ordinary magical superstitions of savage peoples, let us see what is
made of the subject by another method. Mr. R. Brown, the learned and
industrious author of _The Great Dionysiak Myth_, has investigated the
traditions about the Homeric moly. He first[166] 'turns to Aryan
philology.' Many guesses at the etymology of 'moly' have been made.
Curtius suggests _mollis_, _molvis_, ~moly-s~, akin to ~malakos~,
'soft.' This does not suit Mr. Brown, who, to begin with, is persuaded
that the herb is not a magical herb, _sans phrase_, like those which
the Hottentots use, but that the basis of the myth 'is simply the
effect of night upon the world of day.' Now, as moly is a name in use
among the gods, Mr. Brown thinks 'we may fairly examine the hypothesis
of a foreign origin of the term.' Any one who holds that certain Greek
gods were borrowed from abroad, may be allowed to believe that the
gods used foreign words, and, as Mr. Brown points out, there are
foreign elements in various Homeric names of imported articles,
peoples, persons, and so forth. Where, then, is a foreign word like
moly, which might have reached Homer? By a long process of research,
Mr. Brown finds his word in ancient 'Akkadian.' From Professor Sayce
he borrows a reference to Apuleius Barbarus, about whose life nothing
is known, and whose date is vague. Apuleius Barbarus may have lived
about four centuries after our era, and _he_ says that 'wild rue was
called moly by the Cappadocians.' Rue, like rosemary, and indeed like
most herbs, has its magical repute, and if we supposed that Homer's
moly was rue, there would be some interest in the knowledge. Rue was
called 'herb of grace' in English, holy water was sprinkled with it,
and the name is a translation of Homer's ~pharmakon esthlon~. Perhaps
rue was used in sprinkling, because in pre-Christian times rue had, by
itself, power against sprites and powers of evil. Our ancestors may
have thought it as well to combine the old charm of rue and the new
Christian potency of holy water. Thus there would be a distinct
analogy between Homeric moly and English 'herb of grace.'
'Euphrasy and rue' were employed to purge and purify mortal eyes.
Pliny is very learned about the magical virtues of rue. Just as the
stolen potato is sovereign for rheumatism, so 'rue stolen thriveth the
best.' The Samoans think that their most valued vegetables were stolen
from heaven by a Samoan visitor.[167] It is remarkable that rue,
according to Pliny, is killed by the touch of a woman in the same way
as, according to Josephus, the mandrake is tamed.[168] These passages
prove that the classical peoples had the same extraordinary
superstitions about women as the Bushmen and Red Indians. Indeed
Pliny[169] describes a magical manner of defending the crops from
blight, by aid of women, which is actually practised in America by the
Red Men.[170]
Here, then, are proofs enough that rue was magical outside of
Cappadocia. But this is not an argument on Mr. Brown's lines. The
Cappadocians called rue 'moly'; what language, he asks, was spoken by
the Cappadocians? Prof. Sayce (who knows so many tongues) says that
'we know next to nothing of the language of the Cappadocians, or of
the Moschi who lived in the same locality.' But where Prof. Sayce is,
the Hittites, if we may say so respectfully, are not very far off. In
this case he thinks the Moschi (though he admits we know next to
nothing about it) 'seem to have spoken a language allied to that of
the Cappadocians and Hittites.' That is to say, it is not impossible
that the language of the Moschi, about which next to nothing is known,
may have been allied to that of the Cappadocians, about which we know
next to nothing. All that we do know in this case is, that four
hundred years after Christ the dwellers in Cappadocia employed a word
'moly,' which had been Greek for at least twelve hundred years. But
Mr. Brown goes on to quote that one of the languages of which we know
next to nothing, Hittite, was 'probably allied to Proto-Armenian, and
perhaps Lykian, and was above all not Semitic.' In any case 'the
cuneiform mode of writing was used in Cappadocia at an early period.'
As even Professor Sayce declines to give more than a tentative reading
of a Cappadocian cuneiform inscription, it seems highly rash to seek
in this direction for an interpretation of a Homeric word 'moly,' used
in Cappadocia very many centuries after the tablets were scratched.
