The god appears occasionally on Egyptian monuments in purely animal form; the skin of the animal totem, a branch of the god-tree, some actual ears of wheat or maize, are worshipped as very god. Then the semi-human nature of the god is expressed by clothing a human image in an animal skin,1 or placing a human figure (of dough, etc.) on a tree, or clothing a tree or a sheaf of ears in human dress, or a human being in a sheaf or leaves. Then, when the animal or plant origin of the god has been altogether forgotten, the god is simply "associated" in art with the plant or animal: Demeter wears a garland of wheat-ears, Chicomecoatl carries maize-stalks in her hand, Apollo stands beside a dolphin; and finally, even these symbols are dropped. The same evolution is abundantly illustrated in mythology: the Turtle of the Iroquois corresponds to the purely animal form of the Egyptian gods; Zeus, who is at one time human and at another animal, corresponds to the misch-bild, the human body with animal head, which is the most common Egyptian mode of representing the gods, or to the half-human, halfvegetable deity represented by a sheaf wrapped in human raiment. The "association" of a deity with a plant appears in the myth of the Red Maize clan of the Omahas, who say that "the first man of the clan emerged from the water with an ear of red maize in his hand."2 Finally, even the "association" disappears in the myth of the Pima Indians about the maize-spirit: " one day, as she lay asleep, a raindrop fell on her naked bosom, and she became the ancestress of the maize-growing Pueblo Indians." 3

In course of time, the clan may forget that their animal god was their ancestor, and then a fresh reason is required to account for the alliance between the human kin and the animal kind, and so "some families in the islands Leti, Moa, and Lakor reverence the shark, and refused to eat its flesh, because a shark once helped one of their ancestors at sea."4 Or the clan may remember that it was descended from an animal, but―owing to the general disappearance of animalworship-forget that the animal was a god, in which case

1"Αρτεμις έστηκεν ἀμπεχομένη δέρμα ελάφου, Paus. viii. c. 37.

2 Frazer, op. cit. 6.

3 Payne, New World, i. 414 note 4.

Frazer, op. cit. 7.

"transformation" still appears as a feature in the story, but it is no longer due to divine agency: "the Kalang, who have claims to be considered the aborigines of Java, are descended from a princess and a chief who had been transformed into a dog."1

Now, we began by noting that, though many myths are ætiological, i.e. designed to explain something, many are not, but are rather like fairy-tales; and it is evident that we are now, after starting with the former, rapidly approaching the latter class the transformation of the Kalang chief reminds us of the enchanters and enchantresses of the Arabian Nights; the helpful Papuan shark belongs to the same order of creatures as Arion's dolphin and the "friendly animals" of numerous nursery tales. What then are the relations between the two classes ?

To begin with-granted that the tendency to ask the reason why, the desire "rerum cognoscere causas " (provided the things be interesting), is characteristic of man generally --it is clear that curiosity would be inevitably aroused by the totemistic beliefs that human beings are descended from animals and that animals help men: some explanation would eventually be felt to be necessary, and as a matter of fact explanations of the kind already illustrated are forthcoming. It is clear also that when the beliefs were dead and forgotten, the stories which had been invented to account for them would, if they survived, ipso facto be dissevered from the beliefs; and would now appear no longer as reasons or explanations, but as statements of facts which occurred "once upon a time,"-incidents, anecdotes. And, as still happens with anecdotes, there was nothing to prevent them from being appropriated to (or by) the wrong persons: the original dolphin-myth was attached to the historic Arion, whilst the totem-dolphin, the original of the myth, was absorbed by the god Apollo. But a single incident does not make a story. "There was once a man and he was changed into a dog," is not a statement of sufficient interest to live long in the memory; but it may have the requisite interest if either I believe that the man in question was an ancestor of my own, or if I know something about the man, other1 Frazer, op. cit. 6.

So

wise, e.g. if I know him as the hero of other incidents. that, granted that the incidents which compose myths are explanations which have survived the beliefs they were invented to explain, we have yet to learn why they came to be grouped together a point of first-rate importance, because they would not have survived if they had not been combined together. We cannot suppose that they were first dissevered from the beliefs on which they originally depended for their existence, and then were subsequently combined so as to obtain a renewed existence, because they would probably have perished in the interval. We must therefore suppose that they were combined into tales ere yet the beliefs or institutions which gave them their first lease of life had perished. This means that the various parts of one institution, for instance, must have had each its separate explanation, and that these explanations were combined into one whole, the unity of which corresponded to the unity of the institution. An illustration will make this clearer, and we will choose one which shall serve to remind us that the relations of men to their totem-animal and to their animal kindred are not the only things for which early man required an explanation, and are not by any means the only source of the incidents to be found in myths and fairy-tales.

