Stubbs was right: the people of England in the year 1550 A. D., and
for years afterward, were celebrating the end of the Drift Age, the
disappearance of the darkness and the victory of the sun.

[1. "Festivals, Games," etc., p. 126.

2. Ibid., p. 127.

3. Ibid.]

{p. 242}

The myth of Hercules recovering his cows from Cacus is the same story
told in another form:

A strange monster, Cacus, (the comet,) stole the cows of Hercules,
(the clouds,) and dragged them backward by their tails into a cave,
and vomited smoke and flame when Hercules attacked him. But Hercules
killed Cacus with his unerring arrows, and released the cows.

This signifies that the comet, breathing fire and smoke, so rarefied
the air that the clouds disappeared and there followed an age of
awful heat. Hercules smites the monster with his lightnings, and
electrical phenomena on a vast scale accompany the recondensation of
the moisture and the return of the clouds.

"Cacus is the same as Vritra in Sanskrit, Azbidihaka in Zend, Python
in Greek, and the worm Fafnir in Norse."[1]

The cows everywhere are the clouds; they are white and soft; they