Volume II Part 27 (1/2)
* Paus., li. 86.
** Callaway, Izinyanga Zokvbula, p. 362
*** For a collection of pa.s.sages see Aglaophamus, 251-254.
The Black Demeter of the Phigalians in Arcadia was another most archaic form of the G.o.ddess. In Phigalia the myth of the wrath and reconciliation of the G.o.ddess a.s.sumed a brutal and unfamiliar aspect.
The common legend, universally known, declares that Demeter sorrowed for the _enlevement_ of her daughter, Persephone, by Hades. The Phigalians added another cause; the wandering Demeter had a.s.sumed the form of a mare, and was violently wooed by Poseidon in the guise of a stallion.*
* The same story was told of Cronus and Philyra, of Agni and a cow in the _Satapatha Brahmana_ (English translation, i.
326), of Saranyu, daughter of Tvashtri, who ”fled in the form of a mare”. Visvasvat, in like manner, a.s.sumed the shape of a horse, and followed her. From their intercourse sprang the two Asvins. See Muir, Sanskrit Texts, v. 227, or _Rig- Veda_, x. 17, 1. Here we touch a very curious point.
Erinnys was au Arcadian cognomen of the Demeter who was wedded as a mare (Paus., viii. 25). Now, Mr. Max Muller says that ”Erinnys is the Vedic Saranyu, the Dawn,” and we have seen that both Demeter Erinnys and Saranyu were wooed and won in the form of mares (Select Essays, i. 401, 492-622).
The curious thing is that, having so valuable a proof in his hand as the common b.e.s.t.i.a.l amours of both Saranyu and Erinnys Demeter, Mr. Max Muller does not produce it. The Scandinavian horse-loves of Loki also recur to the memory.
Praj.a.pati's loves in the shape of a deer are familiar in the Brahmanas. If Saranyu=Erinnys, and both=Dawn, then a dawn- myth has been imported into the legend of Demeter, whom n.o.body, perhaps, will call a dawn-G.o.ddess. Schwartz, as usual, makes the myth a storm-myth, and Demeter a G.o.ddess of storms (Ursprwig der Myth., p. 164).
The G.o.ddess, in wrath at this outrage, attired herself in black mourning raiment, and withdrew into a cave, according to the Phigalians, and the fruits of the earth perished. Zeus learned from Pan the place of Demeter's retreat, and sent to her the Moerae or Fates, who persuaded her to abate her anger. The cave became her holy place, and there was set an early wooden _xoanon_, or idol, representing the G.o.ddess in the shape of a woman with the head and mane of a mare, in memory of her involuntary intrigue in that shape. Serpents and other creatures were twined about her head, and in one hand, for a mystic reason undivulged, she held a dolphin, in the other a dove. The wooden image was destroyed by fire, and disasters fell on the Phigalians. Onatas was then employed to make a bronze statue like the old idol, wherof the fas.h.i.+on was revealed to him in a dream. This restoration was made about the time of the Persian war.
The sacrifices offered to this Demeter were fruits, grapes, honey and uncarded wool; whence it is clear that the black G.o.ddess was a true earth-mother, and received the fruits of the earth and the flock. The image by Onatas had somewhat mysteriously disappeared before the days of Pausanias.*
* Paus., viii. 42. Compare viii. 25, 4, for the horse Arion, whom Demeter bore to Poseidon.
Even in her rude Arcadian shape Demeter is a G.o.ddess of the fruits of earth. It is probable that her most archaic form survived from the ”Pelasgian” clays in remote mountainous regions. Indeed Herodotus, observing the resemblance between the Osirian mysteries in Egypt and the Thesmophoria of Demeter in Greece, boldly a.s.serts that the Thesmophoria were Egyptian, and were brought to the Pelasgians from Egypt (ii. 171).
