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Lang Andrew
Modern Mythology

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MANNHARDT

Mannhardt’s Attitude

Professor Tiele, it may appear, really ‘fights for his own hand,’ and is not a thorough partisan of either side. The celebrated Mannhardt, too, doubtless the most original student of folk-lore since Grimm, might, at different periods of his career, have been reckoned an ally, now by philologists, now by ‘the new school.’ He may be said, in fact, to have combined what is best in the methods of both parties. Both are anxious to secure such support as his works can lend.

Moral Character Impeached

Mr. Max Müller avers that his moral character seems to be ‘aimed at’ by critics who say that he has no right to quote Mannhardt or Oldenberg as his supporters (1. xvi.). Now, without making absurd imputations, I do not reckon Mannhardt a thorough partisan of Mr. Max Müller. I could not put our theory so well as Mannhardt puts it. ‘The study of the lower races is an invaluable instrument for the interpretation of the survivals from earlier stages, which we meet in the full civilisation of cultivated peoples, but which arose in the remotest fetishism and savagery.’

Like Mr. Max Müller, I do not care for the vague word ‘fetishism,’ otherwise Mannhardt’s remark exactly represents my own position, the anthropological position. ⁴⁸ Now, Mr. Max Müller does not like that position. That position he assails. It was Mannhardt’s, however, when he wrote the book quoted, and, so far, Mannhardt was not absolutely one of Mr. Max Müller’s ‘supporters’ – unless I am one. ‘I have even been accused,’ says Mr. Max Müller, ‘of intentionally ignoring or suppressing Mannhardt’s labours. How charitable!’ (1. xvii.) I trust, from our author’s use of the word todtschweigen, that this uncharitable charge was made in Germany.

Mannhardt

Mannhardt, for a time, says Mr. Max Müller, ‘expressed his mistrust in some of the results of comparative mythology’ (1. xvii.). Indeed, I myself quote him to that very effect. ⁴⁹ Not only ‘some of the results,’ but the philological method itself was distrusted by Mannhardt, as by Curtius. ‘The failure of the method in its practical working lies in a lack of the historical sense,’ says Mannhardt. ⁵⁰ Mr. Max Müller may have, probably has, referred to these sayings of Mannhardt; or, if he has not, no author is obliged to mention everybody who disagrees with him. Mannhardt’s method was mainly that of folklore, not of philology. He examined peasant customs and rites as ‘survivals’ of the oldest paganism. Mr. Frazer applies Mannhardt’s rich lore to the explanation of Greek and other rites in The Golden Bough, that entrancing book. Such was Mannhardt’s position (as I shall prove at large) when he was writing his most famous works. But he ‘returned at last to his old colours’ (1. xvii.) in Die lettischen Sonnenmythen (1875). In 1880 Mannhardt died. Mr. Max Müller does not say whether Mannhardt, before a decease deeply regretted, recanted his heretical views about the philological method, and his expressed admiration of the study of the lower races as ‘an invaluable instrument.’ One would gladly read a recantation so important. But Mr. Max Müller does tell us that ‘if I did not refer to his work in my previous contributions to the science of mythology the reason was simple enough. It was not, as has been suggested, my wish to suppress it (todtschweigen), but simply my want of knowledge of the materials with which he dealt’ (German popular customs and traditions) ‘and therefore the consciousness of my incompetence to sit in judgment on his labours.’ Again, we are told that there was no need of criticism or praise of Mannhardt. He had Mr. Frazer as his prophet – but not till ten years after his death.

Mannhardt’s Letters

‘Mannhardt’s state of mind with regard to the general principles of comparative philology has been so exactly my own,’ says Mr. Max Müller, that he cites Mannhardt’s letters to prove the fact. But as to the application to myth of the principles of comparative philology, Mannhardt speaks of ‘the lack of the historical sense’ displayed in the practical employment of the method. This, at least, is ‘not exactly’ Mr. Max Müller’s own view. Probably he refers to the later period when Mannhardt ‘returned to his old colours.’

