The Myth of the Birth of the Hero _ A psychological interpretation of mythology

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Title: The Myth of the Birth of the Hero _ A psychological interpretation of mythology
Author: Rank, Otto
Language: English
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Transcriber’s Notes

Obvious typographical errors have been silently corrected. Variations
in hyphenation and accents have been standardised but all other
spelling and punctuation remains unchanged.

Footnote 20 is referenced twice several pages apart in the text.

Italics are represented thus _italic_.

domain.

NERVOUS AND MENTAL DISEASE MONOGRAPH
SERIES, NO. 18

The Myth of the Birth of the Hero

A Psychological Interpretation of Mythology

BY
DR. OTTO RANK
of Vienna

Authorized Translation by
DRS. F. ROBBINS and SMITH ELY JELLIFFE

NEW YORK

THE JOURNAL OF NERVOUS AND MENTAL DISEASE
PUBLISHING COMPANY

1914

NERVOUS AND MENTAL DISEASE MONOGRAPH SERIES

Edited by

Drs. SMITH ELY JELLIFFE and WM. A. WHITE

Numbers Issued

1. Outlines of Psychiatry. (4th Edition) $3.00.
By Dr. William A. White.

2. Studies in Paranoia.
By Drs. N. Gierlich and M. Friedman.

3. The Psychology of Dementia Praecox. (Out of Print.)
By Dr. C. G Jung.

4. Selected Papers on Hysteria and other Psychoneuroses.
(2d Edition.) $2.50. By Prof. Sigmund Freud.

5. The Wassermann Serum Diagnosis in Psychiatry. $2.00.
By Dr. Felix Plaut.

6. Epidemic Poliomyelitis. New York, 1907. (Out of Print.)

7. Three Contributions to Sexual Theory. $2.00.
By Prof. Sigmund Freud.

8. Mental Mechanisms. $2.00. By Dr. Wm. A. White.

9. Studies in Psychiatry. $2.00.
New York Psychiatrical Society.

10. Handbook of Mental Examination Methods. $2.00.
By Shepherd Ivory Franz.

11. The Theory of Schizophrenic Negativism. $0.60.
By Professor E. Bleuler.

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By Dr. André-Thomas.

13. History of Prison Psychoses. $1.25.
By Drs. P. Nitsche and K. Wilmanns.

14. General Paresis. $3.00. By Prof. E. Kraepelin.

15. Dreams and Myths. $1.00. By Dr. Karl Abraham.

16. Poliomyelitis. $3.00. Dr. I. Wickmann.

17. Freud’s Theories of the Neuroses. $2.00.
Dr. E. Hitschmann.

18. The Myth of the Birth of the Hero. $1.00.
Dr. Otto Rank.

PRESS OF
THE NEW ERA PRINTING COMPANY
LANCASTER, PA.

TABLE OF CONTENTS.

Introduction 1

Sargon 12

Moses 13

Karna 15

Œdipus 18

Paris 20

Telephos 21

Perseus 22

Gilgamos 23

Kyros 24

Tristan 38

Romulus 40

Hercules 44

Jesus 47

Siegfried 53

Lohengrin 55

Index 95

THE MYTH OF THE BIRTH OF THE HERO

[A PSYCHOLOGICAL INTERPRETATION OF MYTHOLOGY]

INTRODUCTION

The prominent civilized nations, such as the Babylonians, Egyptians,
Hebrews, and Hindoos, the inhabitants of Iran and of Persia, the
Greeks and the Romans as well as the Teutons and others, all began at
an early stage to glorify their heroes, mythical princes and kings,
founders of religions, dynasties, empires or cities, in brief their
national heroes, in a number of poetic tales and legends. The history
of the birth and of the early life of these personalities came to
be especially invested with fantastic features, which in different
nations even though widely separated by space and entirely independent
of each other present a baffling similarity, or in part a literal
correspondence. Many investigators have long been impressed with this
fact, and one of the chief problems of mythical research still consists
in the elucidation of the reason for the extensive analogies in the
fundamental outlines of mythical tales, which are rendered still more
enigmatical by the unanimity in certain details, and their reappearance
in most of the mythical groupings.[1]

The mythological theories, aiming at the explanation of these
remarkable phenomena, are, in a general way, as follows:

(1) The “Idea of the People,” propounded by Adolf Bastian[2] [1868].
This theory assumes the existence of _elementary thoughts_, so that
the unanimity of the myths is a necessary sequence of the uniform
disposition of the human mind, and the manner of its manifestation,
which within certain limits is identical at all times and in all
places. This interpretation was urgently advocated by Adolf Bauer[3]
[1882], as accounting for the wide distribution of the hero myths.

(2) The explanation by original community, first applied by Th. Benfey
[Pantschatantra, 1859] to the widely distributed parallel forms of
folklore and fairy tales. Originating in a favorable locality [India]
these tales were first accepted by the primarily related [namely the
Indo-Germanic] peoples, then continued to grow while retaining the
common primary traits, and ultimately radiated over the entire earth.
This mode of explanation was first adapted to the wide distribution of
the hero myths by Rudolf Schubert[4] [1890].

(3) The modern theory of migration, or borrowing, according to which
the individual myths originate from definite peoples [especially the
Babylonians], and are accepted by other peoples through oral tradition
[commerce and traffic], or through literary influences.[5]

The modern theory of migration and borrowing can be readily shown to
be merely a modification of Benfey’s theory, necessitated by newly
discovered and irreconcilable material. The profound and extensive
research of modern investigations has shown that not India, but rather
Babylonia, may be regarded as the first home of the myths. Moreover
the mythic tales presumably did not radiate from a single point, but
travelled over and across the entire inhabited globe. This brings into
prominence the idea of the interdependence of mythical structures, an
idea which was generalized by Braun[6] [1864], as the basic law of
the nature of the human mind: Nothing new is ever discovered as long
as it is possible to copy. The theory of the elementary thoughts, so
strenuously advocated by Bauer over a quarter of a century ago, is
unconditionally declined by the most recent investigators [Winckler,[7]
Stucken], who maintain the migration and purloining theory.

There is really no such sharp contrast between the various theories,
and their advocates, for the theory of the elementary thoughts does
not interfere with the claims of the primary common possessions and
the migration. Furthermore, the ultimate problem is not whence and
how the material reached a certain people; but the question is,
_where did it come from to begin with?_ All these theories would only
explain the variability and distribution, but not the origin of the
myths. Even Schubert, the most inveterate opponent of Bauer’s view,
acknowledges this truth, by stating that all these manifold sagas date
back to a single very ancient prototype. But he is unable to tell us
anything of the origin of this prototype. Bauer likewise inclines to
this mediating[8] view and points out repeatedly that in spite of
the multiple origin of independent tales, it is necessary to concede
a most extensive and ramified purloining, as well as an original
community of the concepts, in related peoples. The same conciliatory
attitude is maintained by Lessmann, in a recent publication[9] [1908],
in which he rejects the assumption of the elementary thoughts, but
admits that primary relationship and purloining do not exclude one
another. As pointed out by Wundt, it must be kept in mind, however,
that the appropriation of mythical contents always represents at the
same time an independent mythical construction; because only that can
be permanently retained which corresponds to the purloiner’s stage of
mythological ideation. The faint recollections of preceding narratives
would hardly suffice for the re-figuration of the same material,
without the persistent presence of the underlying motives; but
precisely for this reason, such motives may produce new contents, which
agree in their fundamental motives, also in the absence of similar
associations. (Völker-Psychologie, II Vol., 3 Part, 1909).

Leaving aside for the present the enquiry as to the mode of
distribution of these myths, the origin of the hero myth in general
is now to be investigated, fully anticipating that migration,
or borrowing, will prove to be directly and fairly positively
demonstrable, in a number of the cases. When this is not feasible,
other view points will have to be conceded, at least for the present,
rather than barricade the way to further progress by the somewhat
unscientific attitude of Winckler,[10] who says: When human beings and
products, exactly corresponding to each other, are found at remote
parts of the earth, we must conclude that they have wandered thither;
whether we have knowledge of the how or when makes no difference in
the assumption of the fact itself. Even granting the migration of
all myths, the provenance of the first myth would still have to be
explained.[11]

Investigations along these lines will necessarily help to provide a
deeper insight into the contents of the myths. Nearly all authors who
have hitherto been engaged upon the interpretation of the myths of
the birth of heroes find therein a personification of the processes
of nature, following the dominant mode of natural mythological
interpretation. The new born hero is the young sun rising from the
waters, first confronted by lowering clouds, but finally triumphing
over all obstacles [Brodbeck, Zoroaster, Leipzig, 1893, p. 138].
The taking of all natural, chiefly the atmospheric phenomena into
consideration, as was done by the first representatives of this method
of myth interpretation;[12] or the regarding of the myths in a more
restricted sense, as astral myths [Stucken, Winckler and others]—is
not so essentially distinct, as the followers of each individual
direction believe to be the case. Nor does it seem to be an essential
progress when the purely solar interpretation as advocated especially
by Frobenius[13] was no longer accepted and the view was held that
all myths were originally lunar myths, as done by G. Hüsing, in his
“Contributions to the Kyros Myth” [Berlin, 1906], following out the
suggestion of Siecke, who [1908][14] claims this view as the only
legitimate obvious interpretation also for the birth myths of the
heroes, and it is beginning to gain popularity.[15]

The interpretation of the myths themselves will be taken up in
detail later on, and all detailed critical comments on the above
mode of explanation are here refrained from. Although significant,
and undoubtedly in part correct, the astral theory is not altogether
satisfactory and fails to afford an insight into the motives of myth
formation. The objection may be raised that the tracing to astronomical
processes does not fully represent the content of these myths, and that
much clearer and simpler relations might be established through another
mode of interpretation. The much abused theory of elementary thoughts
indicates a practically neglected aspect of mythological research. At
the beginning as well as at the end of his contribution, Bauer points
out how much more natural and probable it would be to seek the reason
for the general unanimity of these myths in very general traits of
the human psyche, than in a primary community or in migration. This
assumption appears to be more justifiable as such general movements of
the human mind are also expressed in still other forms, and in other
domains, where they can be demonstrated as unanimous.

Concerning the character of these general movements of the human mind,
the psychological study of the essential contents of these myths might
help to reveal the source from which has uniformly flowed at all times,
and in all places, an identical content of the myths. Such a derivation
of an essential constituent, from a common human source, has already
been successfully attempted with one of these legendary motives. Freud,
in his “Dream Interpretation,”[16] reveals the connection of the Œdipus
fable [where Œdipus is told by the oracle that he will kill his father
and marry his mother, as he unwittingly does later on] with the two
typical dreams of the father’s death, and of sexual intercourse with
the mother, dreams which are dreamed by many now living. Of King Œdipus
he says that “his fate stirs us only because it might have been our
own fate; because the oracle has cursed us prior to our birth, as it
did him. All of us, perhaps, were doomed to direct the first sexual
emotion towards the mother, the first hatred and aggressive desire
against the father; our dreams convince us of this truth. King Œdipus,
who has murdered his father Laios, and married his mother Iokaste, is
merely the wish fulfilment of our childhood.”[17] The manifestation
of the intimate relation between dream and myth,—not only in regard
to the contents, but also as to the form and motor forces of this and
many other, more particularly pathological psyche structures,—entirely
justifies the interpretation of the myth as a dream of the masses of
the people, which I have recently shown elsewhere (“Der Künstler,”
1907). At the same time, the transference of the method, and in part
also of the results, of Freud’s technique of dream interpretation
to the myths would seem to be justifiable, as was defended and
illustrated in an example, by Abraham, in his paper on “Dreams and
Myths” [1909].[18] The intimate relations between dream and myth find
further confirmation in the following circle of myths, with frequent
opportunity for reasoning from analogy.

The hostile attitude of the most modern mythological tendency [chiefly
represented by the Society for Comparative Mythological Research]
against all attempts at establishing a relation between dream and
myth[19] is for the most part the outcome of the restriction of the
parallelization to the so-called nightmares [Alpträume], as attempted
in Laistner’s notable book, “The Riddle of the Sphinx,” 1889, and
also of ignorance of the relevant teachings of Freud. The latter
help us not only to understand the dreams themselves, but also show
their symbolism and close relationship with all psychic phenomena in
general, especially with the day dreams or phantasies, with artistic
creativeness, and with certain disturbances of the normal psychic
function. A common share in all these productions belongs to a single
psychic function, the human imagination. It is to this imaginative
faculty—of humanity at large rather than individual—that the modern
myth theory is obliged to concede a high rank, perhaps the first, for
the ultimate origin of all myths. The interpretation of the myths in
the astral sense, or more accurately speaking as “almanac tales,”
gives rise to the query, according to Lessmann,—in view of a creative
imagination of humanity,—if the first germ for the origin of such
tales is to be sought precisely in the processes in the heavens;[20]
or if, on the contrary, readymade tales of an entirely different
[but presumably psychic] origin were only subsequently transferred
to the heavenly bodies. Ehrenreich (General Mythology, 1910, p. 104)
makes a more positive admission: The mythologic evolution certainly
begins on a terrestrian soil, in so far as experiences must first be
gathered in the immediate surroundings before they can be projected
into the heavenly universe. And Wundt tells us (loc. cit., p. 282)
that the theory of the evolution of mythology according to which it
first originates in the heavens whence at a later period it descends
to earth, is not only contradictory to the history of the myth,
which is unaware of such a migration, but is likewise contradictory
to the psychology of myth-formation which must repudiate this
translocation as internally impossible. We are also convinced that the
myths,[21] originally at least, are structures of the human faculty
of imagination, which at some time were projected for certain reasons
upon the heavens,[22] and may be secondarily transferred to the
heavenly bodies, with their enigmatical phenomena. The significance of
the unmistakeable traces which this transference has imprinted upon
the myths, as the fixed figures, and so forth, must by no means be
underrated, although the origin of these figures was possibly psychic
in character, and they were subsequently made the basis of the almanac
and firmament calculations, precisely on account of this significance.

In a general way it would seem as if those investigators who make use
of an exclusively natural mythological mode of interpretation, in any
sense, were unable, in their endeavor to discover the original sense
of the mythical tales, to get entirely away from a psychological
process, such as must be assumed likewise for the creators of the
myths.[23] The motive is identical, and led to the same course in the
myth creators as well as in the myth interpretorsIt is most naïvely
uttered by one of the founders and champions of comparative myth
investigation, and of the natural mythological mode of interpretation,
for Max Müller points out in his “Essays” [1869][20] that this
procedure not only invests meaningless legends with a significance and
beauty of their own, but it helps to remove some of the most revolting
features of classical mythology, and to elucidate their true meaning.
This revolt, the reason for which is readily understood, naturally
prevents the mythologist from assuming that such motives as incest
with the mother, sister or daughter; murder of father, grandfather
or brother could be based upon universal phantasies, which according
to Freud’s teachings have their source in the infantile psyche, with
its peculiar interpretation of the external world and its denizens.
This revolt is therefore only the reaction of the dimly sensed painful
recognition of the actuality of these relations; and this reaction
impels the interpreters of the myths, for their own subconscious
rehabilitation, and that of all mankind, to credit these motives
with an entirely different meaning from their original significance.
The same internal repudiation prevents the myth-creating people from
believing in the possibility of such revolting thoughts, and this
defence probably was the first reason for the projecting of these
relations to the firmament. The psychological pacifying through such
a rehabilitation, by projection upon external and remote objects, can
still be realized, up to a certain degree, by a glance at one of these
interpretations, for instance that of the objectionable Œdipus fable,
as given by a representative of the natural mythological mode of
interpretation. Œdipus, who kills his father, marries his mother, and
dies old and blind, is the solar hero who murders his procreator, the
darkness; shares his couch with the mother, the gloaming, from whose
lap, the dawn, he has been born, and dies blinded, as the setting sun
[Goldziher, 1876].[24]

It is intelligible that a similar interpretation is more soothing
to the mind than the revelation of the fact that incest and murder
impulses against the nearest relatives are found in the phantasies of
most people, as remnants of the infantile ideation. But this is not
a scientific argument, and revolt of this kind, although it may not
always be equally conscious, is altogether out of place, in view of
existing facts. One must either become reconciled to these indecencies,
provided they are felt to be such, or one must abandon the study of
psychological phenomena. It is evident that human beings, even in the
earliest times, and with a most naïve imagination, never saw incest and
parricide in the firmament on high,[25] but it is far more probable
that these ideas are derived from another source, presumably human.
In what way they came to reach the sky, and what modifications or
additions they received in the process, are questions of a secondary
character, which cannot be settled until the psychic origin of the
myths in general has been established.

At any rate, besides the astral conception, the claims of the part
played by the psychic life must be credited with the same rights for
myth formation, and this plea will be amply vindicated by the results
of our method of interpretation. With this object we shall first take
up the legendary material on which such a psychological interpretation
is to be attempted for the first time on a large scale; selecting from
the mass[26] of these chiefly biographical hero myths those which are
the best known, and some which are especially characteristic. These
myths will be given in abbreviated form as far as relevant for this
investigation, with statements concerning the provenance. Attention
will be called to the most important, constantly recurrent motives by a
difference in print.

SARGON

Probably the oldest transmitted hero myth in our possession is derived
from the period of the foundation of Babylon (about 2800 B.C.),
and concerns the birth history of its founder, Sargon the First.
The literal translation of the report—which according to the mode
of rendering appears to be an original inscription by King Sargon
himself—is as follows:[27]

“Sargon, the mighty king, King of Agade, am I. _My mother was a
vestal, my father I knew not_, while my father’s brother dwelt in the
mountains. In my city Azupirani, which is situated on the bank of the
Euphrates, my mother, the vestal, bore me. _In a hidden place she
brought me forth. She laid me in a vessel made of reeds_, closed my
door with pitch, and _dropped me down into the river_, which did not
drown me. The river carried me to Akki, the water carrier. Akki the
water carrier lifted me up in the kindness of his heart, Akki the water
carrier raised me as his own son, Akki the water carrier made of me his
gardener. In my work as a gardener I was beloved by Istar, I became the
king, and for 45 years I held kingly sway.”

MOSES

The biblical birth history of Moses, which is told in Exodus, chapter
2, presents the greatest similarity to the Sargon legend, even an
almost literal correspondence of individual traits.[28] Already the
first chapter (22) relates that Pharaoh commanded his people to throw
into the water all sons which were born to Hebrews, while the daughters
were permitted to live; the reason for this order being referred to
the overfertility of the Israelites. The second chapter continues as
follows:

“And there went a man of the house of Levi, and took to wife a daughter
of Levi[29]. And the woman conceived, and bare a son: and when she saw
him that he was a goodly child, she hid him three months. And when she
could no longer hide him, she took for him an ark of bulrushes, and
daubed it with slime and with pitch, and put the child therein; and she
laid it in the flags by the river’s brink. And his sister stood afar
off to wit what would be done to him. And the daughter of Pharaoh came
down to wash herself at the river; and her maidens walked along by the
river’s side and when she saw the ark among the flags, she sent her
maid to fetch it. And when she opened it, she saw the child, and behold
the babe wept. And she had compassion on him, and said, this is one
of the Hebrews’ children. Then said his sister to Pharaoh’s daughter,
Shall I go and call to thee a nurse of the Hebrew women, that she may
nurse the child for thee? And Pharaoh’s daughter said to her, Go. And
the maid went and called the child’s mother. And Pharaoh’s daughter
said unto her, Take this child away, and nurse it for me, and I will
give thee wages. And the woman took the child, and nursed it. And the
child grew, and she brought him unto Pharaoh’s daughter, and he became
her son. And she called his name Moses:[30] and she said, Because I
drew him out of the water.”

This account is ornamented by Rabbi mythology through an account of
the events preceding Moses’ birth. In the sixtieth year after Joseph’s
death, the reigning Pharaoh saw in his dream an old man, who held a
pair of scales, all the inhabitants of Egypt lay on one side, with
only a sucking lamb on the other, but nevertheless this outweighed all
the Egyptians. The startled king at once consulted the wise men and
astrologers, who declared the dream to mean that a son would be born to
the Israelites, who would destroy all Egypt. The king was frightened,
and at once ordered the death of all newborn children of the Israelites
in the entire country. On account of this tyrannical order, the Levite
Amram, who lived in Goshen, meant to separate from his wife Jocabed, so
as not to foredoom to certain death the children conceived from him.
But this resolution was opposed later on by his daughter Miriam, who
foretold with prophetic assurance that precisely the child suggested
in the king’s dream would come forth from her mother’s womb, and would
become the liberator of his people.[31]

Amram therefore rejoined his wife, from whom he had been separated for
three years. At the end of three months, she conceived, and later
on bore a boy at whose birth the entire house was illuminated by an
extraordinary luminous radiance, suggesting the truth of the prophecy.
(After Bergel, “Mythology of the Hebrews,” Leipzig, 1882.)