Ceremonies may continue to be performed as a matter of custom and tradition long after their original purpose and object have been forgotten; but they will not continue to be performed unless some reason or other is forthcoming, and usually the reason which commends itself is some inference from the nature of the ceremony itself, which is indeed an incorrect inference but is so easy and so readily understood that various people can arrive at it for themselves, and all can appreciate it at once. The explanations which thus come to be given of religious ritual form an important class of ætiological myths, and have the further interest for us that they afford instances of myths which from the beginning were tales and not merely single incidents: a single rite might consist of a series of acts, each of which demanded its own explanation; and the unity of the rite might produce a unity of interest and action in the resulting myth. For an instance we must obviously turn to a complex ritual, and

This is

we will take the ritual which resulted from the syncretism of the wine-god Dionysus and a vegetation spirit. It is probable that the festival of Dionysus at Thebes and elsewhere 1 began with a procession in which a branch, or something else originally representative of the vegetation spirit, was carried round the cultivated fields adjacent to the city, in the same way as the ears of maize were carried at the feast of the Mexican Chicomecoatl, or branches by the European Aryans generally on similar occasions—the purpose being the same in all cases, namely, to place the crops under the blessing of the vegetation spirit. The branch or image or what not was carried by a man dressed up as a woman, just as the eipeo ovn was carried by youths dressed up as womenperhaps, as previously hinted, because the worship of the vegetation spirit was originally confined to women. the first act of the ceremony: the carrying of the symbol of the god by a man dressed as a woman. Then, by a custom common in Europe and exactly paralleled in Mexico, a human figure was attached to the top of a tree-trunk previously felled and prepared, and the trunk was hoisted by ropes into an upright position. This, as we have seen, is an indication of the presence of the anthropomorphic vegetation or treespirit in the tree.2 The image was then pelted with stones until it fell, when it was torn in pieces by the crowd of women celebrating the festival. Stoning was the mode adopted of killing first the animal and afterwards the plant totem, because by means of it the whole community could share jointly and equally in the responsibility of killing the god. In the third and final act of the ritual, the woman who in the scramble secured the head of the image raced off with it, and nailed it to the door or roof of the chief house of the town or of the temple, just as the branch is fastened, after its procession round the fields, to the door or roof of the landlord's house, in northern Europe, and just as the eipeo ovn was similarly attached to the temple of Apollo.

Now there came a time when the original meaning of all

1 For what follows I am largely indebted to Mr. A. G. Bather's original and exhaustive paper on "The Problem of the Baccha," Journal of Hellenic Studies, 1894, vol. xiv. ii. 244-64.

2 Supra, p. 215.

three parts of the festival was forgotten, and the spectators were reduced to their own conjectures. The leading fact and the starting-point for all attempts at explanation was that the festival was in honour of the god Dionysus, and whatever was done or represented in it must be something redounding to his glory. Then who was represented by the figure on the tree-top which was treated with such hostility and hatred, pelted and pulled to pieces by the women? It must be some enemy of the god, whose destruction was a triumph for Dionysus and was therefore commemorated in this festival. The women evidently were on the side of the god-must have been his worshippers-therefore the man was not one of Dionysus' worshippers. Perhaps that accounts for the opposition between him and the god: he would not bow down to Dionysus, whereas the women accepted the god cheerfully-the women of a community would be more likely to welcome a novelty in worship than the head of the family and representative of the old worship. But why is the man dressed in woman's clothes? no man in his senses would go about in public dressed up like a woman. No; but it is just one of the powers of the wine-god that he makes men lose their senses-and that may account, too, for the women killing their own king, they must have been frenzied to do that. So there only remain two things not clear now, why is the god not represented at his own festival? and what is the meaning of the tree being suddenly hauled up erect? Perhaps the god is supposed to be present, invisible but directing everything; and in that case it is he who causes the tree-top to rise, after inducing his foe to mount it, in order that, after exposing him to ridicule, he may cause him to perish at the hands of the women of his own family.

We have only now to fill in the proper names in order to have the myth of Pentheus which affords the framework of Euripides' play, the Baccha. Pentheus is the king who resists the introduction of the worship of Dionysus,1 and is consequently bereft of his senses and led in woman's clothes a laughing-stock through his own town by Dionysus.

as

I explained the similar myths of Lycurgus, Eleuthera, and Tiryns in much the same way in Folk-Lore, June 1891, vol. ii. ii. 238-41.