i. 131). Odin would thus (if we admit the etymology) be the
swift goer, the “ganger,” and it seems superfluous to make him
(with Grimm) “the all-powerful, all-permeating being,” a very
abstract and scarcely an early conception. Odin’s brethren (in
Gylfi’s Mocking) are Vile and Ve, who with him slew Ymir the
giant, and made all things out of the fragments of his body. They
also made man out of two stocks. In the Hava-Mal Odin claims
for himself most of the attributes of the medicine-man. In Loka
Senna, Loki, the evil god, says that “Odin dealt in magic in
Samsey.” The goddess Frigg remarks, “Ye should never talk of
your old doings before men, of what ye two Aesir went through in
old times.” But many relics of these “old times,” many traces
of the medicine-man and the “skin-shifter,” survive in the myth of
Odin. When he stole Suttung’s mead (which answers somewhat
to nectar and the Indian soma), he flew away in the shape of an
eagle.[1] The hawk is sacred to Odin; one of his names is “the
Raven-god.” He was usually represented as one-eyed, having
left an eye in pawn that he might purchase a draught from Mimir’s
well. This one eye is often explained as the sun. Odin’s wife
was Frigg; their sons were Thor (the thunder-god) and Balder,
whose myth is well known in English poetry. The gods were
divided into two—not always friendly—stocks, the Aesir and Vanir.
Their relations are, on the whole, much more amicable than those
of the Asuras and Devas in Indian mythology. Not necessarily
immortal, the gods restored their vigour by eating the apples of
Iduna. Asa Loki was a being of mixed race, half god, half giant,
and wholly mischievous and evil. His legend includes animal
metamorphoses of the most obscene character. In the shape of
a mare he became the mother of the eight-legged horse of Odin.
He borrowed the hawk-dress of Freya, when he recovered the
apples of Iduna. Another Eddic god, Hoene, is described in
phrases from lost poems as “the long-legged one,” “lord of the
ooze,” and his name is connected with that of the crane. The constant
enemies of the gods, the giants, could also assume animal
forms. Thus in Thiodolf’s Haust-long (composed after the settlement
of Iceland) we read about a shield on which events from mythology
were painted; among these was the flight of “giant Thiazzi
in an ancient eagle’s feathers.” The god Herindal and Loki once
fought a battle in the shapes of seals. On the whole, the Scandinavian
gods are a society on an early human model, of beings
indifferently human, animal and divine—some of them derived
from elemental forces personified, holding sway over the elements,
and skilled in sorcery. Probably after the viking days came in the
conceptions of the last war of gods, and the end of all, and the theory
of Odin All-Father as a kind of emperor in the heavenly world.
The famous tree that lives through all the world is regarded as
“foreign, Christian, and confined to few poems.” There is, almost
undoubtedly, a touch of the Christian dawn on the figure and
myth of the pure and beloved and ill-fated god Balder, and his
descent into hell. The whole subject is beset with critical difficulties,
and we have chiefly noted features which can hardly be
regarded as late, and which correspond with widely distributed
mythical ideas.
Dasent’s Prose or Younger Edda (Stockholm, 1842); the Corpus Septentrionale already referred to; C. F. Keary’s Mythology of the Eddas (1882); Pigott’s Manual of Scandinavian Mythology (1838); and Laing’s Early Kings of Norway may be consulted by English students.
Classification of Myths.—It is now necessary to cast a hasty glance over the chief divisions of myths. These correspond to the chief problems which the world presents to the curiosity of untutored men. They ask themselves (and the answers are given in myths) the following questions: What is the Origin of the World? The Origin of Man? Whence came the Arts of Life? Whence the Stars? Whence the Sun and Moon? What is the Origin of Death? How was Fire procured by Man? The question of the origin of the marks and characteristics of various animals and plants has also produced a class of myths in which the marks are said to survive from some memorable adventure, or the plants and animals to be metamorphosed human beings. Examples of all these myths are found among savages and in the legends of the ancient civilizations. A few such examples may now be given.
Myths of the Origin of the World.—We have found it difficult to keep myths of the gods apart from myths of the origin of the world and of man, because gods are frequently regarded as creative powers. The origin of things is a problem which has everywhere exercised thought, and been rudely solved in myths. These vary in quality with the civilization of the races in which they are current, but the same ideas which we proceed to state pervade all cosmogonical myths, savage and civilized. All these legends waver between the theory of creation, or rather of manufacture, and the theory of evolution. The earth, as a rule, is supposed to have grown out of some original matter, perhaps an animal, perhaps an egg which floated on the waters, perhaps a fragment of soil fished up out of the floods by a beast or a god. But this conception does not exclude the idea that many of the things in the world—minerals, plants, people, and what not—are fragments of the frame of an animal or non-natural magnified man, or are excretions from the body of a god. We proceed to state briefly the various forms of these ideas. The most backward races usually assume the prior existence of the earth.
