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STORYOLOGY:

Essays in Folk-Lore, Sea-Lore, and Plant-Lore

by

BENJAMIN TAYLOR.







London:
Elliot Stock, 62, Paternoster Row, E.C.
1900.




  To
  HER MEMORY
  IN
  WHOSE DEAR COMPANIONSHIP
  THESE PAPERS
  WERE WRITTEN




PREFACE.


The principal object of this Foreword is to inform the expert
Folkloreist and the case-hardened Mythologist (comparative or otherwise)
that the following pages are intended for those who, being neither
expert nor case-hardened, come under that gracious and catholic
term--general reader. The writer addresses not the scholiast, but the
ordinary person who likes to read about what he has not time to study.

Some portion of what is here printed has appeared in a once popular
magazine now defunct. The author hastens to add, for the relief of the
irreverent, that the journal long survived the ordeal of the
publication. Nevertheless this book appears on its merits, or otherwise,
and seeks no support from past attainment. Neither does it make any
pretension to originality of matter or method, though it may, perhaps,
contain one or two new ideas.

It is unnecessary to add that the publication is made only at the
tearful entreaty of multitudinous friends. That, of course, is well
understood among myth-hunters.




CONTENTS.

       CHAPTER                            PAGE

        PREFACE                            vii

     I. STORYOLOGY                           1

    II. THE MAGIC WAND                      23

   III. THE MAGIC MIRROR                    41

    IV. THE MAGIC MOON                      58

     V. THE DEVIL'S CANDLE                  78

    VI. THE SEA AND ITS LEGENDS             91

   VII. MOTHER CAREY AND HER CHICKENS      104

  VIII. DAVY JONES'S LOCKER                113

    IX. SOME FLOWERS OF FANCY              121

     X. ROSEMARY FOR REMEMBRANCE           137

    XI. HERB OF GRACE                      149

   XII. THE ROMANCE OF A VEGETABLE         163

  XIII. THE STORY OF A TUBER               176

   XIV. THE CENTRE OF THE WORLD            188

        INDEX                              201




STORYOLOGY.




CHAPTER I.

STORYOLOGY.


I.

What is a myth?

According to Webster, it is 'a fabulous or imaginary statement or
narrative conveying an important truth, generally of a moral or
religious nature: an allegory, religious or historical, of spontaneous
growth and popular origin, generally involving some supernatural or
superhuman claim or power; a tale of some extraordinary personage or
country that has been gradually formed by, or has grown out of, the
admiration and veneration of successive generations.' Here is a choice
of three definitions, but not one of them is by itself satisfying. Let
us rather say that a myth is a tradition in narrative form, more or less
current in more or less differing garb among different races, to which
religious or superhuman significations may be ascribable. We say'may
be' ascribable because, although the science of comparative mythology
always seeks for such significations, it is probable that the modern
interpretations are often as different from the original meaning as
certain abstruse'readings' of Shakespeare are from the poet's own
thoughts.

In their introduction to Tales of the Teutonic Lands, Cox and Jones
declare that the whole series of Arthurian legends are pure myths. These
tales, they say, can be 'traced back to their earliest forms in phrases
which spoke not of men and women, but of the Dawn which drives her white
herds to their pastures'--the white clouds being the guardians of the
cattle of the Sun--'of the Sun which slays the dew whom he loves, of the
fiery dragon which steals the cattle of the lord of light, or the Moon
which wanders with her myriad children through the heaven.' It is
claimed that 'a strict etymological connection has been established'
with regard to a large number of these and similar stories, 'but the
link which binds the myth of the Hellenic Hephaistos with that of the
Vedic Agni justifies the inference that both these myths reappear in
those of Regin and of Wayland, or, in other words, that the story of the
Dame of the Fine Green Kirtle is the story of Medeia, and that the tale
of Helen is the legend of the loves of Conall Gulban. Elsewhere one
reads that in the myth of Endymion, the Sun who has sunk to his
dreamless sleep, the Moon appears as Asterodia journeying with her fifty
daughters through the sky. 'In the Christian myth she becomes St. Ursula
with her eleven thousand virgins--this Ursula again appearing in the
myth of Tannhaeuser, as the occupant of the Horselberg, and as the fairy
queen in the tale of True Thomas of Ercildoune.' By the same method of
comparative mythology, the whole series of the Arthurian stories are
placed 'in that large family of heroic legends which have their origin
in mythical phrases describing the phenomena of the outward world, and
more especially those of the day and of the year.'

This seems hard, for it compels us to believe that our remote ancestors
were very much more intelligent, and imaginative, and poetical, and
religious than anything else which they have sent down to us would have
suggested. It is true that Cox and Jones do not deny that the names
which figure in many of these legends, as in those of Greece, may have
been the names of real personages, but yet the narrative, they say, must
not be taken as historical. This may be true, but in what sense can we
regard it as more probable that the story-makers invented allegories,
and clothed them with the names of contemporary or preceding heroes,
than that they invented tales of wonder to fit these heroes? Is it
easier to believe, for instance, that Arthur came after the myths, and
was tacked on to them, than that the myths, or stories, came after
Arthur, and were tacked on to him? Is there anything in the story of St.
Ursula and her virgins which could not have had natural'spontaneous
growth' in an age of deep devotional faith in miracles, that we must be
compelled to regard it as purely a mediaevalized version of the Greek
myth of the sun and moon?

I am not writing for experts and scholars, and therefore do not use the
scientific terms and allusions familiar to students of these matters. I
am merely writing for ordinary persons, who are often puzzled and pained
by the extraordinary meanings which specialists contrive to twist out of
simple and familiar things. It is not too much to say that the
professional mythologists are among the most troublesome meddlers who
disturb the repose of '_the average reader_.' Even Mr. Ruskin suffers in
this connection. In The Queen of the Air he has given us one of his most
delightful books, but there are probably few, outside the circle of
philologists and comparative mythologists, who have not thought in
reading the lovely interpretations of the myths of Athena, that there
was more of Ruskin than of the Ancient Greek in the meaning evolved.
Somehow, it seems easier to think that these things were conceived by a
Professor of Art in the nineteenth century, than that they were the
deliberate convictions of a primitive people ever so many centuries
before Christ--a people, too, known to be steeped in sensualities, and
addicted to very barbarous practices.

Are there, then, reasons for supposing that comparative mythologists are
not always right--that, in fact, their science is but a doubtful science
after all? Mr. Andrew Lang boldly says that there are. In Custom and
Myth his object is to show the connection between savage customs--or
rather the customs of savage and uncivilized races--and ancient myths.
But before this branch of Storyology is reached, we must consider the
question of the relation between our familiar nursery-tales, the
folk-lore of our own and other countries, and the old romances, with
these same myths. There is something more than monotony in the theory
which'resolves most of our old romances into a series of remarks about
the weather.' The author of Primitive Culture (Mr. Tylor) rebels against
this theory. There is no legend, no allegory, no nursery-rhyme, he says,
safe