and went away. In the morning she did not know what to do till the house-wife told her that he had gone over a hill of poison, over which she could not go without horse shoes on her hands and feet. She gave her man's clothes, and told her to learn smithying till she could make horse shoes for herself.

"This she did, and got over the hill of poison. But on the day of her arrival, she found that her husband was to be married to the daughter of a great gentleman that was in the town. As festivities were in progress, the cook of the house asked the stranger to take his place and make the wedding meal. She watched the bridegroom, and let fall the ring and feather in the broth intended for him. With the first spoon he took up the ring, with the next the feather. He asked for the person who cooked the meal, and said, 'that now was his married wife.' The spells went off him. They turned back over the hill of poison, she throwing the horse shoes behind her to him, as she went a bit forward, and he following her. They went to the three houses where she had been. These were the houses of his three sisters; and they took with them their three sons, and they came home to their own home, and they were happy.” *

Such is a good specimen of the folk-tale, and the folk-tales are merely the modern representatives of the old Mythology— merely the detritus, as it were, of the old myths which dealt with the gods and the heroes of the race. In the above tale we are in quite a different world from the practical and scientific views of the 19th century; we have birds speaking and acting as rational beings, and yet exciting no wonder to the human beings they come in contact with; supernatural spells whereby men may be turned into animals; a marriage with a bird, which partially breaks these spells, and the bird becomes a man for part of the day; supernatural kidnapping, ending in the disappearance of the man-bird; and pursuit of him by the wife through fairy regions of charms and spells and untold hardships-a pursuit which ends successfully. It looks all a wild maze of childish nonsense, unworthy of a moment's serious consideration; it would certainly appear to be a hopeless subject for scientific research; for what could science, whose object is truth, have to do with a

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Abridged from Campbell's West Highland Tales, vol. 1, p. 63.

tissue of absurdities and falsehoods? But this view is a superficial one, though it is the one commonly held. On looking more deeply into the matter, we shall find that after all there is a method in the madness of Mythology, and that the incongruous mass of tales and broken-down myths that make up a nation's folk-lore is susceptible of scientific treatment. Science first attacks the problem by the method of comparison; it compares the myths and tales of one nation with those of another, with the view of discovering similarities. The outlines, for example, of the tale already given, exist not merely in one or two more tales in our own folk-lore, but can also be traced over all the continent of Europe, as well as in many parts of Asia. The outline of the tale is this-The youngest and best of three daughters is married or given up to some unsightly being or monster, who in reality is a most beautiful youth, but who is under certain spells to remain in a low form of life until some maiden is found to marry him. He then regains his natural form, though, as a rule, only partially; and the newlymarried pair have to work out his complete redemption from the spells. But, just as he is about to be free from the spells, the curiosity or disobedience of the wife ruins everything; he disappears, and then follows for the wife the dark period of wandering and toil, which can be brought to an end only by the achievement of tasks, generally three in number, each hopelessly beyond human powers. The husband, who meanwhile has forgotten, owing to the nature of the spells upon him, all about his wife, is on the eve of marrying another, when the last task of all is accomplished by the persevering courage of the wife. The spells then leave him for ever, and happiness reigns in the household ever after.

There are in our Highland folk-lore one or two versions of this same tale. The story of the "Daughter of the Skies," in Mr Campbell's book, is one variation. Here the hoodie crow is replaced by a little doggie, and the wife's disobedience is clearly brought out, while the supernatural machinery — the magical scissors and needle, for example-is much more elaborate. The tale also is found in Norway; in the Norse tale, "East of the Sun and West of the Moon," the hero appears at first as a white bear, who, on his marriage with the heroine, becomes a man by

night. She must not, however, see him, for light must not fall on his body or else he at once disappears. But the wife, instigated by her mother, steals a sight of him by lamp-light, with the consequence that he awakes and vanishes. Then follow her trials, pursuit, and recovery of him. The beautiful Greek tale of Psyche and Cupid is but a variation of the same myth. Psyche, the youngest of three royal daughters, incurs the wrath of Venus, who sends Cupid to inspire her with love for something contemptible; as Titania, in Shakespeare, is made to fall in love with the transformed weaver, Bottom. But Cupid, captivated by her beauty, falls in love with her himself, conveys her to a secret cave, and visits her only at night, under strict charge of her not attempting to see him by any light. Her jealous sisters persuade her that she is married to some ugly monster, and she accordingly determines to disobey his injunctions, and inspect him by lamp-light. In so doing, she allows in her admiration of his beauty, a drop of hot oil to fall on his shoulder, and he awakes, and escapes. She suffers woes untold in her pursuit of him, being finally a slave in the household of Venus, who treats her very cruelly. But, of course, she recovers her lost lover at long last. And, again, in India, in the old religious books of the Brahmins, is a somewhat similar tale-the story of Urvasi and Pururavas, the main features of which are the same as the Gaelic and Greek tales already given. To the English reader, the wellknown tale of "Beauty and the Beast" will at once occur as an exact parallel to all these. And, if we take the myths where the heroine is the loathly monster, we shall find an equally wide distribution. We have the Hindu tale, where the Princess is disguised as a withered old woman; the Loathly Lady of Teutonic Mythology; and the Celtic story of Diarmad's love for the daughter of the king of the Land under the Waves, who appears first as a hideous monster, and becomes, on approaching Diarmad, the most beautiful woman ever seen.

