Chapter V: Part 5

The great desideratum of the philological method is a proof that the 'Disease of Language,' ex hypothesi the most fertile source of myths, is a vera causa. Do simple poetical phrases, descriptive of heavenly phenomena, remain current in the popular mouth after the meanings of appellatives (Bright One, Dark One, &c.) have been forgotten, so that these appellatives become proper names--Apollo, Daphne, &c.? Mr. Max Muller seems to think some proof of this process as a vera causa may be derived from 'Folk Riddles.'

The Riddle Theory

We now come, therefore, to the author's treatment of popular riddles (devinettes), so common among savages and peasants. Their construction is simple: anything in Nature you please is described by a poetical periphrasis, and you are asked what it is. Thus Geistiblindr asks,

What is the Dark One
That goes over the earth,
Swallows water and wood,
But is afraid of the wind? &c.

Or we find,

What is the gold spun from one window to another?

The answers, the obvious answers, are (1) 'mist' and (2) 'sunshine.'

In Mr. Max Muller's opinion these riddles 'could not but lead to what we call popular myths or legends.' Very probably; but this does not aid us to accept the philological method. The very essence of that method is the presumed absolute loss of the meaning of, e.g. 'the Dark One.' Before there can be a myth, ex hypothesi the words Dark One must have become hopelessly unintelligible, must have become a proper name. Thus suppose, for argument's sake only, that Cronos once meant Dark One, and was understood in that sense. People (as in the Norse riddle just cited) said, 'Cronos [i.e. the Dark One--meaning mist] swallows water and wood.' Then they forgot that Cronos was their old word for the Dark One, and was mist; but they kept up, and understood, all the rest of the phrase about what mist does. The expression now ran, 'Cronos [whatever that may be] swallows water and wood.' But water comes from mist, and water nourishes wood, therefore 'Cronos swallows his children.' Such would be the development of a myth on Mr. Max Muller's system. He would interpret 'Cronos swallows his children,' by finding, if he could, the original meaning of Cronos. Let us say that he did discover it to mean 'the Dark One.' Then he might think Cronos meant 'night;' 'mist' he would hardly guess.

That is all very clear, but the point is this--in devinettes, or riddles, the meaning of 'the Dark One' is _not_ lost:--

'Thy riddle is _easy_
Blind Gest,
To read'--

Heidrick answers.

What the philological method of mythology needs is to prove that such poetical statements about natural phenomena as the devinettes contain survived in the popular mouth, and were perfectly intelligible except just the one mot d'enigme--say, 'the Dark One.' That (call it Cronos='Dark One'), and that alone, became unintelligible in the changes of language, and so had to be accepted as a proper name, Cronos--a god who swallows things at large.

Where is the proof of such endurance of intelligible phrases with just the one central necessary word obsolete and changed into a mysterious proper name? The world is full of proper names which have lost their meaning--Athene, Achilles, Artemis, and so on but we need proof that poetical sayings, or riddles, survive and are intelligible except one word, which, being unintelligible, becomes a proper name. Riddles, of course, prove nothing of this kind:--

Thy riddle is easy
Blind Gest
To read!

Yet Mr. Max Muller offers the suggestion that the obscurity of many of these names of mythical gods and heroes 'may be due . . . to the riddles to which they had given rise, and which would have ceased to be riddles if the names had been clear and intelligible, like those of Helios and Selene' (i. 92). People, he thinks, in making riddles 'would avoid the ordinary appellatives, and the use of little-known names in most mythologies would thus find an intelligible explanation.' Again, 'we can see how essential it was that in such mythological riddles the principal agents should not be called by their regular names.' This last remark, indeed, is obvious. To return to the Norse riddle of the Dark One that swallows wood and water. It would never do in a riddle to call the Dark One by his ordinary name, 'Mist.' You would not amuse a rural audience by asking 'What is the mist that swallows wood and water?' That would be even easier than Mr. Burnand's riddle for very hot weather:--

My first is a boot, my second is a jack.

Conceivably Mr. Max Muller may mean that in riddles an almost obsolete word was used to designate the object. Perhaps, instead of 'the Dark One,' a peasant would say, 'What is the Rooky One?' But as soon as nobody knew what 'the Rooky One' meant, the riddle would cease to exist--Rooky One and all. You cannot imagine several generations asking each other--

What is the Rooky One that swallows?

if nobody knew the answer. A man who kept boring people with a mere 'sell' would be scouted; and with the death of the answerless riddle the difficult word 'Rooky' would die. But Mr. Max Muller says, 'Riddles would cease to be riddles if the names had been clear and intelligible.' The reverse is the fact. In the riddles he gives there are seldom any 'names;' but the epithets and descriptions are as clear as words can be:--

Who are the mother and children in a house, all having bald heads?--The
moon and stars.

Language cannot be clearer. Yet the riddle has not 'ceased to be a riddle,' as Mr. Max Muller thinks it must do, though the words are 'clear and intelligible.' On the other hand, if the language is _not_ clear and intelligible, the riddle would cease to exist. It would not amuse if nobody understood it. You might as well try to make yourself socially acceptable by putting conundrums in Etruscan as by asking riddles in words not clear and intelligible in themselves, though obscure in their reference. The difficulty of a riddle consists, not in the obscurity of words or names, but in the description of familiar things by terms, clear as terms, denoting their appearance and action. The mist is described as 'dark,' 'swallowing,' 'one that fears the wind,' and so forth. The _words_ are pellucid.