But, on the evidence of the Babylonian character of the cuneiform
writing on Cappadocian tablets, Mr. Brown establishes a connection
between the people of Accadia (who probably introduced the cuneiform
style) and the people of Cappadocia. The connection amounts to this.
Twelve hundred years after Homer, the inhabitants of Cappadocia are
said to have called rue 'moly.' At some unknown period, the Accadians
appear to have influenced the art of writing in Cappadocia. Apparently
Mr. Brown thinks it not too rash to infer that the Cappadocian use of
the word 'moly' is not derived from the Greeks, but from the
Accadians. Now in Accadian, according to Mr. Brown, _mul_ means
'star.' 'Hence _ulu_ or _mulu_ = ~moly~, the mysterious Homerik
counter-charm to the charms of Kirke' (p. 60). Mr. Brown's theory,
therefore, is that moly originally meant 'star.' Circe is the moon,
Odysseus is the sun, and 'what _watches over_ the solar hero at night
when exposed to the hostile lunar power, but the stars?' especially
the dog-star.
The truth is, that Homer's moly, whatever plant he meant by the name,
is only one of the magical herbs in which most peoples believe or have
believed. Like the Scottish rowan, or like St. John's wort, it is
potent against evil influences. People have their own simple reasons
for believing in these plants, and have not needed to bring down their
humble, early botany from the clouds and stars. We have to imagine, on
the other hand (if we follow Mr. Brown), that in some unknown past the
Cappadocians turned the Accadian word for a star into a local name of
a plant, that this word reached Homer, that the supposed old Accadian
myth of the star which watches over the solar hero retained its
vitality in Greek, and leaving the star clung to the herb, that Homer
used an 'Akkado-Kappadokian' myth, and that, many ages after, the
Accadian star-name in its perverted sense of 'rue' survived in
Cappadocia. This structure of argument is based on tablets which even
Prof. Sayce cannot read, and on possibilities about the alliances of
tongues concerning which we 'know next to nothing.' A method which
leaves on one side the common, natural, widely-diffused beliefs about
the magic virtue of herbs (beliefs which we have seen at work in
Kensington and in Central Africa), to hunt for moly among stars and
undeciphered Kappadokian inscriptions, seems a dubious method. We have
examined it at full length because it is a specimen of an erudite,
but, as we think, a mistaken way in folklore. M. Halevy's warnings
against the shifting mythical theories based on sciences so new as the
lore of Assyria and 'Akkadia' are by no means superfluous. 'Akkadian'
is rapidly become as ready a key to all locks as 'Aryan' was a few
years ago.[171]
FOOTNOTES:
[157] Grimm, _D. M._, Engl. transl., p. 1202.
[158] _Tom Sawyer_, p. 87.
[159] _Rep._, vi. 488. Dem., 10, 6.
[160] _Journal Anthrop. Inst._, Feb., 1881.
[161] Gregor, _Folklore of North-east Counties_, p. 40.
[162] _Wars of Jews_, vii. 6, 3.
[163] _Var. Hist._, 14, 27.
[164] Max Mueller, _Selected Essays_, ii. 622.
[165] There is no end to Aryan parallels of savage practices. The
famous soma of the Veda is apparently now used like the Hottentot
roots. By the Zoroastrians 'it is used at incantations and sacrifices,
and thrown into the fire.' See Mr. Hootum Schindler, _Academy_, Jan.
31, 1885, p. 83.
[166] _Myth of Kirke_, p. 80.
[167] Turner's _Samoa_.
[168] Josephus, _loc. cit._ For this, and many other references, I am
indebted to Schwartz's _Praehistorisch-anthropologische Studien_. In
most magic herbs the learned author recognises thunder and
lightning--a theory no less plausible than Mr. Brown's.
[169] Lib. xxviii.
[170] Schoolcraft, v.
[171] Mr. Brown (_Academy_, Jan. 3, 1885) says he freely acknowledges
that his 'suggestion might be quite incorrect'--which seems
possible--and that 'if Odysseus and Kirke were sun and moon here is a
good starting-point for the theory that the moly was stellar.' This
reminds one of the preacher who demonstrated the existence of the
Trinity thus: 'For is there not, my brethren, one sun, and one
moon,--and one multitude of stars?'
