to explain the title of Artemis Diktynna, carries us to the Diktaian cave in which Zeus is born and nursed, and to the kindly Diktys of Seriphos,' and we are left in little doubt that Artemis Diktynna is simply Artemis the light-giving, and that the conversion of light into nets is merely the result of an equivocation like that which changed the seven stars into Seven Rishis or sages.2 .Kirke (Circe) It is perhaps not more doubtful that in the queens of fairyland, from Kalypso and Kirke downwards, we see the fair, yet weird, beauty of the moon, a beauty asand Kalypso. sociated necessarily with the ideas of secrecy and languor, and so connected easily with the notions of sloth, sensuality, and treachery. We may trace the blending of these notions in the picture of Kalypso, and still more in that of Kirke. Their abode is the enervating home in which the bright heroes are tempted to pass luxurious days, taking no count of months and years as they roll along. Here they are withdrawn from all intercourse with the world of men; and if they reappear, they are regarded with suspicion, dislike, or dread. In short, the fairy realm is the land of slumber, and the palace of the queen is a very castle of indolence, in which Kirke may be more sensual and more treacherous than Kalypso, but in which both make use of spells and charms not easily to be resisted. This is the home of Tara Bai, the Star-maiden,3 of Hindu folklore, the being who can neither grow old nor die, and the witchery of whose lulling songs no mortal may withstand. It is the Horselberg to which the Venus of mediæval tradition entices the ill-fated Tanhaüser, the Ercildoune where the fairy queen keeps Thomas the Rimer a not unwilling prisoner.1 1 See p. III. 2 See p. 42. 3 Transliterated into Greek, Tara Bai is the Asteropaios of the Iliad, 12. 102. Frere, Deccan Tales, p. 44. No one probably will attribute the agreement of the names Horselberg and Ercildoune to accident. In each case we have the berg, hill, or down of the moon-goddess Ursel, or Ursula, a name which through the forms Ursa, Arktos, and Arksha, takes us back to the original word denoting splendour or bright FAIRY LAND. Thomas the 161 These beautiful beings may not have the malignant cunning by which Kirke seeks deliberately to bring men below the level of brutes; but the atmosphere of the Tanhauser and palace of Kirke is the air in which each dwells. Rimer. Their abodes are not penetrated by the wholesome sunshine of the daytime, they know nothing of the pure pleasures of the open air. The men who tarry in their chambers must be therefore under a spell; and thus we reach the fully developed notion of imprisonment in the land of Faery. Here knowledge may be obtained, but it can be obtained only under a penalty. At the end of seven years Thomas the Rimer is suffered to return to the earth with an accumulation of superhuman wisdom; but he returns under an oath to go back to Elfland whenever the summons should come. It came, the story went, when he was making merry with some friends. A hart and a hind were seen moving slowly up the street of the village: Thomas knew the sign, and following the animals to the wood, was never seen again.' In the case of Tanhaüser the myth betrays the working of more marked Christian feeling. Like Thomas the Rimer, he longs after a time to exchange the sensuous enjoyments of his fairy paradise for the more healthy occupations of the upper earth, and he makes his escape with an overwhelming sense of sin on his soul, for which he vainly seeks absolution. He goes to the pope, The pope tells him salvation as there is of whom the story calls Urban IV. that there is as much chance of his his pastoral staff bursting into leaf and blossom. Tanhauser departs in despair, and re-entering the Horselberg, disappears for ever. Soon afterwards the pope's staff begins to bud. Messengers are sent to summon the penitent back to the papal presence; but it is too late. The minne ness which gives us the Hindu raja, and the Latin rex, reg-is, on the one side, and the Hindu Rishi with the Teutonic Bragi on the other. For the parallel with Chaucer's 'Rime of Sir Thopas,' see Myth. of Ar. Nat. i. 411. M singer cannot be found. He has re-entered the fairy land, like Olger the Dane, never to leave it again. The Seven the Seven 1 Here, then, we have the idea of an unbroken or deathlike slumber, such as that of the Cretan EpimeSleepers, and nides, who, tending his sheep, fell asleep in a Rishes. cave, and did not wake for half a century. But Epimenides was one of the Seven Sages of Hellas, and. these reappear in the seven Manes of Leinster, and the Seven Champions of Christendom. These again are the Seven Sleepers of Ephesus, where the tradition went that St. John was not dead, but only slumbering till the great consummation of the world should come. This mystic group of seven is seen, lastly, in the Seven Rishis of ancient Hindu story. These wise men were said to be the instruments through whom the Veda was imparted to man. They are mortal, but they are united with