The letters of Mannhardt, cited in proof of his exact agreement with Mr. Max Müller about comparative philology, do not, as far as quoted, mention the subject of comparative philology at all (1. xviii-xx.). Possibly ‘philology’ is here a slip of the pen, and ‘mythology’ may be meant.

Mannhardt says to Müllenhoff (May 2, 1876) that he has been uneasy ‘at the extent which sun myths threaten to assume in my comparisons.’ He is opening ‘a new point of view;’ materials rush in, ‘so that the sad danger seemed inevitable of everything becoming everything.’ In Mr. Max Müller’s own words, written long ago, he expressed his dread, not of ‘everything becoming everything’ (a truly Heraclitean state of affairs), but of the ‘omnipresent Sun and the inevitable Dawn appearing in ever so many disguises.’ ‘Have we not,’ he asks, ‘arrived both at the same conclusion?’ Really, I do not know! Had Mannhardt quite cashiered ‘the corn-spirit,’ who, perhaps, had previously threatened to ‘become everything’? He is still in great vigour, in Mr. Frazer’s Golden Bough, and Mr. Frazer is Mannhardt’s disciple. But where, all this time, is there a reference by Mannhardt to ‘the general principles of comparative philology’? Where does he accept ‘the omnipresent Sun and the inevitable Dawn’? Why, he says the reverse; he says in this letter that he is immeasurably removed from accepting them at all as Mr. Max Müller accepts them!

‘I am very far from looking upon all myths as psychical reflections of physical phenomena, still less as of exclusively solar or meteorological phenomena, like Kuhn, Schwartz, Max Müller and their school.’ What a queer way of expressing his agreement with Mr. Max Müller!

The Professor expostulates with Mannhardt (1. xx.): – ‘Where has any one of us ever done this?’ Well, when Mannhardt said ‘all myths,’ he wrote colloquially. Shall we say that he meant ‘most myths,’ ‘a good many myths,’ ‘a myth or two here and there’? Whatever he meant, he meant that he was ‘still more than very far removed from looking upon all myths’ as Mr. Max Müller does.

Mannhardt’s next passage I quote entire and textually from Mr. Max Müller’s translation: —

‘I have learnt to appreciate poetical and literary production as an essential element in the development of mythology, and to draw and utilise the consequences arising from this state of things. [Who has not?] But, on the other hand, I hold it as quite certain that a portion of the older myths arose from nature poetry which is no longer directly intelligible to us, but has to be interpreted by means of analogies. Nor does it follow that these myths betray any historical identity; they only testify to the same kind of conception and tendency prevailing on similar stages of development. Of these nature myths some have reference to the life and the circumstances of the sun, and our first steps towards an understanding of them are helped on by such nature poetry as the Lettish, which has not yet been obscured by artistic and poetical reflexion. In that poetry mythical personalities confessedly belonging to a solar sphere are transferred to a large number of poetical representatives, of which the explanation must consequently be found in the same (solar) sphere of nature. My method here is just the same as that applied by me to the Tree-cult.’

Mr. Max Müller asks, ‘Where is there any difference between this, the latest and final system adopted by Mannhardt, and my own system which I put forward in 1856?’ (1. xxi.)

How Mannhardt differs from Mr. Max Müller

I propose to show wherein the difference lies. Mannhardt says, ‘My method is just the same as that applied by me to the Tree-cult.’ What was that method?

Mannhardt, in the letter quoted by Mr. Max Müller, goes on to describe it; but Mr. Max Müller omits the description, probably not realising its importance. For Mannhardt’s method is the reverse of that practised under the old colours to which he is said to have returned.

Mannhardt’s Method

‘My method is here the same as in the Tree-cult. I start from a given collection of facts, of which the central idea is distinct and generally admitted, and consequently offers a firm basis for explanation. I illustrate from this and from well-founded analogies. Continuing from these, I seek to elucidate darker things. I search out the simplest radical ideas and perceptions, the germ-cells from whose combined growth mythical tales form themselves in very different ways.’

