Artemus Ward used to say that, while there were many things in the
science of astronomy hard to be understood, there was one fact which
entirely puzzled him. He could partly perceive how we 'weigh the sun,'
and ascertain the component elements of the heavenly bodies, by the aid
of spectrum analysis. 'But what beats me about the stars,' he observed
plaintively, 'is how we come to know their names.' This question, or
rather the somewhat similar question, 'How did the constellations come by
their very peculiar names?' has puzzled Professor Pritchard and other
astronomers more serious than Artemus Ward. Why is a group of stars
called the Bear, or the Swan, or the Twins, or named after the Pleiades,
the fair daughters of the Giant Atlas? {121} These are difficulties that
meet even children when they examine a 'celestial globe.' There they
find the figure of a bear, traced out with lines in the intervals between
the stars of the constellations, while a very imposing giant is so drawn
that Orion's belt just fits his waist. But when he comes to look at the
heavens, the infant speculator sees no sort of likeness to a bear in the
stars, nor anything at all resembling a giant in the neighbourhood of
Orion. The most eccentric modern fancy which can detect what shapes it
will in clouds, is unable to find any likeness to human or animal forms
in the stars, and yet we call a great many of the stars by the names of
men and beasts and gods. Some resemblance to terrestrial things, it is
true, everyone can behold in the heavens. Corona, for example, is like a
crown, or, as the Australian black fellows know, it is like a boomerang,
and we can understand why they give it the name of that curious curved
missile. The Milky Way, again, does resemble a path in the sky; our
English ancestors called it Watling Street--the path of the Watlings,
mythical giants--and Bushmen in Africa and Red Men in North America name
it the 'ashen path,' or 'the path of souls.' The ashes of the path, of
course, are supposed to be hot and glowing, not dead and black like the
ash-paths of modern running-grounds. Other and more recent names for
certain constellations are also intelligible. In Homer's time the Greeks
had two names for the Great Bear; they called it the Bear, or the Wain:
and a certain fanciful likeness to a wain may be made out, though no
resemblance to a bear is manifest. In the United States the same
constellation is popularly styled the Dipper, and every one may observe
the likeness to a dipper or toddy-ladle.
But these resemblances take us only a little way towards appellations. We
know that we derive many of the names straight from the Greek; but whence
did the Greeks get them? Some, it is said, from the Chaldaeans; but
whence did they reach the Chaldaeans? To this we shall return later,
but, as to early Greek star-lore, Goguet, the author of 'L'Origine des
Lois,' a rather learned but too speculative work of the last century,
makes the following characteristic remarks: 'The Greeks received their
astronomy from Prometheus. This prince, as far as history teaches us,
made his observations on Mount Caucasus.' That was the eighteenth
century's method of interpreting mythology. The myth preserved in the
'Prometheus Bound' of AEschylus tells us that Zeus crucified the Titan on
Mount Caucasus. The French philosopher, rejecting the supernatural
elements of the tale, makes up his mind that Prometheus was a prince of a
scientific bent, and that he established his observatory on the frosty
Caucasus. But, even admitting this, why did Prometheus give the stars
animal names? Goguet easily explains this by a hypothetical account of
the manners of primitive men. 'The earliest peoples,' he says, 'must
have used writing for purposes of astronomical science. They would be
content to design the constellations of which they wished to speak by the
hieroglyphical symbols of their names; hence the constellations have
insensibly taken the names of the chief symbols.' Thus, a drawing of a
bear or a swan was the hieroglyphic of the name of a star, or group of
stars. But whence came the name which was represented by the
hieroglyphic? That is precisely what our author forgets to tell us. But
he remarks that the meaning of the hieroglyphic came to be forgotten, and
'the symbols gave rise to all the ridiculous tales about the heavenly
signs.' This explanation is attained by the process of reasoning in a
vicious circle from hypothetical premises ascertained to be false. All
the known savages of the world, even those which have scarcely the
elements of picture-writing, call the constellations by the names of men
and animals, and all tell 'ridiculous tales' to account for the names.