Similar accounts are given of the birth of the ancestor of the Hebrew
nation, Abraham. He was a son of Therach—Nimrod’s captain—and Amtelai.
Prior to his birth, it was revealed to King Nimrod, from the stars,
that the coming child would overthrow the thrones of powerful princes,
and take possession of their lands. King Nimrod means to have the child
killed immediately after its birth. But when the boy is requested from
Therach, he says: Truly a son was born to me, but he has died. He then
delivers a strange child, concealing his own son in a cave underneath
the ground, where God permits him to suck milk from a finger of the
right hand. In this cave, Abraham is said to have remained until the
third (according to others the tenth) year of his life. (Compare Beer,
“The Life of Abraham,” according to the interpretation of Jewish
traditions, Leipzig, 1859, and Aug. Wünsche, “From Israel’s Temples of
Learning,” Leipzig, 1907.) Also in the next generation, in the story
of _Isaac_, appear the same mythical motives. Prior to his birth King
Abimelech is warned by a _dream_ not to touch Sarah, as this would
cause woe to betide him. After a long period of barrenness, she finally
bears her son, who (in later life, in this report) after having been
destined to be _sacrificed by his own father_ (foster-father) Abraham,
is ultimately _rescued_ by God. But Abraham casts out his own son
Ishmael, with Hagar, the boy’s mother (Genesis 20, 6. See also Bergel,
loc. cit.).

KARNA

A close relationship with the Sargon legend is also shown in certain
features of the ancient Hindu epic[32] Mahâbháràta, of the birth of the
hero Karna. The contents of the legend are briefly rendered by Lassen
(“Indische Altertumskunde,” I, p. 63).[33]

The princess Pritha, also known as Kunti, bore as a virgin the boy
Karna, whose father was the sun god Surya. The young Karna was born
with the golden ear ornaments of his father and with an unbreakable
coat of mail. The mother in her distress concealed and exposed the
boy. In the adaptation of the myth by A. Holtzmann,[34] verse 1458
reads: “Then my nurse and I made a large basket of rushes, placed a lid
thereon, and lined it with wax; into this basket I laid the boy and
carried him down to the river Acva.” Floating on the waves, the basket
reaches the river Ganga and travels as far as the city of Campa. “There
was passing along the bank of the river, the charioteer, the noble
friend of Dhrtarastra, and with him was Radha, his beautiful and pious
spouse. She was wrapt in deep sorrow, because no son had been given to
her. On the river she saw the basket, which the waves carried close to
her on the shore; she showed it to Azirath, who went and drew it forth
from the waves.” The two take care of the boy and raise him as their
own child.

Kunti later on marries King Pandu, who is forced to refrain from
conjugal intercourse by the curse that he is to die in the arms of his
spouse. But Kunti bears three sons, again through divine conception,
one of the children being born in the cave of a wolf. One day Pandu
dies in the embrace of his second wife. The sons grow up, and at a
tournament which they arrange, Karna appears to measure his strength
against the best fighter, Arjuna, the son of Kunti. Arjuna scoffingly
refuses to fight the charioteer’s son. In order to make him a worthy
opponent, one of those present anoints him as king. Meanwhile Kunti
has recognized Karna as her son, by the divine mark, and prays him to
desist from the contest with his brother, revealing to him the secret
of his birth. But he considers her revelation as a fantastic tale, and
insists implacably upon satisfaction. He falls in the combat, struck by
Arjuna’s arrow. (Compare the detailed account in Lefmann’s “History of
Ancient India,” Berlin, 1890, p. 181, et seq.)

A striking resemblance of the entire structure with the Karna legend is
presented by the birth history of Ion, the ancestor of the Ionians, of
whom a relatively late tradition states the following:[35]

Apollo, in the grotto of the rock of the Athenian Acropolis, procreated
a son with Kreusa, the daughter of Erechtheus. In this grotto the
boy was also born, and exposed; the mother leaves the child behind
in a woven basket, in the hope that Apollo will not leave his son to
perish. On Apollo’s request, Hermes carries the child the same night to
Delphi, where the priestess finds him on the threshold of the temple
in the morning. She brings the boy up, and when he has grown into a
youth makes him a servant of the temple. Erechtheus later on gave his
daughter Kreusa in marriage to the immigrated Xuthos. As the marriage
long remained childless, they addressed the Delphian oracle, praying to
be blessed with progeny. The god reveals to Xuthos that the first to
meet him on leaving the sanctuary is his son. He hastens outside and
meets the youth, whom he joyfully greets as his own son, giving him
the name Ion, which means “Walker.” Kreusa refuses to accept the youth
as her son; her attempt to poison him fails, and the infuriated people
turn against her. Ion is about to attack her, but Apollo, who did
not wish the son to kill his own mother, enlightened the mind of the
priestess so that she understood the connection. By means of the basket
in which the newborn child had lain, Kreusa recognizes him as her son,
and reveals to him the secret of his birth.

ŒDIPUS

The parents of Œdipus, King Laios and his queen, Jocaste, lived for a
long time in childless wedlock. Laios, who is longing for an heir, asks
the Delphic Apollo for advice. The oracle answers that he may have a
son if he so desires; but fate has ordained that his own son will kill
him. Fearing the fulfilment of the oracle, Laios refrains from conjugal
relations, but being intoxicated one day, he nevertheless procreates a
son, whom he causes to be exposed in the river Kithairon, barely three
days after his birth. In order to be quite sure that the child will
perish, Laios orders his ankles to be pierced. According to the account
of Sophocles, which is not the oldest, however, the shepherd who has
been intrusted with the exposure, surrenders the boy to a shepherd of
King Polybos, of Corinth, at whose court he is brought up, according
to the universal statement. Others say that the boy was exposed in a
box on the sea, and was taken from the water by Periböa, the wife of
King Polybos, as she was rinsing her clothes by the shore.[36] Polybos
brought him up as his own son.

Œdipus, on hearing accidentally that he is a foundling, asks the
Delphian oracle for his own parents, but receives the prophecy that
he will kill his father and marry his mother. In the belief that this
prophecy refers to his foster parents, he flees from Corinth to Thebes,
but on the way unwittingly kills his father Laios. By solving a riddle,
he frees the City from the plague of the Sphinx, a man-devouring
monster, and in reward is given the hand of Jocaste, his mother, as
well as the throne of his father. The revelation of these horrors,
and the subsequent misfortune of Œdipus, were a favorite subject for
spectacular display among the Greek tragedians.

An entire series of Christian legends have been elaborated on the
pattern of the Œdipus myth,[37] and the summarized contents of the
Judas legend may serve as a paradigm of this group. Before his birth,
his mother Cyboread, is warned by a dream that she will bear a wicked
son, to the ruin of all his people. The parents expose the boy in a box
on the sea. The waves cast the child ashore on the Isle of Scariot,
where the childless queen finds him, and brings him up as her son.
Later on, the royal couple have a son of their own, and the foundling,
who feels himself slighted, kills his foster brother. As a fugitive
from the country, he takes service at the court of Pilate, who made
a confidant of him and placed him above his entire household. In a
fight, Judas kills a neighbor, without knowing that he is his father.
The widow of the murdered man, namely his own mother, then becomes his
wife. After the revelation of these horrors, he repents and seeks the
Saviour, who receives him among his apostles. His betrayal of Jesus is
known from the Gospel.

The legend of St. Gregory on the Stone—the subject of the narrative of
Hartmann von Aue—represents a more complicated type of this mythical
cycle. Gregory, the child of the incestuous union of royal lovers,
is exposed by his mother in a box on the sea, saved and raised by
fishermen, and is then educated in a convent for the church. But he
prefers the life of a knight, is victorious in combats, and in reward
is given the hand of the princess, his mother. After the discovery of
the incest, Gregory does penance for seventeen years, on a rock in the
midst of the sea, and he is finally made the Pope, at the command of
God. (Compare Cholevicas, “History of German Poetry, According to the
Antique Elements.”)

A very similar legend is the Iranese legend of King Dârâb, told by
King Firdusi in the Book of Kings, and rendered by Spiegel (Eranische
Altertumskunde, II, 584). The last Kirânian Behmen nominated as his
successor his daughter and simultaneous wife Humâi; so that his son
Sâsân was grieved and withdrew into solitude. A short time after the
death of her husband, Humâi gave birth to a son, whom she resolved to
expose. He was placed in a box, which was put into the Euphrates, and
drifted down stream, until it was held up by a stone, which had been
placed in the water by a tanner. The box with the child was found by
him, and he carried the boy to his wife, who had recently lost her own
child. The couple agreed to raise the foundling, and as the boy grew
up, he soon became so strong that the other children were unable to
resist him. He did not care for the work of his father, but learned to
be a warrior. His foster mother was forced by him to reveal the secret
of his origin, and he joined the army which Humâi was then sending out
to fight the king of Rûm. Her attention being called to him by his
bravery, Humâi readily recognized him as her son, and named him her
successor.

PARIS

Apollodorus relates of the birth of Paris: King Priamos had with
his wife Hekabe a son, named Hektor. When Hekabe was about to bear
another child, _she dreamed_ that she brought forth a burning log of
wood, which set fire to the entire city. Priamos asked the advice of
Aisakos, who was his son with his first wife Arisbe, and an expert in
the interpretation of dreams. Aisakos declared that the child would
bring trouble upon the city, and advised that it be exposed. Priamos
gave the little boy to a slave, who carried him to the top of Mount
Ida; this man’s name was Agelaos. _The child was nursed during five
days by a she-bear._ When Agelaos found that he was still alive, he
picked him up, and carried him home to raise him. He named the boy
Paris; but after the child had grown into a strong and handsome youth,
he was called Alexandros, because he fought the robbers and protected
the flocks. Before long he discovered his parents. How this came about
is told by Hyginus, according to whose report the infant is _found by
shepherds_. One day messengers, sent by Priamos, come to these herders
to fetch a bull which is to serve as the prize for the victor in the
combats arranged in commemoration of Paris. They selected a bull which
Paris valued so highly that he followed the men who led the beast away,
assisted in the combats, and won the prize. This aroused the anger
of his brother Deiphobos, who threatened him with his sword, but his
sister Kassandra recognized him as her brother, and Priamos joyfully
received him as his son. The misfortune which Paris later on brought
to his family and his native city, through the abduction of Helena,
is well known from Homer’s poems, as well as their predecessors and
successors, their _prologue_ and _epilogue_.

A certain resemblance with the story of the birth of Paris is presented
by the poem of Zal, in Firdusi’s Persian hero-myths (translated by
Schack). The first son is born to Sam, king of Sistan, by one of
his consorts. Because he had white hair, _his mother concealed the
birth_. But the nurse reveals the birth of his son to the king. Sam
is disappointed, and commands that the child be exposed. The servants
carry it on the top of Mount Alburs, where it is raised by the Somurgh,
a powerful bird. The full grown youth is seen by a travelling caravan,
whose members speak of him “as whose nurse a bird is sufficient.” King
Sam once _sees his son in a dream_, and sallies forth to seek the
exposed child. He is unable to reach the summit of the elevated rock
where he finally espies the youth. But the Somurgh bears his son down
to him, he receives him joyfully and nominates him as his successor.

TELEPHOS

Aleos, King of Tegea, was informed by the _oracle_ that his sons would
perish through a descendant of his daughter. He therefore made his
daughter Auge a priestess of the goddess Athene, and threatened her
with death should she mate with a man. But when Herakles dwelt as a
guest in the sanctuary of Athene, on his expedition against Augias, he
saw the maiden, and when intoxicated he raped her. When Aleos became
aware of her pregnancy, he delivered her to Nauplios, a rough sailor,
with the command to throw her into the sea. But on the way she gave
birth to Telephos, on Mount Parthenios, and Nauplios, unmindful of the
orders he had received, carried both her and the child to Mysia, where
he delivered them to King Teuthras.

According to another version, Auge secretly brought forth as a
priestess, but kept the child hidden in the temple. When Aleos
discovered the sacrilege, he caused the child to be exposed in the
Parthenian mountains,[38] Nauplios was instructed to sell the mother in
foreign lands, or to kill her. She was delivered by him into the hands
of Teuthras.

According to the current tradition, _Auge exposes the newborn child_
and escapes to Mysia, where the childless King Teuthras adopts her as
his daughter. The boy, however, is nursed by a doe, and is found by
shepherds who take him to King Korythos. The king brings him up as his
son. When Telephos has grown into a youth he betakes himself to Mysia,
on the advice of the oracle, to seek his mother. He frees Teuthras,
who is in danger from his enemies, and in reward receives the hand of
the supposed daughter of the king, namely his own mother Auge. But
she refuses to submit to Telephos, and when he in his ire is about
to pierce the disobedient one with his sword, she calls on her lover
Herakles in her distress, and Telephos thus recognizes his mother.
After the death of Teuthras he becomes king of Mysia.

PERSEUS

Akrisios, the king of Argos, had already reached an advanced age
without having male progeny. As he desired a son, he consulted the
Delphian oracle, but this warned him against male descendants, and
informed him that his daughter Danae would bear a son through whose
hand he would perish. In order to prevent this, his daughter was locked
up by him in an iron chamber, which he caused to be carefully guarded.
But Zeus penetrated through the roof, in the guise of a golden rain,
and Danae became the mother of a boy.[39] One day Akrisios heard the
voice of young Perseus in his daughter’s room, and in this way learned
that she had given birth to a child. _He killed the nurse_, but carried
his daughter with her son to the domestic altar of Zeus, to have an
oath taken on the true father’s name. But he refuses to believe his
daughter’s statement that Zeus is the father, and _he encloses her with
the child in a box,[40] which is cast into the sea_. The box is carried
by the waves to the coast of Seriphos, where _Diktys, a fisherman_,
usually called a brother of King Polydektes, _saves mother and child
by drawing them out of the sea with his nets_. Diktys leads the two
into his house and keeps them as his relations. Polydektes, however,
becomes enamoured of the beautiful mother, and _as Perseus was in his
way, he tried to remove him_ by sending him forth to fetch the head
of the Gorgon Medusa. But against the king’s anticipations Perseus
accomplishes this difficult task, and a number of heroic deeds besides.
In throwing the discos, at play, he accidentally kills his grandfather,
as foretold by the oracle. He becomes the king of Argos, then of
Tiryath, and the builder of Mykene.[41]

GILGAMOS

Aelian, who lived about 200 A.D, relates in his “Animal Stories” the
history of _a boy who was saved by an eagle_.[42]

“Animals have a characteristic fondness for man. An eagle is known to
have nourished a child. I shall tell the entire story, in proof of my
assertion. When Senechoros reigned over the Babylonians, the Chaldean
fortune-tellers foretold that the son of the king’s daughter would
take the kingdom from his grandfather; this verdict was a prophecy of
the Chaldeans. The king was afraid of this prophecy, and humorously
speaking, he became a second Akrisius for his daughter, over whom
he watched with the greatest severity. But his daughter, fate being
wiser than the Babylonian, conceived secretly from an inconspicuous
man. For fear of the king, the guardians threw the child down from the
Akropolis, where the royal daughter was imprisoned. The eagle, with his
keen eyes, saw the boy’s fall, and before the child struck the earth,
he caught it on his back, bore it into a garden, and set it down with
great care. When the overseer of the place saw the beautiful boy he was
pleased with him and raised him. The boy received the name Gilgamos,
and became the king of Babylonia. If anyone regards this as a fable,
I have nothing to say, although I have investigated the matter to the
best of my ability. Also from Achaemenes, the Persian, from whom the
nobility of the Persians is derived, I learn that he was the pupil of
an eagle.”[43]

KYROS

The myth of Kyros, which the majority of investigators place in the
center of this entire mythical circle, without entirely sufficient
grounds, it would appear—has been transmitted to us in several
versions. According to the report of Herodotus (about 450 B.C.), who
states (I, 95) that among four renderings known to him, he selected the
least “glorifying” version, the story of the birth and youth of Kyros
is as follows, I, 107 et seq.[44].

Royal sway over the Medes was held, after Kyaxares, by his son
Astyages, who had a daughter named Mandane. Once he saw, in a dream,
so much water passing from her as to fill an entire city, and inundate
all Asia. He related his dream to the dream interpreters among the
magicians, and was in great fear after they had explained it all to
him. When Mandane had grown up, he gave her in marriage, not to a
Mede, his equal in birth, but to a Persian, by name of Kambyses. This
man came of a good family and led a quiet life. The King considered
him of lower rank than a middle class Mede. After Mandane had become
the wife of Kambyses, Astyages saw another dream vision in the first
year. He dreamed that a vine grew from his daughter’s lap, and this
vine overshadowed all Asia. After he had again related this vision to
the dream interpreters, he sent for his daughter, who was with child,
and after her arrival from Persia, he watched her, because he meant
to kill her offspring. For the dream interpreters among the magicians
had prophesied to him that his daughter’s son would become king in his
place. In order to avert this fate, he waited until Kyros was born, and
then sent for Harpagos, who was his relative and his greatest confidant
among the Medes, and whom he had placed over all his affairs. Him he
addressed as follows: “My dear Harpagos, I shall charge thee with an
errand which thou must conscientiously perform. But do not deceive me,
and let no other man attend to it, for all might not go well with thee.
Take this boy, whom Mandane has brought forth, carry him home, and
kill him. Afterwards thou canst bury him, how and in whatsoever manner
thou desirest.” But Harpagos made answer: “Great King, never hast thou
found thy servant disobedient, and also in future I shall beware not to
sin before thee. If such is thy will, it behooves me to carry it out
faithfully.” When Harpagos had thus spoken, and the little boy with all
his ornaments had been delivered into his hands, for death, he went
home weeping. On his arrival he told his wife all that Astyages had
said to him. But she inquired, “What art thou about to do?” He made
reply: “I shall not obey Astyages, even if he raved and stormed ten
times worse than he is doing. I shall not do as he wills, and consent
to such a murder. I have a number of reasons: in the first place, the
boy is my blood relative; then, Astyages is old, and he has no male
heir. Should he die, and the kingdom go to his daughter, whose son he
bids me kill at present, would I not run the greatest danger? But the
boy must die, for the sake of my safety. However, one of Astyages’ men
is to be his murderer, not one of mine.”

Having thus spoken, he at once despatched a messenger to one of the
king’s cattle herders, by name Mithradates, who, as he happened to
know, was keeping his herd in a very suitable mountain pasturage, full
of wild animals. The herder’s wife was also a slave of Astyages’, by
name Kyno in Greek, or Spako (a bitch) in the Medean language. When the
herder hurriedly arrived, on the command of Harpagos, the latter said
to him: “Astyages bids thee take this boy and expose him in the wildest
mountains, that he may perish as promptly as may be, and the King has
ordered me to say to thee: If thou doest not kill the boy, but let him
live, in whatever way, thou art to die a most disgraceful death. And
I am charged to see to it that the boy is really exposed.” When the
herder had listened to this, he took the boy, went home, and arrived
in his cottage. His wife was with child, and was in labor the entire
day, and it happened that she was just bringing forth, when the herder
had gone to the city. They were greatly worried about each other. But
when he had returned and the woman saw him again so unexpectedly, she
asked in the first place why Harpagos had sent for him so hurriedly.
But he said: “My dear wife, would that I had never seen what I have
seen and heard in the city, and what has happened to our masters. The
house of Harpagos was full of cries and laments. This startled me, but
I entered, and soon after I had entered, I saw a small boy lying before
me, who struggled and cried and was dressed in fine garments and gold.
When Harpagos saw me, he bid me quickly take the boy, and expose him in
the wildest spot of the mountains. He said Astyages had ordered this,
and added awful threats if I failed to do so. I took the child and went
away with it, thinking that it belonged to one of the servants, for it
did not occur to me whence it had come. But on the way, I learned the
entire story from the servant who led me from the city, and placed the
boy in my hands. He is the son of Mandane, daughter of Astyages, and
Kambyses the son of Kyros; and Astyages has ordered his death. Behold,
here is the boy.”

Having thus spoken, the herder uncovered the child and showed it to
her, and when the woman saw that he was a fine strong child, she wept,
and fell at her husband’s feet, and implored him not to expose it. But
he said he could not do otherwise, for Harpagos would send servants to
see if this had been done; he would have to die a disgraceful death
unless he did so. Then she said again: “If I have failed to move thee,
do as follows, so that they may see an exposed child: I have brought
forth a dead child; take it and expose it, but the son of the daughter
of Astyages we will raise as our own child. In this way, thou wilt not
be found a disobedient servant, nor will we fare ill ourselves. Our
stillborn child will be given a kingly burial, and the living child’s
life will be preserved.” The herder did as his wife had begged and
advised him to do. He placed his own dead boy in a basket, dressed him
in all the finery of the other, and exposed him on the most desert
mountain. Three days later he announced to Harpagos that he was now
enabled to show the boy’s cadaver. Harpagos sent his most faithful body
guardians, and ordered the burial of the cattle herder’s son. The other
boy, however, who was known later on as Kyros, was brought up by the
herder’s wife. They did not call him Kyros, but gave him another name.

