Custom and Myth. Lang Andrew
borrowed the instrument from each other. But this theory is quite unnecessary. The bull-roarer is a very simple invention. Anyone might find out that a bit of sharpened wood, tied to a string, makes, when whirred, a roaring noise. Supposing that discovery made, it is soon turned to practical use. All tribes have their mysteries. All want a signal to summon the right persons together and warn the wrong persons to keep out of the way. The church bell does as much for us, so did the shaken seistron for the Egyptians. People with neither bells nor seistra find the bull-roarer, with its mysterious sound, serve their turn. The hiding of the instrument from women is natural enough. It merely makes the alarm and absence of the curious sex doubly sure. The stories of supernatural consequences to follow if a woman sees the turndun lend a sanction. This is not a random theory, without basis. In Brazil, the natives have no bull-roarer, but they have mysteries, and the presence of the women at the mysteries of the men is a terrible impiety. To warn away the women, the Brazilians make loud ‘devil-music’ on what are called ‘jurupari pipes.’ Now, just as in Australia, the women may not see the jurupari pipes on pain of death. When the sound of the jurupari pipes is heard, as when the turndun is heard in Australia, every woman flees and hides herself. The women are always executed if they see the pipes. Mr. Alfred Wallace bought a pair of these pipes, but he had to embark them at a distance from the village where they were procured. The seller was afraid that some unknown misfortune would occur if the women of his village set eyes on the juruparis. 25
The conclusion from all these facts seems obvious. The bull-roarer is an instrument easily invented by savages, and easily adopted into the ritual of savage mysteries. If we find the bull-roarer used in the mysteries of the most civilised of ancient peoples, the most probable explanation is, that the Greeks retained both the mysteries, the bull-roarer, the habit of bedaubing the initiate, the torturing of boys, the sacred obscenities, the antics with serpents, the dances, and the like, from the time when their ancestors were in the savage condition. That more refined and religious ideas were afterwards introduced into the mysteries seems certain, but the rites were, in many cases, simply savage. Unintelligible (except as survivals) when found among Hellenes, they become intelligible enough among savages, because they correspond to the intellectual condition and magical fancies of the lower barbarism. The same sort of comparison, the same kind of explanation, will account, as we shall see, for the savage myths as well as for the savage customs which survived among the Greeks.
THE MYTH OF CRONUS
In a Maori pah, when a little boy behaves rudely to his parents, he is sometimes warned that he is ‘as bad as cruel Tutenganahau.’ If he asks who Tutenganahau was, he is told the following story: —
‘In the beginning, the Heaven, Rangi, and the Earth, Papa, were the father and mother of all things. “In these days the Heaven lay upon the Earth, and all was darkness. They had never been separated.” Heaven and Earth had children, who grew up and lived in this thick night, and they were unhappy because they could not see. Between the bodies of their parents they were imprisoned, and there was no light. The names of the children were Tumatuenga, Tane Mahuta, Tutenganahau, and some others. So they all consulted as to what should be done with their parents, Rangi and Papa. “Shall we slay them, or shall we separate them?” “Go to,” said Tumatuenga, “let us slay them.” “No,” cried Tane Mahuta, “let us rather separate them. Let one go upwards, and become a stranger to us; let the other remain below, and be a parent to us.” Only Tawhiri Matea (the wind) had pity on his own father and mother. Then the fruit-gods, and the war-god, and the sea-god (for all the children of Papa and Rangi were gods) tried to rend their parents asunder. Last rose the forest-god, cruel Tutenganahau. He severed the sinews which united Heaven and Earth, Rangi and Papa. Then he pushed hard with his head and feet. Then wailed Heaven and exclaimed Earth, “Wherefore this murder? Why this great sin? Why destroy us? Why separate us?” But Tane pushed and pushed: Rangi was driven far away into the air. “They became visible, who had hitherto been concealed between the hollows of their parents’ breasts.” Only the storm-god differed from his brethren: he arose and followed his father, Rangi, and abode with him in the open spaces of the sky.’