As the star-stories told by the Greeks, the ancient Egyptians, and other
civilised people of the old world, exactly correspond in character, and
sometimes even in incident, with the star-stories of modern savages, we
have the choice of three hypotheses to explain this curious coincidence.
Perhaps the star-stories, about nymphs changed into bears, and bears
changed into stars, were invented by the civilised races of old, and
gradually found their way amongst people like the Eskimo, and the
Australians, and Bushmen. Or it may be insisted that the ancestors of
Australians, Eskimo, and Bushmen were once civilised, like the Greeks and
Egyptians, and invented star-stories, still remembered by their
degenerate descendants. These are the two forms of the explanation which
will be advanced by persons who believe that the star-stories were
originally the fruit of the civilised imagination. The third theory
would be, that the 'ridiculous tales' about the stars were originally the
work of the savage imagination, and that the Greeks, Chaldaeans, and
Egyptians, when they became civilised, retained the old myths that their
ancestors had invented when they were savages. In favour of this theory
it may be said, briefly, that there is no proof that the fathers of
Australians, Eskimo, and Bushmen had ever been civilised, while there is
a great deal of evidence to suggest that the fathers of the Greeks had
once been savages. {125} And, if we incline to the theory that the star-
myths are the creation of savage fancy, we at once learn why they are, in
all parts of the world, so much alike. Just as the flint and bone
weapons of rude races resemble each other much more than they resemble
the metal weapons and the artillery of advanced peoples, so the mental
products, the fairy tales, and myths of rude races have everywhere a
strong family resemblance. They are produced by men in similar mental
conditions of ignorance, curiosity, and credulous fancy, and they are
intended to supply the same needs, partly of amusing narrative, partly of
crude explanation of familiar phenomena.
Now it is time to prove the truth of our assertion that the star-stories
of savage and of civilised races closely resemble each other. Let us
begin with that well-known group the Pleiades. The peculiarity of the
Pleiades is that the group consists of seven stars, of which one is so
dim that it seems entirely to disappear, and many persons can only detect
its presence through a telescope. The Greeks had a myth to account for
the vanishing of the lost Pleiad. The tale is given in the
'Catasterismoi' (stories of metamorphoses into stars) attributed to
Eratosthenes. This work was probably written after our era; but the
author derived his information from older treatises now lost. According
to the Greek myth, then, the seven stars of the Pleiad were seven
maidens, daughters of the Giant Atlas. Six of them had gods for lovers;
Poseidon admired two of them, Zeus three, and Ares one; but the seventh
had only an earthly wooer, and when all of them were changed into stars,
the maiden with the mortal lover hid her light for shame.
Now let us compare the Australian story. According to Mr. Dawson
('Australian Aborigines'), a writer who understands the natives well,
'their knowledge of the heavenly bodies greatly exceeds that of most
white people,' and 'is taught by men selected for their intelligence and
information. The knowledge is important to the aborigines on their night
journeys;' so we may be sure that the natives are careful observers of
the heavens, and are likely to be conservative of their astronomical
myths. The 'Lost Pleiad' has not escaped them, and this is how they
account for her disappearance. The Pirt Kopan noot tribe have a
tradition that the Pleiades were a queen and her six attendants. Long
ago the Crow (our Canopus) fell in love with the queen, who refused to be
his wife. The Crow found that the queen and her six maidens, like other
Australian gins, were in the habit of hunting for white edible grubs in
the bark of trees. The Crow at once changed himself into a grub (just as
Jupiter and Indra used to change into swans, horses, ants, or what not)
and hid in the bark of a tree. The six maidens sought to pick him out
with their wooden hooks, but he broke the points of all the hooks. Then
came the queen, with her pretty bone hook; he let himself be drawn out,
took the shape of a giant, and ran away with her. Ever since there have
only been six stars, the six maidens, in the Pleiad. This story is well
known, by the strictest inquiry, to be current among the blacks of the
West District and in South Australia.
Mr. Tylor, whose opinion is entitled to the highest respect, thinks that
this may be a European myth, told by some settler to a black in the Greek
form, and then spread about among the natives. He complains that the
story of the loss of the _brightest_ star does not fit the facts of the
case.