Mr. Frazer gives us a similar description of Mannhardt’s method, whether dealing with sun myths or tree myths. ⁵¹ ‘Mannhardt set himself systematically to collect, compare, and explain the living superstitions of the peasantry.’ Now Mr. Max Müller has just confessed, as a reason for incompetence to criticise Mannhardt’s labours, ‘my want of knowledge of the materials with which he dealt – the popular customs and traditions of Germany.’ And yet he asks where there is any difference between his system and Mannhardt’s. Mannhardt’s is the study of rural survival, the system of folklore. Mr. Max Müller’s is the system of comparative philology about which in this place Mannhardt does not say one single word. Mannhardt interprets some myths ‘arising from nature poetry, no longer intelligible to us,’ by analogies; Mr. Max Müller interprets them by etymologies.

The difference is incalculable; not that Mannhardt always abstains from etymologising.

Another Claim on Mannhardt

While maintaining that ‘all comparative mythology must rest on comparison of names as its most certain basis’ (a system which Mannhardt declares explicitly to be so far ‘a failure’), Mr. Max Müller says, ‘It is well known that in his last, nay posthumous essay, Mannhardt, no mean authority, returned to the same conviction.’ I do not know which is Mannhardt’s very last essay, but I shall prove that in the posthumous essays Mannhardt threw cold water on the whole method of philological comparative mythology.

However, as proof of Mannhardt’s return to Mr. Max Müller’s convictions, our author cites Mythologische Forschungen (pp. 86-113).

What Mannhardt said

In the passages here produced as proof of Mannhardt’s conversion, he is not investigating a myth at all, or a name which occurs in mythology. He is trying to discover the meaning of the practices of the Lupercalia at Rome. In February, says Dionysius of Halicarnassus, the Romans held a popular festival, and lads ran round naked, save for skins of victims, whipping the spectators. Mannhardt, in his usual way, collects all the facts first, and then analyses the name Luperci. This does not make him a philological mythologist. To take a case in point, at Selkirk and Queensferry the bounds are ridden, or walked, by ‘Burleymen’ or ‘Burrymen.’ ⁵² After examining the facts we examine the words, and ask, ‘Why Burley or Burry men?’ At Queensferry, by a folk etymology, one of the lads wears a coat stuck over with burrs. But ‘Borough-men’ seems the probable etymology. As we examine the names Burley, or Burry men, so Mannhardt examines the name Luperci; and if a true etymology can be discovered, it will illustrate the original intention of the Lupercalia (p. 86).

He would like to explain the Lupercalia as a popular play, representing the spirits of vegetation opposing the spirits of infertility. ‘But we do not forget that our whole theory of the development of the rite rests on a hypothesis which the lack of materials prevents us from demonstrating.’ He would explain Luperci as Lupiherci – ‘wolf-goats.’ Over this we need not linger; but how does all this prove Mannhardt to have returned to the method of comparing Greek with Vedic divine names, and arriving thence at some celestial phenomenon as the basis of a terrestrial myth? Yet he sometimes does this.

My Relations to Mannhardt

If anything could touch and move an unawakened anthropologist it would be the conversion of Mannhardt. My own relations with his ideas have the interest of illustrating mental coincidences. His name does not occur, I think, in the essay, ‘The Method of Folklore,’ in the first edition of my Custom and Myth. In that essay I take, as an example of the method, the Scottish and Northumbrian Kernababy, the puppet made out of the last gleanings of harvest. This I compared to the Greek Demeter of the harvest-home, with sheaves and poppies in her hands, in the immortal Seventh Idyll of Theocritus. Our Kernababy, I said, is a stunted survival of our older ‘Maiden,’ ‘a regular image of the harvest goddess,’ and I compared κορη. Next I gave the parallel case from ancient Peru, and the odd accidental coincidence that there the maize was styled Mama Cora (μητηρ κορη!).

In entire ignorance of Mannhardt’s corn-spirit, or corn-mother, I was following Mannhardt’s track. Indeed, Mr. Max Müller has somewhere remarked that I popularise Mannhardt’s ideas. Naturally he could not guess that the coincidence was accidental and also inevitable. Two men, unknown to each other, were using the same method on the same facts.

Mannhardt’s Return to his old Colours

If, then, Mannhardt was re-converted, it would be a potent argument for my conversion. But one is reminded of the re-conversion of Prince Charles. In 1750 he ‘deserted the errors of the Church of Rome for those of the Church of England.’ Later he returned, or affected to return, to the ancient faith.