Thus, then, we have traced the same myth among nations so widely apart as the Celts and Hindus, while, intermediate between these, we found it among the Greeks and Teutons. And some myths are even more widely distributed than that; the tale of the imprisoned maiden and the hero who rescues her from the dragon or monster appears among all the nations of Europe as well as

among many of the nations of Asia. Hence, from India in the East, to Ireland in the West, we may find a great mass of mythical tales common to the various nations. And this being the case, it may plainly become a matter of scientific enquiry, first, What the cause of these peculiar myths and tales can be? and, secondly, What the significance is of their wide distribution?

CAUSE OF MYTH.

The cause and origin of these myths have puzzled philosophers of all ages, and it is only a generation ago when the first unravelling of the difficult problem really took place. In olden times their origin was set down to the well-known faculty of invention that man possesses; they were mere inventions and fictions, mostly purposeless, though some were evidently intended for explanations of natural phenomena or of historical events, and others again for the conveyance of moral truth. There were practically two schools of myth-explainers; those who regarded myths as mere allegories or parables, and from them extracted codes of moral obligation and hidden knowledge of the mysteries of nature; and, again, those who, so to speak, "rationalised" the myths-that is to say, those who explained myths as exaggerated real events. Some of these explained, for example, Jupiter as king of Crete in the pre-historic times; and, again, the giant that Jack killed, according to such explanations, was not necessarily far exceeding the natural limit of six or seven feet in height, for the only point to notice was that he was a big burly brute of little sense, overcome by the astuteness of a much lesser man. But this theory gets into grave difficulties when it grapples with the supernatural and the supranatural; in fact, it fails ignominiously. And as to the allegorical theory, while it has no difficulty in explaining Jack the Giant Killer as merely the personification of the truth that power of mind is superior to power of body, that theory is completely wrecked in explaining the myths of Jupiter and the gods generally. No allegory can explain most of these myths, especially the older myths; while the different explanations given by different "allegorizers" of even the simplest myths point to a fundamental error in this theory. Now, it must not be supposed that both allegory and

real events had no share in the formation of myths; they were indeed, most potent factors in the later stages of Mythology, and must have existed all along as a cause for myth. Another theory may be noticed in passing as to the origin of myths in regard to the deities and cosmogony of the world. It may be called the "degradation" theory, and the principle of it is this: As all languages were supposed by theologians to be descendants of the original Hebrew tongue spoken in Eden, so the Mythology of all nations must be more or less a broken-down remembrance of the Hebrew religion and philosophy, first imparted to man in the Garden of Eden. The stoutest supporter of this view is Mr Gladstone. He goes so far as to hold that distinct traces of the Trinity can be found in Greek Mythology, and he consequently resolves Zeus, Apollo, and Athena into the three persons of the Trinity! Supposing for a moment that this theory of the degradation of myth was true, or, indeed, that our only explanation was either or both of the other theories, what a mass of senseless wickedness and immorality much of the deservedly admired Greek Mythology would be? Such theories would argue equal wickedness in the race from whose fancy such inventions sprung: for the Greek Olympus is very full of rapine, paricide, and vice. Yet the Greeks were neither an immoral nor degraded race, but far otherwise. It is this dark side of a nation's Mythology that has puzzled and shocked so many philosophers, and made shipwreck of their theories as to the origin of myths.

With the rise of the science of language and its marked success, all within this century, a complete revolution has taken place, not merely in the case of philology itself, but also in the kindred subjects of Ethnology and Mythology. The methods adopted in linguistic research have also been adopted in the case of Mythology-first, all preconceptions and national prejudices have been put aside; then a careful, even painful examination and comparison of languages have been made, to find laws of interchange of sounds; a consequent discovery of the relationships between languages has taken place; and lastly, a discussion as to the origin of language is thus rendered possible. Exactly the same methods have been employed in the elucidation of myths, with a success that, on the whole, is gratifying. In so