the immortals. With their hymns they caused, it is said, the dawn to arise and the sun to shine. With Manu, we are told, they entered the ark,2 and there remained until the vessel rested on the peak Naubandhana. The story ran that these Rishis had each his abode in one of the seven stars of the Great Bear. The homonym, as we have seen, is easily traced. Round the same root or base sprang up words denoting brightness and wisdom, and the words so produced might be easily interchanged. In the West a name for bears was obtained from the same source; and thus we have the parallel of seven shiners, seven sages, and seven bears.3 The story of the giant-hunter, Orion, is a myth relating to the daily round of the sun; but the name, like that of Athamas, Melikertes, and Kadmos, The hunter 4 may come from a Semitic source. It is significant that he 1 For other instances, see Myth. of Ar. Nat. i. 413. 2 See p. 132. As Manu is, of course, man, the measurer or thinker. such, he is the child of Svayambhu, the self-existent, just as the Germans spoke of their ancestor Manu as the son of Tiu or Tuisco. 3 See note, p. 42. The older form of the name is Oarion. According to Pindar, as cited by Strabo, he was born at Hyria; and he is also called a son of Hyrieus, who is, of course, the eponymos of Hyria. He is also said to be a son of Oinopion, should be called a son of Poseidon, and that, although they represent the same powers, there is a strong antagonism between him and Apollo with his sister Artemis. At Chios, we are told, Orion sees the beautiful Aero; but when he seeks to make her his bride he is blinded by her father, who, by the advice of Dionysos, comes upon him in his sleep. Orion is now told that he may yet recover his sight, if he would go to the east and look toward the rising sun. Thither he is led by Kedalion, whom Hephaistos sends to him as his guide. On his return he vainly tries to seize and punish the man who had blinded him, and then wandering onwards meets and is loved by Artemis. Of his death many stories were told. In the Odyssey he is slain in Ortygia by Artemis, who is jealous of her rival Eos. In another version Artemis slays him unwittingly, having aimed at a mark on the sea, which "Phoebus had declared that she could not hit. This mark was the head of Orion, who had been swimming in the waters. Asklepios, we are further told, seeks to raise him from the dead, and thus brings on his own doom from the thunderbolts of Zeus. In Aktaion, the son of the Kadmeian Autonoê, we have another hunter, who is a pupil of the Centaur Cheiron, and who is torn to pieces by his own dogs, in punish- Aktaion. ment, we are told, for his rashly looking on Artemis when she was bathing in the fountain of Gargaphia. With the myths of these hunters, who probably embody ideas which were much more Semitic than Hellenic, we may compare those which tell us of other mysterious hunters and dancers of the heavens, the Telchines and Kouretes, who with the kindred Kabeiroi and many more seem to be importations from Semitic lands. and Oinopion is called a son of Dionysos. He is thus directly connected with a deity whose ritual was brought into Western Hellas from Asia; and in him as well as in Dionysos we have an embodiment of the cosmical ideas by which Semitic theology is pointedly distinguished from the simpler mythology of the Aryan tribes. Brown, Great Dionysiak Myth. i. ch. x. sect. 5. The hound of Orion became, it is said, the dog-star Seirios, who marks the time of yearly drought. For the significance of the name see Myth. of Ar. Nat. ii. 290, note I. I Agai. CHAPTER III. THE FIRE. THE idea of the fire which burns upon the earth is closely connected with, and is perhaps inseparable from, the thought of the fire which, having its seat in the sun, imparts life and heat to the whole visible universe. For these fires, between which at first the Aryan conquerors of India did not much care to draw any sharp line of distinction, the Hindu name was Agni. Sometimes they spoke of two heats one in the other, which are ever shining and filling the world with their splendour. Hence Agni is spoken of sometimes as the great god who fills all things, sometimes as the light which illumines the heavens, sometimes as the lightning, and sometimes as earthly fire. The flexible and interchangeable characteristics of the old Vedic gods allow them to pass without an effort from one name or thought to another. There is no rivalry between them, and no antagonism. Agni, Varuna, Indra, each is greatest; and when each is so named, the others are for the moment unnoticed or forgotten. Or else Indra is called Agni, and Agni Indra, each being Skambha, the supporter of the universe. and birth of Agni, however, can scarcely be said to have acquired any purely spiritual character. He is rarely besought, as The parentage Varuna is, to forgive sin. In the earlier hymns Agni. he is the fire which men prize as an indispensable boon. He bears up the offerings of men to the gods on the flames which soar heavenward, and he is therefore, |