'Taken all in all, I consider the greater part of the results hitherto
obtained in the field of Indo-Germanic comparative mythology to be, as
yet, a failure, premature or incomplete, my own efforts in German
Myths (1858) included. That I do not, however, "throw out the babe
with the bath," as the proverb goes, my essay on Lettish sun myths in
Bastian-Hartmann's Ethnological Journal will bear witness.'

Such is Mannhardt's conclusion. Taken in connection with his still later
essay on Demeter, it really leaves no room for doubt. There, I think, he
does 'throw out the child with the bath,' throw the knife after the
handle. I do not suppose that Mr. Max Muller ever did quote Mannhardt as
one of his supporters, but such a claim, if really made, would obviously
give room for criticism.



Mannhardt on Solar Myths


What the attitude of Mannhardt was, in 1877 and later, we have seen. He
disbelieves in the philological system of explaining myths by
etymological conjectures. He disbelieves in the habit of finding, in
myths of terrestrial occurrences, reflections of celestial phenomena. But
earlier, in his long essay Die lettischen Sonnenmythen (in Zeitschrift
fur Ethnologie, 1875), he examines the Lettish popular songs about the
Sun, the Sun's daughters, the god-sons, and so forth. Here, of course,
he is dealing with popular songs explicitly devoted to solar phenomena,
in their poetical aspect. In the Lettish Sun-songs and Sun-myths of the
peasants we see, he says, a myth-world 'in process of becoming,' in an