Modern Mythology | Page 5

we now
study myths 'in the unrestrained utterances of the people,' either of
savage tribes or of the European Folk, the unprogressive peasant class.
The former, and to some extent the latter, still live in the mythopoeic
state of mind--regarding bees, for instance, as persons who must be told
of a death in the family. Their myths are still not wholly out of concord
with their habitual view of a world in which an old woman may
become a hare. As soon as learned Jesuits like Pere Lafitau began to
understand their savage flocks, they said, 'These men are living in
Ovid's Metamorphoses.' They found mythology in situ! Hence
mythologists now study mythology in situ--in savages and in peasants,
who till very recently were still in the mythopoeic stage of thought.
Mannhardt made this idea his basis. Mr. Max Muller says, {0d} very
naturally, that I have been 'popularising the often difficult and
complicated labours of Mannhardt and others.' In fact (as is said later),
I published all my general conclusions before I had read Mannhardt.
Quite independently I could not help seeing that among savages and
peasants we had mythology, not in a literary hortus siccus, but in situ.
Mannhardt, though he appreciated Dr. Tylor, had made, I think, but few
original researches among savage myths and customs. His province
was European folklore. What he missed will be indicated in the chapter
on 'The Fire-Walk'--one example among many.
But this kind of mythology in situ, in 'the unrestrained utterances of the
people,' Mr. Max Muller tells us, is no province of his. 'I saw it was
hopeless for me to gain a knowledge at first hand of innumerable local
legends and customs;' and it is to be supposed that he distrusted

knowledge acquired by collectors: Grimm, Mannhardt, Campbell of
Islay, and an army of others. 'A scholarlike knowledge of Maori or
Hottentot mythology' was also beyond him. We, on the contrary, take
our Maori lore from a host of collectors: Taylor, White, Manning ('The
Pakeha Maori'), Tregear, Polack, and many others. From them we
flatter ourselves that we get--as from Grimm, Mannhardt, Islay, and the
rest--mythology in situ. We compare it with the dry mythologic
blossoms of the classical hortus siccus, and with Greek ritual and
temple legend, and with Marchen in the scholiasts, and we think the
comparisons very illuminating. They have thrown new light on Greek
mythology, ritual, mysteries, and religion. This much we think we have
already done, though we do not know Maori, and though each of us can
hope to gather but few facts from the mouths of living peasants.
Examples of the results of our method will be found in the following
pages. Thus, if the myth of the fire-stealer in Greece is explained by
misunderstood Greek or Sanskrit words in no way connected with
robbery, we shall show that the myth of the theft of fire occurs where
no Greek or Sanskrit words were ever spoken. _There_, we shall show,
the myth arose from simple inevitable human ideas. We shall therefore
doubt whether in Greece a common human myth had a singular
cause--in a 'disease of language.'
It is with no enthusiasm that I take the opportunity of Mr. Max Muller's
reply to me 'by name.' Since Myth, Ritual, and Religion (now out of
print, but accessible in the French of M. Marillier) was published, ten
years ago, I have left mythology alone. The general method there
adopted has been applied in a much more erudite work by Mr. Frazer,
The Golden Bough, by Mr. Farnell in Cults of the Greek States, by Mr.
Jevons in his Introduction to the History of Religion, by Miss Harrison
in explanations of Greek ritual, by Mr. Hartland in The Legend of
Perseus, and doubtless by many other writers. How much they excel
me in erudition may be seen by comparing Mr. Farnell's passage on the
Bear Artemis {0e} with the section on her in this volume.
Mr. Max Muller observes that 'Mannhardt's mythological researches
have never been fashionable.' They are now very much in fashion; they
greatly inspire Mr. Frazer and Mr. Farnell. 'They seemed to me, and
still seem to me, too exclusive,' says Mr. Max Muller. {0f} Mannhardt
in his second period was indeed chiefly concerned with myths

connected, as he held, with agriculture and with tree-worship. Mr. Max
Muller, too, has been thought 'exclusive'--'as teaching,' he complains,
'that the whole of mythology is solar.' That reproach arose, he says,
because 'some of my earliest contributions to comparative mythology
were devoted exclusively to the special subject of solar myths.' {0g}
But Mr. Max Muller also mentions his own complaints, of 'the
omnipresent sun and the inevitable dawn appearing in ever so many
disguises.'
Did they really appear? Were the myths, say the myths of Daphne,