ns of the Fleece of Gold, hanging on the oak-
tree in the dark AEaean forest. Idyia, wife of the Colchian king, 'is
clearly the Dawn.' Aia is the isle of the Sun. Helle=Surya, a Sanskrit
Sun-goddess; the golden ram off whose back she falls, while her brother
keeps his seat, is the Sun. Her brother, Phrixus, may be the Daylight.
The oak-tree in Colchis is the Sun-tree of the Lettish songs. Perseus is
a hero of Light, born in the Dark Tower (Night) from the shower of gold
(Sun-rays).

'We can but say "it may be so,"' but who could explain all the complex
Perseus-saga as a statement about elemental phenomena? Or how can the
Far-travelled Tale of the Lad and the Giant's Daughter be interpreted to
the same effect, above all in the countless examples where no Fleece of
Gold occurs? The Greek tale of Jason is made up of several Marchen, as
is the Odyssey, by epic poets. These Marchen have no necessary
connection with each other; they are tagged on to each other, and
localised in Greece and on the Euxine. {62a} A poetic popular view of
the Sun may have lent the peculiar, and elsewhere absent, incident of the
quest of the Fleece of Gold on the shores of the Black Sea. The old epic
poets may have borrowed from popular songs like the Lettish chants (p.
328). A similar dubious adhesion may be given by us in the case of
Castor and Polydeuces (Morning and Evening Stars?), and Helen (Dawn),
{62b} and the Hesperides (p. 234). The germs of the myths _may_ be
popular poetical views of elemental phenomena. But to insist on
elemental allegories through all the legends of the Dioskouroi, and of
the Trojan war, would be to strain a hypothesis beyond the
breaking-point. Much, very much, is epic invention, unverkennbar das
werk der Dichter (p. 328).

Mannhardt's Approach to Mr. Max Muller

In this essay on Lettish Sun-songs (1875) Mannhardt comes nearest to Mr.
Max Muller. He cites passages from him with approval (cf. pp. 314, 322).
His explanations, by aid of Sun-songs, of certain features in Greek
mythology are plausible, and may be correct. But we turn to Mannhardt's
explicit later statement of his own position in 1877, and to his
posthumous essays, published in 1884; and, on the whole, we find, in my
opinion, much more difference from than agreement with the Oxford
Professor, whose Dawn-Daphne and other equations Mannhardt dismisses, and
to whose general results (in mythology) he assigns a value so restricted.
It i