When the boy was twelve years old the truth was revealed, through the
following accident. He was playing on the road, with other boys of his
own age, in the village where the cattle were kept. The boys played
“King,” and elected the supposed son of the cattle herder.[45] But
he commanded some to build houses, others to carry lances; one he
made the king’s watchman, the other was charged with the bearing of
messages; briefly, each received his appointed task. One of the boy’s
playmates, however, was the son of Artembares, a respected man among
the Medes, and when he did not do as Kyros ordained, the latter made
the other boys seize him. The boys obeyed, and Kyros chastised him with
severe blows. After they let him go, he became furiously angry, as if
he had been treated improperly. He ran into the city and complained to
his father of what Kyros had done to him. He did not mention the name
of Kyros for he was not yet called so, but said the cattle herder’s
son. Artembares went wrathfully with his son to Astyages, complained of
the disgraceful treatment, and spoke thus: “Great king, we suffer such
outrageous treatment from thy servant, the herder’s son,” and he showed
him his own son’s shoulders. When Astyages heard and saw this, he
wished to vindicate the boy for the sake of Artembares, and he sent for
the cattle herder with his son. When both were present, Astyages looked
at Kyros and said: “Thou, a lowly man’s son, hast had the effrontery
to treat so disgracefully the son of a man whom I greatly honor!” But
he made answer: “Lord, he has only received his due. For the boys in
the village, he being among them, were at play, and made me their king,
believing me to be the best adapted thereto. And the other boys did as
they were told, but he was disobedient, and did not mind me at all. For
this he has received his reward. If I have deserved punishment, here I
am at your service.”

When the boy spoke in this way, Astyages knew him at once. For the
features of the face appeared to him as his own, and the answer was
that of a highborn youth; furthermore, it seemed to him that the time
of the exposure agreed with the boy’s age. This smote his heart, and he
remained speechless for a while. Hardly had he regained control over
himself, when he spoke to get rid of Artembares, so as to be able to
question the cattle herder without witnesses. “My dear Artembares,”
he said, “I shall take care that neither thou nor thy son shall have
cause for complaint.” Thus he dismissed Artembares. Kyros, however, was
led into the palace by the servants, on the command of Astyages, and
the cattle herder had to stay behind. When he was all alone with him
Astyages questioned him whence he had obtained the boy, and who had
given the child into his hands. But the herder said that he was his own
son, and that the woman who had borne him was living with him. Astyages
remarked that he was very unwise, to look out for most cruel tortures,
and he beckoned the sword bearers to take hold of him. As he was being
led to torture, the herder confessed the whole story, from beginning to
end, the entire truth, finally beginning to beg and implore forgiveness
and pardon. Meanwhile Astyages was not so incensed against the herder,
who had revealed to him the truth, as against Harpagos; he ordered
the sword bearers to summon him, and when Harpagos stood before him,
Astyages asked him as follows: “My dear Harpagos, in what fashion hast
thou taken the life of my daughter’s son, whom I once delivered over to
thee?” Seeing the cattle herder standing near, Harpagos did not resort
to untruthfulness, for fear that he would be refuted at once, and so he
proceeded to tell the truth. Astyages concealed the anger which he had
aroused in him, and first told him what he had learned from the herder;
then he mentioned that the boy was still living, and that everything
had turned out all right. He said that he had greatly regretted what he
had done to the child, and that his daughter’s reproaches had pierced
his soul. “But as everything has ended so well, send thy son to greet
the newcomer, and then come to eat with me, for I am ready to prepare a
feast in honor of the Gods who have brought all this about.”

When Harpagos heard this, he prostrated himself on the ground before
the king, and praised himself for his error having turned out well,
and for being invited to the king’s table, in commemoration of a happy
event. So he went home, and when he arrived there, he at once sent
off his only son, a boy of about thirteen years, telling him to go to
Astyages, and to do as he was bid. Then Harpagos joyfully told his wife
what had befallen him. But Astyages butchered the son of Harpagos when
he came, cut him to pieces, and roasted the flesh in part; another
portion of the flesh was cooked, and when everything was prepared he
kept it in readiness. When the hour of the meal had come, Harpagos
and the other guests arrived. A table with sheep’s meat was arranged
in front of Astyages and the others, but Harpagos was served with his
own son’s flesh, without the head, and without the choppings of hands
and feet, but with everything else. These parts were kept hidden in a
basket. When Harpagos seemed to have taken his fill, Astyages asked him
if the meat had tasted good to him, and when Harpagos answered that he
had enjoyed it, the servants, who had been ordered to do so, brought
in his own son’s covered head, with the hands and feet, stepped up to
Harpagos, and told him to uncover and take what he desired. Harpagos
did so, uncovered the basket, and saw the remnants of his son. When he
saw this, he did not give way to his horror, but controlled himself.
Astyages then asked him if he knew of what game he had eaten; and he
replied that he knew it very well, and that whatever the king did was
well done. Thus he spoke, took the flesh that remained, and went home
with it, where he probably meant to bury it together.

This was the revenge of Astyages upon Harpagos. Concerning Kyros, he
took counsel, and summoned the same magicians who had explained his
dream, then he asked them how they had at one time interpreted his
vision in a dream. But they said that the boy must become a king, if he
remained alive, and did not die prematurely. Astyages made reply: “The
boy is alive, and is here, and as he was staying in the country, the
boys of the village elected him for their king. But he did everything
like the real kings, for he ordained to himself as the master, sword
bearers, gate keepers, messengers, and everything. How do you mean to
interpret this?” The magicians made reply: “If the boy is alive, and
has been made king without the help of anyone, thou canst be at ease
so far as he is concerned, and be of good cheer, for he will not again
be made a king. Already several prophecies of ours have applied to
insignificant trifles, and what rests upon dreams is apt to be vain.”
Astyages made reply: “Ye sorcerers, I am entirely of your opinion that
the dream has been fulfilled when the boy was king in name, and that
I have nothing more to fear from him. Yet counsel me carefully as to
what is safest for my house and for yourselves.” Then the magicians
said: “Send the boy away, that he may get out of thy sight, send him
to the land of the Persians, to his parents.” When Astyages had heard
this, he was greatly pleased. He sent for Kyros, and said to him: “My
son, I have wronged thee greatly, misled by a deceitful dream, but
thy good fortune has saved thee. Now go cheerfully to the land of
the Persians; I shall give thee safe conduct. There wilt thou find a
very different father, and a very different mother than the herders,
Mithradates and his wife.” Thus spake Astyages, and Kyros was sent
away. When he arrived in the house of Kambyses, his parents received
him with great joy when they learned who he was, for they believed him
to have perished at that time, and they desired to know how he had been
preserved. He told them that he had believed himself to be the son
of the cattle herder, but had learned everything on the way from the
companions whom Astyages had sent with him. He related that the cattle
herder’s wife had saved him, and praised her throughout. The bitch
(Spako) played the principal part in his conversation. The parents took
hold of this name, so that the preservation of the child might appear
still more wonderful, and thus was laid the foundation of the myth that
the exposed Kyros was nursed by a bitch.

Later on, Kyros, on the instigation of Harpagos, stirred up the
Persians against the Medes. War was declared, and Kyros, at the head
of the Persians, conquered the Medes in battle. Astyages was taken a
prisoner alive, but Kyros did not harm him, but kept him with him until
his end. Herodotus’s report concludes with the words: “But from that
time on the Persians and Kyros reigned over Asia. Thus was Kyros born
and raised, and made a king.”

The report of Pompeius Trogus is preserved only in the extract by
Justinus.[46] Astyages had a daughter but no male heir. In his dream he
saw a vine grow forth from her lap, the sprouts of which overshadowed
all Asia. The dream interpreters declared that the vision signified the
magnitude of his grandson, whom his daughter was to bear; but also his
own loss of his dominions. In order to banish this dread, Astyages gave
his daughter in marriage neither to a prominent man, nor to a Mede, so
that his grandson’s mind might not be uplifted by the paternal estate
besides the maternal; but he married her to Kambyses, a middle-class
man from the then unknown people of the Persians. But this was not
enough to banish the fears of Astyages, and he summoned his pregnant
daughter, in order to have her infant destroyed before his eyes. When a
boy had been born, he gave him to Harpagos, his friend and confidant,
to kill him. For fear that the daughter of Astyages would take revenge
upon him for the death of her boy, when she came to reign after her
father’s death, he delivered the boy to the king’s herder for exposure.
At the same time when Kyros was born, a son happened to be born also
to the herder. When his wife learned that the king’s child had been
exposed, she urgently prayed for it to be brought to her, that she
might look at it. Moved by her entreaties, the herder returned to the
woods. There he found a bitch standing beside the child, giving it her
teats, and keeping the beasts and birds away from it. At this aspect he
was filled with the same compassion as the bitch; so that he picked
up the boy and carried him home, the bitch following him in great
distress. When his wife took the boy in her arms, he smiled at her as
if he already knew her; and as he was very strong, and ingratiated
himself with her by his pleasant smile, she voluntarily begged the
herder to (expose her own child instead and)[47] permit her to raise
the boy; be it that she was interested in his welfare, or that she
placed her hopes on him. Thus the two boys had to exchange fates; one
was raised in place of the herder’s child, while the other was exposed
instead of the grandson of the king.

The sequel of this apparently more primitive report agrees essentially
with the relation of Herodotus.

An altogether different version of the Kyros myth is extant in the
report of a contemporary of Herodotus, Ktesias, the original of
which has been lost, but is replaced by a fragment of Nikolaos of
Damaskos.[48] This fragment from Nikolaos summarizes the narrative
of Ktesias, which comprised more than an entire book in his Persian
history. Astyages is said to have been the worthiest king of the
Medes, after Abakes. Under his rule occurred the great transmutation
through which the rulership passed from the Medes to the Persians,
through the following cause: The Medes had a law that a poor man who
went to a rich man for his support, and surrendered himself to him,
had to be fed and clothed and kept like a slave by the rich man, or in
case the latter refused to do so, the poor man was at liberty to go
elsewhere. In this way a boy by name of Kyros, a Mard by birth, came to
the king’s servant who was at the head of the palace sweepers. Kyros
was the son of Atradates, whose poverty made him live as a robber,
and whose wife, Argoste, Kyros’ mother, made her living by tending
the goats. Kyros surrendered himself for the sake of his daily bread,
and helped to clean the palace. As he was diligent, the foreman gave
him better clothing, and advanced him from the outside sweepers to
those who cleaned the interior of the king’s palace, placing him under
their superintendent. This man was severe, however, and often whipped
Kyros. He left him and went to the lamp-lighter, who liked Kyros,
and approached him to the king, by placing him among the royal torch
bearers. As Kyros distinguished himself also in his new position, he
came to Artembares, who was at the head of the cup bearers, and himself
presented the cup to the king. Artembares gladly accepted Kyros, and
bade him pour the wine for the guests at the king’s table. Not long
afterwards, Astyages noticed the dexterity and nimbleness of Kyros’
service, and his graceful presentation of the wine cup, so that he
asked of Artembares whence this youth had come who was so skillful a
cup bearer. “O Lord,” spake he, “this boy is thy slave, of Persian
parentage, from the tribe of the Mards, who has surrendered himself to
me to make a living.” Artembares was old, and once on being attacked
by a fever, he prayed the king to let him stay at home until he had
recovered. “In my stead, the youth whom thou hast praised will pour the
wine, and if he should please thee, the king, as a cup bearer, _I, who
am an eunuch, will adopt him as my son_.” Astyages consented, but the
other confided in many ways in Kyros _as in a son_. Kyros thus stood
at the king’s side, and poured his wine by day and by night, showing
great ability and cleverness. Astyages conferred upon him the income of
Artembares, as if he had been his son, adding many presents, and Kyros
became a great man whose name was heard everywhere.

Astyages had a very noble and beautiful daughter,[49] whom he gave to
the Mede Spitamas, adding all Media as her dowry. Then Kyros sent for
his father and mother, in the land of the Medes, and they rejoiced
in the good fortune of their son, and _his mother told him the dream
which she had at the time that she was bearing him_, while asleep in
the sanctuary as she was tending the goats. _So much water passed away
from her that it became as a large stream, inundating all Asia, and
flowing as far as the sea_. When the father heard this, he ordered the
dream to be placed before the Chaldeans in Babylon. Kyros summoned
the wisest among them, and communicated the dream to him. He declared
that the dream foretold great good fortune to Kyros, and _the highest
dignity in Asia_; but Astyages must not learn of it, “for else he
would disgracefully kill thee, as well as myself the interpreter,”
said the Babylonian. They swore to each other to tell no one of this
great and incomparable vision. _Kyros later on rose to still higher
dignities, created his father a Satrap of Persia, and raised his mother
to the highest rank and possessions among the Persian women._ But when
the Babylonian was killed soon afterwards by Oebares, the confidant
of Kyros, his wife betrayed the fateful dream to the king, when she
learned of Kyros’ expedition to Persia, which he had undertaken in
preparation of the revolt. The king sent his horsemen after Kyros, with
the command to deliver him dead or alive. But Kyros escaped them by a
ruse. Finally a combat took place, terminating in the defeat of the
Medes. Kyros also conquered Egbatana, and here the daughter of Astyages
and her husband Spitamas, with their two sons, were taken prisoners.
But Astyages himself could not be found, for Amytis and Spitamas had
concealed him in the palace, under the rafters of the roof. Kyros then
ordered that Amytis, her husband, and the children should be tortured
until they revealed the hiding place of Astyages, but he came out
voluntarily, that his relatives might not be tortured on his account.
_Kyros commanded the execution of Spitamas_, because he had lied in
affirming to be in ignorance of Astyages’ hiding place; _but Amytis
became the wife of Kyros. He removed the fetters of Astyages_, with
which Oebares had bound him, _honored him as a father_, and made him a
Satrap of the Barkanians.

A great similarity to Herodotus’ version of the Kyros myth is found in
the early history of the Iranese royal hero, Kaikhosrav, as related by
_Firdusi_, in the Sâh-nâme. This myth is most extensively rendered by
Spiegel (Eranische Altertumskunde, I, 581 et seq.). During the warfare
of King Kaikaus of Baktria and Iran, against King Afrâsiâb of Turan,
_Kaikaus fell out with his son, Siâvaksh_, who applied to Afrâsiâb
for protection and assistance. He was kindly received by Afrâsiâb,
who gave him his daughter Feringis to wife, on the persuasion of his
Wesir, Pirân, _although he had received the prophecy that the son to be
born of this union would bring great misfortune upon him_. Garsevaz,
the king’s brother, and a near relative of Siâvaksh, calumniates the
son-in-law, and Afrâsiâb leads an army against him. _Before the birth
of his son, Siâvaksh is warned by a dream, which foretold destruction
and death to himself, but royalty to his offspring._ He therefore flies
from Afrâsiâb, but is taken prisoner and killed, on the command of the
Sâh. His wife, who is pregnant, is saved by Pirân from the hands of the
murderers. On condition of announcing at once the delivery of Feringis
to the king, Pirân is granted permission to keep her in his house. The
shade of the murdered Siâvaksh once comes to him in a dream, and tells
him that an avenger has been born, and Pirân actually finds in the
room of Feringis a newborn boy, whom he names Kaikhosrav. Afrâsiâb no
longer insisted upon the killing of the boy, but he ordered Pirân _to
surrender the child with a nurse to the herders, who were to raise him
in ignorance of his origin_. But his royal descent is promptly revealed
in his courage and his demeanor; and as Pirân takes the boy back into
his home, Afrâsiâb becomes distrustful, and orders the boy to be led
before him. Instructed by Pirân, Kaikhosvrav plays the fool,[50] and
reassured as to his harmlessness, the Sâh dismisses him to his mother,
Feringis. Finally, Kaikhosvrav is crowned as king by his grandfather,
Kaikaus. After prolonged, complicated, and tedious combats, Afrâsiâb is
at last taken prisoner, with divine assistance. Kaikhosvrav strikes his
head off, and also causes Garsivaz to be decapitated.

A certain resemblance, although more remote, to the preceding saga,
is presented by the Iranese myth of Feridun, as told by Firdusi in
his “Persian Hero-Myths” (translated by Schack). _Zohâk,[51] the king
of Iran, once sees in a dream three men of royal tribe._ Two of them
are bent with age, but between them is a _younger man_ who holds a
club, with a bull’s head, in his right hand; this man steps up to him,
and _fells him with his club to the ground_. The dream interpreters
declared to the king that the young hero who will dethrone him is
Feridun, a scion of the tribe of Dschemschid. Zohâk at once sets out
to look for the tracks of his dreaded enemy. Feridun is the son of
Abtin, a grandson of Dschemschid. His father hides from the pursuit
of the tyrant, but he is seized and killed. Feridun himself, a boy of
tender age, _is saved by his mother Firânek, who escapes with him and
entrusts him to the care of the guardian of a distant forest. Here he
is suckled by the cow Purmâje._ For three years he remains in this
place, but then his mother no longer believes him safe, and she carries
him to a hermit on the mountain Alburs. Soon afterwards Zohâk comes to
the forest, and kills the guardian as well as the cow.

When Feridun was sixteen years old, he came down from Mount Alburs,
learned of his origin through his mother, and swore to avenge the death
of his father and of his nurse. On the expedition against Zohâk he is
accompanied by his two older brothers, Purmâje and Kayânuseh. He orders
a club to be forged for his use, and ornaments it with the bull’s head,
in memory of his foster mother the cow. With this club he smites Zohâk,
as foretold by the dream.

TRISTAN

The argument of the Feridun story is pursued in the Tristan saga, as
related in the epic poem by Gottfried of Strassburg. This is especially
evident in the prologue of the Tristan-saga, which is repeated later
on in the adventures of the hero himself (duplication). Riwalin, king
in the land of the Parmenians, in an expedition to the court of Marke,
king of Kurnewal and England, had become acquainted with the latter’s
beautiful sister, Blancheflure, and his heart was aflame with love for
her. While assisting Marke in a campaign, Riwalin was mortally wounded
and was carried to Tintajole. Blancheflure, _disguised as a beggar
maid_, hastened to his sick bed, and her devoted love saved the king’s
life. She fled with her lover to his native land (obstacles) and was
there proclaimed as his consort. But Morgan attacked Riwalin’s country,
for the sake of Blancheflure, whom the king entrusted to his _faithful
retainer_ Rual, because she was carrying a child. Rual placed the queen
for safekeeping in the castle of Kaneel. Here _she gave birth to a
son and died, while her husband fell in the battle against Morgan. In
order to protect the king’s offspring from Morgan’s pursuits_, Rual
spread the rumor that the infant had been born dead. The boy was
named Tristan, because he had been conceived and born in sorrow. Under
the care of his _foster-parents_, Tristan grew up, equally straight
in body and mind, until his fourteenth year, when he was kidnapped
by Norwegian merchants, who put him ashore in Kurnewal, because they
feared the wrath of the gods. Here the boy was found by the _soldiers
of King Marke_, who was so well pleased with the brave and handsome
youth that he promptly made him his master of the chase (career), and
held him in great affection. Meanwhile, faithful Rual had set forth
to seek his abducted foster son, whom he found at last in Kurnewal,
where Rual had come begging his way. Rual _revealed Tristan’s descent_
to the king, who was delighted to see in him the son of his beloved
sister, and raised him to the rank of a knight. In order to _avenge his
father_, Tristan proceeded with Rual to Parmenia, vanquished Morgan,
the usurper, and gave the country to Rual as a liege, while he himself
returned to his uncle Marke. (After Chop: Erläuterungen zu Wagner’s
Tristan, Reclam Bibl.)

The actual Tristan saga goes on with a repetition of the principal
themes. In the service of Marke, Tristan kills Morald, the bridegroom
of Isolde, and being wounded unto death, he is saved by Isolde. He
asks her hand in marriage, for his uncle Marke, fulfils the condition
of killing a dragon, and she follows him reluctantly to Kurnewal,
where they travel by ship. On the journey they partake unwittingly
of the disastrous love potion, which binds them together in frenzied
passion. They betray the king, Marke, and on the wedding night Isolde’s
faithful serving maid, Brangäne, represents the queen, and sacrifices
her virginity to the king. Next follows the banishment of Tristan,
his several attempts to regain his beloved, although he had meanwhile
married Isolde Whitehand, who resembled her. At last he is again
wounded unto death, and Isolde arrives too late to save him.[52]

A plainer version of the Tristan-saga, in the sense of the
characteristic features of the myth of the birth of the hero, is found
in the fairy tale, “The True Bride,” quoted by Riklin (“Wunscherfüllung
und Symbolik im Märchen,” p. 56)[53] from Rittershaus’ collection of
fairy tales (XXVII, p. 113). A royal pair have no children. The king
having threatened to kill his wife, unless she bears a child by the
time of his return from his sea-voyage, she is brought to him during
his journey, by his zealous maid-servant, as the fairest of three
promenading ladies, and he takes her into his tent without recognizing
her.[54] She returns home without having been discovered, gives birth
to a daughter, Isol, and dies. Isol later on finds a most beautiful
little boy in a box by the seaside, whose name is Tristram, and she
raises him to become engaged to him. The subsequent story, which
contains the motive of the true bride, is noteworthy for present
purposes only in as far as here again occur the draught of oblivion,
and two Isoldes. The king’s second wife gives a potion to Tristram,
which causes him to forget the fair Isol entirely, so that he wishes to
marry the black Isota. Ultimately he discovers the deception, however,
and becomes united with Isol.

ROMULUS.

