common in the märchen or household tales than in the regular tribal or national myths of the world.[1] The buried brother emerged again with wings, and "without doubt he must have been some devil," says honest Cieza de Leon. This brother was Manco Ccapac, the heroic ancestor of the Incas, and he turned his jealous brethren into stones. The whole tale is in the spirit illustrated by the wilder romances of the Popol Vuh.
Garcilasso gives three forms of this myth. According to "the old Inca," his maternal uncle, it was the sun which sent down two of his children, giving them a golden staff, which would sink into the ground at the place where they were to rest from wandering. It sank at Lake Titicaca. About the current myths Garcilasso says generally that they were "more like dreams" than straightforward stories; but, as he adds, the Greeks and Romans also "invented fables worthy to be laughed at, and in greater number than the Indians. The stories of one age of heathenism may be compared with those of the other, and in many points they will be found to agree." This critical position of Garcilasso's will be proved correct when we reach the myths of Greeks and Indo-Aryans. The myth as narrated north-east of Cuzco speaks of the four brothers and four sisters who came out of caves, and the caves in Inca times were panelled with gold and silver.
Athwart all these lower myths, survivals from the
- ↑ The story of Joseph and the märchen of Jean de l'Ours are well-known examples.