A certain Cardinal seemed contented therewith, and, as the historian remarks, ‘was clearly a man not difficult to please.’ Mr. Max Müller reminds me of the good Cardinal. I do not feel so satisfied as he does of Mannhardt’s re-conversion.

Mannhardt’s Attitude to Philology

We have heard Mannhardt, in a letter partly cited by Mr. Max Müller, describe his own method. He begins with what is certain and intelligible, a mass of popular customs. These he explains by analogies. He passes from the known to the obscure. Philological mythologists begin with the unknown, the name of a god. This they analyse, extract a meaning, and (proceeding to the known) fit the facts of the god’s legend into the sense of his name. The methods are each other’s opposites, yet the letter in which Mannhardt illustrates this fact is cited as a proof of his return to his old colours.

Irritating Conduct of Mannhardt

Nothing irritates philological mythologists so much, nothing has injured them so much in the esteem of the public which ‘goes into these things a little,’ as the statement that their competing etymologies and discrepant interpretations of mythical names are mutually destructive. I have been told that this is ‘a mean argument.’ But if one chemical analyst found bismuth where another found iridium, and a third found argon, the public would begin to look on chemistry without enthusiasm; still more so if one chemist rarely found anything but inevitable bismuth or omnipresent iridium. Now Mannhardt uses this ‘mean argument.’

Mannhardt on Demeter Erinnys

In a posthumous work, Mythologische Forschungen (1884), the work from which Mr. Max Müller cites the letter to Müllenhoff, Mannhardt discusses Demeter Erinnys. She is the Arcadian goddess, who, in the form of a mare, became mother of Despoina and the horse Arion, by Poseidon. ⁵³ Her anger at the unhandsome behaviour of Poseidon caused Demeter to be called Erinnys – ‘to be angry’ being ερινυειν in Arcadian – a folk-etymology, clearly. Mannhardt first dives deep into the sources for this fable. ⁵⁴ Arion, he decides, is no mythological personification, but a poetical ideal (Bezeichnung) of the war-horse. Legend is ransacked for proof of this. Poseidon is the lord of wind and wave. Now, there are waves of corn, under the wind, as well as waves of the sea. When the Suabian rustic sees the wave running over the corn, he says, Da lauft das Pferd, and Greeks before Homer would say, in face of the billowing corn, ’Εκιθι θεουσι ιπποι, There run horses! And Homer himself ⁵⁵ says that the horses of Erichthonius, children of Boreas, ran over cornfield and sea. We ourselves speak of sea-waves as ‘white horses.’ So, to be brief, Mannhardt explains the myth of Demeter Erinnys becoming, as a mare, a mother by Poseidon as a horse, thus, ‘Poseidon Hippies, or Poseidon in horse’s form, rushes through the growing grain and weds Demeter,’ and he cites peasant proverbs, such as Das Korn heirathet; das Korn feiert Hochzeit (p. 264). ‘This is the germ of the Arcadian Saga.’

‘The Arcadian myth of Demeter Erinnys is undeniably a blending of the epic tradition [of the ideal war-horse] with the local cult of Demeter… It is a probable hypothesis that the belief in the wedding of Demeter and Poseidon comes from the sight of the waves passing over the cornfield..’ ⁵⁶

It is very neat! But a certain myth of Loki in horse-form comes into memory, and makes me wonder how Mannhardt would have dealt with that too liberal narrative.

Loki, as a mare (he being a male god), became, by the horse of a giant, the father of Sleipnir, Odin’s eight-footed steed. Mr. W. A. Craigie supplies this note on Loki’s analogy with Poseidon, as a horse, in the waves of corn: —

‘In North Jutland, when the vapours are seen going with a wavy motion along the earth in the heat of summer, they say, “Loki is sowing oats today,” or “Loki is driving his goats.”

‘N.B. – Oats in Danish are havre, which suggests O.N. hafrar, goats. Modern Icelandic has hafrar=oats, but the word is not found in the old language.’

Is Loki a corn-spirit?

