early state of development, as in the Veda (p. 325). But, we may reply,
in the Veda, myths are already full-grown, or even decadent. Already
there are unbelievers in the myths. Thus we would say, in the Veda we
have (1) myths of nature, formed in the remote past, and (2) poetical
phrases about heavenly phenomena, which resemble the nature-poetry of the
Letts, but which do not become full-grown myths. The Lett songs, also,
have not developed into myths, of which (as in the Apollo and Daphne
story, by Mr. Max Muller's hypothesis) _the original meaning is lost_.

In the Lett songs we have a mass of nature-pictures--the boat and the
apples of the Sun, the red cloak hung on the oak-tree, and so on;
pictures by which it is sought to make elemental phenomena intelligible,
by comparison with familiar things. Behind the phenomena are, in popular
belief, personages--mythical personages--the Sun as 'a magnified
non-natural man,' or woman; the Sun's mother, daughters, and other
heavenly people. Their conduct is 'motived' in a human way. Stories are
told about them: the Sun kills the Moon, who revives.

All this is perfectly familiar everywhere. Savages, in their fables,
account for solar, lunar, and similar elemental processes, on the theory
that the heavenly bodies are, and act like, human beings. The Eskimo
myth of the spots on the Moon, marks of ashes thrown by the Sun in a love-
quarrel, is an excellent example. But in all this there is no 'disease
of language.' These are frank nature-myths, 'aetiological,' giving a
fabulous reason for facts of nature.



Mannhardt on Marchen.