Thus 'ordinary appellatives' (i. 99) are _not_ 'avoided' in riddles, though _names_ (sun, mist) cannot be used in the question because they give the answer to the riddle.

For all these reasons ancient riddles cannot explain the obscurity of mythological names. As soon as the name was too obscure, the riddle and the name would be forgotten, would die together. So we know as little as ever of the purely hypothetical process by which a riddle, or popular poetical saying, remains intelligible in a language, while the mot d'enigme, becoming unintelligible, turns into a proper name--say, Cronos. Yet the belief in this process as a vera causa is essential to our author's method.

Here Mr. Max Muller warns us that his riddle theory is not meant to explain 'the obscurities of _all_ mythological names. This is a stratagem that should be stopped from the very first.' It were more graceful to have said 'a misapprehension.'

Another 'stratagem' I myself must guard against. I do not say that _no_ unintelligible strings of obsolete words may continue to live in the popular mouth. Old hymns, ritual speeches, and charms may and do survive, though unintelligible. They are reckoned all the more potent, because all the more mysterious. But an unintelligible riddle or poetical saying does not survive, so we cannot thus account for mythology as a disease of language.

Mordvinian Mythology

Still in the very natural and laudable pursuit of facts which will support the hypothesis of a disease of language, Mr. Max Muller turns to Mordvinian mythology. 'We have the accounts of real scholars' about Mordvinian prayers, charms, and proverbs (i. 235). The Mordvinians, Ugrian tribes, have the usual departmental Nature-gods--as Chkai, god of the sun (chi=sun). He 'lives in the sun, or is the sun' (i. 236). His wife is the Earth or earth goddess, Vediava. They have a large family, given to incest. The morals of the Mordvinian gods are as lax as those of Mordvinian mortals. (Compare the myths and morals of Samos, and the Samian Hera.) Athwart the decent god Chkai comes the evil god Chaitan--obviously Shaitan, a Mahommedan contamination. There are plenty of minor gods, and spirits good and bad. Dawn was a Mordvinian girl; in Australia she was a lubra addicted to lubricity.

_How does this help philological mythology_?

Mr. Max Muller is pleased to find solar and other elemental gods among the Mordvinians. But the discovery in no way aids his special theory. Nobody has ever denied that gods who are the sun or live in the sun are familiar, and are the centres of myths among most races. I give examples in C. and M. (pp. 104, 133, New Zealand and North America) and in M. R. R. (i. 124-135, America, Africa, Australia, Aztec, Hervey Islands, Samoa, and so on). Such Nature-myths--of sun, sky, earth--are perhaps universal; but they do not arise from disease of language. These myths deal with natural phenomena plainly and explicitly. The same is the case among the Mordvinians. 'The few names preserved to us are clearly the names of the agents behind the salient phenomena of Nature, in some cases quite intelligible, in others easily restored to their original meaning.' The meanings of the names not being forgotten, but obvious, there is no disease of language. All this does not illustrate the case of Greek divine names by resemblance, but by difference. Real scholars know what Mordvinian divine names mean. They do not know what many Greek divine names mean--as Hera, Artemis, Apollo, Athene; there is even much dispute about Demeter.

No anthropologist, I hope, is denying that Nature-myths and Nature-gods exist. We are only fighting against the philological effort to get at the elemental phenomena which may be behind Hera, Artemis, Athene, Apollo, by means of contending etymological conjectures. We only oppose the philological attempt to account for all the features in a god's myth as manifestations of the elemental qualities denoted by a name which may mean at pleasure dawn, storm, clear air, thunder, wind, twilight, water, or what you will. Granting Chkai to be the sun, does that explain why he punishes people who bake bread on Friday? (237.) Our opponent does not seem to understand the portee of our objections. The same remarks apply to the statement of Finnish mythology here given, and familiar in the Kalewala. Departmental divine beings of natural phenomena we find everywhere, or nearly everywhere, in company, of course, with other elements of belief--totemism, worship of spirits, perhaps with monotheism in the background. That is as much our opinion as Mr. Max Muller's. What we are opposing is the theory of disease of language, and the attempt to explain, by philological conjectures, gods and heroes whose obscure _names_ are the only sources of information.

Helios is the sun-god; he is, or lives in, the sun. Apollo may have been the sun-god too, but we still distrust the attempts to prove this by contending guesses at the origin of his name. Moreover, if all Greek gods could be certainly explained, by undisputed etymologies, as originally elemental, we still object to such logic as that which turns Saranyu into 'grey dawn.' We still object to the competing interpretations by which almost every detail of very composite myths is explained as a poetical description of some elemental process or phenomenon. Apollo _may_ once have been the sun, but why did he make love as a dog?

Lettish Mythology

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.

The Chances of Fancy

One remark has to be added. Mannhardt regarded many or most of the philological solutions of gods into dawn or sun, or thunder or cloud, as empty jeux d'esprit. And justly, for there is no name named among men which a philologist cannot easily prove to be a synonym or metaphorical term for wind or weather, dawn or sun. Whatever attribute any word connotes, it can be shown to connote some attribute of dawn or sun. Here parody comes in, and gives a not overstrained copy of the method, applying it to Mr. Gladstone, Dr. Nansen, or whom you please. And though a jest is not a refutation, a parody may plainly show the absolutely capricious character of the philological method.

ARTEMIS

I do not here examine our author's constructive work. I have often criticised its logical method before, and need not repeat myself. The etymologies, of course, I leave to be discussed by scholars. As we have seen, they are at odds on the subject of phonetic laws and their application to mythological names. On the mosses and bogs of this Debatable Land some of them propose to erect the science of comparative mythology. Meanwhile we look on, waiting till the mosses shall support a ponderous edifice.

