Chapter 19

Lastly, I take a passage from Godfrey of Viterbo's Pantheon, which was finished in 1187 (Pistorii Scriptor. 2, 53):---'Cum legimus Adam de limo terrae formatum, intelligendum est ex quatuor elementis. mundus enim iste major ex quatuor elementis constat, igne, aere, aqua et terra. humanum quoque corpus dicitur microcosmus, id est minor mundus. habet namque ex terra carnem, ex aqua humores, ex aere flatum, ex igne calorem. caput autem ejus est rotundum sicut coelum, in quo duo sunt oculi, tanquam duo luminaria in coelo micant. venter ejus tanquam mare continet omnes liquores. pectus et pulmo emittit voces, et quasi coelestes resonat harmonias. pedes tanquam terra sustinent corpus universum. ex igni coelesti habet visum, e superiore aere habet auditum, ex inferiori habet olfactum, ex aqua gustum, ex terra habet tactum. in duritie participat cum lapidibus, in ossibus vigorem habet cum arboribus, in capillis et unguibus decorem habet cum graminibus et floribus. sensus habet cum brutis animalibus. ecce talis est hominis substantia corporea.'---Godfrey, educated at Bamberg, and chaplain to German kings, must have heard in Germany the doctrine of the eight parts; he brings forward only a portion of it, such as he could reconcile with his other system of the four elements; he rather compares particular parts of the body with natural objects, than affirms that those were created out of these.

Not one of the four compositions has any direct connexion with another, as their peculiarities prove; but that they all rest on a common foundation follows at once from the 'octo pondera, achta wendem, aht teilen,' among which the alleged correspondences are distributed. They show important discrepancies in the details, and a different order is followed in each. Only three items go right through the first three accounts, namely, that lime (loam, earth) was taken for the flesh, dew for the sweat, clouds for the mind. But then the MHG. and Frisian texts travel much further together; both of them make bone spring out of stone, hair (locks) from grass, eyes from the sun, blood from the sea (water), none of which appear in the AS. Peculiar to the MHG. poem is the derivation of the veins from herbs (würzen), and to the AS. writer that of the blood from fire, of tears from salt, of the various colours in the eye from flowers, (11) of cold breath from wind, and of sense from grace; which last, though placed beyond doubt by the annexed translation, seems an error notwithstanding, for it was purely out of material objects that creation took place; or can the meaning be, that man's will is first conditioned by the grace of God? Fitly enough, tears are likened to salt (salsae lacrimae); somewhat oddly the colours of the eye to flowers, though it is not uncommon to speak of an opening flower as an eye. The creation of hearts out of wind is found in the Frisian account alone, which is also the only one that adds, that into this mixture of eight materials God blew his holy breath, and out of Adam's rib created his companion Eve [the MHG. has: 'imparted his breath']. (12)

If now we compare all the statements with those taken from the Edda, their similarity or sameness is beyond all question: blood with sea or water, flesh with earth, home with stone, hair with trees or grass, are coupled together in the same way here. What weighs more than anything with me is the accordance of 'brain and clouds' with 'thoughts and clouds.' The brain is the seat of thought, and as clouds pass over the sky, so we to this day have them flit across the mind; 'clouded brow' we say of a reflective pensive brooding one, and the Grîmnismâl 45b applies to the clouds the epithet harðmôðagr, hard of mood. It was quite in the spirit of the Edda to make the skull do for the sky, and the eyebrows for a castle; but how could sky or castle have furnished materials for the human frame? That the striking correspondence of the sun to the eye should be wanting in the Edda, is the more surprising, as the sun, moon and stars are so commonly spoken of as eyes (Superst. 614), and antiquity apears even to have seen tongues in them, both of which points fall to be discussed in Chap. XXII.; meanwhile, if these enumerations are found incomplete, it may be that there were plenty more of such correspondences passing current. If Thôrr flung a toe into the sky as a constellation, there may also have been tongues that represented stars.