The original version of the story of Romulus and Remus, as told by the
most ancient Roman annalist, Fabius Pictor, is rendered as follows by
Mommsen.[55] “_The twins_ borne by Ilia, daughter of the preceding
king Numitor, _from the embrace of the war god Mars were condemned by
King Amulius, the present ruler of Alba, to be cast into the river_.
The king’s servants took the children and carried them from Alba as
far as the Tiber on the Palatine Hill; but when they tried to descend
the hill to the river, to carry out the command, they found that the
river had risen, and they were unable to reach its bed. The tub with
the children was therefore thrust by them into the shallow water at the
shore. _It floated_ for a while; _but the water promptly receded_, and
_knocking against a stone, the tub capsized_, and the screaming infants
were upset into the river mud. _They were heard by a she-wolf who had
just brought forth and had her udders full of milk; she came and gave
her teats to the boys, to nurse them_, and as they were drinking she
licked them clean with her tongue. Above them flew a woodpecker, which
guarded the children, and also carried food to them. The father was
providing for his sons: for the wolf and the woodpecker are animals
consecrated to father Mars. This was seen by one of the royal herdsmen,
who was driving his pigs back to the pasture from which the water had
receded. Startled by the spectacle, he summoned his mates, who found
the she-wolf attending like a mother to the children, and the children
treated her as their mother. The men made a loud noise to scare the
animal away; but the wolf was not afraid; she left the children, but
not from fear; slowly, without heeding the herdsmen, she disappeared
into the wilderness of the forest, at the holy site of Faunus, where
the water gushes from a gully of the mountain. Meanwhile the men picked
up the boys and carried them to the chief swineherd of the king,
Faustulus, for they believed that the gods did not wish the children
to perish. _But the wife of Faustulus had just given birth to a dead
child, and was full of sorrow. Her husband gave her the twins, and she
nursed them; the couple raised the children, and named them Romulus
and Remus._ After Rome had been founded, later on, King Romulus built
himself a house not far from the place where his tub had stood. The
gully in which the she-wolf had disappeared has been known since
that time as the Wolf’s Gully, the Lupercal. The image in ore of the
she-wolf with the twins[56] was subsequently erected at this spot,
and the she-wolf herself, the Lupa, was worshipped by the Romans as a
divinity.

The Romulus saga later on underwent manifold transmutations,
mutilations, additions, and interpretations.[57] It is best known in
the form transmitted by Livy (I, 3 et seq.), where we learn something
about the antecedents and subsequent fate of the twins.

King Proca bequeaths the royal dignity to his first born son Numitor.
But his _younger brother, Amulius, pushes him from the throne_, and
becomes king himself. So that no scion from Numitor’s family may arise,
as the avenger, he kills the male descendants of his brother. _Rea
Silvia, the daughter, he elects as a vestal, and thus deprives her of
the hope of progeny, through perpetual virginity_ as enjoined upon her
under the semblance of a most honorable distinction. But the vestal
maiden was overcome by violence, and having _brought forth twins_, she
named _Mars_ as the _father of her illegitimate offspring_, be it from
conviction, or because a god appeared more creditable to her as the
perpetrator of the crime.

The narrative of the exposure in the Tiber goes on as follows: The saga
relates that the floating tub, in which the boys had been exposed,
was left on dry land by the receding waters, and that a thirsty wolf,
attracted from the neighbouring mountains by the children’s cries,
offered them her teats. The boys are said to have been found by the
chief royal herder, supposedly named Faustulus, who took them to the
homestead of his wife, Larentia, where they were raised. Some believe
that Larentia was called Lupa, a she-wolf, by the herders, because she
offered her body, and that this was the origin of the wonderful saga.

Grown to manhood, the youths Romulus and Remus protect the herds
against the attacks of wild animals and robbers. One day Remus is taken
prisoner by the robbers, who accuse him of having stolen Numitor’s
flocks. But Numitor, to whom he is surrendered for punishment, was
touched by his tender age, and when he learned of the twin brothers,
he suspected that they might be his exposed grandsons. While he was
anxiously pondering the resemblance with the features of his daughter,
and the boy’s age as corresponding to the time of the exposure,
Faustulus arrived with Romulus, and a conspiracy was hatched, when
the descent of the boys had been learned from the herders. The youths
armed themselves for vengeance, while Numitor took up weapons to
defend his claim to the throne he had usurped. After _Amulius had been
assassinated_, Numitor was re-instituted as the ruler, and the youths
resolved to found a city in the region where they had been exposed and
brought up. A furious dispute arose upon the question which brother was
to be the ruler of the newly erected city, for neither twin was favored
by the right of primogeniture, and the outcome of the bird oracle was
equally doubtful. The saga relates that Remus jumped over the new wall,
to deride his twin, and _Romulus became so much enraged that he slew
his brother_. Romulus then usurped the sole mastery, and the city was
named Rome after him.

The Roman tale of Romulus and Remus has a close counterpart in the
Greek myth of a city foundation by the twin brothers Amphion and
Zethos, who were the first to found the site of Thebes of the Seven
Gates. The enormous rocks which Zethos brought from the mountains were
joined by the music drawn from Amphion’s lute strings to form the walls
which became so famous later on. Amphion and Zethos passed as _the
children of Zeus and Antiope_, daughter of King Nykteus. She escaped
by flight from the punishment of her father, who died of grief; on
his death bed he implored _his brother and successor on the throne,
Lykos_, to punish the wrongdoing of Antiope. Meantime she had married
Epopeus, the king of Sikyon, who was killed by Lykos. Antiope was led
away by him in fetters. She gave birth to twin sons in the Kithairon,
where she left them. A shepherd raised the boys and called them Amphion
and Zethos. Later on, Antiope succeeded in escaping from the torments
of Lykos and his wife, Dirke. She accidentally sought shelter in the
Kithairon, with the twin brothers, now grown up. The shepherd reveals
to the youths the fact that Antiope is their mother. Thereupon they
cruelly kill Dirke, and deprive Lykos of the rulership.

The remaining twin sagas,[58] which are extremely numerous, cannot
be discussed in detail in this connection. Possibly they represent
a complication of the birth myth by another very ancient and widely
distributed myth complex, that of the hostile brothers, the detailed
discussion of which belongs elsewhere. The apparently late and
secondary character of the twin type in the birth myths justifies
the separation of this part of mythology from the present theme. As
regards the Romulus saga, Mommsen[59] renders it highly probable that
it originally told only of Romulus, while the figure of Remus was added
subsequently, and somewhat disjointedly, when it became desirable to
invest the consulate with a solemnity founded on the old tradition.

HERCULES[60]

After the loss of his numerous sons, Elektryon betroths his daughter,
Alkmene, to Amphitryon, the son of his brother, Alkäos. However,
Amphitryon, through an unfortunate accident, causes the death of
Elektryon, and escapes to Thebes with his affianced bride. He has not
enjoyed her love, for she has solemnly pledged him not to touch her
until he has avenged her brothers on the Thebans. An expedition is
therefore started by him, from Thebes, and he conquers the king of the
hostile people, Pterelaos, with all the islands. As he is returning to
Thebes, Zeus in the form of Amphitryon[61] betakes himself to Alkmene,
to whom he presents a golden goblet as evidence of victory. He rests
with the beauteous maiden during three nights, according to the later
poets, holding back the sun one day. In the same night, Amphitryon
arrives, exultant in his victory and aflame with love. In the fulness
of time, the fruit of the divine and the human embrace[62] is brought
forth and Zeus announces to the gods his son, as the most powerful
ruler of the future. But his jealous spouse, Hera, knows how to obtain
from him the pernicious oath, that the first-born grandson of Perseus
is to be the ruler of all the other descendants of Perseus. Hera
hurries to Mykene, to deliver the wife of the third Perside, Sthenelos,
of the seven months child, Eurystheus. At the same time she hinders
and endangers the confinement of Alkmene, through all sorts of wicked
sorcery, precisely as at the birth of the god of light, Apollo. Alkmene
finally gives birth to Herakles and Iphikles, the latter in no way
the former’s equal in courage or in strength, but destined to become
the father of his faithful friend, Iolaos.[63] In this way Eurystheus
became the king in Mykene, in the land of the Argivians, in conformity
with the oath of Zeus, and the after born Herakles was his subject.

The old legend related the raising of Herakles on the strength giving
waters of the Dirke, the nourishment of all Theban children. Later on,
however, another version arose. Fearing the jealousy of Hera, Alkmene
_exposed the child which she had borne_ in a place which for a long
time after was known as the field of Herakles. About this time, Athene
arrived, in company with Hera. She marvelled at the beautiful form
of the child, and persuaded Hera to put him to her breast. But the
boy took the breast with far greater strength than his age seemed to
warrant; Hera felt pains and angrily flung the child to the ground.
Athene, however, carried him to the neighboring city and _took him
to Queen Alkmene, whose maternity was unknown to her, as a poor
foundling, whom she begged her to raise for the sake of charity_.
This peculiar accident is truly remarkable! The child’s own mother
allows him to perish, disregarding the duty of maternal love, and the
stepmother who is filled with natural hatred against the child, saves
her enemy without knowing it (after Diodor, IV, 9; German translation
by Wurm, Stuttgart, 1831). Herakles had drawn only a few drops from
Hera’s breast, but the divine milk was sufficient to endow him with
immortality. An attempt on Hera’s part to kill the boy, asleep in his
cradle, by means of two serpents, proved a failure, for the child
awakened and crushed the beasts with a single pressure of his hands.
As a boy, Herakles one day killed his tutor, Linos, being incensed
about an unjust chastisement. Amphitryon, fearing the wildness of
the youth, sends him to tend his ox-herds in the mountains, with the
herders, among whom he is said by some to have been raised entirely,
like Amphion and Zethos, Kyros and Romulus. Here he lives from the
hunt, in the freedom of nature (Preller, II, 123).

The myth of Herakles suggests in certain features the Indian saga of
the hero _Krishna_, who like many heroes escapes a general infanticide,
and is then brought up by a herder’s wife, Iasodha. A wicked she-demon
appears, who has been sent by King Kansa to kill the boy. She takes the
post of wet nurse in the home, but is recognized by Krishna, who bites
her so severely in suckling (like Hera, when nursing Herakles, whom
she also means to destroy), that she dies. (The early history of the
pastoral god Krishna is related in the so-called Kariwamsa.)

Jesus

The Gospel according to Luke (1, 26 to 35) relates the prophecy of the
birth of Jesus, as follows:

“And in the sixth month the angel Gabriel was sent from God unto a city
of Galilee named Nazareth, to _a virgin espoused to a man whose name
was Joseph_, of the house of David; and the virgin’s name was Mary.
And the angel came in unto her, and said, Hail! thou that art highly
favored, the Lord is with thee: blessed art thou among women! And when
she saw him, she was troubled at his saying, and cast in her mind what
manner of salutation this should be. And the angel said unto her, Fear
not, Mary; for thou hast found favor with God. And, behold, _thou shalt
conceive in thy womb, and bring forth a son and call his name Jesus.
He shall be great and shall be called the Son of the Highest_: and the
Lord God shalt give unto him the throne of his father David. And he
shall reign over the house of Jacob for ever; and of his kingdom there
shall be no end. Then said Mary unto the angel, How shall this be,
_seeing I know not a man_? And the angel answered and said unto her,
the Holy Ghost shall come upon thee, and the power of the Highest shall
overshadow thee; therefore also that holy thing which shall be born of
thee _shall he called the Son of God_.”

This report is supplemented by the Gospel according to Matthew[64] (1,
18 to 25), in the narrative of the birth and childhood of Jesus: “Now
the birth of Jesus Christ was on this wise: when as his mother Mary
was espoused to Joseph, before they came together, _she was found with
child of the Holy Ghost_. Then Joseph, her husband, being a just man,
and not willing to make her a public example, was minded to put her
away privily. But, while he thought on these things, behold the _angel
of the Lord appeared to him in a dream_, saying, Joseph, thou son of
David, fear not to take unto thee Mary thy wife; for that which is
conceived in her is of the Holy Ghost. And she shall bring forth a son,
and thou shall call his name Jesus; for he shall save his people from
their sins. (Now all this was done that it might be fulfilled which was
spoken of the Lord by the prophet, saying, Behold a virgin shall be
with child, and shall bring forth a son, and they shall call his name
Emmanuel, which, being interpreted, is God with us.) Then Joseph, being
raised from sleep, did as the angel of the Lord had bidden him, and
took unto him his wife. _And knew her not, till she had brought forth
her first born son_; and he called his name Jesus.”

Here we interpolate the detailed account of the birth of Jesus, from
the Gospel of Luke (2, 4 to 20): “And Joseph also went up from Galilee,
out of Nazareth, into Judea, unto the city of David, which is called
Bethlehem (because he was of the house and lineage of David), to be
taxed with Mary his espoused wife, being great with child. And so
it was that while they were there, the days were accomplished that
she should be delivered. And _she brought forth her first born son,
and wrapped him in swaddling clothes, and laid him in a manger_;[65]
because there was no room for them in the inn. And there were in the
same country shepherds abiding in the field, keeping watch over their
flocks by night. And, lo, the angel of the Lord came upon them, and the
glory of the Lord shone round about them, and they were sore afraid.
And the angel said unto them, Fear not; for behold I bring you good
tidings of great joy which shall be to all people. For unto you is born
this day, in the city of David, a Saviour, which is Christ the Lord.
And this shall be a sign unto you, ye shall find the babe wrapped in
swaddling clothes, lying in a manger. And suddenly there was with the
angel a multitude of the heavenly host praising God and saying, Glory
to God in the Highest, and on earth peace, good will toward men. And
it came to pass as the angels were gone away from them into heaven,
the shepherds said one to another, let us now go even unto Bethlehem
and see this thing which has come to pass, which the Lord has made
known unto us. And they came with haste, and found Mary and Joseph, and
the babe lying in a manger. And when they had seen it they made known
abroad the saying which was told them concerning this child. And all
they that heard wondered at those things which were told them by the
shepherds. But Mary kept all these things and pondered them in her
heart. And the shepherds returned glorifying and praising God for all
the things which they had heard and seen, as it was told unto them.”

We now continue the account after Matthew, in the second chapter:
“Now when Jesus was born in Bethlehem of Judea, in the days of Herod
the king, behold, there came _wise men from the East_ to Jerusalem,
saying, _Where is he that was born King of the Jews_, for we have seen
his star in the east, and have come to worship him. When _Herod the
king_ had heard these things he was troubled and all Jerusalem with
him. And when he had gathered all the chief priests and scribes of the
people together, he demanded of them where Christ should be born. And
they said unto him, in Bethlehem of Judea: for thus it is written by
the prophet, And thou Bethlehem in the land of Juda, art not the least
among the princes of Juda, for out of thee shall come a governor which
shall rule my people Israel.

Then Herod, when he had privily called the wise men, enquired of them
diligently what time the star appeared. And he sent them to Bethlehem,
and said, Go and search diligently for the young child; and when ye
have found him, bring me word again, that I may come and worship him
also. When they had heard the king they departed; and lo the star,
which they saw in the east, went before them till it came and stood
over where the young child was.

When they saw the star, they rejoiced with exceeding great joy. And
when they were come into the house, they saw the young child with Mary
his mother, and fell down and worshipped him: and when they had opened
their treasures, they presented unto him gifts; gold, and frankincense,
and myrrh. And being warned of God in a dream, that they should not
return to Herod, they departed into their own country another way.
And when they were departed, behold, _the angel of the Lord appeared
to Joseph in a dream, saying, Arise, and take the young child and his
mother and flee into Egypt_, and be thou there until I bring thee
word: for Herod will seek the young child to destroy him. When he
arose, he took the young child and his mother by night, and departed
into Egypt; and was there until the death of Herod; that it might be
fulfilled which was spoken of the Lord by the prophet, saying, Out of
Egypt have I called my son. Then Herod, when he saw that he was mocked
of the wise men, was exceeding wroth, and sent forth, and _slew all the
children that were in Bethlehem, and in all the coasts thereof, from
two years old and under_, according to the time which he had diligently
enquired of the wise men. But when Herod was dead, behold, an angel of
the Lord appeared in a dream to Joseph in Egypt, saying arise and take
the young child and his mother, and go into the land of Israel: _for
they are dead which sought the young child’s life_. And he arose and
took the young child and his mother, and came into the land of Israel.
But when he heard Archelaus did reign in Judea in the room of his
father Herod, he was afraid to go thither: notwithstanding being warned
of God in a dream, he turned aside into the parts of Galilee. And he
came and dwelt in a city called Nazareth; that it might be fulfilled
which was spoken by the prophets, He shall be called a Nazarene.”[66]

Similar birth legends to those of Jesus have also been transmitted of
other “founders of religions”; such as Zoroaster, who is said to have
lived about the year 1000 before Christ. His mother Dughda dreams,
_in the sixth month of her pregnancy_, that the wicked and the good
spirits are fighting for the embryonic Zoroaster; a monster tears the
future Zoroaster from the mother’s womb, but a light god fights the
monster with his horn of light, re-encloses the embryo in the mother’s
womb, blows upon Dughda, and she became pregnant. On awakening, she
hurries in her fear to a wise dream interpreter, who is unable to
explain the wonderful dream before the end of three days: The child,
which she is carrying, is destined to become a man of great importance;
the dark cloud and the mountain of light signify, that she and her
son will at first have to undergo numerous trials, through tyrants
and other enemies, but at last they will overcome all perils. Dughda
at once returns to her home, and informs Pourushacpa, her husband, of
everything that has happened. Immediately after his birth, the boy
was seen to laugh: this was the first miracle through which he drew
attention to himself. _The magicians announce the birth of the child
as a portent of disaster to the prince of the realm_, Durânsarûn, who
betakes himself without delay to the dwelling of Pourushacpa, in order
to stab the child. But his hand falls paralyzed, and he must leave with
his errand undone. This was the second miracle. Soon after, the wicked
demons steal the child from his mother and carry him into the desert,
in order to kill him; but Dughda finds the unharmed child, calmly
sleeping. This is the third miracle. Later on, Zoroaster was to be
trampled upon, in a narrow passage way, by a herd of oxen, by command
of the king.[67] But the largest of the cattle took the child between
his feet, and preserved it from harm. This was the fourth miracle. The
fifth is merely a repetition of the preceding. What the cattle had
refused to do, was to be accomplished by horses. But again the child
was protected by a horse from the hoofs of the other horses. Durânsurûn
thereupon had the cubs in a wolf’s den killed during the absence of
the old wolves, and Zoroaster was laid down in their place. But a god
closed the jaws of the furious wolves, so that they could not harm
the child. Two divine cows arrived instead and presented their udders
to the child, giving it to drink. This was the sixth miracle, through
which Zoroaster’s life was preserved. (Compare Spiegel’s Eranische
Altertumskunde, I, pp. 688 et seq., also Brodbeck, Zoroaster, Leipzig,
1893.)

Related traits are also encountered in the history of Buddha, whose
life is referred to the sixth century before Christ; such as the
long sterility of the parents, the dream, the birth of the boy under
the open sky, the death of the mother and her substitution by a
foster-mother, the announcing of the birth to the ruler of the realm;
later on the losing of the boy in the temple (as in the history of
Jesus; compare Luke 2, 40-52).

SIEGFRIED

The old Norse _Thidreksaga_, as registered about the year 1250 by an
Icelander, according to oral traditions and ancient songs, relates
the history of the birth and youth of Siegfried, as follows:[68] King
Sigmund of Tarlungaland, on his return from an expedition, banishes his
wife Sisibe, the daughter of King Nidung of Hispania, who is _accused_
by Count Hartvin, whose advances she has spurned, of having had
_illicit relations with a menial_. The king’s counsellors advise him
to mutilate instead of kill the innocent queen, and Hartvin is ordered
to cut out her tongue in the forest, so as to bring it to the king as
a pledge. His companion, Count Hermann, opposes the execution of the
cruel command, and proposes to present the tongue of a dog to the king.
While the two men are engaged in a violent quarrel, _Sisibe gives birth
to a remarkably beautiful boy; she then took a glass vessel, and after
having wrapped the boy in linens, she placed him in the glass vessel,
which she_ carefully closed again and placed beside her (Rassmann).
Count Hartvin was conquered in the fight, and in falling kicked the
glass vessel, _so that it fell into the river_. When the queen saw this
she swooned, and died soon afterwards. Hermann went home, told the
king everything, and was banished from the country. The _glass vessel
meantime drifted down stream to the sea_, and it was not long before
the tide turned. _Then the vessel floated on to a rocky cliff_, and the
water ran off so that the place where the vessel was perfectly dry. The
boy inside had grown somewhat, and when the vessel struck the rock, it
broke, and the child began to cry. [Rassmann] The boy’s wailing was
heard _by a doe_, which seized him with her lips, and carried him to
her litter, _where she nursed him together with her young_. After the
child had lived twelve months in the den of the doe, he had grown to
the height and strength of other boys four years of age. One day he ran
into the forest, where dwelt the wise and skilfull _smith, Mimir who
had lived for nine years in childless wedlock_. He saw the boy, who
was followed by the faithful doe, took him to his home, _and resolved
to bring him up as his own son_. He gave him the name of Siegfried. In
Mimir’s home, Siegfried soon attained an enormous stature and strength,
but his wilfulness caused Mimir _to get rid of him_. He sent the youth
into the forest, where it had been arranged that the dragon Regin,
Mimir’s brother, was to kill him. But Siegfried conquers the dragon,
and kills Mimir. He then proceeds to Brynhild, who names his parents to
him.