_'KALEVALA'; OR, THE FINNISH NATIONAL EPIC._
It is difficult to account for the fact that the scientific curiosity
which is just now so busy in examining all the monuments of the
primitive condition of our race, should, in England at least, have
almost totally neglected to popularise the 'Kalevala,' or national
poem of the Finns. Besides its fresh and simple beauty of style, its
worth as a storehouse of every kind of primitive folklore, being as it
is the production of an _Urvolk_, a nation that has undergone no
violent revolution in language or institutions--the 'Kalevala' has the
peculiar interest of occupying a position between the two kinds of
primitive poetry, the ballad and the epic. So much difficulty has been
introduced into the study of the first developments of song, by
confusing these distinct sorts of composition under the name of
popular poetry, that it may be well, in writing of a poem which
occupies a middle place between epic and ballad, to define what we
mean by each.
The author of our old English _Art of Poesie_ begins his work with a
statement which may serve as a text: 'Poesie,' says Puttenham, writing
in 1589, 'is more ancient than the _artificiall_ of the Greeks and
Latines, coming by instinct of nature, and used by the savage and
uncivill, who were before all science and civilitie. This is proved by
certificate of merchants and travellers, who by late navigations have
surveyed the whole world, and discovered large countries, and strange
people, wild and savage, affirming that the American, the Perusine,
and the very canniball, do sing, and also say, their highest and
holiest matters in certain riming versicles.' Puttenham is here
referring to that instinct of primitive men, which compels them in all
moments of high-wrought feeling, and on all solemn occasions, to give
utterance to a kind of chant.[172] Such a chant is the song of Lamech,
when he had 'slain a man to his wounding.' So in the Norse sagas,
Grettir and Gunnar _sing_ when they have anything particular to say;
and so in the _Maerchen_--the primitive fairy tales of all
nations--scraps of verse are introduced where emphasis is wanted. This
craving for passionate expression takes a more formal shape in the
lays which among all primitive peoples, as among the modern Greeks
to-day,[173] are sung at betrothals, funerals, and departures for
distant lands. These songs have been collected in Scotland by Scott
and Motherwell; their Danish counterparts have been translated by Mr.
Prior. In Greece, M. Fauriel and Dr. Ulrichs; in Provence, Damase
Arbaud; in Italy, M. Nigra; in Servia, Talvj; in France, Gerard de
Nerval--have done for their separate countries what Scott did for the
Border. Professor Child, of Harvard, is publishing a beautiful
critical collection of English _Volkslieder_, with all known variants
from every country.
A comparison of the collections proves that among all European lands
the primitive 'versicles' of the people are identical in tone, form,
and incident. It is this kind of early expression of a people's
life--careless, abrupt, brief, as was necessitated by the fact that
they were sung to the accompaniment of the dance--that we call
ballads. These are distinctly, and in every sense, popular poems, and
nothing can cause greater confusion than to apply the same title,
'popular,' to early epic poetry. Ballads are short; a long ballad, as
Mr. Matthew Arnold has said, creeps and halts. A true epic, on the
other hand, is long, and its tone is grand, noble, and sustained.
Ballads are not artistic; while the form of the epic, whether we take
the hexameter or the rougher _laisse_ of the French _chansons de
geste_, is full of conscious and admirable art. Lastly, popular
ballads deal with vague characters, acting and living in vague places;
while the characters of an epic are heroes of definite station, _whose
descendants are still in the land_, whose home is a recognisable
place, Ithaca, or Argos. Now, though these two kinds of early
poetry--the ballad, the song of the people; the epic, the song of the
chiefs of the people, of the ruling race--are distinct in kind, it
does not follow that they have no connection, that the nobler may not
have been developed out of the materials of the lower form of
expression. And the value of the 'Kalevala' is partly this, that it
combines the continuity and unison of the epic with the simplicity and
popularity of the ballad, and so forms a kind of link in the history
of the development of poetry. This may become clearer as we proceed to
explain the literary history of the Finnish national poem.