Mannhardt’s ‘Mean Argument’

Mannhardt now examines the explanations of Demeter Erinnys, and her legend, given by Preller, E. Curtius, O. Müller, A. Kuhn, W. Sonne, Max Müller, E. Burnouf, de Gubernatis, Schwartz, and H. D. Müller. ‘Here,’ he cries, ‘is a variegated list of hypotheses!’ Demeter is

 
Storm-cloud
Sun Goddess
Earth and Moon Goddess
Dawn
Night.
 

Poseidon is

 
Sea
Storm God
Cloud-hidden Sun
Rain God.
 

Despoina is

 
Rain
Thunder
Moon.
 

Arion, the horse, is

 
Lightning
Sun
Thunder-horse.
 

Erinnys is

 
Storm-cloud
Red Dawn.
 

Mannhardt decides, after this exhibition of guesses, that the Demeter legends cannot be explained as refractions of any natural phenomena in the heavens (p. 275). He concludes that the myth of Demeter Erinnys, and the parallel Vedic story of Saranyu (who also had an amour as a mare), are ‘incongruous,’ and that neither sheds any light on the other. He protests against the whole tendency to find prototypes of all Aryan myths in the Veda, and to think that, with a few exceptions, all mythology is a terrestrial reflection of celestial phenomena (p. 280). He then goes into the contending etymologies of Demeter, and decides (‘for the man was mortal and had been a’ philologer) in favour of his own guess, Ζεια δη+μητηρ=‘Corn-mother’ (p. 294).

This essay on Demeter was written by Mannhardt in the summer of 1877, a year after the letter which is given as evidence that he had ‘returned to his old colours.’ The essay shows him using the philological string of ‘variegated hypotheses’ as anything but an argument in favour of the philological method. On the other hand, he warns us against the habit, so common in the philological school, of looking for prototypes of all Aryan myths in the Veda, and of finding in most myths a reflection on earth of phenomena in the heavens, Erinnys being either Storm-cloud or Dawn, according to the taste and fancy of the inquirer. We also find Mannhardt, in 1877, starting from the known – legend and rural survival in phrase and custom – and so advancing to the unknown – the name Demeter. The philologists commence with the unknown, the old name, Demeter Erinnys, explain it to taste, and bring the legend into harmony with their explanation. I cannot say, then, that I share Mr. Max Müller’s impression. I do not feel sure that Mannhardt did return to his old colours.

Why Mannhardt is Thought to have been Converted

Mannhardt’s friend, Müllenhoff, had an aversion to solar myths. He said: ⁵⁷ ‘I deeply mistrust all these combinations of the new so-called comparative mythology.’ Mannhardt was preparing to study Lithuanian solar myths, based on Lithuanian and Lettish marriage songs. Müllenhoff and Scherer seem to have thought this work too solar for their taste. Mannhardt therefore replied to their objections in the letter quoted in part by Mr. Max Müller. Mannhardt was not the man to neglect or suppress solar myths when he found them, merely because he did not believe that a great many other myths which had been claimed as celestial were solar. Like every sensible person, he knew that there are numerous real, obvious, confessed solar myths not derived from a disease of language. These arise from (1) the impulse to account for the doings of the Sun by telling a story about him as if he were a person; (2) from the natural poetry of the human mind. ⁵⁸ What we think they are not shown to arise from is forgetfulness of meanings of old words, which, ex hypothesi, have become proper names.

That is the theory of the philological school, and to that theory, to these colours, I see no proof (in the evidence given) that Mannhardt had returned. But ‘the scalded child dreads cold water,’ and Müllenhoff apparently dreaded even real solar myths. Mr. Max Müller, on the other hand (if I do not misinterpret him), supposes that Mannhardt had returned to the philological method, partly because he was interested in real solar myths and in the natural poetry of illiterate races.

