Custom and Myth | Page 2

name whatever might be shown to be
appropriate to a solar hero.
The scholarly method has now been applied for many years, and what
are the results? The ideas attained by the method have been so
popularised that they are actually made to enter into the education of
children, and are published in primers and catechisms of mythology.
But what has a discreet scholar to say to the whole business? 'The
difficult task of interpreting mythical names has, so far, produced few

certain results'--so writes Otto Schrader. {4} Though Schrader still has
hopes of better things, it is admitted that the present results are highly
disputable. In England, where one set of these results has become an
article of faith, readers chiefly accept the opinions of a single
etymological school, and thus escape the difficulty of making up their
minds when scholars differ. But differ scholars do, so widely and so
often, that scarcely any solid advantages have been gained in
mythology from the philological method.
The method of philological mythology is thus discredited by the
disputes of its adherents. The system may be called orthodox, but it is
an orthodoxy which alters with every new scholar who enters the
sacred enclosure. Even were there more harmony, the analysis of
names could throw little light on myths. In stories the names may well
be, and often demonstrably are, the latest, not the original, feature.
Tales, at first told of 'Somebody,' get new names attached to them, and
obtain a new local habitation, wherever they wander. 'One of the
leading personages to be met in the traditions of the world is really no
more than--Somebody. There is nothing this wondrous creature cannot
achieve; one only restriction binds him at all--that the name he assumes
shall have some sort of congruity with the office he undertakes, and
even from this he oftentimes breaks loose.' {5} We may be pretty sure
that the adventures of Jason, Perseus, OEdipous, were originally told
only of 'Somebody.' The names are later additions, and vary in various
lands. A glance at the essay on 'Cupid and Psyche' will show that a
history like theirs is known, where neither they nor their counterparts in
the Veda, Urvasi and Pururavas, were ever heard of; while the incidents
of the Jason legend are familiar where no Greek word was ever spoken.
Finally, the names in common use among savages are usually derived
from natural phenomena, often from clouds, sky, sun, dawn. If, then, a
name in a myth can be proved to mean cloud, sky, sun, or what not
(and usually one set of scholars find clouds, where others see the dawn),
we must not instantly infer that the myth is a nature-myth. Though,
doubtless, the heroes in it were never real people, the names are as
much common names of real people in the savage state, as Smith and
Brown are names of civilised men.

For all these reasons, but chiefly because of the fact that stories are
usually anonymous at first, that names are added later, and that stories
naturally crystallise round any famous name, heroic, divine, or human,
the process of analysis of names is most precarious and untrustworthy.
A story is told of Zeus: Zeus means sky, and the story is interpreted by
scholars as a sky myth. The modern interpreter forgets, first, that to the
myth-maker sky did not at all mean the same thing as it means to him.
Sky meant, not an airy, infinite, radiant vault, but a person, and, most
likely, a savage person. Secondly, the interpreter forgets that the tale
(say the tale of Zeus, Demeter, and the mutilated Ram) may have been
originally anonymous, and only later attributed to Zeus, as unclaimed
jests are attributed to Sheridan or Talleyrand. Consequently no
heavenly phenomena will be the basis and explanation of the story. If
one thing in mythology be certain, it is that myths are always changing
masters, that the old tales are always being told with new names.
Where, for example, is the value of a philological analysis of the name
of Jason? As will be seen in the essay 'A Far-travelled Tale,' the
analysis of the name of Jason is fanciful, precarious, disputed, while the
essence of his myth is current in Samoa, Finland, North America,
Madagascar, and other lands, where the name was never heard, and
where the characters in the story have other names or are anonymous.
For these reasons, and others too many to be adduced here, I have
ventured to differ from the current opinion that myths must be
interpreted chiefly by philological analysis of names. The system
adopted here is explained in the first essay, called 'The Method of
Folklore.' The name, Folklore, is not a good one, but 'comparative
mythology' is usually claimed exclusively by