【国外英文文学】Myths and Myth-Makers.docx

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1、【国外英文文学】Myths and Myth-MakersMyths and Myth-Makers: Old Tales and Superstitions Interpreted by comparative mythology by John Fiskeby John FiskeLa mythologie, cette science toute nouvelle, qui nous fait suivre les croyances de nos peres, depuis le berceau du monde jusquaux superstitions de nos campag

2、nes.-EDMOND SCHERERTO MY DEAR FRIEND, WILLIAM DEAN HOWELLS,IN REMEMBRANCE OF PLEASANT AUTUMN EVENINGS SPENT AMONG WEREWOLVES AND TROLLS AND NIXIES, I dedicate THIS RECORD OF OUR ADVENTURES.PREFACE.IN publishing this somewhat rambling and unsystematic series of papers, in which I have endeavoured to

3、touch briefly upon a great many of the most important points in the study of mythology, I think it right to observe that, in order to avoid confusing the reader with intricate discussions, I have sometimes cut the matter short, expressing myself with dogmatic definiteness where a sceptical vagueness

4、 might perhaps have seemed more becoming. In treating of popular legends and superstitions, the paths of inquiry are circuitous enough, and seldom can we reach a satisfactory conclusion until we have travelled all the way around Robin Hoods barn and back again. I am sure that the reader would not ha

5、ve thanked me for obstructing these crooked lanes with the thorns and brambles of philological and antiquarian discussion, to such an extent as perhaps to make him despair of ever reaching the high road. I have not attempted to review, otherwise than incidentally, the works of Grimm, Muller, Kuhn, B

6、real, Dasent, and Tylor; nor can I pretend to have added anything of consequence, save now and then some bit of explanatory comment, to the results obtained by the labour of these scholars; but it has rather been my aim to present these results in such a way as to awaken general interest in them. An

7、d accordingly, in dealing with a subject which depends upon philology almost as much as astronomy depends upon mathematics, I have omitted philological considerations wherever it has been possible to do so. Nevertheless, I believe that nothing has been advanced as established which is not now genera

8、lly admitted by scholars, and that nothing has been advanced as probable for which due evidence cannot be produced. Yet among many points which are proved, and many others which are probable, there must always remain many other facts of which we cannot feel sure that our own explanation is the true

9、one; and the student who endeavours to fathom the primitive thoughts of mankind, as enshrined in mythology, will do well to bear in mind the modest words of Jacob Grimm,- himself the greatest scholar and thinker who has ever dealt with this class of subjects,-I shall indeed interpret all that I can,

10、 but I cannot interpret all that I should like.PETERSHAM, September 6, 1872.CONTENTS.I. THE ORIGINS OF FOLK-LOREII. THE DESCENT OF FIREIII. WEREWOLVES AND SWAN-MAIDENSIV. LIGHT AND DARKNESSV. MYTHS OF THE BARBARIC WORLDVI. JUVENTUS MUNDIVII. THE PRIMEVAL GHOST-WORLDNOTEMYTHS AND MYTH-MAKERS.I. THE O

11、RIGINS OF FOLK-LORE.FEW mediaeval heroes are so widely known as William Tell. His exploits have been celebrated by one of the greatest poets and one of the most popular musicians of modern times. They are doubtless familiar to many who have never heard of Stauffacher or Winkelried, who are quite ign

12、orant of the prowess of Roland, and to whom Arthur and Lancelot, nay, even Charlemagne, are but empty names.Nevertheless, in spite of his vast reputation, it is very likely that no such person as William Tell ever existed, and it is certain that the story of his shooting the apple from his sons head

13、 has no historical value whatever. In spite of the wrath of unlearned but patriotic Swiss, especially of those of the cicerone class, this conclusion is forced upon us as soon as we begin to study the legend in accordance with the canons of modern historical criticism. It is useless to point to Tell

14、s lime-tree, standing to-day in the centre of the market-place at Altdorf, or to quote for our confusion his crossbow preserved in the arsenal at Zurich, as unimpeachable witnesses to the truth of the story. It is in vain that we are told, The bricks are alive to this day to testify to it; therefore

15、, deny it not. These proofs are not more valid than the handkerchief of St. Veronica, or the fragments of the true cross. For if relics are to be received as evidence, we must needs admit the truth of every miracle narrated by the Bollandists.The earliest work which makes any allusion to the adventu