Our author's treatment of Artemis, however, has for me a peculiar interest (ii. 733-743). I really think that it is not mere vanity which makes me suppose that in this instance I am at least one of the authors whom Mr. Max Muller is writing _about_ without name or reference. If so, he here sharply distinguishes between me on the one hand and 'classical scholars' on the other, a point to which we shall return. He says--I cite textually (ii. 732):--

Artemis

'The last of the great Greek goddesses whom we have to consider is Artemis. Her name, we shall see, has received many interpretations, but none that can be considered as well established--none that, even if it were so, would help us much in disentangling the many myths told about her. Easy to understand as her character seems when we confine our attention to Homer, it becomes extremely complicated when we take into account the numerous local forms of worship of which she was the object.

'We have here a good opportunity of comparing the interpretations put forward by _those who think that a study of the myths and customs of uncivilised tribes can help us towards an understanding of Greek deities, and the views advocated by classical scholars_ {138} who draw their information, first of all, from Greek sources, and afterwards only from a comparison of the myths and customs of cognate races, more particularly from what is preserved to us in ancient Vedic literature, before they plunge into the whirlpool of ill-defined and unintelligible Kafir folklore. The former undertake to explain Artemis by showing us the progress of human intelligence from the coarsest spontaneous and primitive ideas to the most beautiful and brilliant conception of poets and sculptors. They point out traces of hideous cruelties amounting almost to cannibalism, and of a savage cult of beasts in the earlier history of the goddess, who was celebrated by dances of young girls disguised as bears or imitating the movements of bears, &c. She was represented as [Greek], and this idea, we are told, was borrowed from the East, which is a large term. We are told that her most ancient history is to be studied in Arkadia, where we can see the goddess still closely connected with the worship of animals, a characteristic feature of the lowest stage of religious worship among the lowest races of mankind. We are then told the old story of Lykaon, the King of Arkadia, who had a beautiful daughter called Kallisto. As Zeus fell in love with her, Hera from jealousy changed her into a bear, and Artemis killed her with one of her arrows. Her child, however, was saved by Hermes, at the command of Zeus; and while Kallisto was changed to the constellation of the Ursa, her son Arkas became the ancestor of the Arkadians. Here, we are told, we have a clear instance of men being the descendants of animals, and of women being changed into wild beasts and stars--beliefs well known among the Cahrocs and the Kamilarois.'

* * * * *

Here I recognise Mr. Max Muller's version of my remarks on Artemis. {139a} Our author has just remarked in a footnote that Schwartz 'does not mention the title of the book where his evidence has been given.' It _is_ an inconvenient practice, but with Mr. Max Muller this reticence is by no means unusual. _He_ 'does not mention the book where 'my 'evidence is given.'

Anthropologists are here (unless I am mistaken) contrasted with 'classical scholars who draw their information, first of all, from Greek sources.' I need not assure anyone who has looked into my imperfect works that I also drew my information about Artemis 'first of all from Greek sources,' in the original. Many of these sources, to the best of my knowledge, are not translated: one, Homer, I have translated myself, with Professor Butcher and Messrs. Leaf and Myers, my old friends.

The idea and representation of Artemis as [Greek] (many-breasted), 'we are told, was borrowed from the East, a large term.' I say 'she is even blended in ritual with a monstrous many-breasted divinity of Oriental religion.' {139b} Is this 'large term' too vague? Then consider the Artemis of Ephesus and 'the alabaster statuette of the goddess' in Roscher's Lexikon, p. 558. Compare, for an Occidental parallel, the many- breasted goddess of the maguey plant, in Mexico. {140} Our author writes, 'we are told that Artemis's most ancient history is to be studied in Arkadia.' My words are, 'The Attic and Arcadian legends of Artemis are confessedly _among the oldest_.' Why should 'Attic' and the qualifying phrase be omitted?

Otfried Muller

Mr. Max Muller goes on--citing, as I also do, Otfried Muller:--'Otfried Muller in 1825 treated the same myth without availing himself of the light now to be derived from the Cahrocs and the Kamilarois. He quoted Pausanias as stating that the tumulus of Kallisto was near the sanctuary of Artemis Kalliste, and he simply took Kallisto for an epithet of Artemis, which, as in many other cases, had been taken for a separate personality.' Otfried also pointed out, as we both say, that at Brauron, in Attica, Artemis was served by young maidens called [Greek] (bears); and he concluded, 'This cannot possibly be a freak of chance, but the metamorphosis [of Kallisto] has its foundation in the fact that the animal [the bear] was sacred to the goddess.'

Thus it is acknowledged that Artemis, under her name of Callisto, was changed into a she-bear, and had issue, Arkas--whence the Arcadians. Mr. Max Muller proceeds (ii. 734)--'He [Otfried] did not go so far as some modern mythologists who want us to believe that originally the animal, the she-bear, was the goddess, and that a later worship had replaced the ancient worship of the animal pur et simple.'

Did I, then, tell anybody that 'originally the she-bear was the goddess'? No, I gave my reader, not a dogma, but the choice between two alternative hypotheses. I said, 'It will become probable that the she-bear actually _was_ the goddess at an extremely remote period, or at all events that the goddess succeeded to, and threw her protection over, an ancient worship of the animal' (ii. 212, 213).

