her monsters. A friendly spirit, or a
group of spirits, may assist the hero, who acts according to the
advice given him by a "wise woman", a magician, or a god. The spirits
are usually wild beasts or birds--the "fates" of immemorial folk
belief--and they may either carry the hero on their backs, instruct
him from time to time, or come to his aid when called upon.

When a great national hero appealed by reason of his achievements to
the imagination of a people, all the floating legends of antiquity
were attached to his memory, and he became identified with gods and
giants and knight-errants "old in story". In Scotland, for instance,
the boulder-throwing giant of Eildon hills bears the name of Wallace,
the Edinburgh giant of Arthur's Seat is called after an ancient Celtic
king,[190] and Thomas the Rhymer takes the place, in an Inverness
fairy mound called Tom-na-hurich, of Finn (Fingal) as chief of the
"Seven Sleepers". Similarly Napoleon sleeps in France and Skobeleff in
Russia, as do also other heroes elsewhere. In Germany the myths of
Thunor (Thor) were mingled with hazy traditions of Theodoric the Goth
(Dietrich), while in Greece, Egypt, and Arabia, Alexander the Great
absorbed a mass of legendary matter of great antiquity, and displaced
in the memories of the people the heroes of other Ages, as those
heroes had previously displaced the humanized spirits of fertility and
growth who alternately battled fiercely against the demons of spring,
made love, gorged and drank deep and went to sleep--the sleep of
winter. Certain folk tales, and the folk beliefs on which they were
based, seem to have been of hoary antiquity before the close of the
Late Stone Age.

There are two great heroes of Babylonian fame who link with Perseus
and Hercules, Sigurd and Siegfried, Dietrich and Finn-mac-Coul. These
are Etana and Gilgamesh, two legendary kings who resemble Tammuz the
Patriarch referred to by Berosus, a form of Tammuz the Sleeper of the
Sumerian psalms. One journeys to the Nether World to obtain the Plant
of Birth and the other to obtain the Plant of Life. The floating
legends with which they were associated were utilized and developed by
the priests, when engaged in the process of systematizing and
symbolizing religious beliefs, with purpose to unfold the secrets of
creation and the Otherworld. Etana secures the assistance or a giant
eagle who is an enemy of serpents like the Indian Garuda, half giant,
half eagle. As Vishnu, t