were shown to belong to the class
of cloud-maidens; and between the tale of Sigurd and that of Hercules
and Cacus there is no difference, save that the bright sunlit clouds
which are represented in the one as cows are in the other represented
as maidens. In the myth of the Argonauts they reappear as the Golden
Fleece, carried to the far east by Phrixos and Helle, who are themselves
Niblungs, or "Children of the Mist" (Nephele), and there guarded by a
dragon. In all these myths a treasure is stolen by a fiend of darkness,
and recovered by a hero of light, who slays the demon. And--remembering
what Scribe said about the fewness of dramatic types--I believe we are
warranted in asserting that all the stories of lovely women held in
bondage by monsters, and rescued by heroes who perform wonderful tasks,
such as Don Quixote burned to achieve, are derived ultimately from solar
myths, like the myth of Sigurd and Brynhild. I do not mean to say that
the story-tellers who beguiled their time in stringing together the
incidents which make up these legends were conscious of their solar
character. They did not go to work, with malice prepense, to weave
allegories and apologues. The Greeks who first told the story of Perseus
and Andromeda, the Arabians who devised the tale of Codadad and
his brethren, the Flemings who listened over their beer-mugs to
the adventures of Culotte-Verte, were not thinking of sun-gods or
dawn-maidens, or night-demons; and no theory of mythology can be sound
which implies such an extravagance. Most of these stories have lived
on the lips of the common people; and illiterate persons are not in
the habit of allegorizing in the style of mediaeval monks or rabbinical
commentators. But what has been amply demonstrated is, that the sun
and the clouds, the light and the darkness, were once supposed to
be actuated by wills analogous to the human will; that they were
personified and worshipped or propitiated by sacrifice; and that their
doings were described in language which applied so well to the deeds of
human or quasi-human beings that in course of time its primitive purport
faded from recollection. No competent scholar now doubts that the myths
of the Veda and the Edda originated in this way, for philology itself
shows that the names employed in them are the names of the great
phenomena of nature. And when once a few striking stories had thus
arisen,--when once it had been told how Indra smote the Panis, and how