16、res of William Tell is the chronicle of the younger Melchior Russ, written in 1482. As the shooting of the apple was supposed to have taken place in 1296, this leaves an interval of one hundred and eighty-six years, during which neither a Tell, nor a William, nor the apple, nor the cruelty of Gessle

17、r, received any mention. It may also be observed, parenthetically, that the charters of Kussenach, when examined, show that no man by the name of Gessler ever ruled there. The chroniclers of the fifteenth century, Faber and Hammerlin, who minutely describe the tyrannical acts by which the Duke of Au

18、stria goaded the Swiss to rebellion, do not once mention Tells name, or betray the slightest acquaintance with his exploits or with his existence. In the Zurich chronicle of 1479 he is not alluded to. But we have still better negative evidence. John of Winterthur, one of the best chroniclers of the

19、Middle Ages, was living at the time of the battle of Morgarten (1315), at which his father was present. He tells us how, on the evening of that dreadful day, he saw Duke Leopold himself in his flight from the fatal field, half dead with fear. He describes, with the loving minuteness of a contemporar

20、y, all the incidents of the Swiss revolution, but nowhere does he say a word about William Tell. This is sufficiently conclusive. These mediaeval chroniclers, who never failed to go out of their way after a bit of the epigrammatic and marvellous, who thought far more of a pointed story than of histo

21、rical credibility, would never have kept silent about the adventures of Tell, if they had known anything about them.After this, it is not surprising to find that no two authors who describe the deeds of William Tell agree in the details of topography and chronology. Such discrepancies never fail to

22、confront us when we leave the solid ground of history and begin to deal with floating legends. Yet, if the story be not historical, what could have been its origin? To answer this question we must considerably expand the discussion.The first author of any celebrity who doubted the story of William T

23、ell was Guillimann, in his work on Swiss Antiquities, published in 1598. He calls the story a pure fable, but, nevertheless, eating his words, concludes by proclaiming his belief in it, because the tale is so popular! Undoubtedly he acted a wise part; for, in 1760, as we are told, Uriel Freudenberge

24、r was condemned by the canton of Uri to be burnt alive, for publishing his opinion that the legend of Tell had a Danish origin.11 See Delepierre, Historical Difficulties, p. 75.The bold heretic was substantially right, however, like so many other heretics, earlier and later. The Danish account of Te

25、ll is given as follows, by Saxo Grammaticus:-A certain Palnatoki, for some time among King Harolds body-guard, had made his bravery odious to very many of his fellow-soldiers by the zeal with which he surpassed them in the discharge of his duty. This man once, when talking tipsily over his cups, had

26、 boasted that he was so skilled an archer that he could hit the smallest apple placed a long way off on a wand at the first shot; which talk, caught up at first by the ears of backbiters, soon came to the hearing of the king. Now, mark how the wickedness of the king turned the confidence of the sire

27、 to the peril of the son, by commanding that this dearest pledge of his life should be placed instead of the wand, with a threat that, unless the author of this promise could strike off the apple at the first flight of the arrow, he should pay the penalty of his empty boasting by the loss of his hea

28、d. The kings command forced the soldier to perform more than he had promised, and what he had said, reported, by the tongues of slanderers, bound him to accomplish what he had NOT said. Yet did not his sterling courage, though caught in the snare of slander, suffer him to lay aside his firmness of h

29、eart; nay, he accepted the trial the more readily because it was hard. So Palnatoki warned the boy urgently when he took his stand to await the coming of the hurtling arrow with calm ears and unbent head, lest, by a slight turn of his body, he should defeat the practised skill of the bowman; and, ta

30、king further counsel to prevent his fear, he turned away his face, lest he should be scared at the sight of the weapon. Then, taking three arrows from the quiver, he struck the mark given him with the first he fitted to the string. . . . . But Palnatoki, when asked by the king why he had taken more

31、arrows from the quiver, when it had been settled that he should only try the fortune of the bow ONCE, made answer, That I might avenge on thee the swerving of the first by the points of the rest, lest perchance my innocence might have been punished, while your violence escaped scot-free. 22 Saxo Gra

32、mmaticus, Bk. X. p. 166, ed. Frankf. 1576.This ruthless king is none other than the famous Harold Blue-tooth, and the occurrence is placed by Saxo in the year 950. But the story appears not only in Denmark, but in Fingland, in Norway, in Finland and Russia, and in Persia, and there is some reason fo

