Modern Mythology
‘Has the myth of Cronos the same sense?’ Probably not, as the Maori story, to my mind, has not got it either. But Professor Tiele says, ‘The myth of Cronos has precisely the opposite sense.’ 45 What is the myth of Cronos? Ouranos (Heaven) married Gaea (Earth). Ouranos ‘hid his children from the light in the hollows of Earth’ (Hesiod). So, too, the New Zealand gods were hidden from light while Heaven (Rangi) lay flat on Papa (Earth). The children ‘were concealed between the hollows of their parent’s breasts.’ They did not like it, for they dwelt in darkness. So Cronos took an iron sickle and mutilated Ouranos in such a way, enfin, as to divorce him a thoro. ‘Thus,’ I say, ‘were Heaven and Earth practically divorced.’ The Greek gods now came out of the hollows where they had been, like the New Zealand gods, ‘hidden from the light.’
Professor Tiele on Sunset MythsNo, says Professor Tiele, ‘the story of Cronos has precisely the opposite meaning.’ The New Zealand myth is one of dawn, the Greek myth is one of sunset. The mutilated part of poor Ouranos is le phallus du ciel, le soleil, which falls into ‘the Cosmic ocean,’ and then, of course, all is dark. Professor Tiele may be right here; I am indifferent. All that I wanted to explain was the savage complexion of the myth, and Professor Tiele says that I have explained that, and (xii. 264) he rejects the etymological theory of Mr. Max Müller.
I say that, in my opinion, the second part of the Cronos myth (the child-swallowing performances of Cronos) ‘was probably a world-wide Märchen, or tale, attracted into the cycle of which Cronos was the centre, without any particular reason beyond the law which makes detached myths crystallise round any celebrated name.’
Professor Tiele says he does not grasp the meaning of, or believe in, any such law. Well, why is the world-wide tale of the Cyclops told about Odysseus? It is absolutely out of keeping, and it puzzles commentators. In fact, here was a hero and there was a tale, and the tale was attracted into the cycle of the hero; the very last man to have behaved as Odysseus is made to do. 46 But Cronos was an odious ruffian. The world-wide tale of swallowing and disgorging the children was attracted to his too notorious name ‘by grace of congruity.’ Does Professor Tiele now grasp my meaning (saisir)?
Our Lack of Scientific ExactnessI do not here give at full length Professor Tiele’s explanation of the meaning of a myth which I do not profess to explain myself. Thus, drops of the blood of Ouranos falling on Earth begat the Mélies, usually rendered ‘Nymphs of the Ash-trees.’ But Professor Tiele says they were really bees (Hesychius, μελιαι=μελισσαι) – ‘that is to say, stars.’ Everybody has observed that the stars rise up off the earth, like the bees sprung from the blood of Ouranos. In Myth, Ritual, and Religion (i. 299-315) I give the competing explanations of Mr. Max Müller, of Schwartz (Cronos=storm god), Preller (Cronos=harvest god), of others who see the sun, or time, in Cronos; while, with Professor Tiele, Cronos is the god of the upper air, and also of the underworld and harvest; he ‘doubles the part.’ ‘Il est l’un et l’autre’ – that is, ‘le dieu qui fait mûrir le blé’ and also ‘un dieu des lieux souterrains.’ ‘Il habite les profondeurs sous la terre,’ he is also le dieu du ciel nocturne.
It may have been remarked that I declined to add to this interesting collection of plausible explanations of Cronos. A selection of such explanations I offer in tabular form: —
Cronos was God of
Time (?) – Max Müller
Sun – Sayce
Midnight sky – Kuhn
Under-world }
Midnight sky} – Tiele
Harvest }
Harvest – Preller
Storm – Schwartz
Star-swallowing sky – Canon Taylor
Sun scorching spring – Hartung
Cronos was by Race
Late Greek (?) – Max Müller
Semitic – Böttiger
Accadian (?) – Sayce
Etymology of Cronos
Χρονος=Time (?) – Max Müller
Krāna (Sanskrit) – Kuhn
Karnos (Horned) – Brown κραινω – Preller
The pleased reader will also observe that the phallus of Ouranos is the sun (Tiele), that Cronos is the sun (Sayce), that Cronos mutilating Ouranos is the sun (Hartung), just as the sun is the mutilated part of Ouranos (Tiele); Or is, according to others, the stone which Cronos swallowed, and which acted as an emetic.
My Lack of Explanation of CronosNow, I have offered no explanation at all of who Cronos was, what he was god of, from what race he was borrowed, from what language his name was derived. The fact is that I do not know the truth about these important debated questions. Therefore, after speaking so kindly of our method, and rejecting the method of Mr. Max Müller, Professor Tiele now writes thus (and this Mr. Max Müller does cite, as we have seen): —
‘Mr. Lang and M. Gaidoz are not entirely wrong in claiming me as an ally. But I must protest, in the name of mythological science, and of the exactness as necessary to her as to any of the other sciences, against a method which only glides over questions of the first importance’ (name, origin, province, race of Cronos), ‘and which to most questions can only reply, with a smile, C’est chercher raison où il n’y en a pas.’
