Modern Mythology by Andrew Lang
page 67 of 218 (30%)
page 67 of 218 (30%)
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phrase and custom--and so advancing to the unknown--the name Demeter. The
philologists commence with the unknown, the old name, Demeter Erinnys, explain it to taste, and bring the legend into harmony with their explanation. I cannot say, then, that I share Mr. Max Muller's impression. I do not feel sure that Mannhardt did return to his old colours. Why Mannhardt is Thought to have been Converted Mannhardt's friend, Mullenhoff, had an aversion to solar myths. He said: {54} 'I deeply mistrust all these combinations of the new so-called comparative mythology.' Mannhardt was preparing to study Lithuanian solar myths, based on Lithuanian and Lettish marriage songs. Mullenhoff and Scherer seem to have thought this work too solar for their taste. Mannhardt therefore replied to their objections in the letter quoted in part by Mr. Max Muller. Mannhardt was not the man to neglect or suppress solar myths when he found them, merely because he did not believe that a great many other myths which had been claimed as celestial were solar. Like every sensible person, he knew that there are numerous real, obvious, confessed solar myths _not_ derived from a disease of language. These arise from (1) the impulse to account for the doings of the Sun by telling a story about him as if he were a person; (2) from the natural poetry of the human mind. {55} What we think they are _not_ shown to arise from is forgetfulness of meanings of old words, which, ex hypothesi, have become proper names. That is the theory of the philological school, and to that theory, to |
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