Similarly to the early history of Siegfried, an Austrasiatic saga
tells of the birth and youth of _Wolfdietrich_.[69] His mother is
likewise accused of _unfaithfulness_, and intercourse with the devil,
by a vassal whom she has repulsed, and who speaks evil of her to the
returning king, Hugdietrich of Constantinople.[70]

_The king surrenders the child to the faithful Berchtung, who is to
kill it, but exposes it instead, in the forest, near the water_, in
the hope that it will fall in of its own accord and thus find its
death. But the frolicking child remains unhurt, and even _the wild
animals_, lions, bears, wolves, which come at night to the water, _do
not harm it_. The astonished Berchtung resolves to save the boy, and he
_surrenders him to a game keeper_ who, together with his wife, raises
him and names him Wolfdietrich.[71]

The following later hero epics may still be quoted in this connection.
In the thirteenth century, the saga of _Horn_, the son of Aluf, who
after having been exposed on the sea, finally reaches the court of
King Hunlaf, and after numerous adventures wins the king’s daughter,
Rimhilt, for his wife. Furthermore, a detail suggestive of Siegfried,
from the saga of the skilfull smith _Wieland_, who, after avenging his
foully murdered father, floats down the river Weser, artfully enclosed
in the trunk of a tree, and loaded with the tools and treasures of
his teachers. Finally the _Arthur_ legend contains the commingling of
divine and human paternity, the exposure and the early life with a
lowly man.

LOHENGRIN

The widely distributed group of sagas which have been woven around the
mythic knight with the swan (the old French Chevalier au cigne) can be
traced back to very ancient Keltic traditions. The following is the
version which has been made familiar by Wagner’s dramatisation of this
theme. The story of Lohengrin, the knight with the swan, as transmitted
by the medieval German epic [modernized by Junghaus, Reclam] and
briefly rendered by the Grimm brothers, in their “German Sagas” (Part
II, Berlin, 1818, p. 306) under the title: Lohengrin in Brabant.

The Duke of Brabant and Limburg died, without leaving other heirs than
a young daughter, Els, or Elsam by name; her he recommended on his
death bed to one of his retainers, Friedrich von Telramund. Friedrich,
the intrepid warrior, became emboldened to demand the youthful duchess’
hand and lands, under the false claim that she had promised to marry
him. She steadfastly refused to do so. Friedrich complained to Emperor
Heinrich, surnamed the Vogler, and the verdict was that she must defend
herself against him, through some hero, in a so called divine judgment,
in which God would accord the victory to the innocent, and defeat the
guilty. As none were ready to take her part, the young duchess prayed
ardently to God, to save her; and far away in distant Montsalvatsch,
in the Council of the Grail, the sound of the bell was heard, showing
that there was some one in urgent need of help. The Grail therefore
resolved to despatch as a rescuer, Lohengrin the son of Parsifal. Just
as he was about to place his foot in the stirrup _a swan came floating
down the water drawing a skiff behind him_. As soon as Lohengrin set
eyes upon the swan, he exclaimed: “Take the steed back to the manger, I
shall follow this bird wherever he may lead me.” Having faith in God’s
omnipotence he took no food with him in the skiff. After they had been
afloat on the sea five days, the swan dipped his bill in the water,
caught a fish, ate one half of it, and gave the other half to the
prince to eat. _Thus the knight was fed by the swan._

Meanwhile Elsa had summoned her chieftains and retainers to a meeting
in Antwerp. Precisely on the day of the assembly, a swan was sighted
swimming up stream (river Schelde) and drawing behind him a skiff, in
which Lohengrin lay asleep on his shield. The swan promptly came to
land at the shore, and the prince was joyfully welcomed. Hardly had
his helmet, shield and sword been taken from the skiff, when the swan
at once swam away again. Lohengrin heard of the wrong which had been
done to the duchess, and willingly consented to become her champion.
Elsa then summoned all her relatives and subjects. The place was
prepared in Mayence, where Lohengrin and Friedrich were to fight in
the emperor’s presence. The hero of the Grail defeated Friedrich, who
confessed having lied to the duchess, and was executed with the axe.
Elsa was alloted to Lohengrin, they having long been lovers; but he
secretly _insisted upon her avoiding all questions as to his ancestry,
or whence he had come_, saying that otherwise he would have to leave
her instantaneously and she would never see him again.

For some time, the couple lived in peace and happiness. Lohengrin was
a wise and mighty ruler over his land, and also served his emperor
well in his expeditions against the Huns and the heathen. But it came
to pass that one day in throwing the javelin he unhorsed the Duke
of Cleve, so that the latter broke an arm. The Duchess of Cleve was
angry, and spoke out amongst the women, saying: “Lohengrin may be
brave enough, and he seems to be a good Christian; what a pity that
his nobility is not of much account _for no one knows whence he has
come floating to this land_.” These words pierced the heart of the
Duchess of Brabant, and she changed color with emotion. At night, when
her spouse was holding her in his arms, she wept, and he said “What
is the matter, Elsa, my own?” She made answer, “the Duchess of Cleve
has caused me sore pain.” Lohengrin was silent and asked no more. The
second night, the same came to pass. But in the third night, Elsa
could no longer retain herself, and she spoke: “Lord, do not chide
me! _I wish to know, for our children’s sake, whence you were born_;
for my heart tells me that you are of high rank.” When the day broke,
Lohengrin declared in public whence he had come, that Parsifal was his
father, and God had sent him from the Grail. He then asked for his
two children, which the duchess had borne him, kissed them, told them
to take good care of his horn and sword which he would leave behind,
and said: “Now, I must be gone.” To the duchess he left a little
ring which his mother had given him. Then the swan, his friend, came
swimming swiftly, with the skiff behind him; the prince stepped in and
crossed the water, back to the service of the Grail. Elsa sank down in
a faint. The empress resolved _to keep the younger boy Lohengrin, for
his father’s sake, and to bring him up as her own child_. But the widow
wept and mourned[72] the rest of her life for her beloved spouse, who
never came back to her.

On inverting the Lohengrin saga in such a way that the end is placed
first,—on the basis of the rearrangement, or even transmutation of
motives, not uncommonly found in myths,—we find the type of saga
with which we have now become familiar: The infant Lohengrin, who is
identical with his father of the same name, _floats in a vessel upon
the sea and is carried ashore by a swan. The empress adopts him as her
son, and he becomes a valorous hero._ Having married a noble maiden of
the land, he forbids her to enquire as to his origin. When the command
is broken he is obliged to reveal his miraculous descent and divine
mission, after which the swan carries him back in his skiff to the
Grail.

Other versions of the saga of the Knight with the Swan have retained
this original arrangement of the motives, although they appear
commingled with elements of fairy tales. The saga of the Knight with
the Swan, as related in the Flemish People’s Book (Deutsche Sagen,
I, 29), contains in the beginning the history of the birth of seven
children,[73] borne by Beatrix, the wife of King Oriant of Flanders.
The wicked mother of the absent king, Matabruna, orders that the
children be killed, and the queen be given seven puppy dogs in their
stead. But the servant contents himself with the exposure of the
children, who are found by a hermit, named Helias, and are nourished by
a goat until they are grown. Beatrix is thrown into a dungeon. Later
on Matabruna learns that the children have been saved and her repeated
command to kill them causes the hunter, who has been charged with the
murder, to bring her as a sign of apparent obedience to her behest, the
silver neck chains which the children wore already at the time of their
birth. One of the boys, named Helias, after his foster father, alone
keeps his chain, and is thereby saved from the fate of his brothers,
who are transformed into swans, as soon as their chains are removed.
Matabruna volunteers to prove the relations of the queen with the dog,
and upon her instigation, Beatrix is to be killed, unless a champion
arises to defend her. In her need, she prays to God, who sends her
son Helias as a rescuer. The brothers are also saved by means of the
other chains, except one, whose chain has already been melted down.
King Oriant now transfers the rulership to his son Helias, who causes
the wicked Matabruna to be burned. One day, Helias sees his brother,
the swan, drawing a skiff on the lake surrounding the castle. This
he regards as a heavenly sign, he arms himself and mounts the skiff.
The swan takes him through rivers and lakes to the place where God
has ordained him to go. Next follows the liberation of an innocently
accused duchess, in analogy with the Lohengrin saga; and his marriage
to her daughter Clarissa, who is forbidden to ask for her husband’s
ancestry. In the seventh year of their marriage she disobeys and puts
the question, after which Helias returns home in the swan’s skiff.
Finally, his lost brother swan is likewise released.

The characteristic features of the Lohengrin saga,—that the divine
hero disappears again in the same mysterious fashion in which he has
arrived; also the transference of mythical motives from the life
of the older hero, bearing the same name, to a younger one, a very
universal process in myth-formation, are likewise embodied in the
Anglian-Longobard saga of Scëaf, which is mentioned in the introduction
to the Beowulf-Song, the oldest German epic, preserved in the
Anglo-Saxon tongue (translated by H. v. Wolzogen, Reclam). The father
of old Beowulf received his name, Scild Scéfing (meaning the son of
Scëaf), because as a very young boy, he was cast ashore as a stranger,
asleep in a boat on a sheaf of grain (Anglo-saxon, scéaf). The waves of
the sea carried him to the coast of the country which he was destined
to defend. The inhabitants welcomed him as a miracle, raised him, and
later on made him their king, as an emissary of God. (Compare Grimm,
German Mythology, I, p. 306; III, p. 391, and H. Leo: Beowulf, Halle,
1839.) What is told of the ancestor of the royal house, Scaf,[74] or
Scëaf, appears in the Beowulf song transferred to his son, Scëafing
Scild, according to the unanimous statement of Grimm (see above), and
Leo (p. 24): His dead body is exposed at his behest, surrounded by
kingly splendor, upon a ship without a crew, which is sent out into
the sea. Thus he vanishes in the same mysterious manner in which his
father arrived ashore; this trait being accounted for, in analogy with
the Lohengrin saga, by the mythical identity of father and son.

A cursory review of these variegated hero myths forcibly brings out
a series of uniformly common features, with a typical ground work,
from which a standard saga, as it were, may be constructed. This
schedule corresponds approximately to the ideal human skeleton which is
constantly seen, with minor deviations, on transillumination of figures
which outwardly differ from one another. The individual traits of the
several myths, and especially apparently crude variations from the
prototype, can only be entirely elucidated by the myth-interpretation.
The standard saga itself may be formulated according to the following
scheme:

The hero is the child of most distinguished parents; usually the son
of a king. His origin is preceded by difficulties, such as continence,
or prolonged barrenness, or secret intercourse of the parents, due to
external prohibition or obstacles. During the pregnancy, or antedating
the same, there is a prophecy, in form of a dream or oracle, cautioning
against his birth, and usually threatening danger to the father, or his
representative. As a rule, he is surrendered to the water, in a box. He
is then saved by animals, or by lowly people (shepherds) and is suckled
by a female animal, or by a humble woman. After he has grown up, he
finds his distinguished parents, in a highly versatile fashion; takes
his revenge on his father, on the one hand, is acknowledged on the
other, and finally achieves rank and honors.[75]

The normal relations of the hero towards his father and his mother
regularly appearing impaired in all these myths, as shown by the
schedule, there is reason to assume that something in the nature of
the hero must account for such a disturbance, and motives of this
kind are not very difficult to discover. It is readily understood—and
may be noted in the modern epigones of the heroic age—that for the
hero who is exposed to envy, jealousy and calumny to a much higher
degree than all others, the descent from his parents often becomes
the source of the greatest distress and embarrassment. The old saying
that “A prophet is not without honor save in his own country and in
his father’s house,” has no other meaning but this, that he whose
parents, brothers and sisters, or playmates, are known to us, is not
so readily conceded to be a prophet (Gospel of St. Mark, VI, 4). There
seems to be a certain necessity for the prophet to deny his parents;
also, the well-known opera of Meyerbeer is based upon the avowal that
the prophetic hero is allowed, in favor of his mission, to abandon and
repudiate even his tenderly beloved mother.

A number of difficulties arise, however, as we proceed to a deeper
enquiry into the motives which oblige the hero to sever his
family relations. Numerous investigators have emphasized that the
understanding of myth formation requires our going back to their
ultimate source, namely the individual faculty of imagination.[76] The
fact has also been pointed out that this imaginative faculty is found
in its active and unchecked exuberance only in childhood. Therefore,
the imaginative life of the child should first be studied, in order
to facilitate the understanding of the far more complex and also more
handicapped mythical and artistic imagination in general.

Meanwhile the investigation of the juvenile faculty of imagination
has hardly commenced, instead of being sufficiently advanced to
permit the utilization of the findings for the explanation of the
more complicated psychic activities. The reason for this imperfect
understanding of the psychic life of the child is referable to the lack
of a suitable instrument, as well as of a reliable avenue, leading
into the intricacies of this very delicate and rather inaccessible
domain. These juvenile emotions can by no means be studied in the
normal human adult, and it may actually be charged, in view of certain
psychic disturbances, that the normal psychic integrity of normal
subjects consists precisely in their having overcome and forgotten
their childish vagaries and imaginations: so that the way has become
blocked. In children, on the other hand, empirical observation (which
as a rule must remain merely superficial) fails in the investigation
of psychic processes, because we are not as yet enabled to trace all
manifestations correctly to their motive forces: so that we are lacking
the instrument. There is a certain class of persons, the so-called
psychoneurotics, shown by the teachings of Freud to have remained
children, in a sense, although otherwise appearing grown up. These
psychoneurotics may be said not to have given up their juvenile psychic
life, which on the contrary, in the course of maturity, has become
strengthened and fixed, instead of modified. In psychoneurotics, the
emotions of the child are preserved and exaggerated, thus becoming
capable of pathological effects, in which these humble emotions appear
broadened and enormously magnified. The fancies of neurotics are,
as it were, the uniformly exaggerated reproductions of the childish
imaginings. This would point the way to a solution of the problem.
Unfortunately, however, the access is still much more difficult
to establish in these cases than to the child mind. There is only
one known instrument which makes this road practicable, namely the
psychoanalytic method, which has been developed through the work of
Freud. Constant handling of this instrument will clear the observer’s
vision to such a degree that he will be enabled to discover the
identical motive forces, only in delicately shaded manifestations, also
in the psychic life of those who do not become neurotics later on.

Professor Freud had the amiability to place at the author’s disposal
his highly appreciated experience with the psychology of the neuroses;
and on this material are based the following comments, on the
imaginative faculty of the child as well as the neurotic.

The detachment of the growing individual from the authority of
the parents is one of the most necessary, but also one of the most
painful achievements of evolution. It is absolutely necessary for
this detachment to take place, and it may be assumed that all normal
grown individuals have accomplished it to a certain extent. Social
progress is essentially based upon this opposition between the two
generations. On the other hand, there exists a class of neurotics
whose condition indicates that they have failed to solve this very
problem. For the young child, the parents are in the first place
the sole authority, and the source of all faith. To resemble them,
_i.e._, the progenitor of the same sex; to grow up like father or
mother, this is the most intense and portentous wish of the child’s
early years. Progressive intellectual development naturally brings it
about that the child gradually becomes acquainted with the category
to which the parents belong. Other parents become known to the child,
who compares these with his own, and thereby becomes justified in
doubting the incomparability and uniqueness with which he had invested
them. Trifling occurrences in the life of the child, which induce a
mood of dissatisfaction, lead up to a criticism of the parents, and
the gathering conviction that other parents are preferable in certain
ways, is utilized for this attitude of the child towards the parents.
From the psychology of the neuroses, we have learned that very intense
emotions of sexual rivalry are also involved in this connection.
The causative factor evidently is the feeling of being neglected.
Opportunities arise only too frequently when the child is neglected,
or at least feels himself neglected, when he misses the entire love
of the parents, or at least regrets having to share the same with the
other children of the family. The feeling that one’s own inclinations
are not entirely reciprocated seeks its relief in the idea,—often
consciously remembered from very early years,—of being a step-child,
or an adopted child. Many persons who have not become neurotics, very
frequently remember occasions of this kind, when the hostile behavior
of the parents was interpreted and reciprocated by them in this
fashion, usually under the influence of story books. The influence
of sex is already evident, in so far as the boy shows a far greater
tendency to harbor hostile feelings against his father than his mother,
with a much stronger inclination to emancipate himself from the father
than from the mother. The imaginative faculty of girls is possibly
much less active in this respect. These consciously remembered psychic
emotions of the years of childhood supply the factor which permits the
interpretation of the myth. What is not often consciously remembered,
but can almost invariably be demonstrated through psychoanalysis, is
the next stage in the development of this incipient alienation from
the parents, which may be designated by the term _Family Romance
of Neurotics_. The essence of neurosis, and of all higher mental
qualifications, comprises a special activity of the imagination which
is primarily manifested in the play of the child, and which from about
the period preceding puberty takes hold of the theme of the family
relations. A characteristic example of this special imaginative faculty
is represented by the familiar _day dreams_,[77] which are continued
until long after puberty. Accurate observation of these day dreams
shows that they serve for the fulfilment of wishes, for the righting
of life, and that they have two essential objects, one erotic, the
other of an ambitious nature (usually with the erotic factor concealed
therein). About the time in question the child’s imagination is engaged
upon the task of getting rid of the parents, who are now despised and
are as a rule to be supplanted by others of a higher social rank. The
child utilizes an accidental coincidence of actual happenings (meetings
with the lord of the manor, or the proprietor of the estate, in the
country; with the reigning prince, in the city. In the United States
with some great statesman, millionaire). Accidental occurrences of
this kind arouse the child’s envy, and this finds its expression in
fancy fabrics which replace the two parents by others of a higher rank.
The technical elaboration of these two imaginings, which of course by
this time have become conscious, depends upon the child’s adroitness,
and also upon the material at his disposal. It likewise enters into
consideration, if these fancies are elaborated with more or less claim
to plausibility. This stage is reached at a time when the child is
still lacking all knowledge of the sexual conditions of descent. With
the added knowledge of the manifold sexual relations of father and
mother; with the child’s realization of the fact that the father is
always uncertain, whereas the mother is very certain—the family romance
undergoes a peculiar restriction; it is satisfied with ennobling the
father, while the descent from the mother is no longer questioned,
but accepted as an unalterable fact. This second (or sexual) stage
of the family romance is moreover supported by another motive, which
did not exist in the first (or asexual) stage. Knowledge of sexual
matters gives rise to the tendency of picturing erotic situations and
relations, impelled by the pleasurable emotion of placing the mother,
or the subject of the greatest sexual curiosity, in the situation of
secret unfaithfulness and clandestine love affairs. In this way the
primary or asexual fantasies are raised to the standard of the improved
later understanding.

The motive of revenge and retaliation, which was originally to the
front, is again evident. These neurotic children are mostly those who
were punished by the parents, to break them of bad sexual habits, and
they take their revenge upon their parents by their imaginings. The
younger children of a family are particularly inclined to deprive
their predecessors of their advantage by fables of this kind (exactly
as in the intrigues of history). Frequently they do not hesitate in
crediting the mother with as many love affairs as there are rivals. An
interesting variation of this family romance restores the legitimacy
of the plotting hero himself, while the other children are disposed
of in this way as illegitimate. The family romance may be governed
besides by a special interest, all sorts of inclinations being met by
its adaptability and variegated character. The little romancer gets rid
in this fashion for example of the kinship of a sister, who may have
attracted him sexually.

Those who turn aside with horror from this corruption of the child
mind, or perhaps actually contest the possibility of such matters,
should note that all these apparently hostile imaginings have not such
a very bad significance after all, and that the original affection
of the child for his parents is still preserved under their thin
disguise. The faithlessness and ingratitude on the part of the child
are only apparent, for on investigating in detail the most common of
these romantic fancies, namely the substitution of both parents, or
of the father alone, by more exalted personages—the discovery will
be made that these new and highborn parents are invested throughout
with the qualities which are derived from real memories of the true
lowly parents, so that the child does not actually remove his father
but exalts him. _The entire endeavor to replace the real father by a
more distinguished one is merely the expression of the child’s longing
for the vanished happy time, when his father still appeared to be the
strongest and greatest man, and the mother seemed the dearest and most
beautiful woman._ The child turns away from the father, as he now
knows him, to the father in whom he believed in his earlier years, his
imagination being in truth only the expression of regret for this happy
time having passed away. _Thus the overvaluation of the earliest years
of childhood again claims its own in these fancies._[78] An interesting
contribution to this subject is furnished by the study of the dreams.
Dream-interpretation teaches that even in later years, in the dreams
of the emperor or the empress, these princely persons stand for the
father and the mother.[79] Thus the infantile overvaluation of the
parents is still preserved in the dream of the normal adult.

As we proceed to fit the above features into our scheme, we feel
justified in analogizing the ego of the child with the hero of the
myth, in view of the unanimous tendency of family romances and hero
myths; keeping in mind that the myth throughout reveals an endeavor to
get rid of the parents, and that the same wish arises in the phantasies
of the individual child at the time when it is trying to establish its
personal independence. The ego of the child behaves in this respect
like the hero of the myth, and as a matter of fact, the hero should
always be interpreted merely as a collective ego, which is equipped
with all the excellences. In a similar manner, the hero in personal
poetic fiction, usually represents the poet himself, or at least one
side of his character.

