EARTH, THE MOTHER. who carries it home, and is astonished to see that the can contains not a mango, but a tiny lady richly dressed in red and gold and no bigger than the fruit. But she grows with wonderful quickness, and when she reaches her full stature, she is again seen by the Rajah, who claims his bride, but is repulsed by the milkwoman. The truth, however, cannot be hid and the Rajah and the milkwoman each recognise the lost maiden, when Sûryâ tells her own tale and confesses that an irresistible impulse made her throw herself into the milk can, while her form was yet that of the mango. 1 305 CHAP. VIII. Earth. The milkwoman of this myth is simply Dêmêtêr in the The aspect with which the Vedic hymn-writers were most familiar. nourishing To them the earth was pre-eminently the being who nourishes all living things with heavenly milk, who satisfies all desires without being herself exhausted. The eagles which carry the child are the clouds of sunrise and sunset-the Asvins or the Dioskouroi, who carry away Aithra from Athens, the swan-maidens of Teutonic folk-lore, the Erinyes and Harpyiai of Hellenic legend. The nest is the secret place where Persephone is hidden, whether Hades, or the lonely heath where Brynhild sleeps, or the gloomy Niflheim where Fafnir guards the stolen treasures. But dreary though it may be, it is not without fire to keep up the maiden's life, as that of Demophoôn is strengthened by the fiery bath of Dêmêtêr. The journey of Sûryâ to the Rakshas' country denotes the blight and frost which may nip and chill the first vegetation of spring. From this slumber she is roused by the Rajah, who, like Sigurd, is the sun. The jealousy of the elder queen is matched, not only by that of Hêrê, but more precisely by that of Eôs, the rival of Prokris. Thus Sûryâ, exposed to countless dangers, is yet imperishable. If thrown into the water, she rises like Aphroditê in renewed beauty: if consumed by fire, the fruit-tree rises from her ashes, I can but follow here the writer of a very able review of Miss Frere's Deccan Tales, which appeared in the Spectator for April 25, 1868. The passages quoted are from the Atharva Veda, but these are perhaps more valuable for the purpose of illustrating the current folk-lore than if they occurred VOL. II. X in the Rig Veda. We see, however, a BOOK II. Holda. The Eleu sinian myth. until at last the mango falls into the milkwoman's can as the ripe fruit must fall into the lap of the earth, its mother.1 The idea of Dêmêtêr finds an expression in the Teutonic Holda, the benignant goddess or lady, who reappears as Frau Berchta, the bright maiden, the Phaethousa or Lampetiê of the Odyssey. The few details which we have of these beings agree strictly with the meaning of their names. Thus Holda gently wraps the earth in a mantle of snow, and when the snow falls Holda is said to be making her bed, of which the feathers fly about, reminding us of the Scythian statement made by Herodotos that the air in the northernmost part of Europe is always full of feathers. This Frau Holda (verelde) is transformed into Pharaildis, a name said to have been given to Herodias, who in the medieval myth was confounded with her daughter, and of whom the story was told that she loved the Baptist, and determined never to wed any man if she could not be his wife; that Herod, discovering this, ordered John to be put to death, and that the bringing of the head on a charger was not for any purposes of insult, but that she might bathe it with her tears.2 The head flies from her kisses, and she is left mourning like Aphroditê for Adonis. A third part of the human race is made subject to her by way of atonement for her sufferings. The same myth is told of dame Habonde in the Roman de la Rose.3 It is in this kindly and attractive guise that Persephonê appears in the myth of Eleusis. Here the story took root most firmly; and the fountain where the daughters of Keleos accosted the mourning mother, and the spot where Iambê assailed her with friendly jests, were pointed out to the veneration of the faithful who came to celebrate her solemn mysteries. To the Eleusinians, beyond a doubt, the whole narrative was genuine and sacred history. But this belief would, of course, explain to them as little as it would to us The modern Hindu storyteller is, doubtless, not more conscious of the meaning and origin of this tale than the authors of the Homeric hymns were of the myths of Aphroditê, or Dionysos. Now and then we can scarcely suppose that they fail to have some conception of the nature of their materials-a con- 2 Grimm, D. M. 262. ♦ Grote, History of Greece, i. 55. DÊMÊTER AND IASIÔN. the origin and nature of the story. Both are alike laid bare by a comparison which has shown that every incident may be matched with incidents in other legends so far resembling each other as to leave no room for questioning their real identity, yet so far unlike as to preclude the idea that the one was borrowed from or directly suggested by the other. But the Eleusinian could adduce in evidence of his belief not only the mysteries which were there enacted, but the geographical names which the story consecrated; and here he found himself in the magic circle from which the inhabitants of Athens or Argos, Arkadia or Lykia, Delos or Ortygia, could never escape. Eleusis itself was a town or village in the land of the dawn-goddess Athênê, and the name denoted simply the approach of Dêmêtêr to greet her returning child. If, again, it pleased the Athenians to think that Persephonê was stolen away from Kolônos, or even from the spot where she met her mother, there were other versions which localised this incident on some Nysaian plain, as in the Homeric hymn, in the Sicilian Enna, or near the well of Arethousa. 