We do not know, and how can the Australians know, that the lost star was
once the brightest? It appears to me that the Australians, remarking the
disappearances of a star, might very naturally suppose that the _Crow_
had selected for his wife that one which had been the most brilliant of
the cluster. Besides, the wide distribution of the tale among the
natives, and the very great change in the nature of the incidents, seem
to point to a native origin. Though the main conception--the loss of one
out of seven maidens--is identical in Greek and in Murri, the manner of
the disappearance is eminently Hellenic in the one case, eminently savage
in the other. However this may be, nothing of course is proved by a
single example. Let us next examine the stars Castor and Pollux. Both
in Greece and in Australia these are said once to have been two young
men. In the 'Catasterismoi,' already spoken of, we read: 'The Twins, or
Dioscouroi.--They were nurtured in Lacedaemon, and were famous for their
brotherly love, wherefore, Zeus, desiring to make their memory immortal,
placed them both among the stars.' In Australia, according to Mr. Brough
Smyth ('Aborigines of Victoria'), Turree (Castor) and Wanjel (Pollux) are
two young men who pursue Purra and kill him at the commencement of the
great heat. Coonar toorung (the mirage) is the smoke of the fire by
which they roast him. In Greece it was not Castor and Pollux, but Orion
who was the great hunter placed among the stars. Among the Bushmen of
South Africa, Castor and Pollux are not young men, but young women, the
wives of the Eland, the great native antelope. In Greek star-stories the
Great Bear keeps watch, Homer says, on the hunter Orion for fear of a
sudden attack. But how did the Bear get its name in Greece? According
to Hesiod, the oldest Greek poet after Homer, the Bear was once a lady,
daughter of Lycaon, King of Arcadia. She was a nymph of the train of
chaste Artemis, but yielded to the love of Zeus, and became the
ancestress of all the Arcadians (that is, Bear-folk). In her bestial
form she was just about to be slain by her own son when Zeus rescued her
by raising her to the stars. Here we must notice first, that the
Arcadians, like Australians, Red Indians, Bushmen, and many other wild
races, and like the Bedouins, believed themselves to be descended from an
animal. That the early Egyptians did the same is not improbable; for
names of animals are found among the ancestors in the very oldest
genealogical papyrus, {128} as in the genealogies of the old English
kings. Next the Arcadians transferred the ancestral bear to the heavens,
and, in doing this, they resembled the Peruvians, of whom Acosta says:
'They adored the star Urchuchilly, feigning it to be a Ram, and
worshipped two others, and say that one of them is a _sheep_, and the
other a lamb . . . others worshipped the star called the Tiger. _They
were of opinion that there was not any beast or bird upon the earth,
whose shape or image did not shine in the heavens_.'
But to return to our bears. The Australians have, properly speaking, no
bears, though the animal called the native bear is looked up to by the
aborigines with superstitious regard. But among the North American
Indians, as the old missionaries Lafitau and Charlevoix observed, 'the
four stars in front of our constellation are a bear; those in the tail
are hunters who pursue him; the small star apart is the pot in which they
mean to cook him.'
It may be held that the Red Men derived their bear from the European
settlers. But, as we have seen, an exact knowledge of the stars has
always been useful if not essential to savages; and we venture to doubt
whether they would confuse their nomenclature and sacred traditions by
borrowing terms from trappers and squatters. But, if this is improbable,
it seems almost impossible that all savage races should have borrowed
their whole conception of the heavenly bodies from the myths of Greece.
It is thus that Egede, a missionary of the last century, describes the
Eskimo philosophy of the stars: 'The notions that the Greenlanders have
as to the origin of the heavenly lights--as sun, moon, and stars--are
very nonsensical; in that they pretend they have formerly been as many of
their own ancestors, who, on different accounts, were lifted up to
heaven, and became such glorious celestial bodies.' Again, he writes:
'Their notions about the stars are that some of them have been men, and
others different sorts, of animals and fishes.' But every reader of Ovid
knows that this was the very mythical theory of the Greeks and Romans.