Summarizing the essentials of the hero myth, we find the descent from
noble parents, the exposure in a river, and in a box, and the raising
by lowly parents; followed in the further evolution of the story by
the hero’s return to his first parents, with or without punishment
meted out to them. It is very evident that the two parent couples of
the myth correspond to the real and the imaginary parent couple of the
romantic phantasy. Closer inspection reveals the psychological identity
of the humble and the noble parents, precisely as in the infantile and
neurotic phantasies.

In conformity with the overvaluation of the parents in early childhood,
the myth begins with the noble parents, exactly like the romantic
phantasy, whereas in reality adults soon adapt themselves to the
actual conditions. Thus the phantasy of the family romance is simply
realized in the myth, with a bold reversal to the actual conditions.
The hostility of the father, and the resulting exposure, accentuate the
motive which has caused the ego to indulge in the entire fiction. The
fictitious romance is the excuse, as it were, for the hostile feelings
which the child harbors against his father, and which in this fiction
are projected against the father. The exposure in the myth, therefore,
is equivalent to the repudiation or non-recognition in the romantic
phantasy. The child simply gets rid of the father in the neurotic
romance, while in the myth the father endeavors to lose the child.
Rescue and revenge are the natural terminations, as demanded by the
essence of the phantasy.

In order to establish the full value of this parallelization, as just
sketched in its general outlines, it must enable us to interpret
certain constantly recurring details of the myth which seem to require
a special explanation. This demand would seem to acquire special
importance in view of the fact that no satisfactory explanation
of these details is forthcoming in the writings of even the most
enthusiastic astral mythologists, or natural philosophers. Such details
are represented by the regular occurrence of dreams (or oracles), and
by the mode of exposure in a box and in the water. These motives do not
at first glance seem to permit a psychologic derivation. Fortunately
the study of dream-symbolisms permits the elucidation of these elements
of the hero-myth. The utilization of the same material in the dreams
of healthy persons and neurotics[80] indicates that the exposure in
the water signifies no more and no less than the _symbolic expression
of birth_. The children come out of the “water.”[81] The basket,
box or receptacle[82] simply means the container, the womb; so that
the exposure directly signifies the process of birth, although it is
represented by its opposite.

Those who object to this representation by opposites should
remember how often the dream works with the same mechanism (compare
“Traumdeutung,” II edition, p. 238). A confirmation of this
interpretation of the exposure, as taken from the common human
symbolism, is furnished by the material itself, in the dream dreamt by
the grandfather (or still more convincingly by the mother herself)[83]
in the Ktesian version of Kyros before his birth; in this dream, so
much water flows from the lap of the expectant mother as to inundate
all Asia, like an enormous ocean.[84] It is remarkable that in
both cases the Chaldeans correctly interpreted these water dreams
as birth-dreams. In all probability, these dreams themselves are
constructed out of the knowledge of a very ancient and universally
understood symbolism, with a dim foresight of the relations and
connections which are appreciated and presented in Freud’s teachings.
There he says (“Traumdeutung,” 2d edition, p. 199) in referring to a
dream in which the dreamer hurls herself in the dark water of a lake:
Dreams of this sort are birth-dreams, and their interpretation is
accomplished by reversing the fact as communicated in the manifest
dream; namely, instead of hurling oneself into the water, it means
emerging from the water, _i.e._, to be born.[85] The justice of this
interpretation, which renders the water-dream equivalent to the
exposure, is again confirmed by the fact that precisely in the Kyros
saga, which contains the water-dream, the motive of the exposure in the
water is lacking, while only the basket, which does not occur in the
dream, plays a part in the exposure.

In this interpretation of the exposure as the birth, we must not let
ourselves be disturbed by the discrepancy in the succession of the
individual elements of the symbolized materialization, with the real
birth process. This chronological rearrangement or even reversal
has been explained by Freud as due to the general manner in which
recollections are elaborated into phantasies; the same material
reappears in the phantasies, but in an entirely novel arrangement, and
no attention whatsoever is paid to the natural sequence of the acts.[86]

Besides this chronological reversal, the reversal of the contents
requires special explanation. The first reason for the representation
of the birth by its opposite,—the life threatening exposure in the
water, is the accentuation of the parental hostility towards the future
hero.[87] The creative influence of this tendency to represent the
parents as the first and most powerful opponents of the hero will be
appreciated, when it is kept in mind that the entire family-romance
in general owes its origin to the feeling of being neglected, namely
the assumed hostility of the parents. In the myth, this hostility
goes so far that the parents refuse to let the child be born, which
is precisely the reason of the hero’s lament, moreover, the myth
plainly reveals the desire to enforce his materialization even against
the will of the parents. The vital peril which is thus concealed in
the representation of birth through exposure, actually exists in the
process of birth itself. The overcoming of all these obstacles also
expresses the idea that the future hero has actually overcome the
greatest difficulties by virtue of his birth, for he has victoriously
thwarted all attempts to prevent it.[88] Or another interpretation
may be admitted, according to which the youthful hero, foreseeing
his destiny to taste more than his share of the bitterness of life,
deplores in pessimistic mood the inimical act which has called him
to earth. He accuses the parents, as it were, for having exposed him
to the struggle of life, for having allowed him to be born.[89] The
refusal to let the son be born, which belongs especially to the father,
is frequently concealed by the contrast motive, the wish for a child
(as in Œdipus, Perseus and others), while the hostile attitude towards
the future successor on the throne and in the kingdom is projected to
the outside, namely it is attributed to an oracular verdict, which is
thereby revealed as the substitute of the ominous dream, or better, as
the equivalent of its interpretation.

From another point of view, however, the family romance shows that the
phantasies of the child, although apparently estranging the parents,
have nought else to say concerning them besides their confirmation as
the real parents. The exposure myth, translated with the assistance of
symbolism, likewise contains nothing but the assurance: this is my
mother, who has borne me at the command of the father. But on account
of the tendency of the myth, and the resulting transference of the
hostile attitude, from the child to the parents, this assurance of
the real parentage can only be expressed as the repudiation of such
parentage.

On closer inspection, it is noteworthy in the first place that the
hostile attitude of the hero towards his parents concerns especially
the father. Usually, as in the myth of Œdipus, Paris, and others, the
royal father receives a prophecy of some disaster, threatening him
through the expected son; then it is the father who causes the exposure
of the boy and who pursues and menaces him in all sorts of ways after
his unlooked-for rescue, but finally succumbs to his son, according to
the prophecy. In order to understand this trait, which at first may
appear somewhat startling, it is not necessary to explore the heavens
for some process into which this trait might be laboriously fitted.
Looking with open eyes and unprejudiced minds at the relations between
parents and children, or between brothers such as these exist in
reality[90]—a certain tension is frequently, if not regularly revealed
between father and son, or still more distinctly a competition between
brothers; although this tension may not be obvious and permanent, it is
lurking in the sphere of the unconscious, as it were, with periodical
eruptions. Erotic factors are especially apt to be involved, and as a
rule the deepest, generally unconscious root of the dislike of the son
for the father, or of two brothers for each other, is referable to the
competition for the tender devotion and love of the mother. The Œdipus
myth shows plainly, only in grosser dimensions, the accuracy of this
interpretation, for the parricide is here followed by the incest with
the mother. This erotic relation with the mother, which predominates in
other mythic cycles, is relegated to the background in the myths of the
birth of the hero,[91] while the opposition against the father is more
strongly accentuated.

The fact that this infantile rebellion against the father is
apparently provoked in the birth myths by the hostile behavior of the
father is due to a reversal of the relation, known as projection,
which is brought about by very peculiar characteristics of the myth
forming psychic activity. The projection mechanism, which also bore
its part in the re-interpretation of the birth act, as well as
certain other characteristics of myth formation, to be discussed
presently,—necessitates the uniform characterisation of the myth
as a paranoid structure, in view of its resemblance to peculiar
processes in the mechanism of certain psychic disturbances. Intimately
connected with the paranoid character is the property of separating
or dissociating what is fused in the imagination. This process, as
illustrated by the two parents couples, provides the foundation for the
myth formation, and together with the projection mechanism supplies the
key to the understanding of an entire series of otherwise inexplicable
configurations of the myth. As the motor power for this projection
of the hero’s hostile attitude on to the father stands revealed the
wish for its justification, arising from the troublesome realization
of these feelings against the father. The displacement process which
begins with the projection of the troublesome sensation is still
further continued, however, and with the assistance of the mechanism
of separation or dissociation, it has found a different expression of
its gradual progress in very characteristic forms of the hero myth. In
the original psychologic setting, the father is still identical with
the king, the tyrannical persecutor. The first attenuation of this
relation is manifested in those myths in which the separation of the
tyrannical persecutor from the real father is already attempted, but
not yet entirely accomplished, the former being still related to the
hero, usually as his grandfather, for example in the Kyros-myth with
all its versions, and in the majority of all hero myths in general.
In the separation of the father’s part from that of the king, this
type signifies the first return step of the descent fantasy toward
the actual conditions, and accordingly the hero’s father appears in
this type mostly as a lowly man: See Kyros, Gilgamos and others.
The hero thus arrives again at an approach toward his parents, the
establishment of a certain kinship, which finds its expression in the
fact that not only the hero himself, but also his father and his mother
represent objects of the tyrant’s persecution. The hero in this way
acquires a more intimate connection with the mother (they are often
exposed together: Perseus, Telephos, Feridun), who is nearer to him on
account of the erotic relation; while the renouncement of his hatred
against the father here attains the expression of its most forcible
reaction,[92] for the hero henceforth appears, as in the Hamlet saga,
not as the persecutor of his father (or grandfather, respectively)
but as the avenger of the persecuted father. This involves a deeper
relation of the Hamlet saga with the Iranese story of Kaikhosrav,
where the hero likewise appears as the avenger of his murdered father
(compare Feridun and others).

The person of the grandfather himself, who in certain sagas appears
replaced by other relatives (the uncle, in the Hamlet saga), also
possesses a deeper meaning.[93] The myth complex of the incest with
the mother—and the related revolt against the father—is here combined
with the second great complex, which has for its contents the erotic
relations between father and daughter. Under this heading belongs
besides other widely ramified groups of sagas (quoted in the author’s
“Incest Book,” Chapter XI), the story which is told in countless
versions of a _newborn boy_, of whom it is _prophesied_ that he is to
become the _son-in-law_ and _heir_ of a certain ruler or potentate,
and who finally does so in spite of all persecutions (exposure and
so forth) on the part of the latter. Detailed literary references
concerning the wide distribution of this story are found in R. Köhler,
“Kleine Schriften,” II, 357. The father who refuses to give his
daughter to any of her suitors, or who attaches certain conditions
difficult of fulfillment to the winning of the daughter, does this
because he really begrudges her to all others, for when all is told he
wishes to possess her himself. He locks her up in some inaccessible
spot, so as to safeguard her virginity (Perseus, Gilgamos, Telephos,
Romulus), and when his command is disobeyed he pursues the daughter
and her offspring with insatiable hatred. However, the unconscious
sexual motives of his hostile attitude, which is later on avenged by
his grandson, render it evident that again the hero kills in him simply
the man who is trying to rob him of the love of his mother: namely the
father.

Another attempt at a reversal to a more original type consists in
the following trait: The return to the lowly father, which has been
brought about through the separation of the father’s rôle from that
of the king, is again nullified through the lowly father’s secondary
elevation to the rank of a god, as in Perseus and the other sons of
virgin mothers; Karna, Ion, Romulus, Jesus. The secondary character of
this godly paternity is especially evident in those myths where the
virgin who has been impregnated by divine conception, later on marries
a mortal (Jesus, Karna, Ion) who then appears as the real father, while
the god as the father represents merely the most exalted childish idea
of the magnitude, power and perfection of the father.[94] At the same
time, these myths strictly insist upon the motive of the virginity of
the mother, which elsewhere is merely hinted at. The first impetus is
perhaps supplied by the transcendental tendency, necessitated through
the introduction of the god. At the same time, the birth from the
virgin is the most abrupt repudiation of the father, the consummation
of the entire myth, as illustrated by the Sargon legend, which does not
admit any father, besides the vestal mother.

The last stage of this progressive attenuation of the hostile relation
to the father is represented by that form of the myth in which the
person of the royal persecutor not only appears entirely detached from
that of the father, but has even lost the remotest kinship with the
hero’s family, which he opposes in the most hostile manner, as its
enemy (in Feridun, Abraham, King Herod against Jesus, and others).
Although of his original threefold character as the father, the king,
and the persecutor, he retains only the part of the royal persecutor
or the tyrant, the entire plan of the myth conveys the impression as
if nothing had been changed, but as if the designation as “father”
had been simply replaced by the term of “tyrant.” This interpretation
of the father as a “tyrant” which is typical of the infantile
ideation,[95] will be found later on to possess the greatest importance
for the interpretation of certain abnormal constellations of this
complex.

The prototype of this identification of the king with the father,
which regularly recurs also in the dreams of adults, presumably is
the origin of royalty from the patriarchate in the family, which is
still attested by the use of identical words for king and father, in
the Hindoo-Germanic languages[96] (compare the German “Landesvater,”
father of his country, = king). The reversal of the family romance to
actual conditions is almost entirety accomplished in this type of myth.
The lowly parents are acknowledged with a frankness which seems to be
directly contradictory to the tendency of the entire myth.

Precisely this revelation of the real conditions, which hitherto had
to be left to the interpretation, enables us to prove the accuracy of
the latter from the material itself. The biblical Moses-legend has been
selected, as especially well adapted to this purpose.

Briefly summarizing the outcome of the previous
interpretation-mechanism, to make matters plainer, we find the two
parent-couples to be identical, after their splitting into the
personalities of the father and the tyrannical persecutor has been
connected; the high born parents being the echo, as it were, of the
exaggerated notions which the child originally harbored concerning
its parents. The Moses-legend actually shows the parents of the hero
divested of all prominent attributes; they are simple people, devotedly
attached to the child, and incapable of harming it. Meanwhile, the
assertion of tender feelings for the child is a confirmation, here
as well as everywhere, of the bodily parentage (compare Akki, the
gardener, in the Gilgamos-legend; the teamster, in the story of Karna;
the fisher, in the Perseus myth, etc.). The amicable utilization of
the exposure motive, which occurs in this type of myth, is referable
to such a relationship. The child is surrendered in a basket to the
water, but not with the object of killing it (as for example the
hostile exposure of Œdipus and many other heroes), but for the purpose
of saving it (compare also Abraham’s early history, p. 15). The danger
fraught warning to the exalted father becomes a hopeful prophecy for
the lowly father (compare, in the birth story of Jesus, the oracle for
Herod and Joseph’s dream), entirely corresponding to the expectations
placed by most parents in the career of their offspring.

Retaining from the original tendency of the romance, the fact that
Bitiah, Pharaoh’s daughter, drew the child from the water, _i.e._, gave
it birth, the outcome is the familiar theme (grandfather type) of the
king, whose daughter is to bear a son, but who on being warned by the
ill-omened interpretation of a dream, resolves to kill his forthcoming
grandson. The handmaiden of his daughter (who in the biblical story
draws the box from the water, at the behest of the princess), is
charged by the king with the exposure of the newborn child in a box,
in the waters of the river Nile, that it may perish (the exposure
motive, from the viewpoint of the highborn parents, here appearing in
its original disastrous significance). The box with the child is then
found by lowly people, and the poor woman raises the child (as his
wet nurse), and when he is grown up he is recognized by the princess
as her son (just as in the prototype the phantasy concludes with the
recognition by the highborn parents).

If the Moses-legend were placed before us in this more original form,
as we have reconstructed it from the existing material,[97] the sum of
this interpretation-mechanism would be approximately what is told in
the myth as it is actually transmitted; namely that his true mother was
not a princess, but the poor woman who was introduced as his nurse, her
husband being his father.

This interpretation is offered as the tradition, in the re-converted
myth; and the fact that this tracing of the progressive mutation
furnishes the familiar type of hero myth, is the proof for the
correctness of our interpretation.

It has thus been our good fortune to show the full accuracy of our
interpretative technique upon the material itself, and it is now
time to demonstrate the tenability of the general viewpoint upon
which this entire technique is founded. Hitherto, the results of our
interpretation have created the appearance of the entire myth formation
as starting from the hero himself, namely from the youthful hero. At
the start we took this attitude in analogizing the hero of the myth
with the ego of the child. Now we find ourselves confronted with the
obligation to harmonize these assumptions and conclusions with the
other conceptions of myth formation, which they seem to directly
contradict.

The myths are certainly not constructed by the hero, least of all by
the child hero, but they have long been known to be the product of a
people of adults. The impetus is evidently supplied by the popular
amazement at the apparition of the hero, whose extraordinary life
history the people can only imagine as ushered in by a wonderful
infancy. This extraordinary childhood of the hero, however, is
constructed by the individual myth-makers—to whom the indefinite idea
of the folk-mind must be ultimately traced—from the consciousness of
their own infancy. In investing the hero with their own infantile
history, they identify themselves with him, as it were, claiming to
have been similar heroes in their own personality. The true hero of
the romance is, therefore, the ego, which finds itself in the hero,
by reverting to the time when the ego was itself a hero, through its
first heroic act, _i.e._, the revolt against the father. The ego can
only find its own heroism in the days of infancy, and it is therefore
obliged to invest the hero with its own revolt, crediting him with
the features which made the ego a hero. This object is achieved with
infantile motives and materials, in reverting to the infantile romance
and transferring it to the hero. Myths are, therefore, created by
adults, by means of retrograde childhood fantasies,[98] the hero being
credited with the myth-maker’s personal infantile history. Meanwhile
the tendency of this entire process is the excuse of the individual
units of the people for their own infantile revolt against the father.

Besides the excuse of the hero for his rebellious revolt, the myth
therefore contains also the excuse of the individual for his revolt
against the father. This revolt had burdened him since his childhood,
as he had failed to become a hero. He is now enabled to excuse himself
by emphasizing that the father has given him grounds for his hostility.
The affectionate feeling for the father is also manifested in the
same fiction, as has been shown above. These myths have therefore
sprung from two opposite motives, both of which are subordinate to
the motive of vindication of the individual through the hero: on the
one hand the motive of affection and gratitude towards the parents;
and on the other hand, the motive of the revolt against the father.
It is not stated outright in these myths, however, that the conflict
with the father arises from the sexual rivalry for the mother, but is
apparently suggested that this conflict dates back primarily to the
concealment of the sexual processes (at childbirth), which in this way
became an enigma for the child. This enigma finds its temporary and
symbolical solution in the infantile sexual theory of the basket and
the water.[99]

The profound participation of the incest motive in myth formation
is discussed in the author’s special investigation of the Lohengrin
saga, which belongs to the myth of the birth of the hero. The cyclic
character of the Lohengrin saga is referred by him to the _fantasy
of being one’s own son_, as revealed by Freud (p. 131; compare also
pp. 96 and 990). This accounts for the identity of father and son,
in certain myths, the repetition of their careers; the fact that the
hero is sometimes not exposed until he has reached maturity, also the
intimate connection between birth and death, in the exposure-motive.
(Concerning the water as the water of death, compare especially chapter
IV of the Lohengrin saga.) Jung, who regards the typical fate of the
hero as the portrayal of the human libido and its typical vicissitudes,
has made this theme the pivot of his interpretation, as the fantasy
of being born again, to which the incest motive is subordinated. Not
only the birth of the hero, which takes place under peculiar symbolic
circumstances, but also the motive of the two mothers of the hero, are
explained by Jung through the birth of the hero taking place under the
mysterious ceremonials of a re-birth from the mother consort (_l. c._,
p. 356).

Having thus outlined the contents of the birth myth of the hero it
still remains for us to point out certain complications within the
birth myth itself, which have been explained on the basis of its
paranoid character, as “splits” of the personality of the royal
father and persecutor. In some myths, however, and especially in the
fairy tales which belong to this group,[100] the multiplication of
mythical personages, and with them, of course, the multiplication of
motives, or even of entire stories, are carried so far that sometimes
the original features are altogether overgrown by these addenda. The
multiplication is so variegated and so exuberantly developed, that
the mechanism of the analysis no longer does it justice. Moreover,
the new personalities here do not show the same independence, as it
were, as the new personalities created by splitting, but they rather
present the characteristics of a copy, a duplicate, or a “double,”
which is the proper mythological term. An apparently very complicated
example, namely, Herodotus’ version of the Kyros saga, illustrates that
these doubles are not inserted purely for ornamentation, or to give a
semblance of historical veracity, but that they are insolubly connected
with the myth-formation and its tendency. Also, in the Kyros-myth, as
in the other myths, the royal grandfather, Astyages, and his daughter,
with her husband, are confronted by the cattle-herder and his wife.
A checkered gathering of other personalities which move around them,
are readily grouped at sight: Between the high born parent couple
and their child stand the administrator Harpagos with his wife and
his son, and the noble Artembares with his legitimate offspring. Our
trained sense for the peculiarities of myth-structure recognizes at
once the doubles of the parents in the intermediate parent-couples and
all the participants are seen to be identical personalities of the
parents and their child; this interpretation being suggested by certain
features of the myth itself. Harpagos receives the child from the
king, to expose it; he therefore acts precisely like the royal father
and remains true to his fictitious paternal part in his reluctance to
kill the child himself—because it is related to him—but he delivers it
instead to the herder Mithradates, who is thus again identified with
Harpagos. The noble Artembares, whose son Kyros causes to be whipped,
is also identified with Harpagos; for when Artembares with his whipped
boy stands before the king, to demand retribution, Harpagos at once
is likewise seen standing before the king, to defend himself, and
he also is obliged to present his son to the king. Thus Artembares
himself plays an episodal part as the hero’s father, and this is fully
confirmed by the Ktesian version, which tells us that the nobleman who
adopted the herder’s son, Kyros, as his own son, was named Artembares.

