Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 2, 1891.djvu/248

(Apollod., II, ii, 2). In the Eleutheræ myth it is Dionysos who himself introduces his own worship, sends the madness, and cures it. In the Tiryns myth, Dionysos sends the madness and Melampus, the seer, cures it. But inasmuch as Herodotus (ii, 49) says that Melampus introduced the worship of Dionysos into Greece, and in view of the resemblance between the names Melampus and Melanaigis, is it fanciful to suggest that "Black-foot" was an epithet of the god in Argos, just as "Black-skin" was at Eleutheræ? Leaving this suggestion for what it is worth, let us turn to the most famous of this class of myths, that of Lycurgus, the son of Dryas, who chased the nurses of frenzied Dionysos, and smote them with the murderous pole-axe, while Dionysos fled trembling to Thetis for refuge in the sea (Il., vi, 142). Here it is not the women of Thrace, but the king who resists the god. The king, however, is punished with madness because of his resistance (Apollod., Ill, v, i.), like the daughters of Eleutheræ and the women of Argos; and we might not unreasonably class all three myths together as primitive hypotheses of the same kind. But the mention of the pole-axe, and the retreat of Dionysos, may point to an instance of "killing the god". The god may have appeared as a bull in this rite, in the same way that he did at Bouphonia—hence the βουπλήξ. The Bouphonia, according to the story, was instituted in order to put an end to drought and famine, and is therefore probably a harvest festival (Golden Bough, ii, 41). Drought and famine also play a part in the story of Lycurgus (Apoll., l. c.); and we may perhaps regard this myth as the "popular explanation" of a harvest festival in which the god of vegetation was killed. Originally the god was killed "only as a necessary step to his revival or resurrection in a better form". But when this was forgotten, the killing required explanation. An enemy alone would kill the god, and he must have killed him because he objected to his mad rites. He must, therefore, have been some one having authority—a king. But the god