of the dwarfs who built them, and likewise in India it is a usual legend of such prehistoric burial-places, that they were dwarfs' houses-the dwellings of the ancient pygmies, who here again appear as representatives of prehistoric tribes.1 But a very different meaning is obvious in a mediæval traveller's account of the hairy, man-like creatures of Cathay, one cubit high, and that do not bend their knees as they walk, or in an Arab geographer's description of an island people in the Indian seas, four spans high, naked, with red downy hair on their faces, and who climb up trees and shun mankind. If any one could possibly doubt the real nature of these dwarfs, his doubt may be resolved by Marco Polo's statement that in his time monkeys were regularly embalmed in the East Indies, and sold in boxes to be exhibited over the world as pygmies.2 Thus various different facts have given rise to stories of giants and dwarfs, more than one mythic element perhaps combining to form a single legend-a result perplexing in the extreme to the mythological interpreter. Descriptions of strange tribes made in entire good faith may come to be understood in new extravagant senses, when carried among people not aware of the original facts. The following are some interpretations of this kind, among which some far-fetched cases are given, to show that the method must not be trusted too much. The term 'noseless' is apt to be misunderstood, yet it was fairly enough applied to flat-nosed tribes, such as Turks of the steppes, whom Rabbi Benjamin of Tudela thus depicts in the twelfth century: They have no noses, but draw breath through two small holes."3 Again, among the common ornamental · 1 Squier, 'Abor. Monuments of N. Y.' p. 68; Long's Exp.' vol. i. pp. 62, 275; Hersart de Villemarqué, Chants Populaires de la Bretagne,' p. liv., 35; Meadows Taylor in 'Journ. Eth. Soc.' vol. i. p. 157. * Gul. de Rubruquis in Pinkerton, vol. vii. p. 69; Lane, 'Thousand and One N.' vol. iii. pp. 81, 91, see 24, 52, 97; Hole, p. 63; Marco Polo, book iii, ch. xii. 3 Benjamin of Tudela, 'Itinerary,' ed. and tr. by Asher, 83; Plin. vii. 2. See Max Müller in Bunsen Philos. Univ. Hist.,' vol. i. pp. 346, 358. 1 mutilations of savages is that of stretching the ears to an enormous size by weights or coils, and it is thus verbally quite true that there are men whose ears hang down upon their shoulders. Yet without explanation such a phrase would be understood to describe, not the appearance of a real savage with his ear-lobes stretched into pendant fleshy loops, but rather that of Pliny's Panotii, or of the Indian Karnaprávarana, 'whose ears serve them for cloaks,' or of the African dwarfs, said to use their ears one for mattress and the other for coverlet when they lie down. One of the most extravagant of these stories is told by Fray Pedro Simon in California, where in fact the territory of Oregon has its name from the Spanish term of Orejones, or 'BigEars,' given to the inhabitants from their practice of stretching their ears with ornaments. Even purely metaphorical descriptions, if taken in a literal sense, are capable of turning into catches, like the story of the horse with its head where its tail should be. I have been told by a French Protestant from the Nismes district that the epithet of gorgeo negro, or black-throat,' by which Catholics describe a Huguenot, was taken so literally that heretic children were sometimes forced to open their mouths to satisfy the orthodox of their being of the usual colour within. On examining the description of savage tribes by higher races, it appears that several of the epithets usually applied only need literalizing to turn into the wildest of the legendary monster-stories. Thus the Burmese speak of the rude Karens as 'dog-men;'2 Marco Polo describes the Angaman (Andaman) islanders as brutish and savage cannibals, with heads like dogs. Elian's account of the dogheaded people of India is on the face of it an account of a savage race. The Kynokephali, he says, are so called from 3 1 Plin. iv. 27; Mela, iii. 6; Bastian, 'Oestl. Asien,' vol. i. p. 120; vol. ii. p. 93; St. John, vol. ii. p. 117; Marsden, p. 53; Lane, 'Thousand and One N.' vol. iii. pp. 92, 305; Petherick, Egypt, &c.' p. 367; Burton, 'Central Afr.' vol i. p. 235; Pedro Simon, 'Indias Occidentales,' p. 7. 2 Bastian, 'Oestl. Asien,' vol. i. p. 133. 