The main difference between the Scandinavian view and all the others is, as I said before, that the one uses the microcosm as material for the macrocosm, and the other inversely makes the universe contribute to the formation of man. There the whole of nature is but the first man gone to pieces, here man is put together out of the elements of nature. The first way of thinking seems more congenial to the childhood of the world, it is all in keeping to explain the sun as a giant's eye, the mountains as his bones, the bushes as his hair; there are plenty of legends still that account for particular lakes and marshes by the gushing blood of a giant, for oddly-shaped rocks by his ribs and marrow-bones; and in a similar strain the waving corn was likened to the hair of Sif or Ceres. It is at once felt to be more artificial for sun and mountain and tree to be put into requisition to produce the human eye and bones and hair. Yet we do speak of eyes being sunny, and of our flesh as akin to dust, and why may not even the heathens have felt prompted to turn that cosmogonic view upside down? Still more would this commend itself to Christians, as the Bible expressly states that man was made of earth or loam, (13) without enlarging on the formation of the several constituent parts of the body. None of the Fathers seem to be acquainted with the theory of the eight constituents of the first man; I will not venture to decide whether it was already familiar to heathen times, and maintained itself by the side of the Eddic doctrine, or first arose out of the collision of this with christian teaching, and is to be regarded as a fuller development of the Adamic dogma. If Adam was interpreted to mean clay, it was but taking a step farther to explain, more precisely, that the flesh only was borrowed from earth, but the bones from stones, and the hair from grass. It is almost unscriptural, the way in which the MHG. poetizer of Genesis (Fundgr. 2, 15) launches out into such minutiæ:---'Duo Got zeinitzen stucchen den man zesamene wolte rucchen, duo nam er, sôsich wâne, einen leim zâhe (glutinous lime), dâ er wolte daz daz lit zesamene solte (wished the limbs to come together), streich des unterzuisken (smeared it between), daz si zesamene mohten haften (stick). denselben letten (clay) tet er ze âdaren (made into veins), uber ieglich lit er zôch denselben leim zâch, daz si vasto chlebeten, zesamene sich habeten. ûz hertem leime (hard lime) tet er daz gebeine, uz prôder erde (crumbly earth) hiez er daz fleisk werden, ûz letten deme zâhen machet er die âdare. duo er in allen zesamene gevuocte, duo bestreich er in mit einer slôte (bedaubed him with a slime), diu selbe slôte wart ze dere hûte (became the skin). duo er daz pilede (figure) êrlich gelegete fure sich, duo stuont er ime werde obe der selben erde. sînen geist er in in blies, michelen sin er ime firliez, die âdare alle wurden pluotes folle, ze fleiske wart diu erde, ze peine der leim herte, die âdare pugen sich swâ zesamene gie daz lit (blew his spirit in, imparted mickle sense, the veins filled with blood, the earth became flesh, the hard lime bone, etc).'----These distinctions between lime, clay, earth and slime have a tang of heathenism; the poet durst not entirely depart from the creation as set forth by the church, but that compounding of man out of several materials appears to be still known to him. And traces of it are met with in the folk-poetry. (14)

It is significant how Greek and, above all, Asiatic myths of the creation coincide with the Norse (and what I believe to have been once the universal Teutonic) view of the world's origin out of component parts of the human body: it must therefore be of remote antiquity. The story lasts in India to this day, that Brahmâ was slain by the other gods, and the sky made out of his skull: there is some analogy to this in the Greek notion of Atlas supporting on his head the vault of heaven. According to one of the Orphic poets, the body of Zeus is understood to be the earth, his bones the mountains, and his eyes the sun and moon. (15) Cochin-Chinese traditions tell, how Buddha made the world out of the giant Banio's body, of his skull the sky, of his eyes the sun and moon, of his flesh the earth, of his bones rocks and hills, and of his hair trees and plants. Similar macrocosms are met with in Japan and Ceylon; Kalmuk poems describe how the earth arose from the metamorphosis of a mountain-giantess, the sea from her blood (Finn. Magn. Lex., 877-8, and Suppl.).

