Heaven-god, that in old days the Finn turned with such prayers:
- 'Ukko, thou, O God above us
- Thou, O Father in the heavens,
- Thou who rulest in the cloud-land,
- And the little cloud-lambs leadest,
- Send us down the rain from heaven,
- Make the clouds to drop with honey,
- Let the drooping corn look upward,
- Let the grain with plenty rustle.'[1]
Quite like this were the classic conceptions of Ζεὺς ὑέτιος Jupiter Pluvius. They are typified in the famous Athenian prayer recorded by Marcus Aurelius, 'Rain, rain, O dear Zeus, on the plough-lands of the Athenians, and the plains!'[2] and in Petronius Arbiter's complaint of the irreligion of his times, that now no one thinks heaven is heaven, no one keeps a fast, no one cares a hair for Jove, but all men with closed eyes reckon up their goods. Aforetime the ladies walked up the hill in their stoles with bare feet and loosened hair and pure minds, and entreated Jove for water; then all at once it rained bucketsfull, then or never, and they all went home wet as drowned rats.[3] In later ages, when drought parched the fields of the mediæval husbandman, he transferred to other patrons the functions of the Rain-god, and with procession and litany sought help from St. Peter or St. James, or, with more of mythological consistency, from the Queen of Heaven. As for ourselves, we have lived to see the time when men shrink from addressing even to Supreme Deity the old customary rain-prayers, for the rainfall is passing from the region of the supernatural, to join the tides and seasons in the realm of physical science.
1 Castrén, 'Finn. Myth.' p. 36; Kalewala, Rune ii. 317.
2 Marc. Antonin. v. 7. 'Εὐχὴ Ἀθηναίων, ὗσον, ὗσον, ὦ φίλε Ζεῦ, κατὰ τῆς ἀρούρας τῆς Ἀθηναίων καὶ τῶν πεδίων..'
3 Petron. Arbiter. Sat. xliv. 'Antea stolatæ ibant nudis pedibus in clivum, passis capillis, mentibus puris, et Jovem aquam exorabant. Itaque statim urceatim pluebat: aut tunc aut nunquam; et omnes redibant udi tanquam mures.' See Grimm, 'D. M.' p. 160.
