hear the
deathly yells which the plant utters as it is being dragged out of the
earth. Then before sunrise on a Friday, the amateur goes out with a
dog, 'all black,' makes three crosses round the mandrake, loosens the
soil about the root, ties the root to the dog's tail, and offers the
beast a piece of bread. The dog runs at the bread, drags out the
mandrake root, and falls dead, killed by the horrible yell of the
plant. The root is now taken up, washed with wine, wrapped in silk,
laid in a casket, bathed every Friday, 'and clothed in a little new
white smock every new moon.' The mandrake acts, if thus considerately
treated, as a kind of familiar spirit. 'Every piece of coin put to her
over night is found doubled in the morning.' Gipsy folklore, and the
folklore of American children, keep this belief in doubling deposits.
The gipsies use the notion in what they call 'The Great Trick.' Some
foolish rustic makes up his money in a parcel which he gives to the
gipsy. The latter, after various ceremonies performed, returns the
parcel, which is to be buried. The money will be found doubled by a
certain date. Of course when the owner unburies the parcel he finds
nothing in it but brass buttons. In the same way, and with pious
confidence, the American boy buries a marble in a hollow log, uttering
the formula, 'What hasn't come here, _come!_ what's here, _stay_
here!' and expects to find all the marbles he has ever lost.[158] Let
us follow the belief in magical roots into the old Pagan world.
The ancients knew mandragora and the superstitions connected with it
very well. Dioscorides mentions _mandragorus_, or _antimelon_, or
_dircaea_, or _Circaea_, and says the Egyptians call it _apemoum_, and
Pythagoras 'anthropomorphon.' In digging the root, Pliny says 'there
are some ceremonies observed, first they that goe about this worke,
look especially to this that the wind be not in their face, but blow
upon their backs. Then with the point of a sword they draw three
circles round about the plant, which don, they dig it up afterwards
with their face unto the west.' Pliny says nothing of the fetich
qualities of the plant, as credited in modern and mediaeval Germany,
but mentions 'sufficient it is with some bodies to cast them into
sleep with the smel of mandrago.' This is like Shakespeare's 'poppy
and mandragora, and all the drowsy syrups of the world.' Plato and
Demosthenes[159] also speak of mandragora as a soporific. It is more
to the purpose of magic that Columella mentions 'the _half-human_
mandragora.' Here we touch the origin of the mandrake superstitions.
The roots have a kind of fantastic resemblance to the human shape;
Pliny describes them as being 'of a fleshy substance and tender.' Now
it is one of the recognised principles in magic, that things like each
other, however superficially, affect each other in a mystic way, and
possess identical properties. Thus, in Melanesia, according to Mr.
Codrington,[160] 'a stone in the shape of a pig, of a bread-fruit, of
a yam, was a most valuable find,' because it made pigs prolific, and
fertilised bread-fruit trees and yam-plots. In Scotland, too, 'stones
were called by the names of the limbs they resembled, as "eye-stane,"
"head-stane." A patient washed the affected part of his body, and
rubbed it well with the stone corresponding.'[161] In precisely the
same way, the mandrake root, being thought to resemble the human body,
was credited with human and superhuman powers. Josephus mentions[162]
a plant 'not easily caught, which slips away from them that wish to
gather it, and never stands still' till certain repulsive rites are
performed. These rites cannot well be reported here, but they are
quite familiar to Red Indian and to Bushman magic. Another way to dig
the plant spoken of by Josephus is by aid of the dog, as in the German
superstition quoted from Grimm. AElian also recommends the use of the
dog to pluck the herb aglaophotis, which shines at night.[163] When
the dog has dragged up the root, and died of terror, his body is to be
buried on the spot with religious honours and secret sacred rites.
So much for mandragora, which, like the healing potato, has to be
acquired stealthily and with peril. Now let us examine the Homeric
herb moly. The plant is thus introduced by Homer: In the tenth book of
the _Odyssey_, Circe has turned Odysseus's men into swine. He sets
forth to rescue them, trusting only to his sword. The god Hermes meets
him, and offers him 'a charmed herb,' 'this herb of grace' (~pharmakon
esthlon~), whereby he may subdue the magic wiles of Circe.
