wish-bone,[47] and so is the stem which bears the
forget-me-not or wild scorpion grass. So too the leaves of the
Hindu ficus religiosa resemble long spear-heads.[48] But in
many cases it is impossible for us to determine with
confidence the reasons which may have guided primitive men in
their choice of talismanic plants. In the case of some of
these stories, it would no doubt be wasting ingenuity to
attempt to assign a mythical origin for each point of detail.
The ointment of the dervise, for instance, in the Arabian
tale, has probably no special mythical significance, but was
rather suggested by the exigencies of the story, in an age
when the old mythologies were so far disintegrated and mingled
together that any one talisman would serve as well as another
the purposes of the narrator. But the lightning-plants of
Indo-European folk-lore cannot be thus summarily disposed of;
for however difficult it may be for us to perceive any
connection between them and the celestial phenomena which they
represent, the myths concerning them are so numerous and
explicit as to render it certain that some such connection was
imagined by the myth-makers. The superstition concerning the
hand of glory is not so hard to interpret. In the mythology of
the Finns, the storm-cloud is a black man with a bright copper
hand; and in Hindustan, Indra Savitar, the deity who slays the
demon of the cloud, is golden-handed. The selection of the
hand of a man who has been hanged is probably due to the
superstition which regarded the storm-god Odin as peculiarly
the lord of the gallows. The man who is raised upon the
gallows is placed directly in the track of the wild huntsman,
who comes with his hounds to carry off the victim; and hence
the notion, which, according to Mr. Kelly, is "very common in