Sixty years ago, it may be said, no one was aware that Finland
possessed a national poem at all. Her people--who claim affinity with
the Magyars of Hungary, but are possibly a back-wave of an earlier
tide of population--had remained untouched by foreign influences since
their conquest by Sweden, and their somewhat lax and wholesale
conversion to Christianity: events which took place gradually between
the middle of the twelfth and the end of the thirteenth centuries.
Under the rule of Sweden, the Finns were left to their quiet life and
undisturbed imaginings, among the forests and lakes of the region
which they aptly called Pohja, 'the ends of things'; while their
educated classes took no very keen interest in the native poetry and
mythology of their race. At length the annexation of Finland by
Russia, in 1809, awakened national feeling, and stimulated research
into songs and customs which were the heirlooms of the people.
It was the policy of Russia to encourage, rather than to check, this
return on a distant past; and from the north of Norway to the slopes
of the Altai, ardent explorers sought out the fragments of unwritten
early poetry. These runes, or _Runots_, were chiefly sung by old men
called _Runoias_, to beguile the weariness of the long dark winters.
The custom was for two champions to engage in a contest of memory,
clasping each other's hands, and reciting in turn till he whose
memory first gave in slackened his hold. The 'Kalevala' contains an
instance of this practice, where it is said that no one was so hardy
as to clasp hands with Waeinaemoeinen, who is at once the Orpheus and the
Prometheus of Finnish mythology. These Runoias, or rhapsodists,
complain, of course, of the degeneracy of human memory; they notice
how any foreign influence, in religion or politics, is destructive to
the native songs of a race.[174] 'As for the lays of old time, a
thousand have been scattered to the wind, a thousand buried in the
snow; ... as for those which the Munks (the Teutonic knights) swept
away and the prayer of the priests overwhelmed, a thousand tongues
were not able to recount them.' In spite of the losses thus caused,
and in spite of the suspicious character of the Finns, which often
made the task of collection a dangerous one, enough materials remained
to furnish Dr. Loennrot, the most noted explorer, with thirty-five
_Runots_, or cantos. These were published in 1835, but later research
produced the fifteen cantos which make up the symmetrical fifty of the
'Kalevala.' In the task of arranging and uniting these, Dr. Loennrot
played the part traditionally ascribed to the commission of
Pisistratus in relation to the _Iliad_ and _Odyssey_. Dr. Loennrot cut
about and altered at pleasure the materials which come before us as
one poem. They have little unity now, and originally had none.
It cannot be doubted that, at whatever period the Homeric poems took
shape in Greece, they were believed to record the feats of the
supposed ancestors of existing families. Thus, for example,
Pisistratus, as a descendant of the Nelidae, had an interest in
securing certain parts, at least, of the _Iliad_ and the _Odyssey_
from oblivion. The same family pride embellished and preserved the
epic poetry of early France. There were in France but three heroic
houses, or _gestes_; and three corresponding cycles of _epopees_. Now,
in the 'Kalevala,' there is no trace of the influence of family
feeling; it was no one's peculiar care and pride to watch over the
records of the fame of this or that hero. The poem begins with a
cosmogony as wild as any Indian dream of creation; and the human
characters who move in the story are shadowy inhabitants of no very
definite lands, whom no family claim as their forefathers. The very
want of this idea of family and aristocratic pride gives the
'Kalevala' a unique place among epics. It is emphatically an epic of
the people, of that class whose life contains no element of progress,
no break in continuity; which from age to age preserves, in solitude
and close communion with nature, the earliest beliefs of grey
antiquity. The Greek epic, on the other hand, has, as Preller[175]
points out, 'nothing to do with natural man, but with an ideal world
of heroes, with sons of the gods, with consecrated kings, heroes,
elders, _a kind of specific race of men_. The people exist only as
subsidiary to the great houses, as a mere background against which
stand out the shining figures of heroes; as a race of beings fresh and
rough from the hands of nature, with whom, and with whose concerns,
the great houses and their bards have little concern.' This
feeling--so universal in Greece, and in the feudal countries of
mediaeval Europe, that there are two kinds of men, the golden and the
brazen race, as Plato would have called them--is absent, with all its
results, in the 'Kalevala.'
