come down to earth and again return.[1] It is a fall from such ideas of the Galaxy to the Siamese 'Road of the White Elephant,' the Spaniards' 'Road of Santiago,' or the Turkish 'Pilgrims' Road,' and a still lower fall to the 'Straw Road ' of the Syrian, the Persian, and the Turk, who thus compare it with their lanes littered with the morsels of straw that fall from the nets they carry it in.[2] But of all the fancies which have attached themselves to the celestial road, we at home have the quaintest. Passing along the short and crooked way from St. Paul's to Cannon Street, one thinks to how small a remnant has shrunk the name of the great street of the Wætlingas, which in old days ran from Dover through London into Wales. But there is a Watling Street in heaven as well as on earth, once familiar to Englishmen, though now almost forgotten even in local dialect. Chaucer thus speaks of it in his 'House of Fame:' —
'Lo there (quod he) cast up thine eye Se yondir, lo, the Galaxie, The whiche men clepe The Milky Way, For it is white, and some parfay, Ycallin it han Watlynge strete.'[3]
Turning from the mythology of the heavenly bodies, a glance over other districts of nature-myth will afford fresh evidence that such legend has its early home within the precincts of savage culture. It is thus with the myths of the Winds. The New Zealanders tell how Maui can ride upon the other Winds or imprison them in their caves, but he cannot catch the West wind nor find its cave to roll a
1 Beausobre, 'Hist. de Manichée,' vol. ii. p. 513.
2 Bastian, 'Oestl. Asien,' vol. iii. p. 341; 'Chronique de Tabari,' tr. Dubeux, p. 24; Grimm, 'D.M.' p. 330, &c.
3 Chaucer, 'House of Fame,' ii. 427. With reference to questions of Aryan mythology illustrated by the savage galaxy-myths, see Pictet, 'Origines,' part ii. p. 582, &c. Mr. J. Jeremiah informs me that 'Watling Street' is still (1871) a name for the Milky Way in Scotland; see also his paper on 'Welsh names of the Milky Way,' Philological Soc., Nov. 17, 1871. The corresponding name 'London Road ' is used in Suffolk.
