to typify the operations of time, by others the alternations of night
and day--the stone swallowed by Saturn being the sun, which he
afterwards disgorges at daybreak. By others Saturn is held to be the sun
and ripener of the harvests; by others, again, the storm-god, who
swallows the clouds, whose sickle is the rainbow, and whose blood is the
lightning; by others still Saturn is regarded as the sky, which swallows
and reproduces the stars, and whose sickle is the crescent moon. There
is a great deal of diversity of opinion, it will be observed, about this
myth of Saturn, or Cronus, but it is curious to note how all the leading
incidents of this myth may be traced in various parts of the world.[4]
Among the Maoris, the story of Tutenganahau is told, and this is a story
of the severing of heaven and earth, very similar to the Greek story. In
India and in China, legends tell of the former union of heaven and
earth, and of their violent separation by their own children. As regards
the swallowing performances of Saturn, they find analogues in tales
among the Australians, among the Red Indians, among the natives of
British Guiana, and among the Kaffirs.

The conclusion, then, is that the first part of the Saturn myth is
evidently the survival of an old nature-myth which is common to races
who never had any communication with the Greeks. The second part is
unintelligible, except as just such a legend as might be evolved by
persons in the same savage intellectual condition as, say, the Bushmen,
who account for celestial phenomena by saying that a big star has
swallowed his daughter and spat her out again.

Any myth which accounts for the processes of nature or the aspects of
natural phenomena may, says Mr. Lang, conceivably have been invented
separately, therefore it is not surprising to find the star-stories of
savages closely resembling those of civilized races. The story of the
lost sister of the Pleiades, according to the Greek myth, finds a
parallel in a tradition among the Australians. Of star-lore generally,
it may be said that it is much the same even among the Bushmen of
Africa, as it was among the Greeks and Egyptians, and as it is among the
Australians and Eskimos.

Another interesting inquiry is to trace the legend current among the
Greeks, and known to us as that of Jason and the Golden Fleece, in the
Storyology of the Africans, the Norse, the Malagasies, the Russians, the
Italians, the Samoans, the Finns, the Sa