3 Marco Polo, book iii. ch. xviii. their bodily appearance, but otherwise they are human, and "The Anthropophagi, and men whose heads grow beneath their shoulders.' If, however, we look in dictionaries for the Acephali, we 1 Ælian, iv. 46; Plin. vi. 35; vii. 2. See for other versions, Purchas, 2 Plin. v. 8; vi. 24, 35; vii. 2; Mela, iii. 9; Herberstein in Hakluyt, 3 Plin. v. 8; Lane, vol. i. p. 33; vol. ii. p. 377; vol. iii. p. 81; Eisen- Shikk and the Nesnas, creatures like one half of a split man, with one arm, leg, and eye. Possibly it was thence that the Zulus got their idea of a tribe of half-men, who in one of their stories found a Zulu maiden in a cave and thought she was two people, but on closer inspection of her admitted, 'The thing is pretty! But oh the two legs!' These realistic fancies coincide with the simple metaphor which describes a savage as only 'half a man,' semihomo, as Virgil calls the ferocious Cacus. Again, when the Chinese compared themselves to the outer barbarians, they said 'We see with two eyes, the Latins with one, and all other nations are blind.' Such metaphors, proverbial among ourselves, verbally correspond with legends of one-eyed tribes, such as the savage cave-dwelling Kyklopes.2 Verbal coincidence of this kind, untrustworthy enough in these latter instances, passes at last into the vaguest fancy. The negroes called Europeans 'long-headed,' using the phrase in our familiar metaphorical sense; but translate it into Greek, and at once Hesiod's Makrokephaloi come into being. And, to conclude the list, one of the commonest of the monster-tribes of the Old and New World is that distinguished by having feet turned backward. Now there is really a people whose name, memorable in scientific controversy, describes them as 'having feet the opposite 1 Lane, vol. i. p. 33; Callaway, 'Zulu Tales,' vol. i. pp. 199, 202. Virg. Æn. viii. 194; a similar metaphor is the name of the Nimchas, from Persian nim-half, 'Journ. Eth. Soc.' vol. i. p. 192, cf. French demi-monde. Compare the 'one-legged' tribes, Plin. vii. 2; Schoolcraft, 'Indian Tribes,' part iii. p. 521; Charlevoix, vol. i. p. 25. The Australians use the metaphor of one leg' (matta gyn) to describe tribes as of one stock, G. F. Moore, 'Vocab.' pp. 5, 71. 2 Hayton in Purchas, vol. iii. p. 108; see Klemm, 'C. G.' vol. vi. p. 129; Vambéry, p. 49; Homer. Odyss. ix. ; Strabo, i. 2, 12; see Scherzer, Voy. of Novara,' vol. ii. p. 40; C. J. Andersson, Lake Ngami, &c.,' p. 453; Du Chaillu, Equatorial Africa,' p. 440; Sir J. Richardson, Polar Regions,' p. 300. For tribes with more than two eyes, see Pliny's metaphorically explained Nisacæthæ and Nisyti, Plin. vi. 35; also Bastian, 'Mensch,' vol. ii. p. 414; 'Oestl. Asien,' vol. i. pp. 25, 76; Petherick, 1.c.; Bowen, 'Yoruba Gr.' p. xx. ; Schirren, p. 196. Kölle, Vei Gr.' p. 229; Strabo, i. 2, 35. The artificially elongated skulls of real Maкроképаλoι (Hippokrates, 'De Aeris,' 14.) are found in the burial-places of Kertch. way,' and they still retain that ancient name of Antipodes Returning from this digression to the region of philosophic myth, we may examine new groups of explanatory stories, produced from that craving to know causes and reasons which ever besets mankind. When the attention of a man in the myth-making stage of intellect is drawn to any phenomenon or custom which has to him no obvious reason, he invents and tells a story to account for it, and even if he does not persuade himself that this is a real legend of his forefathers, the story-teller who hears it from him and repeats it is troubled with no such difficulty. Our task in dealing with such stories is made easy when the criterion of possibility can be brought to bear upon them. It has become a mere certainty to moderns that asbestos is not really salamander's wool; that morbid hunger is not really caused by a lizard or a bird in a man's stomach; that a Chinese philosopher cannot really have invented the firedrill by seeing a bird peck at the branches of a tree till sparks came. The African Wakuafi account for their cattlelifting proclivities by the calm assertion that Engai, that is, Heaven, gave all cattle to them, and so wherever there is any it is their call to go and seize it. So in South America the fierce Mbayas declare they received from the Caracara a divine command to make war on all other tribes, killing the men and adopting the women and children.3 But though it may be consistent with the notions of these savages to relate such explanatory legends, it is not consistent with our notions to believe them. Fortunately, too, the ex post facto legends are apt to come into collision with more authentic sources of information, or to encroach on the domain of valid history. It is of no use for the Chinese to tell their stupid story of written characters having been invented from the markings on a tortoise's 1 Plin. vii. 2; Humboldt and Bonpland, vol. v. p. 81. 2 Krapf, p. 359. 3 Southey, 'Brazil,' vol. iii. p. 390. |