The Egyptians, again, worshipped Osiris, Isis, and the rest as
_ancestors_, and there are even modern scholars, like Mr. Loftie in his
'Essay of Scarabs,' who hold Osiris to have been originally a real
historical person. But the Egyptian priests who showed Plutarch the
grave of Osiris, showed him, too, the stars into which Osiris, Isis, and
Horus had been metamorphosed. Here, then, we have Greeks, Egyptians, and
Eskimo, all agreed about the origin of the heavenly lights, all of
opinion that 'they have formerly been as many of their own ancestors.'
The Australian general theory is: 'Of the good men and women, after the
deluge, Pundjel (a kind of Zeus, or rather a sort of Prometheus of
Australian mythology) made stars. Sorcerers (Biraark) can tell which
stars were once good men and women.' Here the sorcerers have the same
knowledge as the Egyptian priests. Again, just as among the Arcadians,
'the progenitors of the existing tribes, whether birds, or beasts, or
men, were set in the sky, and made to shine as stars.' {130}
We have already given some Australian examples in the stories of the
Pleiades, and of Castor and Pollux. We may add the case of the Eagle. In
Greece the Eagle was the bird of Zeus, who carried off Ganymede to be the
cup-bearer of Olympus. Among the Australians this same constellation is
called Totyarguil; he was a man who, when bathing, was killed by a
fabulous animal, a kind of kelpie; as Orion, in Greece, was killed by the
Scorpion. Like Orion, he was placed among the stars. The Australians
have a constellation named Eagle, but he is our Sinus, or Dog-star.
The Indians of the Amazon are in one tale with the Australians and
Eskimo. 'Dr. Silva de Coutinho informs me,' says Professor Hartt, {131}
'that the Indians of the Amazonas not only give names to many of the
heavenly bodies, but also tell stories about them. The two stars that
form the shoulders of Orion are said to be an old man and a boy in a
canoe, chasing a peixe boi, by which name is designated a dark spot in
the sky near the above constellation.' The Indians also know
monkey-stars, crane-stars, and palm-tree stars.
The Bushmen, almost the lowest tribe of South Africa, have the same star-
lore and much the same myths as the Greeks, Australians, Egyptians, and
Eskimo. According to Dr. Bleek, 'stars, and even the sun and moon, were
once mortals on earth, or even animals or inorganic substances, which
happened to get translated to the skies. The sun was once a man, whose
arm-pit radiated a limited amount of light round his house. Some
children threw him into the sky, and there he shines.' The Homeric hymn
to Helios, in the same way, as Mr. Max Muller observes, 'looks on the sun
as a half-god, almost a hero, who had once lived on earth.' The pointers
of the Southern Cross were 'two men who were lions,' just as Callisto, in
Arcadia, was a woman who was a bear. It is not at all rare in those
queer philosophies, as in that of the Scandinavians, to find that the sun
or moon has been a man or woman. In Australian fable the moon was a man,
the sun a woman of indifferent character, who appears at dawn in a coat
of red kangaroo skins, the present of an admirer. In an old Mexican text
the moon was a man, across whose face a god threw a rabbit, thus making
the marks in the moon. {132a}
Many separate races seem to recognise the figure of a hare, where we see
'the Man in the Moon.' In a Buddhist legend, an exemplary and altruistic
hare was translated to the moon. 'To the common people in India the
spots on the moon look like a hare, and Chandras, the god of the moon,
carries a hare: hence the moon is called sasin or sasanka, hare-mark. The
Mongolians also see in these shadows the figure of a hare.' {132b} Among
the Eskimo, the moon is a girl, who always flees from her cruel brother,
the sun, because he disfigured her face. Elsewhere the sun is the girl,
beloved by her own brother, the moon; she blackens her face to avert his
affection. On the Rio Branco, and among the Tomunda, the moon is a girl
who loved her brother and visited him in the dark. He detected her
wicked passion by drawing his blackened hand over her face. The marks
betrayed her, and, as the spots on the moon, remain to this day. {133}
Among the New Zealanders and North American Indians the sun is a great
beast, whom the hunters trapped and thrashed with cudgels. His blood is
used in some New Zealand incantations; and, according to an Egyptian
myth, was kneaded into clay at the making of man. But there is no end to
similar sun-myths, in all of which the sun is regarded as a man, or even
as a beast.