The Pelasgians were driven out of Peloponnesus by the Dorians, and the Arcadians, who were not expelled, retained the rites. As Pelasgians also lingered long in Attica, Herodotus recognised the Thesmophoria as in origin Egyptian. In modern language this theory means that the Thesmophoria were thought to be a rite of prehistoric antiquity older than the Dorian invasion. Herodotus naturally explained resemblances in the myth and ritual of distant peoples as the result of borrowing, usually from Egypt, an idea revived by M. Foucart. These a.n.a.logies, however, are more frequently produced by the working out of similar thoughts, presenting themselves to minds similarly situated in a similar way. The mysteries of Demeter offer an excellent specimen of the process. While the Greeks, not yet collected into cities, lived in village settlements, each village would possess its own feasts, mysteries and ”medicine-dances,” as the Red Indians say, appropriate to seedtime and harvest. For various reasons, certain of these local rites attained high importance in the development of Greek civilisation The Eleusinian performances, for instance, were adopted into the state ritual of a famous city, Athens, and finally acquired a national status, being open to all not disqualified h.e.l.lenes. In this development the old local ritual for the propitiation of Demeter, for the fertility of the seed sown, and for the gratification of the dead ancestors, was caught up into the religion of the state, and was modified by advancing ideas of religion and morality. But the local Athenian mystery of the Thesmophoria probably retained more of its primitive shape and purpose.
The Thesmophoria was the feast of seed-time, and Demeter was adored by the women as the patroness of human as well as of universal fertility.
Thus a certain jocund and licentious element was imparted to the rites, which were not to be witnessed by men.
The Demeter of the Thesmophoria was she who introduced and patronised the (------) of marriage, as Homer says of Odysseus and Penelope.* What was done at the Thesmophoria Herodotus did not think fit to tell. A scholiast on Lucian's _Dialogues of Courtesans_ let out the secret in a much later age. He repeats the story of the swineherd Eubuleus, whose pigs were swallowed up by the earth when it opened to receive Hades and Persephone. In honour and in memory of Eubuleus, pigs were thrown into the cavernof Demeter. Then certain women brought up the decaying flesh of the dead pigs, and placed it on the altar. It was believed that to mix this flesh with the seed-corn secured abundance of harvest. Though the rite is magical in character, perhaps the decaying flesh might act as manure, and be of real service to the farmer. Afterwards images of pigs, such as Mr. Newton found in a hole in the holy plot of Demeter at Cnidos, were restored to the place whence the flesh had been taken. The practice was believed to make marriage fruitful; its virtues were for the husband as well as for the husbandman.** However the Athenians got the rite, whether they evolved it or adapted it from some ”Pelasgian”
or other prehistoric people, similar practices occur among the Khonds in India and the p.a.w.nees in America. The Khonds sacrifice a pig and a human victim, the p.a.w.nees a girl of a foreign tribe.
* Odyssey, xxiii. 295.
** Newton, Hulicarn., plate iv. pp. 331, 371-391.
The fragments of flesh are not mixed with the seed-corn, but buried on the borders of the fields.* The ancient, perhaps ”Pelasgian,” ritual of Demeter had thus its savage features and its savage a.n.a.logues.
More remarkable still is the p.a.w.nee version, as we may call it, of the Eleusinia. Curiously, the Red Indian myth which resembles that of Demeter and Persephone is _not_ told about Me-suk-k.u.m-mik-o-kwi, the Red Indian Mother Earth, to whom offerings are made, valuable objects being buried for her in bra.s.s kettles.** The American tale is attached to the legend of Manabozho and his brother Chibiabos, not to that of the Earth Mother and her daughter, if in America she had a daughter.
The account of the p.a.w.nee mysteries and their origin is worth quoting in full, as it is among the most remarkable of mythical coincidences. If we decline to believe that Pere De Smet invented the tale for the mere purpose of mystifying mythologists, we must, apparently, suppose that the coincidences are due to the similar workings of the human mind in the Prairies as at Eleusis. We shall first give the Red Indian version.
It was confided to De Smet, as part of the general tradition of the p.a.w.nees, by an old chief, and was first published by De Smet in his _Oregon Mission_*** Tanner speaks of the legend as one that the Indians chant in their ”medicine-songs,” which record the sacred beliefs of the race.****
* De Smet, Oregon Missions, p. 359; Mr. Russell's, ”Report”
in Major Campbell's Personal Narrative, 1864, pp. 55, 113.
** Tanner's Narrative, 1830, p. 115.
*** New York, 1847.