long-enduring superstition. Mr. Cox, indeed, would have us believe that
the whole notion arose from an unintentional play upon words; but
the careful survey of the field, which has been taken by Hertz and
Baring-Gould, leads to the conclusion that many other circumstances
have been at work. The delusion, though doubtless purely mythical in its
origin, nevertheless presents in its developed state a curious mixture
of mythical and historical elements.

With regard to the Arkadian legend, taken by itself, Mr. Cox is probably
right. The story seems to belong to that large class of myths which have
been devised in order to explain the meaning of equivocal words whose
true significance has been forgotten. The epithet Lykaios, as applied to
Zeus, had originally no reference to wolves: it means "the bright one,"
and gave rise to lycanthropic legends only because of the similarity
in sound between the names for "wolf" and "brightness." Aryan mythology
furnishes numerous other instances of this confusion. The solar deity,
Phoibos Lykegenes, was originally the "offspring of light"; but popular
etymology made a kind of werewolf of him by interpreting his name as
the "wolf-born." The name of the hero Autolykos means simply the
"self-luminous"; but it was more frequently interpreted as meaning "a
very wolf," in allusion to the supposed character of its possessor.
Bazra, the name of the citadel of Carthage, was the Punic word for
"fortress"; but the Greeks confounded it with byrsa, "a hide," and hence
the story of the ox-hides cut into strips by Dido in order to measure
the area of the place to be fortified. The old theory that the Irish
were Phoenicians had a similar origin. The name Fena, used to designate
the old Scoti or Irish, is the plural of Fion, "fair," seen in the
name of the hero Fion Gall, or "Fingal"; but the monkish chroniclers
identified Fena with phoinix, whence arose the myth; and by a like
misunderstanding of the epithet Miledh, or "warrior," applied to Fion by
the Gaelic bards, there was generated a mythical hero, Milesius, and the
soubriquet "Milesian," colloquially employed in speaking of the Irish.
[66] So the Franks explained the name of the town Daras, in Mesopotamia,
by the story that the Emperor Justinian once addressed the chief
magistrate with the exclamation, daras, "thou shalt give": [67] the
Greek chronicler, Malalas, who spells the name Doras, informs us
with equal complacency that it was the place wher