Modern Mythology

‘Has the myth of Cronos the same sense?’ Probably not, as the Maori story, to my mind, has not got it either. But Professor Tiele says, ‘The myth of Cronos has precisely the opposite sense.’ 45 What is the myth of Cronos? Ouranos (Heaven) married Gaea (Earth). Ouranos ‘hid his children from the light in the hollows of Earth’ (Hesiod). So, too, the New Zealand gods were hidden from light while Heaven (Rangi) lay flat on Papa (Earth). The children ‘were concealed between the hollows of their parent’s breasts.’ They did not like it, for they dwelt in darkness. So Cronos took an iron sickle and mutilated Ouranos in such a way, enfin, as to divorce him a thoro. ‘Thus,’ I say, ‘were Heaven and Earth practically divorced.’ The Greek gods now came out of the hollows where they had been, like the New Zealand gods, ‘hidden from the light.’

Professor Tiele on Sunset Myths

No, says Professor Tiele, ‘the story of Cronos has precisely the opposite meaning.’ The New Zealand myth is one of dawn, the Greek myth is one of sunset. The mutilated part of poor Ouranos is le phallus du ciel, le soleil, which falls into ‘the Cosmic ocean,’ and then, of course, all is dark. Professor Tiele may be right here; I am indifferent. All that I wanted to explain was the savage complexion of the myth, and Professor Tiele says that I have explained that, and (xii. 264) he rejects the etymological theory of Mr. Max Müller.

I say that, in my opinion, the second part of the Cronos myth (the child-swallowing performances of Cronos) ‘was probably a world-wide Märchen, or tale, attracted into the cycle of which Cronos was the centre, without any particular reason beyond the law which makes detached myths crystallise round any celebrated name.’

Professor Tiele says he does not grasp the meaning of, or believe in, any such law. Well, why is the world-wide tale of the Cyclops told about Odysseus? It is absolutely out of keeping, and it puzzles commentators. In fact, here was a hero and there was a tale, and the tale was attracted into the cycle of the hero; the very last man to have behaved as Odysseus is made to do. 46 But Cronos was an odious ruffian. The world-wide tale of swallowing and disgorging the children was attracted to his too notorious name ‘by grace of congruity.’ Does Professor Tiele now grasp my meaning (saisir)?

Our Lack of Scientific Exactness

I do not here give at full length Professor Tiele’s explanation of the meaning of a myth which I do not profess to explain myself. Thus, drops of the blood of Ouranos falling on Earth begat the Mélies, usually rendered ‘Nymphs of the Ash-trees.’ But Professor Tiele says they were really bees (Hesychius, μελιαι=μελισσαι) – ‘that is to say, stars.’ Everybody has observed that the stars rise up off the earth, like the bees sprung from the blood of Ouranos. In Myth, Ritual, and Religion (i. 299-315) I give the competing explanations of Mr. Max Müller, of Schwartz (Cronos=storm god), Preller (Cronos=harvest god), of others who see the sun, or time, in Cronos; while, with Professor Tiele, Cronos is the god of the upper air, and also of the underworld and harvest; he ‘doubles the part.’ ‘Il est l’un et l’autre’ – that is, ‘le dieu qui fait mûrir le blé’ and also ‘un dieu des lieux souterrains.’ ‘Il habite les profondeurs sous la terre,’ he is also le dieu du ciel nocturne.

It may have been remarked that I declined to add to this interesting collection of plausible explanations of Cronos. A selection of such explanations I offer in tabular form: —

Cronos was God of

Time (?) – Max Müller

Sun – Sayce

Midnight sky – Kuhn

Under-world }

Midnight sky} – Tiele

Harvest }

Harvest – Preller

Storm – Schwartz

Star-swallowing sky – Canon Taylor

Sun scorching spring – Hartung

Cronos was by Race

Late Greek (?) – Max Müller

Semitic – Böttiger

Accadian (?) – Sayce

Etymology of Cronos

Χρονος=Time (?) – Max Müller

Krāna (Sanskrit) – Kuhn

Karnos (Horned) – Brown κραινω – Preller

The pleased reader will also observe that the phallus of Ouranos is the sun (Tiele), that Cronos is the sun (Sayce), that Cronos mutilating Ouranos is the sun (Hartung), just as the sun is the mutilated part of Ouranos (Tiele); Or is, according to others, the stone which Cronos swallowed, and which acted as an emetic.

