ont to strike dead, with its
basilisk glance, those who rashly enter its mysterious caverns, it is
regarded rather as a benefactor than as a destroyer. The feelings with
which the myth-making age contemplated the thunder-shower as it
revived the earth paralyzed by a long drought, are shown in the myth of
Oidipous. The Sphinx, whose name signifies "the one who binds," is the
demon who sits on the cloud-rock and imprisons the rain, muttering, dark
sayings which none but the all-knowing sun may understand. The flash
of solar light which causes the monster to fling herself down from the
cliff with a fearful roar, restores the land to prosperity. But besides
this, the association of the thunder-storm with the approach of summer
has produced many myths in which the lightning is symbolized as the
life-renewing wand of the victorious sun-god. Hence the use of the
divining-rod in the cure of disease; and hence the large family of
schamir-myths in which the dead are restored to life by leaves or herbs.
In Grimm's tale of the "Three Snake Leaves," a prince is buried alive
(like Sindbad) with his dead wife, and seeing a snake approaching her
body, he cuts it in three pieces. Presently another snake, crawling from
the corner, saw the other lying dead, and going, away soon returned
with three green leaves in its mouth; then laying the parts of the body
together so as to join, it put one leaf on each wound, and the dead
snake was alive again. The prince, applying the leaves to his wife's
body, restores her also to life." [50] In the Greek story, told by
AElian and Apollodoros, Polyidos is shut up with the corpse of Glaukos,
which he is ordered to restore to life. He kills a dragon which is
approaching the body, but is presently astonished at seeing another
dragon come with a blade of grass and place it upon its dead companion,
which instantly rises from the ground. Polyidos takes the same blade of
grass, and with it resuscitates Glaukos. The same incident occurs in the
Hindu story of Panch Phul Ranee, and in Fouque's "Sir Elidoc," which is
founded on a Breton legend.

We need not wonder, then, at the extraordinary therapeutic
properties which are in all Aryan folk-lore ascribed to the
various lightning-plants. In Sweden sanitary amulets are made of
mistletoe-twigs, and the plant is supposed to be a specific against
epilepsy and an antidote for poisons. In Cornwall children are passed
through holes in ash-trees in order to cure them of