treasure-house, into which none might look and live. This
conception is the foundation of part of the story of
Blue-Beard and of the Arabian tale of the third one-eyed
Calender

Usually, however, though the lightning is wont to strike dead,
with its basilisk glance, those who rashly enter its
mysterious caverns, it is regarded rather as a benefactor than
as a destroyer. The feelings with which the myth-making age
contemplated the thunder-shower as it revived the earth
paralyzed by a long drought, are shown in the myth of
Oidipous. The Sphinx, whose name signifies "the one who
binds," is the demon who sits on the cloud-rock and imprisons
the rain, muttering, dark sayings which none but the
all-knowing sun may understand. The flash of solar light which
causes the monster to fling herself down from the cliff with a
fearful roar, restores the land to prosperity. But besides
this, the association of the thunder-storm with the approach
of summer has produced many myths in which the lightning is
symbolized as the life-renewing wand of the victorious
sun-god. Hence the use of the divining-rod in the cure of
disease; and hence the large family of schamir-myths in which
the dead are restored to life by leaves or herbs. In Grimm's
tale of the Three Snake Leaves," a prince is buried alive
(like Sindbad) with his dead wife, and seeing a snake
approaching her body, he cuts it in three pieces. Presently
another snake, crawling from the corner, saw the other lying
dead, and going, away soon returned with three green leaves in
its mouth; then laying the parts of the body together so as to
join, it put one leaf on each wound, and the dead snake was