Mr. Max Muller's error, it will be observed, consists in writing 'and' where I wrote 'or.' To make such rather essential mistakes is human; to give references is convenient, and not unscholarly.

In fact, this is Mr. Max Muller's own opinion, for he next reports his anonymous author (myself) as saying ('we are now told'), 'though without any reference to Pausanias or any other Greek writers, that the young maidens, the [Greek], when dancing around Artemis, were clad in bearskins, and that this is a pretty frequent custom in the dances of totemic races. In support of this, however, we are not referred to really totemic races . . . but to the Hirpi of Italy, and to the [Greek] in Egypt.' Of course I never said that the [Greek] danced around Artemis! I did say, after observing that they were described as 'playing the bear,' 'they even in archaic ages wore bear-skins,' for which I cited Claus {141a} and referred to Suchier, {141b} including the reference in brackets [ ] to indicate that I borrowed it from a book which I was unable to procure. {142a} I then gave references for the classical use of a saffron vest by the [Greek].

Beast Dances

For the use of beast-skins in such dances among totemists I cite Bancroft (iii. 168) and (M. R. R. ii. 107) Robinson {142b} (same authority). I may now also refer to Robertson Smith: {142c} 'the meaning of such a disguise [a fish-skin, among the Assyrians] _is well known from many savage rituals_; it means that the worshipper presents himself as a fish,' as a bear, or what not. {142d} Doubtless I might have referred more copiously to savage rituals, but really I thought that savage dances in beast-skins were familiar from Catlin's engravings of Mandan and Nootka wolf or buffalo dances. I add that the Brauronian rites 'point to a time when the goddess was herself a bear,' having suggested an alternative theory, and added confirmation. {142e} But I here confess that while beast-dances and wearing of skins of sacred beasts are common, to prove these sacred beasts to be totems is another matter. It is so far inferred rather than demonstrated. Next I said that the evolution of the bear into the classical Artemis 'almost escapes our inquiry. We find nothing more akin to it than the relation borne by the Samoan gods to the various totems in which they are supposed to be manifest.' This Mr. Max Muller quotes (of course, without reference or marks of quotation) and adds, 'pace Dr. Codrington.' Have I incurred Dr. Codrington's feud? He doubts or denies totems in Melanesia. Is Samoa in Melanesia, par exemple? {143a} Our author (i. 206) says that 'Dr. Codrington will have no totems in his islands.' But Samoa is not one of the doctor's fortunate isles. For Samoa I refer, not to Dr. Codrington, but to Mr. Turner. {143b} In Samoa the 'clans' revere each its own sacred animals, 'but combine with it the belief that the spiritual deity reveals itself in each separate animal.' {143c} I expressly contrast the Samoan creed with 'pure totemism.' {143d}

So much for our author's success in stating and criticising my ideas. If he pleases, I will not speak of Samoan totems, but of Samoan sacred animals. It is better and more exact.

The View of Classical Scholars

They (ii. 735) begin by pointing out Artemis's connection with Apollo and the moon. So do I! 'If Apollo soon disengages himself from the sun . . . Artemis retains as few traces of any connection with the moon.' {143e} 'If Apollo was of solar origin,' asks the author (ii. 735), 'what could his sister Artemis have been, from the very beginning, if not some goddess connected with the moon?' Very likely; quis negavit? Then our author, like myself (loc. cit.), dilates on Artemis as 'sister of Apollo.' 'Her chapels,' I say, 'are in the wild wood; she is the abbess of the forest nymphs,' 'chaste and fair, the maiden of the precise life.' How odd! The classical scholar and I both say the same things; and I add a sonnet to Artemis in this aspect, rendered by me from the Hippolytus of Euripides. Could a classical scholar do more? Our author then says that the Greek sportsman 'surprised the beasts in their lairs' by night. Not very sportsmanlike! I don't find it in Homer or in Xenophon. Oh for exact references! The moon, the nocturnal sportswoman, is Artemis: here we have also the authority of Theodore de Banville (Diane court dans la noire foret). And the nocturnal hunt is Dian's; so she is protectress of the chase. Exactly what I said! {144a}

All this being granted by me beforehand (though possibly that might not be guessed from my critic), our author will explain Artemis's human sacrifice of a girl in a fawn-skin--bloodshed, bear and all--with no aid from Kamilarois, Cahrocs, and Samoans.

Mr. Max Muller's Explanation

Greek races traced to Zeus--usually disguised, for amorous purposes, as a brute. The Arcadians had an eponymous heroic ancestor, 'Areas;' they also worshipped Artemis. Artemis, as a virgin, could not become a mother of Areas by Zeus, or by anybody. Callisto was also Artemis. Callisto was the mother of Areas. But, to save the character of Artemis, Callisto was now represented as one of her nymphs. Then, Areas reminding the Arcadians of [Greek] (a bear), while they knew the Bear constellation, 'what was more natural than that Callisto should be changed into an arktos, a she-bear . . . placed by Zeus, her lover, in the sky' as the Bear?

Nothing could be more natural to a savage; they all do it. {144b} But that an Aryan, a Greek, should talk such nonsense as to say that he was the descendant of a bear who was changed into a star, and all merely because 'Areas reminded the Arcadians of arktos,' seems to me an extreme test of belief, and a very unlikely thing to occur.