But Indian doctrine itself inverts this macrocosm, making the sun enter into the eye, plants into the hair, stones into the bones, and water into the blood of created man, so that in him the whole world is mirrored back. According to a Chaldean cosmogony, when Belus had cut the darkness in twain, and divided heaven from earth, he commanded his own head to be struck off, and the blood to be let run into the ground; out of this arose man gifted with reason. Hesiod's representation is, that Pandora was formed by Hephæstus out of earth mingled with water, and then Hermes endowed her with speech, Erga 61-79. The number of ingredients is first reduced to earth and blood (or water), then in the O.T. to earth alone.

And there are yet other points of agreement claiming our attention. As Ymir engendered man and wife out of his hand, and a giant son out of his foot, we are told by the Indian Manus, that Brahmâ produced four families of men, namely from his mouth the first brahman (priest), from his arm the first kshatriya (warrior), from his thigh the first vizh (trader and husbandman), (16) from his foot the first sûdra (servant and artizan). And so, no doubt, would the Eddic tradition, were it more fully preserved, make a difference of rank exist between the offspring of Ymir's hand and those of his foot; a birth from the foot must mean a lower one. There is even a Caribbean myth in which Luguo, the sky, descends to the earth, and the first parents of mankind come forth from his navel and thigh, in which he had made an incision. (17) Reading of these miraculous births, who can help thinking of Athena coming out of Zeus's head (tritogenia), and Dionysus out of his thigh (mhrorrafhj)? As the latter was called dimhtwr (two-mothered), so the unexplained fable of the nine mothers of Heimdallr (p. 234) seems to rest on some similar ground (see Suppl.).

From these earlier creations of gods and giants the Edda and, as the sequel will show, the Indian religion distinguish the creation of the first human pair. As with Adam and Eve in Scripture, so in the Edda there is presupposed some material to be quickened by God, but a simple, not a composite one. Trê means both tree and wood, askr the ash-tree (fraxinus); the relation of Askr to the Isco of heroic legend has already been discussed, p. 350. If by the side of Askr, the man, there stood an Eskja, the woman, the balance would be held more evenly; they would be related as Meshia and Meshiane in the Persian myth, man and women, who likewise grew out of plants. But the Edda calls them Askr and Embla: embla, emla, signifies a busy woman, OHG. emila, as in fiur-emila (focaria), a cinderella (Graff 1, 252), from amr, ambr, aml, ambl (labor assiduus), whence also the hero's name Amala (p. 370). As regards Askr however, it seems worthy of notice, that legend makes the first king of the Saxons, Aschanes (Askanius), grow up out of the Harz rocks, by a fountain-head in the midst of the forest. Seeing that the Saxons themselves take their name from sahs (saxum, stone), that a divine hero bears the name of Sahsnôt (p. 203), that other traditions derive the word Germani from germinare, because the Germans are said to have grown on trees; (18) we have here the possibility of a complex chain of relationships. The Geogr. of Ravenna says, the Saxons removed from their ancient seats to Britian 'cum principe suo, nomine Anchis.' This may be Hengist, or still better his son Oesc, whom I have identified with Askr. (19)

Plainly there existed primitive legends, which made the first men, or the founders of certain branches of the Teutonic nation, grow out of trees and rocks, that is to say, which endeavoured to trace the lineage of living beings to the half-alive kingdom of plants and stones. Even our leut (populus), OHG. liut, has for its root liotan (crescere, pullulare), OS. liud, liodan; (20) and the sacredness of woods and mountains in our olden time is heightened by this connexion. And similar notions of the Greeks fit in with this. One who can reckon up his ancestors is appealed to with the argument (Od. 19, 163):

