gentleman than the lord of the golden castle. That is to say, there was first a brief dark moon, then a long light one, followed by the re-appearance of the sun with increasing and then waning splendour for the remainder of the year. In the Siebenbürgen form of the story, in place of a castle of lead is a copper well, with copper-coloured water, and a copper palace, which may be a reminiscence of the Aurora borealis; in the Venetian variant the lead and copper have given place to the wind.
Let us now attempt roughly to compare a few of the principal incidents and properties of the eight stories. First, let us take the properties of the Three Fates in the different stories. These figures are absent from Vedic legends. Their most primitive form (ideally if not chronologically), is that of the three Norns, past, present, and future, allegorized in Greek myth as the Parcæ plying that most ancient of all spinning-jennies, the spindle, and twisting the line with it from the distaff. In Father Know-All we observe them to be dressed in white and to carry tapers. In Grandmother Death, as has been observed, they have dwindled to one who leads the hero into a cavern, where tapers representing the lives of human beings are burning. This cavern with the tapers is the night firmament studded with stars. [1]The idea that the life of every human being is bound up with a star in heaven is a thoroughly and profoundly Slavic one, although it also occurs among the Maoris of New Zealand in the legend of Hikatoro.
- ↑ In my selections of Victor Halek’s (the great Slav poet) evensongs, there is a translation of his versified version of the legend. As my translation of his admirable writings proved “caviar to the general,” and the reader is not likely to possess a copy, I reproduce here the translation, such as it is:
Two thoughts in God, as stars were set
In heaven’s divine communion,
And shone, of all the starry choir,
In closest union,Till one of them fell prone to earth
And left her mate to languish,
Till God excused her, too, the skies
Pitying her anguish.And many a night on earth they roved
In grief for their lost Aden,
Till once again they met as men,
As youth and maiden,And looking in each other’s eyes
They recognized straightway,
And lived, thrice blest, till God to rest
Called one away.Who, dying out of earth, recalled
Her love to heaven’s fair shore,
And God forbade it not, and now
They’re stars once more.Versifying this legend, the great constructive Slav poet wished to point out not merely the only possible, but the only thinkable, form of immortality since the new world of thought, created by Darwin and Darwinism. In the New Zealand legend, Hikatoro’s wife fell from heaven on to the earth. He followed in search of