Wider Application of the Theory

Let us apply the explanation more widely. Say that a hundred animal names are represented in the known totem-kindreds of the world. Then had each such kin originally an eponymous hero whose name, like that of Areas in Arcady, accidentally 'reminded' his successors of a beast, so that a hundred beasts came to be claimed as ancestors? Perhaps this was what occurred; the explanation, at all events, fits the wolf of the Delawares and the other ninety-nine as well as it fits the Arcades. By a curious coincidence all the names of eponymous heroes chanced to remind people of beasts. But _whence come the names of eponymous heroes_? From their tribes, of course--Ion from Ionians, Dorus from Dorians, and so on. Therefore (in the hundred cases) the names of the _tribes_ derive from names of animals. Indeed, the names of totem-kins _are_ the names of animals--wolves, bears, cranes. Mr. Max Muller remarks that the name 'Arcades' _may_ come from [Greek], a bear (i. 738); so the Arcadians (Proselenoi, the oldest of races, 'men before the moon') may be--Bears. So, of course (in this case), they would necessarily be Bears _before_ they invented Areas, an eponymous hero whose name is derived from the pre- existing tribal name. His name, then, could not, before they invented it, remind them of a bear. It was from their name [Greek] (Bears) that they developed _his_ name Areas, as in all such cases of eponymous heroes. I slightly incline to hold that this is exactly what occurred. A bear-kin claimed descent from a bear, and later, developing an eponymous hero, Areas, regarded him as son of a bear. Philologically 'it is possible;' I say no more.

The Bear Dance

'The dances of the maidens called [Greek], would receive an easy interpretation. They were Arkades, and why not [Greek] (bears)?' And if [Greek], why not clad in bear-skins, and all the rest? (ii. 738). This is our author's explanation; it is also my own conjecture. The Arcadians were bears, knew it, and possibly danced a bear dance, as Mandans or Nootkas dance a buffalo dance or a wolf dance. But all such dances are not totemistic. They have often other aims. One only names such dances totemistic when performed by people who call themselves by the name of the animal represented, and claim descent from him. Our author says genially, 'if anybody prefers to say that the arctos was something like a totem of the Arcadians . . . why not?' But, if the arctos was a totem, that fact explains the Callisto story and Attic bear dance, while the philological theory--Mr. Max Muller's theory--does not explain it. What is oddest of all, Mr. Max Muller, as we have seen, says that the bear- dancing girls were 'Arkades.' Now we hear of no bear dances in Arcadia. The dancers were Athenian girls. This, indeed, is the point. We have a bear Callisto (Artemis) in Arcady, where a folk etymology might explain it by stretching a point. But no etymology will explain bear dances to Artemis in Attica. So we find bears doubly connected with Artemis. The Athenians were not Arcadians.

As to the meaning and derivation of Artemis, or Artamis, our author knows nothing (ii. 741). I say, 'even [Greek] ([Greek], bear) has occurred to inventive men.' Possibly I invented it myself, though not addicted to etymological conjecture.

THE FIRE-WALK

The Method of Psychical Research

As a rule, mythology asks for no aid from Psychical Research. But there are problems in religious rite and custom where the services of the Cendrillon of the sciences, the despised youngest sister, may be of use. As an example I take the famous mysterious old Fire-rite of the Hirpi, or wolf-kin, of Mount Soracte. I shall first, following Mannhardt, and making use of my own trifling researches in ancient literature, describe the rite itself.

Mount Soracte

Everyone has heard of Mount Soracte, white with shining snow, the peak whose distant cold gave zest to the blazing logs on the hearth of Horace. Within sight of his windows was practised, by men calling themselves 'wolves' (Hirpi), a rite of extreme antiquity and enigmatic character. On a peak of Soracte, now Monte di Silvestre, stood the ancient temple of Soranus, a Sabine sun-god. {148a} Virgil {148b} identifies Soranus with Apollo. At the foot of the cliff was the precinct of Feronia, a Sabine goddess. Mr. Max Muller says that Feronia corresponds to the Vedic Bhuranyu, a name of Agni, the Vedic fire-god (ii. 800). Mannhardt prefers, of course, a derivation from _far_ (grain), as in confarreatio, the ancient Roman bride-cake form of marriage. Feronia Mater=Sanskrit bharsani mata, Getreide Mutter. {149a} It is a pity that philologists so rarely agree in their etymologies. In Greek the goddess is called Anthephorus, Philostephanus, and even Persephone--probably the Persephone of flowers and garlands. {149b}

Hirpi Sorani

Once a year a fete of Soranus and Feronia was held, in the precinct of the goddess at Soracte. The ministrants were members of certain local families called Hirpi (wolves). Pliny says, {149c} 'A few families, styled Hirpi, at a yearly sacrifice, walk over a burnt pile of wood, yet are not scorched. On this account they have a perpetual exemption, by decree of the Senate, from military and all other services.' Virgil makes Aruns say, {149d} 'Highest of gods, Apollo, guardian of Soracte, thou of whom we are the foremost worshippers, thou for whom the burning pile of pinewood is fed, while we, strong in faith, walk through the midst of the fire, and press our footsteps in the glowing mass. . . .' Strabo gives the same facts. Servius, the old commentator on Virgil, confuses the Hirpi, not unnaturally, with the Sabine 'clan,' the Hirpini. He says, {149e} 'Varro, always an enemy of religious belief, writes that the Hirpini, when about to walk the fire, smear the soles of their feet with a drug' (medicamentum). Silius Italicus (v. 175) speaks of the ancient rite, when 'the holy bearer of the bow (Apollo) rejoices in the kindled pyres, and the ministrant thrice gladly bears entrails to the god through the harmless flames.' Servius gives an aetiological myth to account for the practice. 'Wolves came and carried off the entrails from the fire; shepherds, following them, were killed by mortal vapours from a cave; thence ensued a pestilence, because they had followed the wolves. An oracle bade them "play the wolf," i.e. live on plunder, whence they were called Hirpi, wolves,' an attempt to account for a wolf clan-name. There is also a story that, when the grave of Feronia seemed all on fire, and the people were about carrying off the statue, it suddenly grew green again. {150a}

