CHAP V.
seven sheep-gut cords. Then striking the strings he called forth
sounds of wonderful sweetness, as he sang of the loves of Zeus in the
beautiful home of his mother Maia, the daughter of Atlas. But soon
he laid down his harp in his cradle, for the craving of hunger was
upon him, and as the sun went down with his chariot and horses to
the stream of Ocean,^ the child hastened to the shadowy mountains
of Pieria, where the cattle of the gods feed in their large pastures.
Taking fifty of the herd, he drove them away, sending them hither
and thither, so that none could tell by what path they had really
gone, and on his own feet he bound branches of tamarisk and myrtle.
Passing along the plains of Onchestos, he charged an old man who
was at work in his vineyard to forget the things which it might not
be convenient to remember.
Hastening onwards with the cattle, he reached the banks of The theft Alpheios, as the moon rose up in the sky. There he brought °^ ^'?^ together a heap of wood, and, kindling the first flame that shone upon the earth, he slew two of the cows, and stretching their hides on the rock, cut up the flesh into twelve portions.^ But sorely though his hunger pressed him, he touched not the savoury food, and hurling his sandals into the river, he broke up the blazing pile, and scattered the ashes all night long beneath the bright light of the moon. Early in the morning he reached Kyllene, neither god nor man having spied him on the road ; and passing through the bolt-hole of the cave like a mist or a soft autumn breeze,' he lay down in his cradle, playing among the clothes with one hand, while he held his lyre in the other. To the warning of his mother, who told him that Phoibos would take a fearful vengeance, and bade him begone as born to be the plague of gods and men,* Hermes simply answered that he meant to be the equal of Phoibos, and that if this right were refused to him, he would go and sack his wealthy house at Pytho.
Meanwhile, Phoibos, hastening to Onchestos in search of his The cove- cattle, had asked the old vinedresser to say who had taken them, term's But the words of Hermes still rang in the old man's ears, and he and Phoi- bos.
' Hyifiin to Ilertnes, 67. I have striven to adhere with scrupulous care to the imagery of the hymn, avoiding the introduction of any notions not warranted by actual expressions in the poem.
- Hermes is thus especially con-
nected with the ordering of burnt sacri- fices. But this we have seen to be the especial attribute or function of Agni. ' In other words, the great giant has reduced himself almost to nothing. This is the story of the Fisherman and the Jin in the Arabian A-ights, of the Spirit in the Bottle in Grimm's German stories, of the devil in the purse of the Master Smith, and again in the story of the Lad and the Devil (Dasent), and the Gaelic tale of The Soldier. — Camp- bell, ii. 279.
- With this we may compare the
prognostications of the mother of the Shifty Lad, in the Scottish version of the myth.
