by night? Pure food for some pure nymph. The wasp-gods would be
forgotten; probably smoked out as sacrilegious intruders. The lucky
seer or poet who struck out the fancy would soon find imitators; and
it would become, after a while, a common and popular superstition
that Hamadryads haunted the hollow forest trees, Naiads the wells,
and Oreads the lawns. Somewhat thus, I presume, did the more
cheerful Hellenic myths displace the darker superstitions of the
Pelasgis and those rude Arcadian tribes who offered, even as late as
the Roman Empire, human sacrifices to gods whose original names were
forgotten.

But even the cultus of nymphs would be defiled after awhile by a
darker element. However fair, they might be capricious and
revengeful, like other women. Why not? And soon, men going out
into the forest would be missed for awhile. They had eaten narcotic
berries, got sun-strokes, wandered till they lost their wits. At
all events, their wits were gone. Who had done it? Who but the
nymphs? The men had seen something they should not have seen; done
something they would not have done; and the nymphs had punished the
unconscious rudeness by that frenzy. Fear, everywhere fear, of
Nature--the spotted panther as some one calls her, as fair as cruel,
as playful as treacherous. Always fear of Nature, till a Divine
light arise, and show men that they are not the puppets of Nature,
but her lords; and that they are to fear God, and fear naught else.

And so ends my true myth of the wasp-tree. No, it need not end
there; it may develop into a yet darker and more hideous form of
superstition, which Europe has often seen; which is common now among
the Negros; {223} which we may hope, will soon be exterminated.