Among the Finns we find no trace of an aristocracy; there is scarcely
a mention of kings, or priests; the heroes of the poem are really
popular heroes, fishers, smiths, husbandmen, 'medicine-men,' or
wizards; exaggerated shadows of the people, pursuing on a heroic
scale, not war, but the common daily business of primitive and
peaceful men. In recording their adventures, the 'Kalevala,' like the
shield of Achilles, reflects all the life of a race, the feasts, the
funerals, the rites of seed-time and harvest, of marriage and death,
the hymn, and the magical incantation.
Though without the interest of an unique position as a popular epic,
the 'Kalevala' is very valuable, both for its literary beauties and
for the confused mass of folklore which it contains.
Here old cosmogonies, attempts of man to represent to himself the
beginning of things, are mingled with the same wild imaginings as are
found everywhere in the shape of fairy-tales. We are hurried from an
account of the mystic egg of creation, to a hymn like that of the
Ambarval Brothers, to a strangely familiar scrap of a nursery story,
to an incident which we remember as occurring in almost identical
words in a Scotch ballad. We are among a people which endows
everything with human characters and life, which is in familiar
relations with birds, and beasts, and even with rocks and plants.
Ravens and wolves and fishes of the sea, sun, moon, and stars, are
kindly or churlish; drops of blood find speech, man and maid change to
snake or swan and resume their forms, ships have magic powers, like
the ships of the Phaeacians.
Then there is the oddest confusion of every stage of religious
development: we find a supreme God, delighting in righteousness; Ukko,
the lord of the vault of air, who stands apart from men, and sends his
son, Waeinaemoeinen, to be their teacher in music and agriculture.
Across this faith comes a religion of petrified abstractions like
those of the Roman Pantheon. There are gods of colour, a goddess of
weaving, a goddess of man's blood, besides elemental spirits of woods
and waters, and the _manes_ of the dead. Meanwhile the working faith
of the people is the belief in magic--generally a sign of the lower
culture. It is supposed that the knowledge of certain magic words
gives power over the elemental bodies which obey them; it is held
that the will of a distant sorcerer can cross the lakes and plains
like the breath of a fantastic frost, with power to change an enemy to
ice or stone. Traces remain of the worship of animals: there is a hymn
to the bear; a dance like the bear-dance of the American Indians; and
another hymn tells of the birth and power of the serpent. Across all,
and closing all, comes a hostile account of the origin of
Christianity--the end of joy and music.
How primitive was the condition of the authors of this medley of
beliefs is best proved by the survival of the custom called
exogamy.[176] This custom, which is not peculiar to the Finns, but is
probably a universal note of early society, prohibits marriage between
members of the same tribe. Consequently, the main action, such as it
is, of the 'Kalevala' turns on the efforts made by the men of Kaleva
to obtain brides from the hostile tribe of Pohja.[177]
Further proof of ancient origin is to be found in what is the great
literary beauty of the poem--its pure spontaneity and simplicity. It
is the production of an intensely imaginative race, to which song came
as the most natural expression of joy and sorrow, terror or
triumph--a class which lay near to nature's secret, and was not out of
sympathy with the wild kin of woods and waters.
'These songs,' says the prelude, 'were found by the wayside,
and gathered in the depths of the copses; blown from the
branches of the forest, and culled among the plumes of the
pine-trees. These lays came to me as I followed the flocks,
in a land of meadows honey-sweet and of golden hills.... The
cold has spoken to me, and the rain has told me her runes;
the winds of heaven, the waves of the sea, have spoken and
sung to me; the wild birds have taught me, the music of many
waters has been my master.'
The metre in which the epic is chanted resembles, to an English ear,
that of Mr. Longfellow's 'Hiawatha'--there is assonance rather than
rhyme; and a very musical effect is produced by the liquid character
of the language, and by the frequent alliterations.
This rough outline of the main characteristics of the 'Kalevala' we
shall now try to fill up with an abstract of its contents. The poem is
longer than the _Iliad_, and much of interest must necessarily be
omitted; but it is only through such an abstract that any idea can be
given of the sort of unity which does prevail amid the most utter
discrepancy.