The aborigines of the northern parts of Victoria (Australia) believe that the earth was made by Pund-jel, the bird-creator, who sliced the valleys with a knife. Another Australian theory is that the men of a previous race, the Nooralie (very old ones), made the earth.
The problem of the origin of the world seems scarcely to have troubled the Bushmen. They know about “men who brought the sun,” but their doctrines are revealed in mysteries, and Qing, the informant of Mr Orpen (Cape Monthly Magazine, July 1874), “did not dance that dance”—that is, had not been initiated into all the secret doctrines of his tribe. According to Qing, creation was the work of Cagn (the mantis insect), “he gave orders and caused all things to appear.” Elsewhere in the myth Cagn made or manufactured things by his skill.
As a rule the most backward races, while rich in myths of the origin of men, animals, plants, stones and stars, do not say much about the making of the world. Among people a little more advanced, the earth is presumed to have grown out of the waters. In the Iroquois myth (Lafitau, Mœurs des sauvages, 1724), a heavenly woman was tossed out of heaven, and fell on a turtle, which developed into the world. Another North-American myth assumes a single island in the midst of the waters, and this island grew into the world. The Navaho and the Digger Indians take earth for granted as a starting-point in their myths. The Winnebagos, not untouched by Christian doctrine, do not go farther back. The Great Manitou awoke and found himself alone. He took a piece of his body and a piece of earth and made a man. Here the existence of earth is assumed (Bancroft iv. 228). Even in Guatemala, though the younger sons of a divine race succeed in making the earth where the elder son (as usual) failed, they all had a supply of clay as first material. The Pima, a Central-American tribe, say the earth was made by a powerful being, and at first appeared “like a spider’s web.” This reminds one of the Ananzi or spider creator of West Africa. The more metaphysical Tacullies of British Columbia say that in the beginning nought existed but water and a musk-rat. The musk-rat sought his food at the bottom of the water, and his mouth was frequently filled with mud. This he kept spitting out, and so formed an island, which developed into the world. Among the Tinneh, the frame of a dog (which could assume the form of a handsome young man) became the first material of most things. The dog, like Osiris, Dionysus, Purusha and other gods, was torn to pieces by giants; the fragments became many of the things in the world (Bancroft i. 106). Even here the existence of earth for the dog to live in is assumed.
Coming to races more advanced in civilization, we find the New Zealanders in possession of ancient hymns in which the origin of things is traced back to nothing, to darkness, and to a metaphysical process from nothing to something, from being to becoming. The hymns may be read in Sir George Grey’s Polynesian Mythology, and in Taylor’s New Zealand. It has been suggested that these hymns bear traces of Buddhist and Indian influence; in any case, they are rather metaphysical than mystical. Myth comes in when the Maoris represent Rangi and Papa, Heaven and Earth, as two vast beings, male and female, united in a secular embrace, and finally severed by their children, among whom Tane Mahuta takes the part of Cronus in the Greek myth. The gods were partly elemental, partly animal in character; the lists of their titles show that every human crime was freely attributed to them. In the South Sea Islands, generally, the fable of the union and separation of Heaven and Earth is current; other forms will be found in Gill’s Myths and Songs from the South Pacific.
The cosmogonic myths of the Aryans of India are peculiarly interesting, as we find in the Vedas and Brahmanas and Puranas almost every fiction familiar to savages side by side with the most abstract metaphysical speculations. We have the theory that earth grew, as in the Iroquois story of the turtle, from a being named Uttanapad (Muir v. 335). We find that Brahmanaspati “blew the gods forth from his mouth,” and one of the gods, Tvashtri, the mechanic among the deities, is credited with having fashioned the earth and the heaven (Muir v. 354). The “Purusha Sukta,” the 90th hymn of the tenth book of the Rig Veda, gives us the Indian version of the theory that all things were made out of the mangled limbs of Purusha, a magnified non-natural man, who was sacrificed by the gods. As this hymn gives an account of the origin of the castes (which elsewhere are scarcely recognized in the
- ↑ Indra was a hawk when, “being well-winged, he carried to men the food tasted by the gods” (R. V. iv. 26, 4). Yehl, the Tlingit god-hero, was a raven or a crane when he stole the water (Bancroft iii. 100–102). The prevalence of animals, or of god-animals, in myths of the stealing of water, soma and fire, is very remarkable. Among the Andaman Islanders, a kingfisher steals fire for men from the god Puluga (Anthrop. Journal, November 1882.