Even more distinct than the identity of the different fathers is that
of their children, which of course serves to confirm the identity of
the fathers. In the first place, and this would seem to be conclusive,
the _children are all of the same age_. Not only the son of the
princess, and the child of the herder, who are born at the same time;
but Herodotus specially emphasizes that Kyros played the game at
kings, in which he caused the son of Artembares to be whipped, with
boys of the same age. He also points out, perhaps intentionally, that
the _son of Harpagos_, destined to become the playmate of Kyros,
whom the king had recognized, was likewise apparently of the same
age as Kyros. Furthermore, the remains of this boy are placed before
his father, Harpagos, in a basket, it was also a basket in which the
newborn Kyros was to have been exposed, and this actually happened to
his substitute, the herder’s son, whose identity with Kyros is obvious
and tangible in the report of Iustin, p. 34. In this report, Kyros is
actually exchanged with the _living_ child of the herders;, but this
paradoxical parental feeling is reconciled by the consciousness that in
reality nothing at all has been altered by this exchange. It appears
more intelligible, of course, that the herder’s wife should wish to
raise the living child of the king, instead of her own _stillborn_
boy, as in the Herodotus version; but here the identity of the boys
is again evident, for just as the herder’s son suffered death instead
of Kyros in the past, twelve years later the son of Harpagos (also in
the basket) is killed directly for Kyros, whom Harpagos had allowed to
live.[101]

The impression is thereby conveyed that all the multiplications of
Kyros, after having been created for a certain purpose, are again
removed, as disturbing elements, once this purpose has been fulfilled.
This purpose is undoubtedly the exalting tendency which is inherent to
the family romance. The hero in the various duplications of himself
and his parents, ascends the social scale from the herder Mithradates,
by way of the noble Artembares, who is high in the king’s favor, and
of the first administrator, Harpagos, who is personally related to the
king—until he has himself become a prince; so his career is exposed in
the Ktesian version, where Kyros advances from the herder’s son to the
king’s administrator.[102] In this way, he constantly removes, as it
were, the last traces of his ascent, the lower Kyros being discarded
after absolving the different stages of his career.[103]

This complicated myth with its promiscuous array of personages is
thus simplified and reduced to three actors, namely the hero and his
parents. Entirely similar conditions prevail in regard to the “cast”
of many other myths. For example, the duplication may concern the
daughter, as in the Moses myth, in which the princess mother (in order
to establish the identity of the two families)[104] appears among
the poor people as the daughter Miriam, who is merely a split of the
mother, the latter appearing divided into the princess and the poor
woman. In case the duplication concerns the father, his doubles appear
as a rule in the part of relatives, more particularly as his brothers,
as for example in the Hamlet saga, in distinction from the foreign
personages created by the analysis. In a similar way, the grandfather,
who is taking the place of the father, may also appear complemented by
a brother, who is the hero’s grand uncle, and as such his opponent,
as in the myths of Romulus, Perseus and others. Other duplications,
in apparently complicated mythical structures, as for example in
Kaikhosrav, Feridun, and others, are easily recognized when envisaged
from this angle.

The duplication of the fathers, or the grandfathers, respectively, by
a brother may be continued in the next generation, and concern the
hero himself, thus leading to the _brother myths_, which can only be
hinted at in connection with the present theme. The prototypes of the
boy, who in the Kyros saga vanish into thin air after they have served
their purpose, namely the exaltation of the hero’s descent, if they
were to assume a vitality of their own, would come to confront the hero
as competitors with equal rights, namely as his brothers. The original
sequence is probably better preserved through the interpretation of the
hero’s strange doubles as shadowy brothers, who like the twin brother,
must die for the hero’s sake. Not only the father, who is in the way of
the maturing son, but also the interfering competitor, or the brother,
are removed, in a naïve realization of the childish fantasies, for the
simple reason that the hero does not want a family.

The complications of the hero myth with other myth cycles include,
besides the myth of the hostile brothers, which has already been
disposed of, also the actual incest myth, such as forms the nucleus
of the Œdipus myth. The mother, and her relation to the hero, appear
relegated to the background in the myth of the birth of the hero. But
there is another conspicuous motive, meaning that the lowly mother
is so often represented by an animal. This motive of the helpful
animals[105] belongs in part to a series of foreign elements, the
explanation of which would far exceed the scope of this essay.[106]

The animal motive may be fitted into the sequence of our
interpretation, on the basis of the following reflections. In a similar
way as the projection on to the father justifies the hostile attitude
on the part of the son, so the lowering of the mother into an animal
is likewise meant to vindicate the ingratitude of the son, who denies
her. In a similar way as the detachment of the persecuting king from
the father, the exclusive rôle of a wet nurse, alloted to the mother,
in this substitution by an animal, goes back to the separation of
the mother into the parts of the child bearer and the suckler. This
cleavage is again subservient to the exalting tendency, in so far as
the child bearing part is reserved for the high born mother, whereas
the lowly woman, who cannot be eradicated from the early history, must
content herself with the function of a nurse. Animals are especially
appropriate substitutes, because the sexual processes are here plainly
evident also to the child, while the concealment of these processes is
presumably the root of the childish revolt against the parents. The
exposure in the box and in the water asexualizes the birth process, as
it were, in a childlike fashion; the children are fished out of the
water by the stork,[107] who takes them to the parents in a basket. The
animal fable improves upon this idea, by emphasizing the similarity
between human birth and animal birth.

This introduction of the motive may possibly be interpreted from the
parodistic point of view, if we assume that the child accepts the
story of the stork from the parents, feigning ignorance, but adding
superciliously: If an animal has brought me, it may also have nursed
me.[108]

When all is said and done, however, and when the cleavage is followed
back, this separation of the child bearer from the suckler—which
really endeavors to remove the bodily mother entirely, by means of her
substitution through an animal or a strange nurse—does not express
anything beyond the fact: The woman who has suckled me is my mother.
This statement is found directly symbolized in the Moses legend,
the retrogressive character of which we have already studied; for
precisely the woman who is his own mother is chosen to be his nurse
[similarly also in the myth of Herakles, and in the Egyptian-Phenician
Osiris-Adonis myth, where Osiris, encased in a chest, floats down the
river to Phenicia, and is finally found under the name Adonis, by Isis,
who is installed by Queen Astarte as the nurse of her own son].[109]

Only a brief reference can here be made to other motives which seem
to be more loosely related to the entire myth. Such motives include
that of playing the fool, which is suggested in animal fables as the
universal childish attitude towards the grown ups; furthermore, the
physical defects of certain heroes [Zal, Œdipus, Hephaistos], which are
perhaps meant to serve for the vindication of individual imperfections,
in such a way that the reproaches of the father for possible defects
or shortcomings are incorporated in the myth, with the appropriate
accentuation, the hero being endowed with the same weakness which
burdens the self-respect of the individual.

This explanation of the psychological significance of the myth of
the birth of the hero would not be complete without emphasizing its
relations to certain mental diseases. Also readers without psychiatric
training—or these perhaps more than any others, must have been
struck with these relations. As a matter of fact, the hero myths are
equivalent in many essential features to the delusional ideas of
certain psychotic individuals, who suffer from delusions of persecution
and grandeur,—the so called paranoiacs. Their system of delusions is
constructed very much like the hero myth, and therefore indicates
the same psychogenic motives as the neurotic family romance, which
is analysable, whereas the system of delusions is inaccessible even
for psychoanalytical approaches. For example, the paranoiac is apt to
claim that the people whose name he bears are not his real parents,
but that he is actually the son of a princely personage; he was to be
removed for some mysterious reason, and was therefore surrendered to
his “parents” as a foster child. His enemies, however, wish to maintain
the fiction that he is of lowly descent, in order to suppress his
legitimate pretensions to the crown or to enormous riches.[110] Cases
of this kind often occupy alienists or tribunals.[111]

This intimate relationship between the hero myth and the delusional
structure of paranoiacs has already been definitely established through
the characterization of the myth as a paranoid structure, which is
here confirmed by its contents. The remarkable fact that paranoiacs
will frankly reveal their entire romance has ceased to be puzzling,
since the profound investigations of Freud have shown that the contents
of hysterical fantasies, which can often be made conscious through
analysis, are identical up to the minutest details with the complaints
of persecuted paranoiacs; moreover, the identical contents are also
encountered as a reality, in the arrangements of perverts for the
gratification of their desires.[112]

The egotistical character of the entire system is distinctly revealed
by the paranoiac, for whom the exaltation of the parents, as brought
about by him, is merely the means for his own exaltation. As a
rule the pivot for his entire system is simply the culmination of
the family romance, in the apoditic statement: I am the emperor
(or god). Reasoning in the symbolism of dreams and myths, which is
also the symbolism of all fancies, including the “morbid” power of
imagination—all he accomplishes thereby is to put himself in the place
of the father, just as the hero terminates his revolt against the
father. This can be done in both instances, because the conflict with
the father—which dates back to the concealment of the sexual processes,
as suggested by the latest discoveries—is nullified at the instant when
the grown boy himself becomes a father. The persistence with which the
paranoiac puts himself in the father’s place, _i.e._, becomes a father
himself, appears like an illustration to the common answer of little
boys to a scolding or a putting off of their inquisitive curiosity: You
just wait until I am a papa myself, and I’ll know all about it!

Besides the paranoiac, his equally a-social counterpart must also
be emphasized. In the expression of the identical fantasy contents,
the hysterical individual who has suppressed them, is offset by the
pervert, who realizes them, and even so the diseased and passive
paranoiac—who needs his delusion for the correction of the actuality,
which to him is intolerable—is offset by the active criminal, who
endeavors to change the actuality according to his mind. In this
special sense, this type is represented by the anarchist. The hero
himself, as shown by his detachment from the parents, begins his
career in opposition to the older generation; he is at once a rebel,
a renovator, and a revolutionary. However, every revolutionary is
originally a disobedient son, a rebel against the father.[113] (Compare
the suggestion of Freud, in connection with the interpretation of a
“revolutionary dream.” Traumdeutung, II edition, p. 153. See English
translation by Brill. Macmillan. Annotation.)

But whereas the paranoiac, in conformity with his passive character,
has to suffer persecutions and wrongs which ultimately proceed from
the father, and which he endeavors to escape by putting himself in
the place of the father or the emperor—the anarchist complies more
faithfully with the heroic character, by promptly himself becoming
the persecutor of kings, and finally killing the king, precisely like
the hero. The remarkable similarity between the career of certain
anarchistic criminals and the family romance of hero and child has
been illustrated by the author, through special instances (Belege zur
Rettungsphantasie, _Zentralblatt f. Psychoanalyse_, I, 1911, p. 331,
and Die Rolle des Familienromans in der Psychologie des Attentäters,
Internationale Zeitschrift für aerztliche Psychoanalyse, I, 1913).
The truly heroic element then consists only in the real justice or
even necessity of the act, which is therefore generally endorsed and
admired;[114] while the morbid trait, also in criminal cases, is the
pathologic transference of the hatred from the father to the real king,
or several kings, when more general and still more distorted.

As the hero is commended for the same deed, without asking for its
psychic motivation, so the anarchist might claim indulgence from the
severest penalties, for the reason that he has killed an entirely
different person from the one he really intended to destroy, in spite
of an apparently excellent perhaps political motivation of his act.[115]

For the present let us stop at the narrow boundary line where the
contents of innocent infantile imaginings, suppressed and unconscious
neurotic fantasies, poetical myth structures, and certain forms of
mental disease and crime lie close together, although far apart as to
their causes and dynamic forces. We resist the temptation to follow one
of these divergent paths which lead to altogether different realms, but
which are as yet unblazed trails in the wilderness.

INDEX

PAGE

Abraham, 15

Aleos, 21

Alkmene, 45

Akrisios, 22

Ambivalence, 70

Amphion and Zetos, 43

Anarchist, 93

Animal motives, 88

Apollo, 17

Artembares, 29

Arthurian legends, 55

Astyages, 29

Attenuation of myth, 78

Auge, 22

Babylonian myths, 12

Beating, 56

Beowulf, 60

Birth symbols, 69

Blancheflure, 38

Borrowing theories, 2

Box, 69

Bride true, 40

Brother myths, 87

Brothers, hostility of, 88

Buddha, 53

Child psyche and myth formation, 63

Childhood of hero, 81

Conflict of younger and older generation, 64

Content reversals, 72

Criminality and myths, 93

Criticism of parents, 64

Darab, 19

Daughter father, 77

Delusion formation, 91

Dirke, 46

Displacements in myths, 76

Dream and myth, 69

Dreams of water, 71

Dughda, 51

Duplication, 87

Egotism motives, 92

Elsa, 56

Erotic factors, 74

Exposure myths, 72, 73

Family relations, 62

Family romance of neurotics, 65

Father and hero, 61

Father and tyrant, 76

Father daughter, 77

Father replacement, 67

Feridun, 37

Flood myths, 25, 34

Fool motive, 90

Gilgamos, 23, 79

Grandfather replacement, 77

Hamlet, 76

Harpagos, 26, 27, 28

Hekabe, 20

Hercules, 44

Hero and father, 61

Hero and mother, 61

Hero myth, summary of, 67

Herod, 50

Horn, 55

Hostile brothers, 88

Hostility motives, 74

Hysteria and myth, 92

Hysterical fantasies, 92

Incest motive in myth, 83

Infantile imagination, 62

Infantile psyche and myth, 9, 10

Infantile sexual theory, 82

Interpretation summary, 79

Ion, 17

Iranese legends, 19, 36, 37

Isaac, 15

Isolde, 38, 39

Jesus, 47, 48, 49, et seq.

Judas myth, 19

Kaikaus, 36

Kaikhosrav, 35

Kamleyses, 25

Karna, 15

Krishna, 47

Kyros, 24, 89

Kyros myth, versions of, 24, 32, 33

Kunti, 16

Lohengrin, 55, 58

Lunar myths, 5

Mandane, 25

Migration theories, 2

Moses, 13, 79

Mother and hero, 61

Myth and hysterical fancy, 92

Myth and infantile psyche, 9, 10

Myths and paranoid mechanisms, 75

Myth and race, 11

Myth and sex, 65

Myth, complications of, 83

Myth contents, 4, 6

Myth displacements, 76

Myth distribution, 4

Myth, evolution of, 8

Myth formation and child psyche, 63

Myth ground plan, 61

Myth interpretation, 5

Myth of hero, summary of, 67

Myth, psychological significance of, 90

Myth structure and psychoneuroses, 63

Myth, type of, 61

Mythological theories, 1, 3

Neurotic family romance, 65

Neurotics, 64

Nightmares, 7

Œdipus, 74

Œdipus myth, 6, 18

Old age and youth, 64

Opposites, 70

Oriant, 56

Paranoid delusions, 91

Paranoid mechanism in myths, 75

Parental authority, 63

Parental criticism, 64

Parents, fancied, 73

Parents, real, 73

Paris, 20

Perseus, 22

Persian myths, 37

Persian war, 32

Pharaoh, 80

Priamos, 20

Pritha, 16

Proca, 42

Projection, 75

Psychological significance of myth, 90

Psychoneuroses and myth structure, 63

Psychoneurotics, 63

Races and myths, 81

Real parents, 73

Reformer, 93

Remus, 40

Replacement of father, 67

Retaliation and revenge, 66

Revenge and retaliation, 66

Reversals, 72

Revolt of hero, 82

Revolutionary, 93

River legends, 46

Romulus, 40

Romulus, modifications of, 42

St. Gregory, 19

Sam, 21

Sargon myth, 12

Scëaf, 60

Scild Scefing, 60

Senechoros, 24

Sex and myth, 65

Siegfried, 93

Split personalities, 84

Summary interpretation, 79

Symbolic expression, 69

Telephos, 21

Thebes, 43

Theories of myths, 1, 3

Tristan, 38, 39

True bride, 40

Twin myths, 44

Types of reversal, 77

Typical myth, 61

Tyrant and father, 76

Water dreams, 71

Water in myth, 34

Wieland, 55

Wolfdietrich, 54

Youth and old age, 64

Zal, 21

Zetos and Amphion, 43

Zoroaster, 51

FOOTNOTES:

[1] A short and fairly complete review of the general theories of
mythology and its principal advocates is to be found in Wundt’s
“Völkerpsychologie,” Vol. II, Myths and Religion. Part I [Leipzig,
1905], p. 527.

[2] “Das Beständige in den Menschenrassen und die Spielweise ihrer
Veränderlichkeit.” Berlin, 1868.

[3] “Die Kyros Sage und Verwandtes,” _Sitzb. Wien. Akad._, 100, 1882,
p. 495.

[4] Schubert. Herodots Darstellung der Cyrussage, Breslau, 1890.

[5] Compare E. Stucken, “Astral mythen,” Leipzig, 1896-1907, especially
Part V, “Moses.” H. Lessmann, “Die Kyrossage in Europe,” _Wiss. beit.
z. Jahresbericht d. städt. Realschule zu Charlottenburg_, 1906.

[6] “Naturgeschichte d. Sage.” Tracing all religious ideals, legends,
and systems back to their common family tree, and their primary root, 2
volumes, Munich 1864-65.

[7] Some of the important writings of Winckler will be mentioned in the
course of this article.

[8] _Zeitschrift f. d. Oesterr. Gym._, 1891, p. 161, etc. Schubert’s
reply is also found here, p. 594, etc.

[9] Lessmann, “Object and Aim of Mythological Research,” _Mythol.
Bibliot._, 1, Heft 4, Leipzig.

[10] Winckler, “Die babylonische Geisteskultur in ihren Beziehungen zur
Kulturentwicklung der Menschheit,” _Wissenschaft u. Bildung_, Vol. 15,
1907, p. 47.

[11] Of course no time will be wasted on the futile question as to what
this first legend may have been; for in all probability this never had
existence, any more than a “first human couple.”

[12] As an especially discouraging example of this mode of procedure
may be mentioned a contribution by the well-known natural mythologist
Schwartz, which touches upon this circle of myths, and is entitled:
“Der Ursprung der Stamm und Gründungssage Roms unter dem Reflex
indogermanischer Mythen” [Jena, 1898].

[13] Frobenius, Das Zeitalter des Sonnengotten, Berlin, 1904.

[14] Siecke, “Hermes als Mondgott,” _Myth. Bibl._, Vol. II, Pt. 1, p.
48.

[15] Compare for example, Paul Koch, “Sagen der Bibel und ihre
Ubereinstimmung mit der Mythologie der Indogermanen,” Berlin,
1907. Compare also the partly lunar, partly solar, but at any rate
entirely one sided conception of the hero myth, in Gustav Friedrich’s
“Grundlage, Entstehung und genaue Einzeldeutung der bekanntesten
germanischen Märchen, Mythen und Sagen” [Leipzig, 1909], p. 118.

[16] Translated by Dr. A. A. Brill. Macmillan Co.

[17] The fable of Shakespeare’s Hamlet also permits of a similar
interpretation, according to Freud. It will be seen later on how
mythological investigators bring the Hamlet legend from entirely
different view points into the correlation of the mythical circle.

[18] In JOURNAL OF NERVOUS AND MENTAL DISEASE, 1912. Also collected in
this Monograph Series, No. 15.

[19] Compare Lessmann (Mythol. Bibl., I, 4). Ehrenreich alone (loc.
cit., p. 149) admits the extraordinary significance of dream-life for
the myth-fiction of all times. Wundt does so likewise, for individual
mythical motives.

[20] Stucken [Mose, p. 432] says in this sense. The myth transmitted
by the ancestors was transferred to natural processes and interpreted
in a naturalistic way, not vice versa. “Interpretation of nature is
a motive in itself” [p. 633, annotation]. In a very similar way, we
read in Meyer’s History of Antiquity, Vol. V, p. 48: In many cases,
the natural symbolism, sought in the myths, is only apparently present
or has been secondarily introduced, as often in the Vedda and in the
Egyptian myths; it is a primary attempt at interpretation, like the
myth-interpretations which arose among the Greeks since the fifth
century.

[21] For fairy tales, in this as well as in other essential features,
Thimme advocates the same point of view as is here claimed for the
myths. Compare Adolf Thimme, “Das Märchen,” 2d volume of the Handbücher
zur Volkskunde, Leipzig, 1909.