ou gar apo druoj essi palaifatou oud apo petrhj

for not of fabled oak art thou, nor rock; (21) and there must have been fairy tales about it, which children told each other in confidential chat (oarizemenai apo druoj hd apo petrhj, Il. 22, 126. (22) alla tih moi tauta peri drun h peri petrhn; Hes. Theog. 35). In marked unison with the myth of Askr is the statement of Hesiod, that Zeus formed the third or brazen race out of ash-trees (ek melian, Op. 147); and if the allusion be to the stout ashen shafts of the heroes, why, Isco or Askr may have brandished them too. One remembers too those wood-wives and fays, who, like the Greek meliads and dryads, had their sole power of living bound up with some particular oak or ash, and, unlike the tree-born man, had never got wholly detached from the material of their origin. Then, a creation out of stones is recorded in the story of Deucalion, whom after the deluge Hermes bade throw stones behind his back: those that he threw, all turned into men, and those that his wife Pyrrha threw, into women. As in the Edda, after the great flood comes a new creation; only in this case the rescued poeple are themselves the actors. (23) Even the Jews appear to have known of a mythical creation out of stones, for we read in Matth. 3, 9: oti duvatai o Qeoj ek twn liqwn toutwn egeirai tekna tw Abraam (see Suppl.).

The creation of dwarfs is described ambiguously in the Edda: according to one story they bred as worms in the proto-giant's flesh, and were then endowed by the gods with understanding and human shape; but by the older account they were created out of the flesh and bones of another giant Brîmir. All this has to do with the black elves alone, and must not extend to the light ones, about whose origin we are left in the dark. And other mythologies are equally silent.

It is important and interesting to get a clear view of the gradation and sequence of the several creations. That in the Edda giants come first, gods next, and then, after an intervening deluge, men and dwarfs are created, appears in surprising harmony with a theological opinion largely adopted throughout the Mid. Ages, according to which, though the O.T. begins with the work of the six days, yet the existence and consequently the creation of angels and the apostasy of devils had gone before, and then were produced heaven and earth, man and all other creatures. (24) Aftewards, it is true, there comes also a destructive flood, but does not need to be followed by a new creation, for a pious remnant of mankind is saved, which peoples the earth anew. The Muhammedan eblis (by aphæresis from dieblis, diabolus) is an apostate spirit indeed, but created after Adam, and expelled from Paradise. Our Teutonic giants resemble at once the rebel angels (devils) and the sinful men swept away by the flood; here deliverance was in store for a patriarch, there for a giant, who after it continues his race by the side of men. A narrative preserved in the appendix to our Heldenbuch offers some fragments of cosmogony: three creations follow one another, that of dwarfs leading the way, after whom come giants, and lastly men; God has called into being the skilful dwarfs to cultivate waste lands and mountain regions, the giants to fight wild beasts, and the heroes to assist the dwarfs against disloyal giants; this connection and mutual dependence of the races is worthy of note, though on the manner of creating there is not a word. Lastly, the threefold arrangement of classes instituted by Heimdallr (25) may, I think, be regarded as a later act in the drama of creation, of which perhaps a trace is yet to be seen even in modern traditions (p. 234). (26)