33、r supposing that it was known in India. In Norway we have the adventures of Pansa the Splay-footed, and of Hemingr, a vassal of Harold Hardrada, who invaded England in 1066. In Iceland there is the kindred legend of Egil brother of Wayland Smith, the Norse Vulcan. In England there is the ballad of W

34、illiam of Cloudeslee, which supplied Scott with many details of the archery scene in Ivanhoe. Here, says the dauntless bowman, I have a sonne seven years old; Hee is to me full deere; I will tye him to a stake- All shall see him that bee here- And lay an apple upon his head, And goe six paces him fr

35、oe, And I myself with a broad arrowe Shall cleave the apple in towe.In the Malleus Maleficarum a similar story is told Puncher, a famous magician on the Upper Rhine. The great ethnologist Castren dug up the same legend in Finland. It is common, as Dr. Dasent observes, to the Turks and Mongolians; an

36、d a legend of the wild Samoyeds, who never heard of Tell or saw a book in their lives relates it, chapter and verse, of one of their marksmen. Finally, in the Persian poem of Farid-Uddin Attar, born in 1119, we read a story of a prince who shoots an apple from the head of a beloved page. In all thes

37、e stories, names and motives of course differ; but all contain the same essential incidents. It is always an unerring archer who, at the capricious command of a tyrant, shoots from the head of some one dear to him a small object, be it an apple, a nut, or a piece of coin. The archer always provides

38、himself with a second arrow, and, when questioned as to the use he intended to make of his extra weapon, the invariable reply is, To kill thee, tyrant, had I slain my son. Now, when a marvellous occurrence is said to have happened everywhere, we may feel sure that it never happened anywhere. Popular

39、 fancies propagate themselves indefinitely, but historical events, especially the striking and dramatic ones, are rarely repeated. The facts here collected lead inevitably to the conclusion that the Tell myth was known, in its general features, to our Aryan ancestors, before ever they left their pri

40、mitive dwelling-place in Central Asia.It may, indeed, be urged that some one of these wonderful marksmen may really have existed and have performed the feat recorded in the legend; and that his true story, carried about by hearsay tradition from one country to another and from age to age, may have f

41、ormed the theme for all the variations above mentioned, just as the fables of La Fontaine were patterned after those of AEsop and Phaedrus, and just as many of Chaucers tales were consciously adopted from Boccaccio. No doubt there has been a good deal of borrowing and lending among the legends of di

42、fferent peoples, as well as among the words of different languages; and possibly even some picturesque fragment of early history may have now and then been carried about the world in this manner. But as the philologist can with almost unerring certainty distinguish between the native and the importe

43、d words in any Aryan language, by examining their phonetic peculiarities, so the student of popular traditions, though working with far less perfect instruments, can safely assert, with reference to a vast number of legends, that they cannot have been obtained by any process of conscious borrowing.

44、The difficulties inseparable from any such hypothesis will become more and more apparent as we proceed to examine a few other stories current in different portions of the Aryan domain.As the Swiss must give up his Tell, so must the Welshman be deprived of his brave dog Gellert, over whose cruel fate

45、 I confess to having shed more tears than I should regard as well bestowed upon the misfortunes of many a human hero of romance. Every one knows how the dear old brute killed the wolf which had come to devour Llewellyns child, and how the prince, returning home and finding the cradle upset and the d

46、ogs mouth dripping blood, hastily slew his benefactor, before the cry of the child from behind the cradle and the sight of the wolfs body had rectified his error. To this day the visitor to Snowdon is told the touching story, and shown the place, called Beth-Gellert,3 where the dogs grave is still t

47、o be seen. Nevertheless, the story occurs in the fireside lore of nearly every Aryan people. Under the Gellert-form it started in the Panchatantra, a collection of Sanskrit fables; and it has even been discovered in a Chinese work which dates from A. D. 668. Usually the hero is a dog, but sometimes

48、a falcon, an ichneumon, an insect, or even a man. In Egypt it takes the following comical shape: A Wali once smashed a pot full of herbs which a cook had prepared. The exasperated cook thrashed the well-intentioned but unfortunate Wali within an inch of his life, and when he returned, exhausted with

49、 his efforts at belabouring the man, to examine the broken pot, he discovered amongst the herbs a poisonous snake.4 Now this story of the Wali is as manifestly identical with the legend of Gellert as the English word FATHER is with the Latin pater; but as no one would maintain that the word father is in any sense deriv