Part 64 (1/2)

CHAPTER XVIII. FROM THE DEAD SEA LEGENDS TO COMPARATIVE MYTHOLOGY,

I. THE GROWTH OF EXPLANATORY TRANSFORMATION MYTHS.

A few years since, Maxime Du Camp, an eminent member of the French Academy, travelling from the Red Sea to the Nile through the Desert of Kosseir, came to a barren slope covered with boulders, rounded and glossy.

His Mohammedan camel-driver accounted for them on this wise:

”Many years ago Hadji Abdul-Aziz, a sheik of the dervishes, was travelling on foot through this desert: it was summer: the sun was hot and the dust stifling; thirst parched his lips, fatigue weighed down his back, sweat dropped from his forehead, when looking up he saw--on this very spot--a garden beautifully green, full of fruit, and, in the midst of it, the gardener.

”'O fellow-man,' cried Hadji Abdul-Aziz, 'in the name of Allah, clement and merciful, give me a melon and I will give you my prayers.'”

The gardener answered: 'I care not for your prayers; give me money, and I will give you fruit.'

”'But,' said the dervish, 'I am a beggar; I have never had money; I am thirsty and weary, and one of your melons is all that I need.'

”'No,' said the gardener; 'go to the Nile and quench your thirst.'

”Thereupon the dervish, lifting his eyes toward heaven, made this prayer: 'O Allah, thou who in the midst of the desert didst make the fountain of Zem-Zem spring forth to satisfy the thirst of Ismail, father of the faithful: wilt thou suffer one of thy creatures to perish thus of thirst and fatigue? '

”And it came to pa.s.s that, hardly had the dervish spoken, when an abundant dew descended upon him, quenching his thirst and refres.h.i.+ng him even to the marrow of his bones.

”Now at the sight of this miracle the gardener knew that the dervish was a holy man, beloved of Allah, and straightway offered him a melon.

”'Not so,' answered Hadji Abdul-Aziz; 'keep what thou hast, thou wicked man. May thy melons become as hard as thy heart, and thy field as barren as thy soul!'

”And straightway it came to pa.s.s that the melons were changed into these blocks of stone, and the gra.s.s into this sand, and never since has anything grown thereon.”

In this story, and in myriads like it, we have a survival of that early conception of the universe in which so many of the leading moral and religious truths of the great sacred books of the world are imbedded.

All ancient sacred lore abounds in such mythical explanations of remarkable appearances in nature, and these are most frequently prompted by mountains, rocks, and boulders seemingly misplaced.

In India we have such typical examples among the Brahmans as the mountain-peak which Durgu threw at Parvati; and among the Buddhists the stone which Devadatti hurled at Buddha.

In Greece the Athenian, rejoicing in his belief that Athena guarded her chosen people, found it hard to understand why the great rock Lycabettus should be just too far from the Acropolis to be of use as an outwork; but a myth was developed which explained all. According to this, Athena had intended to make Lycabettus a defence for the Athenians, and she was bringing it through the air from Pallene for that very purpose; but, unfortunately, a raven met her and informed her of the wonderful birth of Erichthonius, which so surprised the G.o.ddess that she dropped the rock where it now stands.

So, too, a peculiar rock at Aegina was accounted for by a long and circ.u.mstantial legend to the effect that Peleus threw it at Phocas.

A similar mode of explaining such objects is seen in the mythologies of northern Europe. In Scandinavia we constantly find rocks which tradition accounts for by declaring that they were hurled by the old G.o.ds at each other, or at the early Christian churches.

In Teutonic lands, as a rule, wherever a strange rock or stone is found, there will be found a myth or a legend, heathen or Christian, to account for it.

So, too, in Celtic countries: typical of this mode of thought in Brittany and in Ireland is the popular belief that such features in the landscape were dropped by the devil or by fairies.

Even at a much later period such myths have grown and bloomed. Marco Polo gives a long and circ.u.mstantial legend of a mountain in Asia Minor which, not long before his visit, was removed by a Christian who, having ”faith as a grain of mustard seed,” and remembering the Saviour's promise, transferred the mountain to its present place by prayer, ”at which marvel many Saracens became Christians.”(422)

(422) For Maxime Du Camp, see Le Nil: Egypte et Nubie, Paris, 1877, chapter v. For India, see Duncker, Geschichte des Alterthums, vol. iii, p. 366; also Coleman, Mythology of the Hindus, p. 90. For Greece, as to the Lycabettus myth, see Leake, Topography of Athens, vol. i, sec. 3; also Burnouf, La Legende Athenienne, p. 152. For the rock at Aegina, see Charton, vol. i, p. 310. For Scandanavia, see Thorpe, Northern Antiquities, pa.s.sim. For Teutonic countries, see Grimm, Deutsche Mythologie; Panzer, Beitrag zur deutschen Mythologie, vol. ii; Zingerle, Sagen aus Tyrol, pp. 111 et seq., 488, 504, 543; and especially J. B.

Friedrich, Symbolik und Mythologie der Natur, pp. 116 et seq. For Celtic examples I am indebted to that learned and genial scholar, Prof. J.