he died for the good of the inhabitants of earth, and became the constellation that bears his name, so that still at the proper season men see him lying as he fell toward the north on the plains of heaven, with the fatal arrow still sticking in his tail. Compare these savage stories with Orion pursuing the Pleiad sisters who take refuge from him in the sea, and the maidens who wept themselves to death and became the starry cluster of the Hyades, whose rising and setting betokened rain: such mythic creatures might for simple significance have been invented by savages, even as the savage constellation-myths might have been made by ancient Greeks. When we consider that the Australians who can invent such myths, and invent them with such fulness of meaning, are savages who put two and one together to make their numeral for three, we may judge how deep in the history of culture those conceptions lie, of which the relics are still represented in our star-maps by Castor and Pollux, Arcturus and Sirius, Bootes and Orion, the Argo and the Charles's Wain, the Toucan and the Southern Cross. Whether civilized or savage, whether ancient or new made after the ancient manner, such names are so like in character that any tribe of men might adopt them from any other, as American tribes are known to receive European names into their own skies, and as our constellation of the Royal Oak is said to have found its way, in new copies of the old Hindu treatises, into the company of the Seven Sages and the other ancient constellations of Brahmanic India.

Such fancies are so fanciful, that two peoples seldom fall on the same name for a constellation, while, even within the limits of the same race, terms may differ altogether. Thus the stars which we call Orion's Belt are in New

1 Schoolcraft, Algic Res.' vol. i. pp. 57-66. The story of the hero or deity invulnerable like Achilles save in one weak spot, recurs in the tales of the slaying of the Shining Manitu, whose scalp alone was vulnerable, and of the mighty Kwasind, who could be killed only by the cone of the white pine wounding the vulnerable place on the crown of his head (vol. i. p. 153; vol. ii. p. 163).

2

Zealand either the Elbow of Maui, or they form the stern of the Canoe of Tamarerete, whose anchor dropped from the prow is the Southern Cross.1 The Great Bear is equally like a Wain, Orion's Belt serves as well for Frigga's or Mary's Spindle, or Jacob's Staff. Yet sometimes natural correspondences occur. The seven sister Pleiades seem to the Australians a group of girls playing to a corroboree; while the North American Indians call them the Dancers, and the Lapps the Company of Virgins. Still more striking is the correspondence between savages and cultured nations in fancies of the bright starry band that lies like a road across the sky. The Basutos call it the Way of the Gods;' the Ojis say it is the 'Way of Spirits,' which souls go up to heaven by.3 North American tribes know it as 'the Path of the Master of Life,' the 'Path of Spirits,' 'the Road of Souls,' where they travel to the land beyond the grave, and where their camp-fires may be seen blazing as brighter stars. Such savage imaginations of the Milky Way fit with the Lithuanian myth of the Road of the Birds,' at whose end the souls of the good, fancied as flitting away at death like birds, dwell free and happy.5 That souls dwell in the Galaxy was a thought familiar to the Pythagoreans, who gave it on their master's word that the souls that crowd there descend, and appear to men as dreams, and to the Manichæans whose fancy transferred pure souls to this 'column of light,' whence they could

6

1. Taylor, New Zealand,' p. 363.

2 Stanbridge, 1.c.; Charlevoix, vol. vi. p. 148; Leems, 'Lapland,' in Pinkerton, vol. i. p. 411. The name of the Bear occurring in North America in connexion with the stars of the Great and Little Bear (Charlevoix, 1.c.; Cotton Mather in Schoolcraft, Tribes,' vol. i. p. 284) has long been remarked on (Goguet, vol. i. p. 262; vol. ii. p. 366, but with reference to Greenland, see Cranz, p. 294). See observations on the history of the Aryan name in Max Müller, Lectures,' 2nd series, p. 361.

3 Casalis, p. 196; Waitz, vol. ii. p. 191.

4 Long's Exp. vol. i. p. 288 ; Schoolcraft, part p. 272; Le Jeune in 'Rel. des Jés. de la Nouvelle France,' 1634, p. 18; Loskiel, part i. p. 35; J. G. Müller, p. 63.

5 Hanusch, pp. 272, 407, 415.

Porphyr. de Antro Nympharum, 28; Macrob. de Somn. Scip. i. 12.

come down to earth and again return. It is a fall from such ideas of the Galaxy to the Siamese 'Road of the White Elephant,' the Spaniards' 'Road of Santiago,' or the Turkish Pilgrims' Road,' and a still lower fall to the 'Straw Road' of the Syrian, the Persian, and the Turk, who thus compare it with their lanes littered with the morsels of straw that fall from the nets they carry it in.2 But of all the fancies which have attached themselves to the celestial road, we at home have the quaintest. Passing along the short and crooked way from St. Paul's to Cannon Street, one thinks to how small a remnant has shrunk the name of the great street of the Watlingas, which in old days ran from Dover through London into Wales. But there is a Watling Street in heaven as well as on earth, once familiar to Englishmen, though now almost forgotten even in local dialect. Chaucer thus speaks of it in his 'House of Fame:'

