These remarks apply equally well to our author's dissertation on Lettish
mythology (ii. 430 et seq.). The meaning of statements about the sun and
sky 'is not to be mistaken in the mythology of the Letts.' So here is no
disease of language. The meaning is not to be mistaken. Sun and moon
and so on are spoken of by their natural unmistakable names, or in
equally unmistakable poetical periphrases, as in riddles. The daughter
of the sun hung a red cloak on a great oak-tree. This 'can hardly have
been meant for anything but the red of the evening or the setting sun,
sometimes called her red cloak' (ii. 439). Exactly so, and the
Australians of Encounter Bay also think that the sun is a woman. 'She
has a lover among the dead, who has given her a red kangaroo skin, and in
this she appears at her rising.' {135} This tale was told to Mr. Meyer
in 1846, before Mr. Max Muller's Dawn had become 'inevitable,' as he
says.
The Lettish and Australian myths are folk-poetry; they have nothing to do
with a disease of language or forgotten meanings of words which become
proper names. All this is surely distinct. We proclaim the abundance of
poetical Nature-myths; we 'disable' the hypothesis that they arise from a
disease of language.