Mannhardt’s Final Confession

Mannhardt’s last work published in his life days was Antike Wald– und Feldkulte (1877). In the preface, dated November 1, 1876 (after the famous letter of May 1876), he explains the growth of his views and criticises his predecessors. After doing justice to Kuhn and his comparisons of European with Indian myths, he says that, in his opinion, comparative Indo-Germanic mythology has not yet borne the expected fruits. ‘The assured gains shrink into very few divine names, such as Dyaus – Zeus – Tius, Parjany – Perkunas, Bhaga – Bug, Varuna – Uranus, &c.’ I wish he had completed the list included in &c. Other equations, as Sarameya=Hermeias, Saranyu=Demeter Erinnys, he fears will not stand close criticism. He dreads that jeux d’esprit (geistvolle Spiele des Witzes) may once more encroach on science. Then, after a lucid statement of Mr. Max Müller’s position, he says, ‘Ich vermag dem von M. Müller aufgestellten Principe, wenn überhaupt eine, so doch nur eine sehr beschrankte Geltung zuzugestehen.’

‘To the principle of Max Müller I can only assign a very limited value, if any value at all.’ ⁵⁹

‘Taken all in all, I consider the greater part of the results hitherto obtained in the field of Indo-Germanic comparative mythology to be, as yet, a failure, premature or incomplete, my own efforts in German Myths (1858) included. That I do not, however, “throw out the babe with the bath,” as the proverb goes, my essay on Lettish sun myths in Bastian-Hartmann’s Ethnological Journal will bear witness.’

Such is Mannhardt’s conclusion. Taken in connection with his still later essay on Demeter, it really leaves no room for doubt. There, I think, he does ‘throw out the child with the bath,’ throw the knife after the handle. I do not suppose that Mr. Max Müller ever did quote Mannhardt as one of his supporters, but such a claim, if really made, would obviously give room for criticism.

Mannhardt on Solar Myths

What the attitude of Mannhardt was, in 1877 and later, we have seen. He disbelieves in the philological system of explaining myths by etymological conjectures. He disbelieves in the habit of finding, in myths of terrestrial occurrences, reflections of celestial phenomena. But earlier, in his long essay Die lettischen Sonnenmythen (in Zeitschrift für Ethnologie, 1875), he examines the Lettish popular songs about the Sun, the Sun’s daughters, the god-sons, and so forth. Here, of course, he is dealing with popular songs explicitly devoted to solar phenomena, in their poetical aspect. In the Lettish Sun-songs and Sun-myths of the peasants we see, he says, a myth-world ‘in process of becoming,’ in an early state of development, as in the Veda (p. 325). But, we may reply, in the Veda, myths are already full-grown, or even decadent. Already there are unbelievers in the myths. Thus we would say, in the Veda we have (1) myths of nature, formed in the remote past, and (2) poetical phrases about heavenly phenomena, which resemble the nature-poetry of the Letts, but which do not become full-grown myths. The Lett songs, also, have not developed into myths, of which (as in the Apollo and Daphne story, by Mr. Max Müller’s hypothesis) the original meaning is lost.

In the Lett songs we have a mass of nature-pictures – the boat and the apples of the Sun, the red cloak hung on the oak-tree, and so on; pictures by which it is sought to make elemental phenomena intelligible, by comparison with familiar things. Behind the phenomena are, in popular belief, personages – mythical personages – the Sun as ‘a magnified non-natural man,’ or woman; the Sun’s mother, daughters, and other heavenly people. Their conduct is ‘motived’ in a human way. Stories are told about them: the Sun kills the Moon, who revives.

All this is perfectly familiar everywhere. Savages, in their fables, account for solar, lunar, and similar elemental processes, on the theory that the heavenly bodies are, and act like, human beings. The Eskimo myth of the spots on the Moon, marks of ashes thrown by the Sun in a love-quarrel, is an excellent example. But in all this there is no ‘disease of language.’ These are frank nature-myths, ‘ætiological,’ giving a fabulous reason for facts of nature.

Mannhardt on Märchen

But Mannhardt goes farther. He not only recognises, as everyone must do, the Sun, as explicitly named, when he plays his part in myth, or popular tale (Märchen). He thinks that even when the Sun is not named, his presence, and reference to him, and derivation of the incidents in Märchen from solar myth, may sometimes be detected with great probability (pp. 326, 327). But he adds, ‘not that every Märchen contains a reference to Nature; that I am far from asserting’ (p. 327).