Mannhardt decides that the so-called wolves leaped through the sun-god's fire, in the interest of the health of the community. He elucidates this by a singular French popular custom, held on St. John's Eve, at Jumieges. The Brethren of the Green Wolf select a leader called Green Wolf, there is an ecclesiastical procession, cure and all, a souper maigre, the lighting of the usual St. John's fire, a dance round the fire, the capture of next year's Green Wolf, a mimicry of throwing him into the fire, a revel, and next day a loaf of pain benit, above a pile of green leaves, is carried about. {150b}

The wolf, thinks Mannhardt, is the Vegetation-spirit in animal form. Many examples of the 'Corn-wolf' in popular custom are given by Mr. Frazer in The Golden Bough (ii. 3-6). The Hirpi of Soracte, then, are so called because they play the part of Corn-wolves, or Korndamonen in wolf shape. But Mannhardt adds, 'this _seems_, at least, to be the explanation.' He then combats Kuhn's theory of Feronia as lightning goddess. {151a} He next compares the strange Arcadian cannibal rites on Mount Lycaeus. {151b}

Mannhardt's Deficiency

In all this ingenious reasoning, Mannhardt misses a point. What the Hirpi did was _not_ merely to leap through light embers, as in the Roman Palilia, and the parallel doings in Scotland, England, France, and elsewhere, at Midsummer (St. John's Eve). The Hirpi would not be freed from military service and all other State imposts for merely doing what any set of peasants do yearly for nothing. Nor would Varro have found it necessary to explain so easy and common a feat by the use of a drug with which the feet were smeared. Mannhardt, as Mr. Max Muller says, ventured himself little 'among red skins and black skins.' He read Dr. Tylor, and appreciated the method of illustrating ancient rites and beliefs from the living ways of living savages. {151c} But, in practice, he mainly confined himself to illustrating ancient rites and beliefs by survival in modern rural folk-lore. I therefore supplement Mannhardt's evidence from European folk-lore by evidence from savage life, and by a folk-lore case which Mannhardt did not know.

The Fire-walk

A modern student is struck by the cool way in which the ancient poets, geographers, and commentators mention a startling circumstance, the Fire- walk. The only hint of explanation is the statement that the drug or juice of herbs preserved the Hirpi from harm. That theory may be kept in mind, and applied if it is found useful. Virgil's theory that the ministrants walk, pietate freti, corresponds to Mrs. Wesley's belief, when, after praying, she 'waded the flames' to rescue her children from the burning parsonage at Epworth. The hypothesis of Iamblichus, when he writes about the ecstatic or 'possessed' persons who cannot be injured by fire, is like that of modern spiritualists--the 'spirit' or 'daemon' preserves them unharmed.

I intentionally omit cases which are vaguely analogous to that of the Hirpi. In Icelandic sagas, in the Relations of the old Jesuit missionaries, in the Travels of Pallas and Gmelin, we hear of medicine- men and Berserks who take liberties with red-hot metal, live coals, and burning wood. Thus in the Icelandic Flatey Book (vol. i. p. 425) we read about the fighting evangelist of Iceland, a story of Thangbrandr and the foreign Berserkir. 'The Berserkir said: "I can walk through the burning fire with my bare feet." Then a great fire was made, which Thangbrandr hallowed, and the Berserkir went into it without fear, and burned his feet'--the Christian spell of Thangbrandr being stronger than the heathen spell of the Berserkir. What the saga says is not evidence, and some of the other tales are merely traditional. Others may be explained, perhaps, by conjuring. The mediaeval ordeal by fire may also be left on one side. In 1826 Lockhart published a translation of the Church Service for the Ordeal by Fire, a document given, he says, by Busching in Die Vorzeit for 1817. The accused communicates before carrying the red-hot iron bar, or walking on the red-hot ploughshare. The consecrated wafer is supposed to preserve him from injury, if he be guiltless. He carries the iron for nine yards, after which his hands are sealed up in a linen cloth and examined at the end of three days. 'If he be found clear of scorch or scar, glory to God.' Lockhart calls the service 'one of the most extraordinary records of the craft, the audacity, and the weakness of mankind.' {153}

The fraud is more likely to have lain in the pretended failure to find scorch or scar than in any method of substituting cold for hot iron, or of preventing the metal from injuring the subject of the ordeal. The rite did not long satisfy the theologians and jurists of the Middle Ages. It has been discussed by Lingard in his History of England, and by Dr. E. B. Tylor in Primitive Culture.

For the purpose of the present inquiry I also omit all the rites of leaping sportfully, and of driving cattle through light fires. Of these cases, from the Roman Palilia, or Parilia, downwards, there is a useful collection in Brand's Popular Antiquities under the heading 'Midsummer Eve.' One exception must be made for a passage from Torreblanca's Demonologia (p. 106). People are said 'pyras circumire et transilire in futuri mali averruncatione'--to 'go round about and leap over lighted pyres for the purpose of averting future evils,' as in Mannhardt's theory of the Hirpi. This may be connected with the Bulgarian rite, to be described later, but, as a rule, in all these instances, the fire is a light one of straw, and no sort of immunity is claimed by the people who do not walk through, but leap across it.