This is the Maori story of the severing of the wedded Heaven and Earth. The cutting of them asunder was the work of Tutenganahau and his brethren, and the conduct of Tutenganahau is still held up as an example of filial impiety. 26 The story is preserved in sacred hymns of very great antiquity, and many of the myths are common to the other peoples of the Pacific. 27
Now let us turn from New Zealand to Athens, as she was in the days of Pericles. Socrates is sitting in the porch of the King Archon, when Euthyphro comes up and enters into conversation with the philosopher. After some talk, Euthyphro says, ‘You will think me mad when I tell you whom I am prosecuting and pursuing!’ ‘Why, has the fugitive wings?’ asks Socrates. ‘Nay, he is not very volatile at his time of life!’ ‘Who is he?’ ‘My father.’ ‘Good heavens! you don’t mean that. What is he accused of?’ ‘Murder, Socrates.’ Then Euthyphro explains the case, which quaintly illustrates Greek civilisation. Euthyphro’s father had an agricultural labourer at Naxos. One day this man, in a drunken passion, killed a slave. Euthyphro’s father seized the labourer, bound him, threw him into a ditch, ‘and then sent to Athens to ask a diviner what should be done with him.’ Before the answer of the diviner arrived, the labourer literally ‘died in a ditch’ of hunger and cold. For this offence, Euthyphro was prosecuting his own father. Socrates shows that he disapproves, and Euthyphro thus defends the piety of his own conduct: ‘The impious, whoever he may be, ought not to go unpunished. For do not men regard Zeus as the best and most righteous of gods? Yet even they admit that Zeus bound his own father Cronus, because he wickedly devoured his sons; and that Cronus, too, had punished his own father, Uranus, for a similar reason, in a nameless manner. And yet when I proceed against my father, people are angry with me. This is their inconsistent way of talking, when the gods are concerned, and when I am concerned.’
Here Socrates breaks in. He ‘cannot away with these stories about the gods,’ and so he has just been accused of impiety, the charge for which he died. Socrates cannot believe that a god, Cronus, mutilated his father Uranus, but Euthyphro believes the whole affair: ‘I can tell you many other things about the gods which would quite amaze you.’ 28
We have here a typical example of the way in which mythology puzzled the early philosophers of Greece. Socrates was anxious to be pious, and to respect the most ancient traditions of the gods. Yet at the very outset of sacred history he was met by tales of gods who mutilated and bound their own parents. Not only were such tales hateful to him, but they were of positively evil example to people like Euthyphro. The problem remained, how did the fathers of the Athenians ever come to tell such myths?
Let us now examine the myth of Cronus, and the explanations which have been given by scholars. Near the beginning of things, according to Hesiod (whose cosmogony was accepted in Greece), Earth gave birth to Heaven. Later, Heaven, Uranus, became the husband of Gæa, Earth. Just as Rangi and Papa, in New Zealand, had many children, so had Uranus and Gæa. As in New Zealand, some of these children were gods of the various elements. Among them were Oceanus, the deep, and Hyperion, the sun – as among the children of Earth and Heaven, in New Zealand, were the Wind and the Sea. The youngest child of the Greek Heaven and Earth was ‘Cronus of crooked counsel, who ever hated his mighty sire.’ Now even as the children of the Maori Heaven and Earth were ‘concealed between the hollows of their parents’ breasts,’ so the Greek Heaven used to ‘hide his children from the light in the hollows of Earth.’ Both Earth and her children resented this, and, as in New Zealand, the children conspired against Heaven, taking Earth, however, into their counsels. Thereupon Earth produced iron, and bade her children avenge their wrongs. 29 Now fear fell on all of them, except Cronus, who, like Tutenganahau, was all for action. Cronus determined to end the embraces of Heaven and Earth. But, while the Maori myth conceives of Heaven and Earth as of two beings which have never been separated before, Hesiod makes Heaven amorously approach his wife from a distance. Then Cronus stretched out his hand, armed
Wallace,
A crowd of similar myths, in one of which a serpent severs Heaven and Earth, are printed in Turner’s
The translation used is Jowett’s.