Page:Segnius Irritant or Eight Primitive Folk-lore Stories.pdf/112

Bitterlich weint das Sonnchen In apfel-garten Von apple-baum ist gefallen Das Goldnen apfel Wein nicht Sonnchen Gott macht ein Ander Von gold, von erz Von Silberchen Steh früh auf, Sonnen-tochter, Wasche weiss Den linen-tische Morgen früh kommen, Gottes Sohne Den goldnen apfel Zu wirbeln

Einfuhr die Sonne Zum apfel-garten Neun wagen zogen Wohl hundert Rosse Schlumme o Sonne Im apfel-garten Die augenlider Voll apfel-blüthen Was weint die Sonne So bitter traurig In’s meer gesunken Ein goldnen Boot ist Wein nicht, o sonne, Gott baut ein neues Halb baut er’s golden Und halb von Silber.

To make the allegory still clearer, the following Swedish enigma is to the point: “Our mother,” it says, “has a counterpane no one can fold. Our father more gold than he can count. Our brother a golden apple that nobody can bite.” The answer tells us that the counterpane is the sky, the gold is the stars, and the golden pippin the sun.

Lastly, in all these eight stories, the hero is never the sun, but the living power of organic nature triumphant in spring, and with whose triumph the return of spring is somehow connected. Poets, and “that universal poet, the people,” are much more matter-of-act and stick much closer to it than philologists give them credit for doing. When a great number of myths are vaguely compared together, a certain indefiniteness results, and many points of resemblance are masked and thus overlooked; what is required is to group the immense mass of myths and legends, and first to compare minutely among themselves the members of the different groups. We are so accustomed to the scientific way of looking at nature, and to refer all activity to the sun as the prime source of it, that it is difficult for us to realize that the primitive savage’s point of view was a very different one. It was a mistake, of course, but with his limited observation and knowledge of facts it was a perfectly logical one. A child with strong rational and comparative instincts, that is to say, poetical ones, tossed about at sea in a boat, blames the trees for the wind, and exclaims: “Naughty trees.” He knows that a fan produces a current of air, and, observing that the trees wave their arms about when the wind is high, naturally concludes that the trees are the source of it. In the Roumanian versified legend, the infant Jesus being restless, the Virgin Mary gives him two apples to play with; one he throws into the air, and it becomes the sun, the other becomes the moon. In the Hottentot form of the legend, the first Hottentot man throws up his right shoe, and it becomes the sun; he throws up his left, and it becomes the moon. This is the frame of mind one must try to get into to understand these early Slav annual myths. The sun may be, indeed, an essential factor of the problem, but it is always the hero, the latent invincible power of