These kinds of analogous examples, then, it suffices merely to mention. For the others, in all affairs of this sort, the wide diffusion of a tale of miracle is easily explained. The fancy craves for miracles, and the universal mode of inventing a miracle is to deny the working, on a given occasion, of a law of Nature. Gravitation was suspended, men floated in air, inanimate bodies became agile, or fire did not burn. No less natural than the invention of the myth is the attempt to feign it by conjuring or by the use of some natural secret. But in the following modern instances the miracle of passing through the fire uninjured is apparently feigned with considerable skill, or is performed by the aid of some secret of Nature not known to modern chemistry. The evidence is decidedly good enough to prove that in Europe, India, and Polynesia the ancient rite of the Hirpi of Soracte is still a part of religious or customary ceremony.

Fijian Fire-walk

The case which originally drew my attention to this topic is that given by Mr. Basil Thomson in his South Sea Yarns (p. 195). Mr. Thomson informs me that he wrote his description on the day after he witnessed the ceremony, a precaution which left no room for illusions of memory. Of course, in describing a conjuring trick, one who is not an expert records, not what actually occurred, but what he was able to see, and the chances are that he did not see, and therefore omits, an essential circumstance, while he misstates other circumstances. I am informed by Mrs. Steel, the author of The Potter's Thumb and other stories of Indian life, that, in watching an Indian conjurer, she generally, or frequently, detects his method. She says that the conjurer often begins by whirling rapidly before the eyes of the spectators a small polished skull of a monkey, and she is inclined to think that the spectators who look at this are, in some way, more easily deluded. These facts are mentioned that I may not seem unaware of what can be said to impugn the accuracy of the descriptions of the Fire Rite, as given by Mr. Thomson and other witnesses.

Mr. Thomson says that the Wesleyan missionaries have nearly made a clean sweep of all heathen ceremonial in Fiji. 'But in one corner of Fiji, the island of Nbengga, a curious observance of mythological origin has escaped the general destruction, probably because the worthy iconoclasts had never heard of it.' The myth tells how the ancestor of the clan received the gift of fire-walking from a god, and the existence of the myth raises a presumption in favour of the antiquity of the observance.

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'Once every year the masawe, a dracaena that grows in profusion on the grassy hillsides of the island, becomes fit to yield the sugar of which its fibrous root is full. To render it fit to eat, the roots must be baked among hot stones for four days. A great pit is dug, and filled with large stones and blazing logs, and when these have burned down, and the stones are at white heat, the oven is ready for the masawe. It is at this stage that the clan Na Ivilankata, favoured of the gods, is called on to "leap into the oven" (rikata na lovo), and walk unharmed upon the hot stones that would scorch and wither the feet of any but the descendants of the dauntless Tui Nkualita. Twice only had Europeans been fortunate enough to see the masawe cooked, and so marvellous had been the tales they told, and so cynical the scepticism with which they had been received, that nothing short of another performance before witnesses and the photographic camera would have satisfied the average "old hand."

'As we steamed up to the chiefs village of Waisoma, a cloud of blue smoke rolling up among the palms told us that the fire was newly lighted. We found a shallow pit, nineteen feet wide, dug in the sandy soil, a stone's throw from high-water mark, in a small clearing among the cocoanuts between the beach and the dense forest. The pit was piled high with great blazing logs and round stones the size of a man's head. Mingled with the crackling roar of the fire were loud reports as splinters flew off from the stones, warning us to guard our eyes. A number of men were dragging up more logs and rolling them into the blaze, while, above all, on the very brink of the fiery pit, stood Jonathan Dambea, directing the proceedings with an air of noble calm. As the stones would not be hot enough for four hours, there was ample time to hear the tradition that warrants the observance of the strange ceremony we were to see.

'When we were at last summoned, the fire had been burning for more than four hours. The pit was filled with a white-hot mass shooting out little tongues of white flame, and throwing out a heat beside which the scorching sun was a pleasant relief. A number of men were engaged, with long poles to which a loop of thick vine had been attached, in noosing the pieces of unburnt wood by twisting the pole, like a horse's twitch, until the loop was tight, and dragging the log out by main force. When the wood was all out there remained a conical pile of glowing stones in the middle of the pit. Ten men now drove the butts of green saplings into the base of the pile, and held the upper end while a stout vine was passed behind the row of saplings. A dozen men grasped each end of the vine, and with loud shouts hauled with all their might. The saplings, like the teeth of an enormous rake, tore through the pile of stones, flattening them out towards the opposite edge of the pit. The saplings were then driven in on the other side and the stones raked in the opposite direction, then sideways, until the bottom of the pit was covered with an even layer of hot stones. This process had taken fully half an hour, but any doubt as to the heat of the stones at the end was set at rest by the tongues of flame that played continually among them. The cameras were hard at work, and a large crowd of people pressed inwards towards the pit as the moment drew near. They were all excited except Jonathan, who preserved, even in the supreme moment, the air of holy calm that never leaves his face. All eyes are fixed expectant on the dense bush behind the clearing, whence the Shadrachs, Meshachs and Abednegos of the Pacific are to emerge. There is a cry of "Vutu! Vutu!" and forth from the bush, two and two, march fifteen men, dressed in garlands and fringes. They tramp straight to the brink of the pit. The leading pair show something like fear in their faces, but do not pause, perhaps because the rest would force them to move forward. They step down upon the stones and continue their march round the pit, planting their feet squarely and firmly on each stone. The cameras snap, the crowd surges forward, the bystanders fling in great bundles of green leaves. But the bundles strike the last man of the procession and cut him off from his fellows; so he stays where he is, trampling down the leaves as they are thrown to line the pit, in a dense cloud of steam from the boiling sap. The rest leap back to his assistance, shouting and trampling, and the pit turns into the mouth of an Inferno, filled with dusky frenzied fiends, half seen through the dense volume that rolls up to heaven and darkens the sunlight. After the leaves, palm-leaf baskets of the dracaena root are flung to them, more leaves, and then bystanders and every one join in shovelling earth over all till the pit is gone, and a smoking mound of fresh earth takes its place. This will keep hot for four days, and then the masawe will be cooked.

