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MYTHOLOGY.

likely that of the moon, which in popular myth is told of as found in the well.[1] Possibly, too, some such solar fancy may explain part of the myth of Perseus. There are three Scandinavian Norns, whose names are Urdhr, Verdhandi, and Skuld — Was, and Is, and Shall-be — and these three maidens are the 'Weird sisters' who fix the lifetime of all men. So the Fates, the Parkai, daughters of the inevitable Anagkē, divide among them the periods of time: Lachesis sings the past, Klôthô the present, Atropos the future. Now is it allowable to consider these fatal sisters as of common nature with two other mythic sister-triads — the Graiai and their kinsfolk the Gorgons?[2] If it be so, it is easy to understand why of the three Gorgons one alone was mortal, whose life her two immortal sisters could not save, for the deathless past and future cannot save the ever-dying present. Nor would the riddle be hard to read, what is the one eye that the Graiai had between them, and passed from one to another? — the eye of day — the sun,

  1. Edda, 'Völuspa,' 22; 'Gylfaginning,' 15. See Grimm, 'D.M.' p. 133; 'Reinhart Fuchs.'
  2. As to the identification of the Norns and the Fates, see Grimm, 'D. M.' pp. 376-86; Max Müller, 'Chips,' vol. ii. p. 154. It is to be observed in connexion with the Perseus-myth, that another of its obscure episodes, the Gorgon's head turning those who look on it into stone, corresponds with myths of the sun itself. In Hispaniola, men came out of two caves (thus being born of their mother Earth); the giant who guarded these caves strayed one night, and the rising sun turned him into a great rock called Kauta, just as the Gorgon's head turned Atlas the Earth-bearer into the mountain that bears his name; after this, others of the early cave-men were surprised by the sunlight, and turned into stones, trees, plants or beasts (Friar Roman Pane in 'Life of Columbus in Pinkerton, vol. xii. p. 80; J. G. Müller, 'Amer. Urrelig.' p. 179). In Central America a Quiché legend relates how the ancient animals were petrified by the Sun (Brasseur, 'Popol Vuh,' p. 245). Thus the Americans have the analogue of the Scandinavian myths of giants and dwarfs surprised by daylight outside their hiding-places, and turned to stones. Such fancies appear connected with the fancied human shapes of rocks or 'standing stones' which peasants still account for as transformed creatures. Thus in Fiji, two rocks are a male and female deity turned to stone at daylight, Seemann, 'Viti,' p. 66; see Liebrecht in 'Heidelberg. Jahrb.' 1864, p. 216. This idea is brought also into the Perseus-myth, for the rocks abounding in Seriphos are the islanders thus petrified by the Gorgon's head.