Another thing I lay stress on is, that in the Edda man and women (Askr and Embla) come into existence together, but the Bible makes two separate actions, Adam's creation coming first, and Eve's being performed afterwards and in a different manner. (27) So, by Hesiod's account, there already existed men descended from the gods themselves, when the first woman Pandora, the all-gifted, fair and false, was formed out of earth and flood (p. 571). It is difficult to arrive at the exact point of view in the Hesiodic poems. In the Theogony, there ascend out of chaos first Gaia (earth) the giantess, then Erebus (corresp. to Niflheim) and Night; but Gaia by herself brought forth Uranus (sky) and seas and mountains, then other children by Uranus, the last of them Kronus the father of Zeus and ancestor of all the gods. As the Edda has a Buri and Börr before Oðinn, so do Uranus and Kronus here come before Zeus; with Zeus and Oðinn begins the race of gods proper, and Poseidon and Hades complete the fraternal trio, like Vili and Ve. The enmity of gods and titans is therefore that of âses and giants; at the same time, there is just as much resemblance in the expulsion of the titans from heaven (Thog. 813) to the fall of the rebel angels into the bottomless pit; so that to the giant element in the titans we may add a dæmonic. When the 'Works and Days' makes the well-known five races fill five successive ages, the act of creation must needs have been repeated several times; on which point neither the poem itself nor Plato (Cratyl. 397-8, Steph.) gives sufficient information. First came the golden race of blissful daimones, next the silver one of weaker divine beings, thirdly, the brazen one of warriors sprung from ash-trees, fourthly, the race of heroes, fifthly, the iron one of men now living. The omission of a metal designation for the fourth race is of itself enough to make the statement look imperfect. Dimmest of all is the second race, which also Plate passes over, discussing only dæmons, heroes and men: will the diminutive stature of these shorter-lived genii warrant a comparison with the wights and elves of our own mythology? In the third race giants seem to be portrayed, or fighters of the giant sort, confronting as they do the rightful heroes of the fourth. The latter we might in Mosaic language call sons of Elohim, and the former sons of men; at the same time, their origin from the ash would admit of their being placed beside the first-created men of the Edda. The agreement of the myths would be more striking if we might bestow the name of stone race on the third, and shift that of brazen, together with the creation from the ash, to the fourth; stones being the natural arms of giants. Apollodorus however informs us it was the brazen race that Zeus intended to destroy in the great flood which Deucalion and Pyrrha were saved, and this fits in with the Scandinavian overthrow of giants. The creation of Askr and Embla has its parallel in the stone-throwing of the Greek myth, and the race of heroes might also be called stone-created (see Suppl.).

It will be proper, before concluding, to cast a glance at the Story of the Deluge: its diffusion among the most diverse nations of the earth gives a valuable insight into the nature of these myths. (28)

From the sons of God having mingled with the daughters of men sprang robbers and wrongdoers; and it repented Jehovah that he had made man, and he said he would destroy everything on earth. But Noah found favour in his eyes, and he bade him build a great ark, and enter therein with his household. Then it began to rain, until the waters rose fifteen cubits above the highest mountains, and all that had flesh and breath perished, but the ark floated on the flood. Then Jehovah stayed the rain, the waters returned from off the earth, and the ark rested on the mountains of Ararat. But Noah let out first a raven, then a dove, which found no rest for her foot and returned into the ark; and after seven days he again sent forth a dove, which came back with an olive leaf in her mouth; and after yet other seven days he sent forth a dove, which returned not any more. (29) Then Noah came out on the dry earth, and offered a clean burnt offering, and Jehovah made a covenant with man, and set his bow in the cloud for a token of the covenant.

After this beautiful compact picture in the O.T., the Eddic narrative looks crude and unpolished. Not from heaven does the flood rain down, it swells up from the blood of the slain giant, whose carcase furnishes material for creating all things, and the human race itself. The insolence and violence of the annihilated giants resemble those of the sons of Elohim who had mingled with the children of men; and Noah's box (kibwtoj ) is like Bergelmi's lûðr. But the epic touches, such as the landing on the mountain, the outflying dove, the sacrifice and rainbow, would surely not have been left out, had there been any borrowing here.

In the Assyrian tradition, (30) Kronos warns Sisuthros of the coming downpour, who thereupon builds a ship, and embarks with men and beasts. Three days after the rain has ceased, birds are sent out, twice they come flying back, the second time with slime on their feet, and the third time they stayed away. Sisuthros got out first with his wife and daughter and pilot, they prayed, sacrificed, and suddenly disappeared. When the rest came to land, a voice sounded in the air, saying the devout Sisuthros had been taken up to the gods; but they were left to propagate the human race. Their vessel down to recent times lay on the mountains of Armenia. (31) Coins of Apamea, a city in Phrygia, show an ark floating on the water, with a man and woman in it; on it sits a bird, another comes flying with a twig in its claws. Close by stand the same human pair on firm land, holding up their right hands. Beside the ark appears the letters NW (Noah), and this Apamea is distinguished by the by-name of kibwtoj. (32)