My Lack of Explanation of Cronos

Now, I have offered no explanation at all of who Cronos was, what he was god of, from what race he was borrowed, from what language his name was derived. The fact is that I do not know the truth about these important debated questions. Therefore, after speaking so kindly of our method, and rejecting the method of Mr. Max Müller, Professor Tiele now writes thus (and this Mr. Max Müller does cite, as we have seen): —

‘Mr. Lang and M. Gaidoz are not entirely wrong in claiming me as an ally. But I must protest, in the name of mythological science, and of the exactness as necessary to her as to any of the other sciences, against a method which only glides over questions of the first importance’ (name, origin, province, race of Cronos), ‘and which to most questions can only reply, with a smile, C’est chercher raison où il n’y en a pas.’

My Crime

Now, what important questions was I gliding over? In what questions did I not expect to find reason? Why in this savage fatras about Cronos swallowing his children, about blood-drops becoming bees (Mr. Max Müller says ‘Melian nymphs’), and bees being stars, and all the rest of a prehistoric Märchen worked over again and again by the later fancy of Greek poets and by Greek voyagers who recognised Cronos in Moloch. In all this I certainly saw no ‘reason,’ but I have given in tabular form the general, if inharmonious, conclusions of more exact and conscientious scholars, ‘their variegated hypotheses,’ as Mannhardt says in the case of Demeter. My error, rebuked by Professor Tiele, is the lack of that ‘scientific exactitude’ exhibited by the explanations arranged in my tabular form.

My Reply to Professor Tiele

I would reply that I am not engaged in a study of the Cult of Cronos, but of the revolting element in his Myth: his swallowing of his children, taking a stone emetic by mistake, and disgorging the swallowed children alive; the stone being on view at Delphi long after the Christian era. Now, such stories of divine feats of swallowing and disgorging are very common, I show, in savage myth and popular Märchen. The bushmen have Kwai Hemm, who swallows the sacred Mantis insect. He is killed, and all the creatures whom he has swallowed return to light. Such stories occur among Australians, Kaffirs, Red Men, in Guiana, in Greenland, and so on. In some cases, among savages. Night (conceived as a person), or one star which obscures another star, is said to ‘swallow’ it. Therefore, I say, ‘natural phenomena, explained on savage principles, might give the data of the swallowing myth, of Cronos’ 47

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1

Chips, iv. 62.

2

Chips, iv. p. xxxv.

3

Chips, iv. pp. vi. vii.

4

Ibid. iv. p. xv.

5

Cults of the Greek States, ii. 435-440.

6

Chips, iv. p. xiv.

7

Chips, iv. p. xiii.

8

Suidas, s.v. τελμισσεις; he cites Dionysius of Chalcis, B.C. 200.

9

See Goguet, and Millar of Glasgow, and Voltaire.

10

Translated by M. Parmentier.

11

See ‘Totemism,’ infra.

12

Longmans.

13

M. R. R. i. 155-160.

14

Tylor’s Prim. Cult. i. 145.

15

Turner’s Samoa, p. 219.

16

Gill’s Myths and Songs, p. 79.

17

M. R. R. ii. 160.

18

Metam. i. 567.

19

Grimm, cited by Liebrecht in Zur Volkskunde, p. 17.

20

Primitive Culture, i. 285.

21

Op. cit. i. 46-81.

22

M. R. R. i. 160.

23

Erratum: This is erroneous. See Contributions, &c., vol. i. p. 6, where Mr. Max Müller writes, ‘Tuna means eel.’ This shows why Tuna, i.e. Eel, is the hero. His connection, as an admirer, with the Moon, perhaps remains obscure.

24

Phonetically there may be ‘no possible objection to the derivation of Απολλων from a Sanskrit form, *Apa-var-yan, or *Apa-val-yan’ (ii. 692); but, historically, Greek is not derived from Sanskrit surely!

25

Mythologische Forschungen, p. 275.

26

Baumkultus, p. 297. Berlin: 1875.

27

Antike Wald– und Feldkulte, p. 257. Referring to Baumkultus, p. 297.

28

Oriental and Linguistic Studies, second series, p. 160. La Religion Védique, iii. 293.

29

1, viii. cf. i. 27.

30

Riv. Crit. Mensile. Geneva, iii. xiv. p. 2.

31

Custom and Myth, p. 3, citing Revue de l’Hist. des Religions, ii. 136.

32

M. R. R. i. 24.

33

Revue de l’Hist. des Religions, xii. 256.

34

Op. cit. p. 253.

35

Op. cit. xii. 250.

36

P. 104, infra.

37

Revue de l’Hist. des Religions, xii. 259.

38

M. R. R. i. 25.

39

Rev. xii. 247.

40

M. R. R. i. 24.

41

Rev. xii. 277.

42

Rev. xii. 264.

43

M. R. R. i. 44, 45.

44

Custom and Myth, p. 51.

45

Rev. xii. 262.

46

Odyssey, book ix.

47

C. and M. p. 56.