The plant is described by Homer with some minuteness. 'It was black
at the root, but the flower was like to milk. "Moly," the gods call
it, but it is hard for mortal men to dig, howbeit with the gods all
things are possible.' The etymologies given of 'moly' are almost as
numerous as the etymologists. One derivation, from the old 'Turanian'
tongue of Accadia, will be examined later. The Scholiast offers the
derivation '~molyein~, to make charms of no avail'; but this is
exactly like Professor Blackie's etymological discovery that Erinys is
derived from ~erinyein~: 'he might as well derive _critic_ from
_criticise_.'[164] The Scholiast adds that moly caused death to the
person who dragged it out of the ground. This identification of moly
with mandrake is probably based on Homer's remark that moly is 'hard
to dig.' The black root and white flower of moly are quite unlike the
yellow flower and white fleshy root ascribed by Pliny to mandrake.
Only confusion is caused by regarding the two magical herbs as
identical.
But why are any herbs or roots magical? While some Scholars, like De
Gubernatis, seek an explanation in supposed myths about clouds and
stars, it is enough for our purpose to observe that herbs really have
medicinal properties, and that untutored people invariably confound
medicine with magic. A plant or root is thought to possess virtue, not
only when swallowed in powder or decoction, but when carried in the
hand. St. John's wort and rowan berries, like the Homeric moly, still
'make evil charms of none avail';
Rowan, ash, and red threed
Gar the witches tyne their speed,
says the Scotch rhyme. Any fanciful resemblance of leaf or flower or
root to a portion of the human body, any analogy based on colour, will
give a plant reputation for magical virtues. This habit of mind
survives from the savage condition. The Hottentots are great
herbalists. Like the Greeks, like the Germans, they expect
supernatural aid from plants and roots. Mr. Hahn, in his _Tsui Goam,
the Supreme Being of the Khoi Khoi_ (p. 82), gives the following
examples:--
Dapper, in his description of Africa, p. 621, tells us: 'Some
of them wear round the neck, roots, which they find far
inland, in rivers, and being on a journey they light them in
a fire or chew them, if they must sleep the night out in the
field. They believe that these roots keep off the wild
animals. The roots they chew are spit out around the spot
where they encamp for the night; and in a similar way, if
they set the roots alight, they blow the smoke and ashes
about, believing that the smell will keep the wild animals
off.
'I had often occasion to observe the practice of these
superstitious ceremonies, especially when we were in a part
of the country where we heard the roaring of the lions, or
had the day previously met with the footprints of the king of
the beasts.
'The Korannas also have these roots as safeguards with them.
If a Commando (a warlike expedition) goes out, every man will
put such roots in his pockets and in the pouch where he keeps
his bullets, believing that the arrows or bullets of the
enemy have no effect, but that his own bullets will surely
kill the enemy. And also before they lie down to sleep, they
set these roots alight, and murmur: "My grandfather's root,
bring sleep on the eyes of the lion and leopard and the
hyena. Make them blind, that they cannot find us, and cover
their noses, that they cannot smell us out." Also, if they
have carried off large booty, or stolen cattle of the enemy,
they light these roots and say: "We thank thee, our
grandfather's root, that thou hast given us cattle to eat.
Let the enemy sleep, and lead him on the wrong track, that he
may not follow us until we have safely escaped."
'Another sort of shrub is called _abib_. Herdsmen,
especially, carry pieces of its wood as charms, and if cattle
or sheep have gone astray, they burn a piece of it in the
fire, that the wild animals may not destroy them. And they
believe that the cattle remain safe until they can be found
the next morning.'[165]
Schweinfurth found the same belief in magic herbs and roots among the
Bongoes and Niam Niams in 'The Heart of Africa.' The Bongoes believe,
like the Homeric Greeks, that 'certain roots ward off the evil
influences of spirits.' Like the German amateurs of the mandrake, they
assert that 'there is no other resource for obtaining communication
with spirits, except by means of certain roots' (i. 306).
Our position is that the English magical potato, the German mandrake,
the Greek moly, are all survivals from a condition of mind like that
in which the Hottentots still pray to roots.