'Lo there (quod he) cast up thine eye
Se yondir, lo, the Galaxie,

The whiche men clepe The Milky Way,
For it is white, and some parfay,

Ycallin it han Watlynge strete.' 3

Turning from the mythology of the heavenly bodies, a glance over other districts of nature-myth will afford fresh evidence that such legend has its early home within the precincts of savage culture. It is thus with the myths of the Winds. The New Zealanders tell how Maui can ride upon the other Winds or imprison them in their caves, but he cannot catch the West wind nor find its cave to roll a

1 Beausobre, 'Hist. de Manichée,' vol. ii. p. 513.

2 Bastian, 'Oestl. Asien,' vol. iii. p. 341; Chronique de Tabari,' tr. Dubeux, p. 24; Grimm, 'D. M.' p. 330, &c.

3 Chaucer, 'House of Fame,' ii. 427. With reference to questions of Aryan mythology illustrated by the savage galaxy-myths, see Pictet, 'Origines,' part ii. p. 582, &c. Mr. J. Jeremiah informs me that 'Watling Street' is still (1871) a name for the Milky Way in Scotland; see also his paper on 'Welsh names of the Milky Way,' Philological Soc., Nov. 17, 1871. The corresponding name 'London Road' is used in Suffolk.

stone against the mouth, and therefore it prevails, yet from time to time he all but overtakes it, and hiding in its cave for shelter it dies away. Such is the fancy in classic poetry of Aeolus holding the prisoned winds in his dungeon cave:

'Hic vasto rex Aeolus antro

Luctantes ventos, tempestatesque sonoras

Imperio premit, ac vinclis et carcere fraenat.'2

The myth of the Four Winds is developed among the native races of America with a range and vigour and beauty scarcely rivalled elsewhere in the mythology of the world. Episodes belonging to this branch of Red Indian folklore are collected in Schoolcraft's 'Algic Researches,' and thence rendered with admirable taste and sympathy, though unfortunately not with proper truth to the originals, in Longfellow's masterpiece, the 'Song of Hiawatha.' The West Wind Mudjekeewis is Kabeyun, Father of the Winds, Wabun is the East Wind, Shawondasee the South Wind, Kabibonokka the North Wind. But there is another mighty wind not belonging to the mystic quaternion, Manabozho the North-West Wind, therefore described with mythic appropriateness as the unlawful child of Kabeyun. The fierce North Wind, Kabibnokka, in vain strives to force Shingebis, the lingering diver-bird, from his warm and happy winter-lodge; and the lazy South Wind, Shawondasee, sighs for the maiden of the prairie with her sunny hair, till it turns to silvery white, and as he breathes upon her, the prairie dandelion has vanished. Man naturally divides his horizon into four quarters, before and behind, right and left, and thus comes to fancy the world a square, and to refer the winds to its four corners. Dr. Brinton, in his 'Myths of the New World,' has well traced from these ideas the growth of legend after legend among the native

1 Yate, 'New Zealand,' p. 144, see Ellis, 'Polyn. Res.' vol. ii. p. 417.

2 Virg. Aeneid, i. 56; Homer, Odyss. x. 1.

3 Schoolcraft, Algic Res.' vol. i. p. 200; vol. ii. pp. 122, 214; 'Indian Tribes,' part iii. p. 324.

races of America, where four brother heroes, or mythic ancestors or divine patrons of mankind, prove, on closer view, to be in personal shape the Four Winds.1

The Vedic hymns to the Maruts, the Storm Winds, who tear asunder the forest kings and make the rocks shiver, and assume again, after their wont, the form of new-born babes, the mythic feats of the child Hermes in the Homeric hymn, the legendary birth of Boreas from Astraios and Eôs, Starry Heaven and Dawn, work out, on Aryan ground, mythic conceptions that Red Indian tale-tellers could understand and rival.2 The peasant who keeps up in fireside talk the memory of the Wild Huntsman, Wodejäger, the Grand Veneur of Fontainebleau, Herne the Hunter of Windsor Forest, has almost lost the significance of this grand old storm-myth. By mere force of tradition, the name of the 'Wish' or 'Wush' hounds of the Wild Huntsman has been preserved through the west of England; the words must for ages past have lost their meaning among the country folk, though we may plainly recognize in them Woden's ancient well-known name, old German 'Wunsch.' As of old, the Heaven-God drives the clouds before him in raging tempest across the sky, while, safe within the cottage walls, the tale-teller unwittingly describes in personal legendary shape this same Wild Hunt of the Storm.3

It has many a time occurred to the savage poet or philosopher to realize the thunder, or its cause, in myths of a Thunder-bird. Of this wondrous creature North American legend has much to tell. He is the bird of the great Manitu, as the eagle is of Zeus, or he is even the great Manitu himself incarnate. The Assiniboins not only know

1 Brinton, 'Myths of the New World,' ch. iii.

2 Rig-Veda,' tr. by Max Müller, vol. i. (Hymns to Maruts); Welcker, 'Griech. Götterl.' vol. iii. p. 67; Cox, 'Mythology of Aryan Nations,' vol. ii. ch. v.

3 Grimm, 'D. M.' pp. 126, 599, 894; Hunt, 'Pop. Rom.' 1st ser. p. xix. ; Baring-Gould, 'Book of Werewolves,' p. 101; see 'Myths of the Middle Ages,' p. 25; Wuttke, 'Deutsche Volksaberglaube,' pp. 13, 236; Monnier, 'Traditions,' pp. 75, &c., 741, 747.