selves by
saying that the paternal beast was only a god in disguise and en bonne
fortune.

This hypothesis at least 'colligates the facts,' and brings them into
intelligible relationship with widely-diffused savage institutions and
myths.

The Greek Mouse-totem?

My theory connecting Apollo Smintheus and the place-names derived from
mice with a possible prehistoric mouse-totem gave me, I confess,
considerable satisfaction. But in Mr. Frazer's Golden Bough (ii. 129-
132) is published a group of cases in which mice and other vermin are
worshipped for prudential reasons--to get them to go away. In the
Classical Review (vol. vi. 1892) Mr. Ward Fowler quotes Aristotle and
AElian on plagues of mice, like the recent invasion of voles on the
Border sheep-farms. He adopts the theory that the sacred mice were
adored by way of propitiating them. Thus Apollo may be connected with
mice, not as a god who superseded a mouse-totem, but as an expeller of
mice, like the worm-killing Heracles, and the Locust-Heracles, and the
Locust-Apollo. {81a} The locust is still painted red, salaamed to, and
set free in India, by way of propitiating his companions. {81b} Thus the
Mouse-Apollo (Smintheus) would be merely a god noted for his usefulness
in getting rid of mice, and any worship given to mice (feeding them,
placing their images on altars, their stamp on coins, naming places after
them, and so on) would be mere acts of propitiation.

There would be no mouse-totem in the background. I do not feel quite
convinced--the mouse being a totem, and a sacred or tabooed animal, in
India and Egypt. {82a} But I am content to remain in a balance of
opinion. That the Mouse is the Night (Gubernatis), or the Lightning
(Grohmann), I am disinclined to believe. Philologists are very apt to
jump at contending meteorological explanations of mice and such small
deer without real necessity, and an anthropologist is very apt to jump at
an equally unnecessary and perhaps equally undemonstrated totem.

Philological Theory

Philological mythologists prefer to believe that the forgotten meaning of
words produced the results; that the wolf-born Apollo ([Greek])
originally meant 'Light-born Apollo,' {82b} and that the wolf came in
from a confusion between [Greek], 'Light,' and [Greek], a wolf. I make
no doubt that philologists can explain Sminthian Apollo, the Dog-Apollo,
and all the rest in the same way, and account for all the other
pecul