"disease of language" by which the primitive and purer nature-myth was corrupted; e.g. the story of Kronos devouring his offspring was the result of a vulgar misunderstanding of the swallowing of the Days by Time. The theory won well-nigh universal acceptance, and held the field for years until doubt was thrown on the validity of the equations; e.g. while Max Müller translated the Vedic goddess Urvasi as "the dawn," Dr. Roth translated that name as "lewd or wanton"! One by one the assumed equations were challenged, with the result that scarcely any have survived the more rigid tests of a later comparative philology.
Working, "in giant ignorance of Mannhardt,"[1] on the same lines of enquiry, Lang reached the conclusion shrewdly anticipated by Fontenelle, a nephew of Corneille, more than a century and a half ago, that "all nations invented the astounding part of their myths while they were savages, and retained them from custom and religious conservatism." Hence, to understand the ugly and crazy myths of civilized races, we must make ourselves familiar with the thoughts, manners, and myths of races who are now in the same savage state as were the prehistoric ancestors of Greeks, Romans, and other advanced peoples. This method is emphasised in Andrew Lang's last words on the subject in a posthumous review published nine days after his death.[2] "We knew little about the evolution of religion, or of social organisations and institutions, or of mythology, till we began to study them comparatively, by observing their forms, and as far as possible their development, among all peoples of whom we have sufficient knowledge."
It is, then, in his original contributions towards the supersession of the philological by the anthropological method of interpretation that the folklorist and the comparative mythologist owe Andrew Lang an incalculable debt. And there is warrant for the belief that he would have accepted in this recognition the most welcome tribute to the abiding features of his life-work.
- ↑ A. Lang, "Mr. Max Müller and his Adversaries," Daily News, Dec. 12, 1895.
- ↑ "The Heroic Age" (by H. Munro Chadwick), The Morning Post, July 29, 1912.