'As the procession had filed up to the pit, by a preconcerted arrangement with the noble Jonathan, a large stone had been hooked out of the pit to the feet of one of the party, who poised a pocket-handkerchief over it, and dropped it lightly upon the stone when the first man leapt into the oven, and snatched what remained of it up as the last left the stones. During the fifteen or twenty seconds it lay there every fold that touched the stone was charred, and the rest of it scorched yellow. So the stones were not cool. We caught four or five of the performers as they came out, and closely examined their feet. They were cool, and showed no trace of scorching, nor were their anklets of dried tree-fern leaf burnt. This, Jonathan explained, is part of the miracle; for dried tree-fern is as combustible as tinder, and there were flames shooting out among the stones. Sceptics had affirmed that the skin of a Fijian's foot being a quarter of an inch thick, he would not feel a burn. Whether this be true or not of the ball and heel, the instep is covered with skin no thicker than our own, and we saw the men plant their insteps fairly on the stone.'

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Mr. Thomson's friend, Jonathan, said that young men had been selected because they would look better in a photograph, and, being inexperienced, they were afraid. A stranger would share the gift if he went in with one of the tribe. Some years ago a man fell and burned his shoulders. 'Any trick?' 'Here Jonathan's ample face shrunk smaller, and a shadow passed over his candid eye.' Mr. Thomson concludes: 'Perhaps the Na Ivilankata clan have no secret, and there is nothing wonderful in their performance; but, miracle or not, I am very glad I saw it.' The handkerchief dropped on the stone is 'alive to testify to it.' Mr. Thomson's photograph of the scene is ill-developed, and the fumes of steam somewhat interfere with the effect. A rough copy is published in Folk-Lore for September, 1895, but the piece could only be reproduced by a delicate drawing with the brush.

The parallel to the rite of the Hirpi is complete, except that red-hot stones, not the pyre of pine-embers, is used in Fiji. Mr. Thomson has heard of a similar ceremony in the Cook group of islands. As in ancient Italy, so in Fiji, a certain _clan_ have the privilege of fire-walking. It is far enough from Fiji to Southern India, as it is far enough from Mount Soracte to Fiji. But in Southern India the Klings practise the rite of the Hirpi and the Na Ivilankata. I give my informant's letter exactly as it reached me, though it has been published before in Longman's Magazine:

Kling Fire-walk

'Dear Sir,--Observing from your note in Longman's Magazine that you have mislaid my notes re fire-walking, I herewith repeat them. I have more than once seen it done by the "Klings," as the low-caste Tamil-speaking Hindus from Malabar are called, in the Straits Settlements. On one occasion I was present at a "fire-walking" held in a large tapioca plantation in Province Wellesley, before many hundreds of spectators, all the Hindu coolies from the surrounding estates being mustered. A trench had been dug about twenty yards long by six feet wide and two deep. This was piled with faggots and small wood four or five feet high. This was lighted at midday, and by four p.m. the trench was a bed of red-hot ashes, the heat from which was so intense that the men who raked and levelled it with long poles could not stand it for more than a minute at a time. A few yards from the end of the trench a large hole had been dug and filled with water. When all was ready, six men, ordinary coolies, dressed only in their "dholis," or loin-cloths, stepped out of the crowd, and, amidst tremendous excitement and a horrible noise of conches and drums, passed over the burning trench from end to end, in single file, at a quick walk, plunging one after the other into the water. Not one of them showed the least sign of injury. They had undergone some course of preparation by their priest, not a Brahman, but some kind of devil-doctor or medicine-man, and, as I understood it, they took on themselves and expiated the sins of the Kling community for the past year (a big job, if thieving and lying count; probably not). They are not, however, always so lucky, for I heard that on the next occasion one of the men fell and was terribly burnt, thus destroying the whole effect of the ceremony. I do not think this to be any part of the Brahmanical religion, though the ordeal by fire as a test of guilt is, or was, in use all over India. The fact is that the races of Southern India, where the Aryan element is very small, have kept all their savage customs and devil-worship under the form of Brahmanism.

'Another curious feat I saw performed at Labuan Deli, in Sumatra, on the Chinese New Year. A Chinaman of the coolie class was squatted stark naked on the roadside, holding on his knees a brass pan the size of a wash-hand basin, piled a foot high with red-hot charcoal. The heat reached one's face at two yards, but if it had been a tray of ices the man couldn't have been more unconcerned. There was a crowd of Chinese round him, all eagerly asking questions, and a pile of coppers accumulating beside him. A Chinese shopkeeper told me that the man "told fortunes," but from the circumstance of a gambling-house being close by, I concluded that his customers were getting tips on a system.

'Hoping these notes may be of service to you, 'I remain, 'Yours truly, 'STEPHEN PONDER.'

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