In a posthumous work, Mythologische Forschungen (1884), the work from
which Mr. Max Muller cites the letter to Mullenhoff, Mannhardt discusses
Demeter Erinnys. She is the Arcadian goddess, who, in the form of a
mare, became mother of Despoina and the horse Arion, by Poseidon. {51a}
Her anger at the unhandsome behaviour of Poseidon caused Demeter to be
called Erinnys--'to be angry' being [Greek] in Arcadian--a
folk-etymology, clearly. Mannhardt first dives deep into the sources for
this fable. {51b} Arion, he decides, is no mythological personification,
but a poetical ideal (Bezeichnung) of the war-horse. Legend is ransacked
for proof of this. Poseidon is the lord of wind and wave. Now, there
are waves of corn, under the wind, as well as waves of the sea. When the
Suabian rustic sees the wave running over the corn, he says, Da lauft das
Pferd, and Greeks before Homer would say, in face of the billowing corn,
[Greek], There run horses! And Homer himself {51c} says that the horses
of Erichthonius, children of Boreas, ran over cornfield and sea. We
ourselves speak of sea-waves as 'white horses.' So, to be brief,
Mannhardt explains the myth of Demeter Erinnys becoming, as a mare, a
mother by Poseidon as a horse, thus, 'Poseidon Hippies, or Poseidon in
horse's form, rushes through the growing grain and weds Demeter,' and he
cites peasant proverbs, such as Das Korn heirathet; das Korn feiert
Hochzeit (p. 264). 'This is the germ of the Arcadian Saga.'
'The Arcadian myth of Demeter Erinnys is undeniably a blending of the
epic tradition [of the ideal war-horse] with the local cult of
Demeter. . . . It is a probable hypothesis that the belief in the
wedding of Demeter and Poseidon comes from the sight of the waves
passing over the cornfield. . . .' {52}
It is very neat! But a certain myth of Loki in horse-form comes into
memory, and makes me wonder how Mannhardt would have dealt with that too
liberal narrative.
Loki, as a mare (he being a male god), became, by the horse of a giant,
the father of Sleipnir, Odin's eight-footed steed. Mr. W. A. Craigie
supplies this note on Loki's analogy with Poseidon, as a horse, in the
waves of corn:--
'In North Jutland, when the vapours are seen going with a wavy motion
along the earth in the heat of summer, they say, "Loki is sowing oats
today," or "Loki is driving his goats."
'N.B.--Oats in Danish are havre, which suggests O.N. hafrar, goats.
Modern Icelandic has hafrar=oats, but the word is not found in the old
language.'
Is Loki a corn-spirit?