According to Greek legend, Zeus had determined to destroy mankind; at the prompting of Prometheus, Deucalion built an ark, which received him and Pyrrha his wife. Zeus then sent a mighty rain, so that Hellas was flooded, and the people perished. Nine days and nights Deucalion floated on the waters, then landed on Parnassus, and offered sacrifice to Zeus; we have seen how this couple created a new generation by casting stones. Plutarch adds, that when Deucalion let a dove out of the ark, he could tell the approach of storm by her flying back, and of fair weather by her keeping away. Lucian (De dea Syria, cap. 12. 13) calls him Deukaliwna ton Skuqea (the Scythian); if that sprang out of Sisuqea, (33) it may have long had this altered form in the legend itself. Some branches of the Greek race had their own stories of an ancient flood, of which they called the heroes Ogyges and Ogygos;(34) but all these accounts are wanting in epic details. (35)

A rich store of these opens for us in the Indian Mahâbhârata. (36) King Manus stood on a river's bank, doing penance, when he heard the voice of a little fish imploring him to save it. He caught it in his hand and laid it in a vessel, but the fish began to grow, and demanded wider quarters. Manus threw it into a large lake, but the fish grew on, and wished to be taken to Gangâ the bride of the sea. Before long he had not room to stir even there, and Manus was obliged to carry him to the sea; but when launched in the sea, he foretold the coming of a fearful flood, Manus was to build a ship and go on board it with the seven sages, and preserve the seeds of all things, then he would show himself to them horned. Manus did as he was commanded, and sailed in the ship; the monster fish appeared, had the ship fastened to his horn by a rope, and towed it through the sea for many years, till they reached the summit of the Himavân, there he bade them moor the ship, and the spot to which it was tied still bears the name of Naubandhanam (ship-binding). Then spake the fish: I am Brahmâ, lord of created things, a higher than I there is not, in the shape of a fish have I delivered you; now shall Manus make all creatures, gods, asuris and men, and all the worlds, things movable and immovable. And as he had spoken, so it was done.

In the Bhâgavatam, Satyâvratas (supra, p. 249) takes the place of Manus, Vishnus that Brahmâ, and the facts are embellished with philosophy.

The Indian myth then, like the Teutonic, makes the Deluge precede the real creation, whereas in the Mosaic account Adam lives long before Noah, and the flood is not followed by a new creation. The seven rishis in the ship, as Bopp remarks, are of divine rather than human nature, sons of Brahmâ, and of an older birth than the inferior gods created by Manus or their enemies the asuris (elsewhere daityas and dânavas = titans, giants). But it is a great point gained for us, that Manus (after whom manushyas, homo, is named) comes in as a creator; so that in our German Mannus (whence manna and manniskja, homo) we recognise precisely Börr and his creator sons (p. 349). Askr and Embla are simply a reproduction of the same idea of creation, and on a par with Deucalion and Pyrrha, or Adam and Eve.

I must not pass over the fact, that the first part of the Indian poem, where Brahmâ as a fish is caught by Manus, and then reveals to him the future, lingers to this day in our nursery tale of the small all-powerful turbot or pike, who gradually elevates a fisherman from the meanest condition to the highest rank; and only plunges him back into his pristine poverty, when, urged by the counsels of a too ambitious wife, he desires at last to be equal with God. The bestowal of the successive dignities is in a measure a creation of the different orders. (37)