My CrimeNow, what important questions was I gliding over? In what questions did I not expect to find reason? Why in this savage fatras about Cronos swallowing his children, about blood-drops becoming bees (Mr. Max Müller says ‘Melian nymphs’), and bees being stars, and all the rest of a prehistoric Märchen worked over again and again by the later fancy of Greek poets and by Greek voyagers who recognised Cronos in Moloch. In all this I certainly saw no ‘reason,’ but I have given in tabular form the general, if inharmonious, conclusions of more exact and conscientious scholars, ‘their variegated hypotheses,’ as Mannhardt says in the case of Demeter. My error, rebuked by Professor Tiele, is the lack of that ‘scientific exactitude’ exhibited by the explanations arranged in my tabular form.
My Reply to Professor TieleI would reply that I am not engaged in a study of the Cult of Cronos, but of the revolting element in his Myth: his swallowing of his children, taking a stone emetic by mistake, and disgorging the swallowed children alive; the stone being on view at Delphi long after the Christian era. Now, such stories of divine feats of swallowing and disgorging are very common, I show, in savage myth and popular Märchen. The bushmen have Kwai Hemm, who swallows the sacred Mantis insect. He is killed, and all the creatures whom he has swallowed return to light. Such stories occur among Australians, Kaffirs, Red Men, in Guiana, in Greenland, and so on. In some cases, among savages. Night (conceived as a person), or one star which obscures another star, is said to ‘swallow’ it. Therefore, I say, ‘natural phenomena, explained on savage principles, might give the data of the swallowing myth, of Cronos’ 47– that is, the myth of Cronos may be, probably is, originally a nature-myth. ‘On this principle Cronos would be (ad hoc) the Night.’ Professor Tiele does not allude to this effort at interpretation. But I come round to something like the view of Kuhn. Cronos (ad hoc) is the midnight [sky], which Professor Tiele also regards as one of his several aspects. It is not impossible, I think, that if the swallowing myth was originally a nature-myth, it was suggested by Night. But the question I tried to answer was, ‘Why did the Greeks, of all people, tell such a disgusting story?’ And I replied, with Professor Tiele’s approval, that they inherited it from an age to which such follies were natural, an age when the ancestors of the Greeks were on (or under) the Maori stage of culture. Now, the Maoris, a noble race, with poems of great beauty and speculative power, were cannibals, like Cronos. To my mind, ‘scientific exactitude’ is rather shown in confessing ignorance than in adding to the list of guesses.
Conclusion as to Professor TieleThe learned Professor’s remarks on being ‘much more my ally than my opponent’ were published before my Myth, Ritual, and Religion, in which (i. 24, 25) I cited his agreement with me in the opinion that ‘the philological method’ (Mr. Max Müller’s) is ‘inadequate and misleading, when it is a question of discovering the origin of a myth.’ I also quoted his unhesitating preference of ours to Mr. Max Müller’s method (i. 43, 44). I did not cite a tithe of what he actually did say to our credit. But I omitted to quote what it was inexcusable not to add, that Professor Tiele thinks us ‘too exclusive,’ that he himself had already, before us, combated Mr. Max Müller’s method in Dutch periodicals, that he blamed our ‘songs of triumph’ and our levities, that he thought we might have ignorant camp-followers, that I glided over important questions (bees, blood-drops, stars, Melian nymphs, the phallus of Ouranos, &c.), and showed scientific inexactitude in declining chercher raison où il n’y en a pas.
None the less, in Professor Tiele’s opinion, our method is new (or is not new), illuminating, successful, and alone successful, for the ends to which we apply it, and, finally, we have shown Mr. Max Müller’s method to be a house builded on the sand. That is the gist of what Professor Tiele said.
Mr. Max Müller, like myself, quotes part and omits part. He quotes twice Professor Tiele’s observations on my deplorable habit of gliding over important questions. He twice says that we have ‘actually’ claimed the Professor as ‘an ally of the victorious army,’ ‘the ethnological students of custom and myth,’ and once adds, ‘but he strongly declined that honour.’ He twice quotes the famous braves gens passage, excepting only M. Gaidoz, as a scholar, from a censure explicitly directed at our possible camp-followers as distinguished from ourselves.
But if Mr. Max Müller quotes Professor Tiele’s remarks proving that, in his opinion, the ‘army’ is really victorious; if he cites the acquiescence in my opinion that his mythological house is ‘builded on the sands,’ or Professor Tiele’s preference for our method over his own, or Professor Tiele’s volunteered remark that he is ‘much more our ally than our adversary,’ I have not detected the passages in Contributions to the Science of Mythology.
The reader may decide as to the relative importance of what I left out, and of what Mr. Max Müller omitted. He says, ‘Professor Tiele and I differ on several points, but we perfectly understand each other, and when we have made a mistake we readily confess and correct it’ (i. 37).
The two scholars, I thought, differed greatly. Mr. Max Müller’s war-cry, slogan, mot d’ordre, is to Professor Tiele ‘a false hypothesis.’ Our method, which Mr. Max Müller combats so bravely, is all that Professor Tiele has said of it. But, if all this is not conspicuously apparent in our adversary’s book, it does not become me to throw the first stone. We are all, in fact, inclined unconsciously to overlook what makes against our argument. I have done it; and, to the best of my belief, Mr. Max Müller has not avoided the same error.
MANNHARDT
Mannhardt’s AttitudeProfessor 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 ImpeachedMr. 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.
MannhardtMannhardt, 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 MüllerI 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 MannhardtWhile 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 saidIn 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 MannhardtIf 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!).