Now perhaps nobody will deny that some incidents in Märchen may have been originally suggested by nature-myths. The all-swallowing and all-disgorging beast, wolf, or ogre, may have been derived from a view of Night as the all-swallower. But to disengage natural phenomena, mythically stated, from the human tangle of Märchen, to find natural phenomena in such a palimpsest as Perrault’s courtly and artificial version of a French popular tale, is a delicate and dangerous task. In many stories a girl has three balls – one of silver, one of gold, one of diamond – which she offers, in succession, as bribes. This is a perfectly natural invention. It is perilous to connect these balls, gifts of ascending value, with the solar apple of iron, silver, and gold (p. 103 and note 5). It is perilous, and it is quite unnecessary. Some one – Gubernatis, I think – has explained the naked sword of Aladdin, laid between him and the Sultan’s daughter in bed, as the silver sickle of the Moon. Really the sword has an obvious purpose and meaning, and is used as a symbol in proxy-marriages. The blood shed by Achilles in his latest victories is elsewhere explained as red clouds round the setting Sun, which is conspicuously childish. Mannhardt leans, at least, in this direction.

‘The Two Brothers’

Mannhardt takes the old Egyptian tale of ‘The Two Brothers,’ Bitiou and Anepou. This fable, as old, in actual written literature, as Moses, is a complex of half the Märchen plots and incidents in the world. It opens with the formula of Potiphar’s Wife. The falsely accused brother flies, and secretes his life, or separable soul, in a flower of the mystic Vale of Acacias. This affair of the separable soul may be studied in Mr. Hartland’s Perseus, and it animates, as we shall see, Mr. Frazer’s theory of the Origin of Totemism. A golden lock of the wicked wife’s hair is then borne by the Nile to the king’s palace in Egypt. He will insist on marrying the lady of the lock. Here we are in the Cinderella formula, en plein, which may be studied, in African and Santhal shapes, in Miss Coxe’s valuable Cinderella. ⁶⁰ Pharaoh’s wise men decide that the owner of the lock of hair is (like Egyptian royalty at large) a daughter of the Sun-god (p. 239). Here is the Sun, in all his glory; but here we are dealing with a literary version of the Märchen, accommodated to royal tastes and Egyptian ideas of royalty by a royal scribe, the courtly Perrault of the Egyptian Roi-Soleil. Who can say what he introduced? – while we can say that the Sun-god is absent in South African and Santhal and other variants. The Sun may have slipped out here, may have been slipped in there; the faintest glimmer of the historical sense prevents us from dogmatising.

Wedded to Pharaoh, the wicked wife, pursuing her vengeance on Bitiou, cuts down his life-tree. Anepou, his brother, however, recovers his concealed heart (life), and puts it in water. Bitiou revives. He changes himself into the sacred Bull, Apis – a feature in the story which is practically possible in Egypt alone. The Bull tells the king his story, but the wicked wife has the Bull slain, as by Cambyses in Herodotus. Two of his blood-drops become two persea trees. One of them confesses the fact to the wicked wife. She has them cut down; a chip flies into her mouth, she becomes a mother by the chip, the boy (Bitiou) again becomes king, and slays his mother, the wicked wife.

In the tree, any tree, acacia or persea, Mannhardt wishes to recognise the Sun-tree of the Lett songs. The red blossoms of the persea tree are a symbol of the Sun-tree: of Horus. He compares features, not always very closely analogous, in European Märchen. For example, a girl hides in a tree, like Charles II. at Boscobel. That is not really analogous with Bitiou’s separable life in the acacia! ‘Anepou’ is like ‘Anapu,’ Anubis. The Bull is the Sun, is Osiris – dead in winter. Mr. Frazer, Mannhardt’s disciple, protests à grands cris against these identifications when made by others than Mannhardt, who says, ‘The Märchen is an old obscure solar myth’ (p. 242). To others the story of Bitiou seems an Egyptian literary complex, based on a popular set of tales illustrating furens quid femina possit, and illustrating the world-wide theory of the separable life, dragging in formulas from other Märchen, and giving to all a thoroughly classical Egyptian colouring. ⁶¹ Solar myths, we think, have not necessarily anything to make in the matter.