307 CHAP. VIII. siôn. As we might expect, the myth of Dêmêtêr is intertwined Dêmêtêr with the legends of many other beings, both human and and Iadivine. Like Herakles and Zeus, she has, in many lands, many loves and many children. As the wife of Poseidôn she is the mother of Despoina and Orîôn.' The earth must love the beautifully tinted skies of morning; and thus Dêmêtêr loves Iasiôn, the son of Zeus and Hemera, the heaven and the day, or of Minos and the nymph Pyronea, and becomes the mother of Ploutôn or Ploutos, the god who guards the treasures of the earth, and whom the Latins identified with Hades. She must hate those who spoil her trees and waste her fruits; hence she punishes with fearful Max Müller, Lectures, second series, 517; Apollod. iii. 6, 8. The name Minos, it has been already said, is, like Menu, the same word as man the measurer or thinker. But Minos himself is the husband of Pasiphae the light-giver, and the father of Ariadne who guides Theseus to the den of the Minotauros. It is scarcely necessary to give all the names which occur in the story of Iasiôn or other myths of a like kind. There are but few which II. BOOK hunger the earth-tearer Erysichthon. As possessing and guarding the wealth of the earth, she takes her place among the Chthonian deities, whose work is carried on unseen by mortal eyes. As teaching men how to plough, to sow, and to reap, she is Dêmêtêr Thesmophoros, the lover of law, order, peace and justice. Ceres and Of the Latin Ceres it is enough to say that although, like other Latin deities, she has no special mythology, her name at least is significant. She is strictly the ripener of the fruits of the earth; and since, as such, she could have no attribute wholly inconsistent with the character of the Greek Dêmêtêr, it became easy to attach to Ceres all the stories told of the Hellenic goddess. With the name of Ceres we ought to connect that of Saturn, a god who has no feature in common with the Greek Kronos with whom the later Romans identified him, as they identified his wife Ops, a name corresponding in meaning with that of Ploutos, with Rhea. Saturn, as the sower of the seed,2 answers far more nearly to the Greek Triptolemos, who is taught by Dêmêtêr. At the end of his work Saturn is said to have vanished from the earth, as Persephonê disappears when the summer has come to an end; and the local tradition went that Latium was his lurking-place.3 Erichthonios. SECTION III.-THE CHILDREN OF THE EARTH. As the Eleusinian myth tells the story of the earth and her treasures under the name of Dêmêtêr, so the Athenian legend tells the same story under the name of Erechtheus or Erichthonios, a son of Hephaistos, according to one version, by Atthis, a daughter of Kranaos, according to another, by Athênê herself. In the latter version Athênê becomes his The name has by some been identified with the Greek Korê, by others with the Latin Garanus or Recaranus. By Professor Max Müller it is referred to the root which yields the Sanskrit Sarad, autumn, viz. śri or srî, to cook or ripen. Srî, or Lakshmi, is in the Ramayana the wife of Vishnu. Like Aphroditê, she rises from the sea, but with four arms, and her dwelling is in the Lotos. 2 Bréal, Hercule et Cacus, 38. The name must necessarily be traced through its cognate forms; and thus, before we can judge positively, we must compare it with Latini, Lakini, Lavini, &c. See vol. i. p. 235. 4 As Krana is a title of Athêne, Atthis the child of Kranaos is probably only Athênê under a slight disguise. ERECHTHEUS AND KEKROPS. mother when she goes to Hephaistos to ask for a suit of armour, the fire-fashioned raiment of the morning. When the child is born she nourishes it, as Dêmêtêr nursed Demophoôn, with the design of rendering it immortal; and, placing it in a chest, she gave the child to Pandrosos, Hersê, and Agraulos, charging them not to raise the lid.' They disobey, and finding that the coils of a snake are folded round the body of the child, are either slain by Athênê or throw themselves down the precipice of the Akropolis. Henceforth the dragon-bodied or snake-bound Erichthonios dwells in the shrine of Athênê, and under her special protection. 309 CHAP. VIII. There were other stories of Erichthonios or Erechtheus 2 Erechtheus. which some mythographers assign to a grandson of the supposed child of Hephaistos and Athênê. Of this latter Erectheus, the son of Pandion, it is said that he was killed by the thunderbolts of Zeus, after his daughters had been sacrificed to atone for the slaughter of Eumolpos by the Athenians-a tale manifestly akin to the punishment of Tantalos after the crime committed on his son Pelops. But the legend of Erichthonios is merely a repetition of Kekrops. the myth of the dragon-bodied Kekrops, who gave his name to the land which had till then been called Aktê, and who became the father not only of Erysichthon but of the three sisters who proved faithless in the charge of Erichthonios. To the time of Kekrops is assigned one version of the story which relates the rivalry of Poseidon and Athênê; but here Poseidon produces not a horse, but a well on the Akropolis, a work for which he is careless enough to produce no witness, while Athênê makes her olive tree grow up beneath The names Pandrosos and Hersê translate each other: the addition of Agraulos merely states that the dew covers the fields. 2 Of the name Erichthonios, Preller, Gr. Myth. i. 159, says, 'Der Name. . recht eigentlich einen Genius der fruchtbaren Erdbodens bedeutet,' and compares it with ἐριούνης, ἐρίβωλος, and other words. If Erechtheus and Erichthonios are names for one and the same person, the explanation which regards the name as a compound of xewv, the earth, seems to become at least doubtful. There is, however, no ground for up holding a double personality. 'The |