unfaithful or neglectful procure a piece, wrap it in paper, and throw it on the fire, saying:
May he no pleasure or profit see
Till he come back again to me.
[Cuthbert Bede in Notes and Queries.
Series 1., Vol. II., p. 242.]
Dragons are mentioned many times in the Authorised Version of the Old Testament. In most of these instances jackals are substituted in the Revised Version, and only once, I think, the alternative of crocodiles is suggested in the margin, though in many instances it would obviously be a better rendering, as has been pointed out by many scholars.
THE SCIENCE OF MYTHOLOGY
which seeks to explain how the old myths, some poetical, many disgusting,
and all impossible, originated, is a modern study which has fascinated a large
number of learned scholars. The old notion that they were merely allegorical
forms of representing facts and phenomena is not tenable in view of the universality
of the legends among the least cultivated races. Professor Max
Müller initiated a lively controversy some forty years ago by suggesting that
myths were a consequence of language, a disease of language, as Mr. Andrew
Lang has termed it. He traced many of the Greek myths to Aryan sources,
and insisted that they had developed from the words or phrases used to
describe natural phenomena. Thus, for example, he explained the myth of
Apollo and Daphne (mentioned on page 9) by supposing that a phrase
existed describing the Sun following, or chasing, the Dawn. He even maintained
that the Sanskrit Ahana, dawn, was the derivation of Daphne.
Words, of course, were invented to convey some mental conception; that
conception, while it was intelligible, would (according to Max Müller's
system) be developed into a story. The argument was most ingeniously
worked out, but it has not proved capable of satisfying the conditions of the
problem. How could it suffice, for instance, to explain the occurrence of
almost identical myths treasured by the most degraded and widely separated
peoples? The more likely theory is that in a very early stage of the savage
mind the untrained imagination tended inevitably to associate the facts of
nature with certain monstrous, obscene, and irrational forms. Perhaps the
most able exposition of this view, or something like it, expounded within
moderate limits, is to be found in an article on Mythology contributed to the
"Encyclopædia Britannica" by Mr. Andrew Lang.