One more story of the Deluge, which relates the origin of the Lithuanians, deserves to be introduced. (38) When Pramzimas the most high god looked out of a window of his heavenly house (like Wuotan, p. 135) over the world, and perceived nothing but war and wrong among men, he sent two giants Wandu and Weyas (water and wind) upon the sinful earth, who laid all things waste for twenty nights and days. Looking down once more, when he happened to be eating celestial nuts, Pramzimas dropt a nutshell, and it lighted on the top of the highest mountain, to which beasts and several human pairs had fled for refuge. They all climbed into the shell, and it drifted on the flood which now covered all things. But God bent his countenance yet a third time upon the earth, and he laid the storm, and made the waters to abate. The men that were saved dispersed themselves, only one pair remained in that country, and from them the Lithuanians are descended. But they were now old, and they grieved, whereupon God sent them for a comforter (linxmine) the rainbow, who counselled them to leap over the earth's bones: nine times they leapt, and nine couples sprang up, founders of the nine tribes of Lithuania. This incident reminds us of the origin of men from the stones cast by Deucalion and Pyrrha; and the rainbow, of the Bible account, except that here it is introduced as a person, instructing the couple what to do, as Hermes (the divine messenger) did Deucalion. It were overbold perhaps to connect the nutshell with that nut-tree (p. 572-3), by which one vaguely expresses an unknown extraction.

Not all, even of the stories quoted, describe a universal deluge desolating the whole earth: that in which Deucalion was rescued affected Greece alone, and of such accounts of partial floods there are plenty. Philemon and Baucis in Phrygia (where Noah's ark rested, p. 577), had given shelter to the wayfaring gods, and being warned by them, fled up the mountain, and saw themselves saved when the flood rose over the land (Ovid. Met. 8, 620); they were changed into trees, as Askr and Embla were trees. A Welsh folktale says, that in Brecknockshire, where a large lake now lies, there once stood a great city. The king sent his messenger to the sinful inhabitants, to prove them; they heeded not his words, and refused him a lodging. He stept into a miserable hut, in which there only lay a child crying in its cradle (conf. lûdara, p. 559n.); there he passed the night, and in going away, dropt one of his gloves in the cradle. He had not left the city long, when he heard a noise and lamentation; he thought of turning back to look for his glove, but the town was no longer to be seen, the waters covered the whole plain, but lo, in the midst of the waves a cradle came floating, in which lay both child and glove. This child he took to the king, who had it reared as the sole survivor of the sunken city.(39) Conf. the story of Dold at the end of Ch. XXXII. Another and older narrative, found even in the British Triads, comes much nearer to those given above: When the lake of Llion overflowed and submerged all Britian, the people were all drowned save Dwyvan and Dwyvach, who escaped in a naked (sailless) ship, and afterwards repeopled the land. This ship is also named that of Nevydd nâv neivion, and had on board a male and female of every creature; again it is told, that the oxen of Hu Gadarn dragged the avanc (beaver) ashore out of the Llion lake, and it has never broken out since. (40)

Of still narrower limits are our German tales, as that of the dwarf seeking a lodging at Ralligen on L. Thun (no. 45), which is very like the Philemon-myth; of Arendsee (no. 111), where again only a husband and wife are saved; of Seeburg (no. 131); and Frauensee (no. 239). A Danish folktale is given by Thiele 1, 227. Fresh and graceful touches abound in the Servian lay of the three angels sent by God to the sinful world, and the origin of the Plattensee or Balatino yezero, Vuk 4, 8-13 (2^nd ed. 1, no. 207). (41)

There is above all a dash of German heathenism about the lakes and pools said to have been formed by the streaming blood of giants (Deut. sag. no. 325), as the destructive Deluge arose from Ymir's blood.

It appears to me impossible to refer to the whole mass of these tales about the great Flood and the Creation of the human species to the Mosaic record, as if they were mere perversions and distortions of it; the additions, omissions and discrepancies peculiar to almost every one of them are sufficient to forbid that. And I have not by a long way exhausted this cycle of legends (see Suppl.): in islands of the Eastern Archipelago, in Tonga and New Zealand, among Mexicans and Caribs there start up accounts, astonishingly similar and yet different, of creation and the first human pair, of a flood and deliverance, and the murder of a brother. (42)




ENDNOTES: