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ception, may be adduced as an exemplification of the fact; and even the sacred writings of the Old Testament contain occasional indications of a similar practice.

The operation of this principle, while it is sufficient to account for all the marvels of popular fiction, will also lead to the establishment of two conclusions: first, that wherever there may have been any resemblance in the objects calling it forth, the imagery produced will exhibit a corresponding similarity of character; and secondly, that a large proportion of the symbols thus brought into circulation, like the primitive roots in language, will be found recurring in almost every country, as a common property inherited by descent. In illustration of these conclusions, we need only refer to those local traditions of distant countries which profess to record the history of some unusual appearance on the surface of the soil", the peculiar character of a vegetable production, or the structure of a public monument. Whether in ancient Greece or modern Europe, every object of this kind that meets the traveller's eye is found to have a chronicle of its origin; the causes assigned for its existence, or its natural and artificial attributes, wear a common mythic garb; while in either country these narratives are so strikingly allied to the fictions of popular song, that it is sometimes difficult to decide whether the muse has supplied their substance, or been herself indebted to them for some of her most attractive incidents 18. A mound of earth becomes

16 See the fable of the trees, Judges ix. 8.; of the thistle and the cedar, 2 Chronicles xxv. 18.

17 At the entrance of a cave near the plain of Marathon, Pausanias saw a number of loose stones, which at a distance resembled goats. The country people called them Pan's Flock. (Attica, 26.) A similar group on Marlborough Down is still called the Gray Wethers. A tuft of cypresses near Psophis, in Arcadia, was called the Virgins. Arcad. c. 24.) On the downs between Wadebridge and St. Columb, there is a

line of stones called the Nine Maids. Borlase Ant. of Corn. p. 159. The Glastonbury thorn, which budded on Christmas day, was a dry hawthorn staff miraculously planted by St. Joseph. Collinson's Somersetshire, ii. p. 265. This is a common miracle in the history of the Dionysic thyrsus. A myrtle at Træzene, whose leaves were full of holes, was said to have been thus perforated by Phædra in her moments of despair. (Paus. i. 22. See also ii. 28 and 32.)

18 There can be little doubt that the story of the Phæacian ship (Od. xiii. 163.)

the sepulchre of a favourite hero; a pile of enormous stones, the easy labour of some gigantic craftsmen 20; a single one, the stupendous instrument of daily exercise to a fabulous king"; the conformation of a rock, or a mark upon its surface, attests the anger or the presence of some divinity; and the emblems and decorations of a monumental effigy must either be explained from the events of popular history, or perverted from

was taken from some local tradition well known at the period. In the time of Procopius it had become localized at the modern Cassopé; notwithstanding an inscription explained the origin of the votive structure to which it was attached. At the present day, a small island near the harbour of Corfu, claims the honour of being the original bark. In the same way many incidents in the Argonautica received a "local habitation." According to Timonax, Jason and Medea were married at Colchis, where the bridal bed was shown. Timæus denied this, and referred to the nuptial altars at Cercyra. (Schol. in Apoll. Rhod. iv. 1217.) The earliest version of this fiction may be supposed to have confirmed the Colchian tradition; but as the limits of the sphere of action became extended, the later narratives of necessity embraced other fables. Hence the Argonautic poems became for ancient geography and local tradition, what the syncretic statues of Cybele were for ancient symbols. The passage in Apollonius, l. i. v. 1305. is evidently taken from a local fiction, as it refers to the rocking-stones commemorating the event.

19 In localizing these traditions, little regard is paid to the contending claims of other districts. Several mounds are shown in various parts of Denmark, as the graves of Vidrich Verlandsen, and as many of the giant Langbein. (Müller Saga Bibliothek, vol. ii. p. 224.) The residence of Habor and Signe, so celebrated in Danish song, has been appropriated in the same way; and has given name to a variety of places. (Udvalgte Danske Viser, vol. iii. p. 403.) Scottish tradition has transferred the burial place of Thomas the Rhymer, from Erceldown to a tomhan which rises in a plain

near Inverness. Grant's Essays, &c. vol. ii. p. 158.

20 The Cyclops were the contrivers of these works in ancient times, whose place has been supplied by the Giants. See the books relative to Stonehenge, Giant's Causeway, &c. The Arabs have a tradition, that Cleopatra's needle was once surrounded by seven others, which were brought from mount Berym to Alexandria, by seven giants of the tribe of Aad.

21 The common people call a cromleach, near Lligwy in Anglesea, Coeten Arthur, or Arthur's Quoit. Jones's Bardic Mus. p. 60. The general character of the Homeric poems will justify the conclusion, that a similar monument supplied the incident in the Odyssey, viii. ver. 194. The Locrians showed an enormous stone before the door of Euthymus, which he was said to have placed there by his own efforts. Ael. V. Hist. viii. 18.

At mount Sipylus in Attica, there was a rock, which at some distance resembled a woman weeping; the inhabitants called it Niobe. (Paus. i. 21.) The footstep of Hercules was seen imprinted on a rock near the river Tyra in Scythia, Herod. iv. 82. In Cicero's time the marks of the horses' hoofs of Castor and Pollux were still shown as a proof of their presence at the battle of Regillus. De Nat. Deor. iii. 5. 11. 2.

** The statue of Nemesis at Rhamnus gave rise to a Grecian fable, that the stone of which it was made had been brought to Marathon by the Persians, for the purpose of erecting a victorious trophy. (Paus. i. 33.) That it was a mere fable, every practice of their enemies clearly proves.

their original character to give some passage in it a locality*. It is thus too that the volcanic eruptions of Lydia, Sicily, Cilicia, and Boeotia, were respectively attributed to the agency of Typhon25; that the purple tints upon certain flowers were said to have originated with the deaths of Ajax, Adonis and Hyacinthus; that the story of the man in the moon has found a circulation throughout the world; and that the clash of elements in the thunder-storm was ascribed in Hellas to the rolling chariot-wheels of Jove, and in Scandinavia to the ponderous waggon of the Norwegian Thor. The same general principle has likewise led to that community of ideas entertained by all mankind of the glories and felicities of the past. Every age has been delighted to dwell with sentiments of admiration upon the memory of the "good old times;" they still continue to form a theme of fond and lavish applause; and the philosophic Agis had to console his desponding countryman with a remark which every man's experience has made familiar, "that the fading virtues of later times were a cause of grief to his father Archidamus, who again had listened to the same regrets from his own venerable sire"." In this, indeed, the feelings and conduct of nations in their collective capacity, only present us with a counterpart to individual opinion. The sinking energies of increasing age, like the dimness of enfeebled vision, have a constant tendency to deprive passing events of their natural sharpness of outline, and the broader features of their character; and we learn to charge them with an indistinctness of form, and a sombre tameness of colouring, which only exists in the spectator's mind. The defects of our own impaired and waning organs become transferred to the changeless objects around us; and in proportion as the imagination recalls the impressions of earlier life, when the sense enjoyed

4 See the account of sir John Conyers' tomb in Gough's Camden, iii. p. 114.

15 Schol. in Lycoph. v. 177.

* Hesychius in v. ελχεσίβροντα.
"Plutarch. Apophtheg. Lacon. 17.

the robust and healthy action of youth, the present is doomed to suffer by an unjust and degrading contrast. Thus also in the lengthened vista of popular tradition, every thing which is shrouded in the obscurity of a distant age, is made to partake of those physical and temporal advantages which the fancy has bestowed upon the reign of Saturn in Hesperia, or the joys of Asgard before the arrival of the gigantic visitants from Jotunheim. The qualities of the mind, and the properties of the body, are then supposed to share in the native vigour of a young creation; and those cherished objects of man's early wishes, extreme longevity and great corporeal strength, are believed to be the enviable lot of all 30. Hence the fictions of every country have agreed in regarding an unusual extension of the thread of life as a mark of divine favour ; and

See Diod. Sic. iii. 61. Compare also Hesiod's account of the golden age. Op. et Dies, v. 108, &c. The comic side of the picture is to be found in Athæn. 1. vi. p. 267, &c. But the ancients always had some distant country, where these fancied blessings were still enjoyed. In the earlier periods, Ethiopia seems to have been the name ascribed to this land of promise (II. i. 428. Od. i. 22.); and hence perhaps the flattering, though somewhat sobered, picture of its inhabitants given by Herodotus iii. c. 17-24. Later traditions place the scene in the country of the Hyperboreans, a people changing their locality from the northern extremity of Asia to that of Europe, or even the coast of Gaul (compare Diod. Sic. 2. c. 47 with Pomponius Mela, 3. c. 5.), and to whom Strabo, on the authority of Simonides and Pindar, has given a life of a thousand years, lib. xv. p. 711. Another chain of fiction assigns it to the isles of the West (Od. iv. 563), and from hence have sprung the descriptions of Horace (Epod. xvi. 41), and Plutarch (in Vit. Sertor.). For similar accounts of India see Ctesias ap. Wesseling's Herod. p. 861. and Pliny vii. 2.

20

Edda of Snorro Dæmesaga, 12. Josephus, after noticing the age of Noah, cites the testimonies of Manetho

for the extreme longevity of the early Egyptians; of Hieronymus for that of the Phoenicians; of Hesiod, Hecatæus, &c. for the Grecians; all of whom gave a thousand years to the life of man in the first periods of the world. Archæolog. i. c. 3. § 9. For the same advantage enjoyed by the early Egyptian kings, see Diod. Sic. i. 26, and compare Pliny's account of the Arcadians and Ætolians, some of whom lived three hundred years. Hist. Nat. vii. 43. The long-lived Ethiopians of Herodotus, who, be it remembered, were the tallest and most beautiful of mankind, usually lived 120 years. Herod. iii. c. 17. 23.

At the siege of Troy the "Pylian sage" was living his third age. Il. i. 250, A Lycian tradition had assigned to Sar pedon a life of three ages, as the favourite son of Jove. Apollod. Bibl. iii. 1, 2. Heyne, forgetful that we are here on mythic ground, wishes to follow Diodorus, who attempts to give the narrative an air of probability, by making two Sarpedons, a grandsire and his grandson. Tiresias was said to have lived seven ages, and Agatharchides more than five. (Meurs. in Lycophr. v. 682.) Norna-Gest, as he lighted the candle on which his existence depended, said he was three hundred years old. (Norna

every national hero has been endowed with gigantic stature", and made to possess all those virtues which the common consent of mankind unites in considering so, or the ruder ethics of an earlier period have substituted for such.

With regard to those standing types of popular fiction, which have been compared to the roots of language, the history of their application in various periods of society displays the same frequent recurrence of certain primitive images, and the same series of ever-changing analysis and combination which mark the growth and progress of language itself. There will appear something fanciful perhaps in this comparison, yet the nearer we investigate it, the more we shall feel assured, that many of the laws which have governed the one are strictly analogous with those which have swayed the development of the other; and that, however much we may dispute as to the causes which have called forth these important phænomena of the mind, their subsequent regulation is considerably less equivocal. The mass of primitives in every language,

Gest Saga in Müller's Saga-Bibliothek, vol. ii. p. 113.) Toke Tokesen was also fated to live two ages of man, Ib. p. 117. and Hildebrand, the invincible champion and Mentor of Theodoric, died aged 180 or 200 years. Ib. 278.

The sandal of Perseus found at Chemnis was two cubits in length. Herod. 2. c. 91. The footstep of Hercules shown in Scythia, was of the same size. Ib. 4. c. 82.; though the more sober traditions make his whole stature only four cubits and a foot. (Herod. Ponticus ad Lycophr. v. 663.) Lycophron calls Achilles ròv várnxv, Cass. v. 860.

The body of Orestes when found measured seven cubits. (Herod. I. c. 68.) And for the large size of Ajax, Pelops and Theseus, see Paus. i. 35. v. 13. and Plut. in Vit. c. 36.

A Feroe song says of Sigurdr (the Siegfred of the Nibelungen Lied), that he grew more in one month than others did in twelve. (Compare the romance of Sir

Gowghther and Homer's account of Otus and Ephialtes, Od. 11. 308.) He was so tall, that when he walked through a field of ripe rye, the point of his sword (which was seven spans long) might be seen above the standing corn. (Muller, p. 61.) A hair of his horse's tail, which Gest shewed king Oluf, measured seven ells. (Ib. p. 111. Theodoric of Berne was two ells broad between the shoulders, tall as an Eten (giant), and stronger than any man would believe who had not seen him. (Wilkina-Saga, c. 14.) The grave of Gawain was fourteen feet long, the reputed stature of Little John. (Ritson.) Of Arthur, Higden has said: "Also have mynde that Arthures chyn-bone that was thenne (on the discovery of his body at Glastonbury) shewed, was lenger by thre ynches than the legge and the knee of the lengest man, that was thenne founde. Also the face of his forhede, bytweene hys two eyen, was a spanne brode." Trevisa's transl. f. 290. rec.

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