[22] Volume II of the German translation, Leipzig, 1869, p. 143.

[23] Of this myth-interpretation, Wundt has well said that it really
should have accompanied the original myth-formation. (Loc. cit., p.
352.)

[24] See Ignaz Goldziher, “Der Mythus bei den Hebräern und seine
geschichtliche Entwickelung” [Leipzig, 1876], p. 125. According to the
writings of Siecke [“Hermes als Mondgott,” Leipzig, 1908, p. 39], the
incest myths lose all unusual features through being referred to the
moon, and its relation to the sun. The explanation being quite simple:
the daughter, the new moon, is the repetition of the mother [the old
moon], with her the father [the sun] [also the brother, the son]
becomes reunited.

[25] Is it to be believed? In an article entitled “Urreligion der
Indogermanen” [Berlin, 1897], where Siecke points out that the incest
myths are descriptive narrations of the seen but inconceivable process
of nature, he objects to a statement of Oldenburg [“Religion der Veda,”
p. 5] who assumes a primeval tendency of myths to the incest motive,
with the remark that in the days of yore the motive was thrust upon the
narrator, without an inclination of his own, through the forcefulness
of the witnessed facts.

[26] The great variability and wide distribution of the birth myths of
the hero results from the above quoted writings of Bauer, Schubert and
others, while their comprehensive contents and fine ramifications were
especially discussed by Husing, Lessmann, and the other representatives
of the modern direction.

Innumerable fairy tales, stories, and poems of all times, up to the
most recent dramatic and novelistic literature, show very distinct
individual main motives of this myth. The exposure-romance is known to
appear in the following literary productions: The late Greek pastorals,
as told in Heliodor’s “Aethiopika,” in Eustathius’ “Ismenias and
Ismene,” and in the Story of the two exposed children, Daphnis and
Chloe. The more recent Italian pastorals are likewise very frequently
based upon the exposure of children, who are raised as shepherds by
their foster-parents, but are later recognized by the true parents,
through identifying marks which they received at the time of their
exposure. To the same set belong the family history in Grimmelshausen’s
“Limplizissimus” (1665), in Jean Paul’s “Titan” (1800), as well as
certain forms of the Robinson stories and Cavalier romances (compare
Würzbach’s Introduction to the Edition of “Don Quichote” in Hesse’s
edition).

[27] The various translations of the partly mutilated text differ only
in unessential details. Compare Hommel’s “History of Babylonia and
Assyria” (Berlin, 1885), p. 302, where the sources of the tradition are
likewise found, and A. Jeremias, “The Old Testament in the Light of the
Ancient Orient,” II edition, Leipzig, 1906, p. 410.

[28] On account of these resemblances, a dependence of the Exodus tale
from the Sargon legend has often been assumed, but apparently not
enough attention has been paid to certain fundamental distinctions,
which will be taken up in detail in the interpretation.

[29] The parents of Moses were originally nameless, as were all persons
in this, the oldest account. Their names were only conferred upon them
by the priesthood. Chapter 6, 20, says: “And Amram took him Jocabed his
father’s sister to wife; and she bare him Aaron and Moses” [and their
sister Miriam, IV, 26, 59]. Also compare Winckler, “History of Israel,”
II, and Jeremias, l. c., p. 408.

[30] The name, according to Winckler (“Babylonian Mental Culture,” p.
119), means “The Water-Drawer” (see also Winckler, “Ancient Oriental
Studies,” III, 468, etc.), which would still further approach the Moses
legend to the Sargon legend, for the name Akki signifies I have drawn
water.

[31] Schemot Rabba, fol. 2, 4. Concerning 2, Moses 1, 22, says that
Pharaoh was told by the astrologers of a woman who was pregnant with
the Redeemer of Israel.

[32] The Hindu birth legend of the mythical king Vikramâdita must also
be mentioned in this connection. Here again occur the barren marriage
of the parents, the miraculous conception, ill-omened warnings, the
exposure of the boy in the forest, his nourishment with honey, finally
the acknowledgment by the father. (See Jülg, “Mongolian Fairy Tales,”
Innsbruck, 1868, p. 73, et seq.)

[33] “Hindu Legends,” Karlsruhe, 1846, Part II, pp. 117 to 127.

[34] “Hindu Legends,” l. c.

[35] See Röscher, concerning the Ion of Euripides. Where no other
source is stated, all Greek and Roman myths are taken from the
Extensive Dictionary of Greek and Roman Mythology, edited by Röscher,
which also contains a list of all sources.

[36] According to Bethe, “Thebanische Heldenlieder,” the exposure on
the waters was the original rendering. According to other versions, the
boy is found and raised by horse herds; according to a later myth, by a
countryman, Melibios.

[37] The entire material has been discussed by Rank in Das Inzest-Motiv
in Dichtung und Sage, 1912, Chapter X.

[38] I. In the version of Euripides, whose tragedies “Auge” and
“Telephos” are extant, _Aleos caused the mother and the child to be
thrown into the sea in a box_, but through the protection of Athene
this box was carried to the end of the Mysian River, Kaikos. There it
was found by Teuthras. who made Auge his wife and took her child into
his house as his foster son.

[39] Later authors, including Pindar, state that Danae was impregnated,
not by Zeus, but by the brother of her father.

[40] Simonides of Keos (fr. 37, ed. Bergk), speaks of a casement
strong as ore, in which Danae is said to have been exposed. (Geibel,
Klassisches Liederbuch, page 52.)

[41] According to Hüsing, the Perseus myth in several versions is
also demonstrable in Japan. Compare also, Sydney Hartland, Legend of
Perseus, 1894-96; 3 volumes. London.

[42] Claudius Aelianus, “Historia animalium,” XII, 21, translated by
Fr. Jacobs (Stuttgart, 1841).

[43] It was also told of Ptolemaös, the son of Lagos and Arsinoë, that
an eagle protected the exposed boy with his wings against the sunshine,
the rain and birds of prey (_loc. cit._).

[44] F. E. Lange, “Herodot’s Geschichten” (Reclam). Compare also
Duncker’s “History of Antiquity” (Leipsig, 1880), N. 5, page 256 et
sequitur.

[45] The same “playing king” is found in the Hindoo myth of
Candragupta, the founder of the Maurja dynasty, whom his mother exposed
after his birth, in a vessel at the gate of a cowshed, where a herder
found him and raised him. Later on he came to a hunter, where he as
cow-herder played “king” with the other boys, and as king ordered
that the hands and feet of the great criminals be chopped off. [The
mutilation motive occurs also in the Kyros saga, and is generally
widely distributed.] At his command, the separated limbs returned to
their proper position. Kanakja, who once looked on as they were at
play, admired the boy, and bought him from the hunter for one thousand
Kârshâpana; at home he discovered that the boy was a Maurja. (After
Lassen’s Indische Altertumskunde, II, 196, Annotation 1.)

[46] Justinus, “Extract from Pompeius Trogus’ Philippian History,” I,
4-7. As far as results from Justinus’ extract, Deinon’s Persian tales
(written in the first half of the fourth century before Christ) are
presumably the sources of Trogus’ narrative.

[47] The words in parenthesis are said to be lacking in certain
manuscripts.

[48] Nicol. Damasc. Frag. 66, Ctes.; Frag. Pers., 2, 5.

[49] This daughter’s name is Amytis (not Mandane) in the version of
Ktesias.

[50] On the basis of this _motive of simulated dementia_ and certain
other corresponding features Jiriczek (“Hamlet in Iran,” in the
_Zeitschrift des Vereins für Volkskunde_, Vol. X, 1900, p. 353) has
represented the _Hamlet Saga_ as a variation of the Iranese myth of
Kaikhosrav. This idea was followed up by H. Lessmann (“Die Kyrossage
in Europa”), who shows that the Hamlet saga strikingly agrees in
certain items, for example, in the simulated folly, with the sagas
of Brutus and of Tell. (Compare also the protestations of Moses.) In
another connection, the deeper roots of these relations have been more
extensively discussed, especially with reference to the Tell saga.
(See: Das Inzest-Motiv in Dichtung und Sage, Chapter VIII.) Attention
is also directed to the story of David, as it is told in the books
of Samuel. Here again, the royal scion, David, is made a shepherd,
who gradually rises in the social scale up to the royal throne. He
likewise is given the king’s (Saul’s) daughter in marriage, and the
king seeks his life, but David is always saved by miraculous means from
the greatest perils. He also evades persecution by simulating dementia
and playing the fool. The relationship between the Hamlet saga and the
David saga has already been pointed out by Jiriczek and Lessmann. The
biblical character of this entire mythical cycle is also emphasized by
Jiriczek, who finds in the tale of Siâvaksh’s death certain features
from the Passion of the Savior.

[51] The name Zohâk is a mutilation of the original Zend expression
Ashi-dahaka [Azis-dahaka], meaning pernicious serpent. (See “The Myth
of Feridun in India and Iran,” by Dr. R. Roth, in the _Zeitschrift
der Deutschen Morgenländischen Gesellschaft_, II, p. 216.) To the
_Iranese Feridum_ corresponds the _Hindoo Trita_, whose Avestian
double is Thraetaona. The last named form is the most predominantly
authenticated; from it was formed, by transition of the aspirated
sounds, first Phreduna, then Frêdûn or Afrêdun; Feridun is a more
recent corruption. Compare F. Spiegel’s “Eranische Altertumskunde,” I,
p. 537 et seq.

[52] Compare Immermann, “Tristan und Isolde, Ein Gedicht in Romanzen,”
Düsseldorf, 1841. Like the epic of Gottfried of Strassburg, his poem
begins with the preliminary history of the loves of Tristan’s parents,
King Riwalin Kannlengres of Parmenia and Marke’s beautiful sister
Blancheflur. The maiden never reveals her love, which is not sanctioned
by her brother, but she visits the king, who is wounded unto death,
in his chamber, and dying he procreates Tristan, “the son of the most
daring and doleful love.” Grown up as a foundling in the care of Rual
and his wife, Florete, the winsome youth Tristan introduces himself
to Marke in a stag hunt, as an expert huntsman, is recognized as his
nephew by a ring, the king’s gift to his beloved sister, and becomes
his favorite.

[53] See translation by W. A. White, M.D.., Psychoanalytic Review, Vol.
I, No. 1, et seq.

[54] Compare the substitution of the bride, through Brangäne.

[55] Mommsen, Th., “Die echte und die falsche Acca Larentia”; in
Festgaben für G. Homeyer (Berlin, 1891), p. 93, et seq.; and _Römische_
_Forschungen_ (Berlin, 1879), II, p. 1, et seq. Mommsen reconstructs
the lost narrative of Fabius from the preserved reports of Dionysius
(I, 79-831, and of Plutarch (Romulus)).

[56] The Capitoline She Wolf is considered as the work of very ancient
Etruscan artists, which was erected at the Lupercal, in the year 296
B.C., according to Livy (X, 231). Compare picture on title page.

[57] All these renderings were compiled by Schwegler, in his Roman
History, I, p. 384, et seq.

[58] Some Greek twin sagas are quoted by Schubert (loc. cit., p. 13, et
seq.) in their essential content. Concerning the extensive distribution
of this legendary form, compare the somewhat confused book of J. H.
Becker, “The Twin Saga as the Key to the Interpretation of Ancient
Tradition. With a Table of the Twin Saga.” Leipsic, 1891. German text.

[59] Mommsen, “Die Remus Legende,” Hermes, 1881.

[60] After Preller, Greek Mythology (Leipzig, 1854, II, pp. 120 et
seq.).

[61] The same transformation of the divine procreator into the form
of the human father is found in the birth history of the Egyptian
queen, Hatshepset (about 1500 before Christ), who believes that the god
Amen cohabited with her mother, Aahames, in the form of her father,
Thothmes the First (see Budge: A History of Egypt, V; Books on Egypt
and Chaldea, Vol. XII, p. 21, etc.). Later on she married her brother,
Thothmes II, presumably the Pharaoh of Exodus, after whose dishonorable
death she endeavored to eradicate his memory, and herself assumed
the rulership, in masculine fashion (cp. the Deuteronium, edited by
Schrader, II ed., 1902).

[62] A similar mingling of the divine and human posterity is related
in the myth of Theseus, whose mother Aithra, the beloved of Poseidon,
was visited in one night by this god, and by the childless King Aigeus
of Athens, who had been brought under the influence of wine. The boy
was raised in secret, and in ignorance of his father (v. Roscher’s
dictionary, article Aigeus).

[63] Alkmene bore Herakles as the son of Zeus, and Iphikles as the
offspring of Amphitryon. According to Apollodorus, 2, 4, 8, they were
twin children, born at the same time; according to others Iphikles
was conceived and born one night later than Herakles (see Roscher’s
Lexicon, Amphitryon and Alkmene). The shadowy character of the twin
brother, and his loose connection with the entire myth, is again
evident. In a similar way, Telephos, the son of Auge, was exposed
together with Parthenopaüs, the son of Atalantis, nursed by a doe, and
taken by herders to King Korythos. The external subsequent insertion of
the partner is here again quite obvious.

[64] For the formal demonstration of the entire identity of the birth
and early history of Jesus with the other hero-myths, the author has
presumed to re-arrange the corresponding paragraphs from the different
versions, in the Gospels, irrespective of the traditional sequence
and the originality of the individual parts. The age, origin and
genuineness of these parts are briefly summarized and discussed in W.
Soltan’s Birth History of Jesus Christ (German text), Leipsic, 1902.
The transmitted versions of the several Gospels,—which according to
Usener (Birth and Childhood of Christ, 1903, in Lectures and Essays
(German text), Leipsic, 1907), contradict and even exclude each
other,—have been placed, or left, in juxtaposition, precisely for
the reason that the apparently contradictory elements in these birth
myths are to be elucidated in the present research, no matter if these
contradictions be encountered within a single uniform saga, or in its
different versions (as, for example, in the Kyros myth).

[65] Concerning the birth of Jesus in a cave, and the furnishing
of the birth place with the typical animals (ox and ass) compare
Jeremias, Babylonisches im Neuen Testament (Leipzig, 1905), p. 56, and
Preuschen, Jesu Geburt in einer Höhle, Zeitschrift für die Neutest.
Wissenschaften, 1902, P. 359.

[66] According to recent investigations, the birth history of Christ
is said to have the greatest resemblance with the royal Egyptian myth,
over five thousand years old, which relates the birth of Amenophis III.
Here again recurs the divine prophecy of the birth of a son, to the
waiting queen; her fertilization by the breath of heavenly fire; the
divine cows, which nurse the new born child; the homage of the kings,
and so forth. In this connection, compare A. Malvert, Wissenschaft
und Religion, Frankfort, 1904, pp. 49 et seq, also the suggestion of
Professor Idleib in Bonn (Feuilleton of Frankfurter Zeitung, November
8, 1908).

[67] Very similar traits are found in the Keltic saga of Habis, as
transmitted by Justin (44,4). Born as the illegitimate son of a king’s
daughter, Habis is persecuted in all sorts of ways by his royal
grandfather, Gargoris, but is always saved by divine providence, until
he is finally recognized by his grandfather, and assumes royal sway. As
in the Zarathustra legend, there occurs an entire series of the most
varied methods of persecution. He is at first exposed, but nursed by
wild animals; then he was to be trampled upon by a herd in a narrow
path; then he was cast before hungry beasts, but they again nursed him,
and finally he is thrown into the sea, but is gently lapped ashore and
nursed by a doe, near which he grows up.

[68] Compare August Rassmann: Die deutsche Heldensage und ihre Heimat,
Hanover, 1857-8, Vol. II, pp. 7 et seq; for the sources, see Jiriczek,
Die deutsche Heldensage (collection Göschen) and Piper’s introduction
to the volume: Die Nibelungen, in Kürschner’s German National
Literature.

[69] Compare: Deutsches Heldenbuch, Part III, Vol. I (Berlin, 1871),
edited by Amelung and Jaenicke, which also contains the second version
(B) of the Wolfdietrich saga.

[70] The motive of calumniation of the wife by a rejected suitor, in
combination with the exposure and nursing by an animal (doe), forms
the nucleus of the story of _Genovefa_ and her son Schmerzenreich, as
told, for example, by the Grimm brothers, in their German Sagas, II,
Berlin, 1818, pp. 280 et seq. Here, again, the faithless calumniator
proposes _to drown the countess with her child in the water_. For
literary and historical orientation, compare _L. Zacher_, Die Historic
von der Pfalzgräfin Genovefa, Koenigsberg, 1860, and _B. Seuffert_, Die
Legende von der Pfalzgräfin Genovefa, Würzburg, 1877. Similar sagas of
wives suspected of infidelity and punished by exposure are discussed in
the XI chapter of my investigation of “Das Inzestmotiv in Dichtung und
Sage” (The Incest Motive in Fiction and Legends).

[71] The same accentuation of the animal motive is found in the saga
of Schalû, the Hindoo wolf child; compare Jülg, Mongolische Märchen
(Mongolian fairy tales; Innsbruck, 1868).

[72] The Grimm Brothers, in their German Sagas (part II, p. 206, etc.),
quote six further versions of the saga of the Knight with the Swan.
Certain fairy tales of the Grimm Brothers, such as “The Six Swans” (No.
49), “The Twelve Brothers” (No. 9), and the “Seven Ravens” (No. 25),
with their parallels and variations, mentioned in the 3d volume of the
“Kinder-und Hausmärchen,” also belong to the same mythological cycle.
Further material from this cycle may be found in Leo’s “Beowulf,” and
in Görre’s “Introduction to Lohengrin” (Heidelberg, 1813).

[73] The ancient Longobard tale of the exposure of King Lamissio,
related by Paulus Diaconus (L, 15), gives a similar incident. A public
woman had thrown her seven newborn infants into a fish pond. King
Agelmund passed by, and looked curiously at the children, turning them
around with his spear. But when one of the children took hold of the
spear, the king considered this as of good augury; he ordered this boy
to be taken out of the pond, and to be given to a wet nurse. As he had
taken him from the pond, which in his language is called “lama,” he
named the boy Lamissio. He grew up into a stalwart champion, and after
Agelmund’s death, became king of the Longobards.

[74] Scaf is the high German “Schaffing” (barrel), which leads Leo to
assume, in connection with Scild’s being called Scefing, that he had no
father Sceaf or Schaf at all, but was himself the boy cast ashore by
the waves, who was named the “son of the barrel” (Schaffing). The name
Beowulf itself, explained by Grimm as Bienen-wolf (bee-wolf), seems to
mean originally (according to Wolzogen) Bärwelf, namely Jungbär (bear
cub or whelp), which is suggestive of the saga of the origin of the
Guelphs (Ursprung der Welfen, Grimm, II, 233), where the boys are to be
thrown into the water as “whelps.”

[75] The possibility of further specification of separate items of this
schedule will be seen from the compilation as given by H. Lessmann, at
the conclusion of his work on “The Kyros Saga in Europe.”

[76] See also Wundt, who psychologically interprets the hero as a
projection of human desires and aspirations (loc. cit., p. 48).

[77] Compare Freud, “Hysterical Fancies, and their Relation to
Bisexuality,” with references to the literature on this subject. This
contribution is contained in the second series of the “Collection of
Short Articles on the Neurosis Doctrine,” Vienna and Leipsic, 1909.

[78] For the idealizing of the parents by the children, compare
Maeder’s comments (Jahrb. f. Psychoanalyse, p. 152, and Centralblatt f.
Psychoanalyse, I, p. 51) on Varendonk’s essay, “Les idéals d’enfant,”
Tome VII, 1908.

[79] Dream Interpretation (Traumdeutung), II ed., p. 200. See Brill’s
Translation, Macmillan & Co., 1913.

[80] Compare the “birth dreams” in Freud’s “Traumdeutung” (see Brill’s
translation, Macmillan & Co., p. 207 et seq.), also the examples quoted
by the author in the “Lohengrin saga” (p. 27 et seq.).

[81] In fairy tales, which are adapted to infantile ideation, and
especially to the infantile sexual theories (compare Freud in the
December number of Sexuelle Probleme), the birth of man is frequently
represented as a lifting of the child from a well or a lake (Thimme,
_l. c._, p. 157). The story of “Dame Holle’s Pond” (Grimm, Deutsche
Sagen, I, 7) relates that the newborn children come from her well,
whence she brings them forth. The same interpretation is apparently
expressed in certain national rites; for example, when a Celt had
reason to doubt his paternity, he placed the newborn child on a large
shield and put it adrift in the nearest river. If the waves carried it
ashore, it was considered as legitimate, but if the child was drowned,
this was proof of the contrary and the mother was also put to death
(see Franz Helbing, “History of Feminine Infidelity”). Additional
ethnological material from folklore has been compiled by the author in
his “Lohengrin saga” (p. 20 et seq.).

[82] The “box” in certain myths is represented by the _cave_, which
also distinctly symbolizes the womb; aside from statements in Abraham,
Ion, and others, especially in case of Zeus, who is born in a cave
of the Ida mountains, and nourished by the goat Amalthea, his mother
concealing him for fear of her husband, Kronos. According to Homer’s
Iliad (XVIII, 396, et seq.), Hephaistos is also cast into the water
by his mother, on account of his lameness, and remains hidden, for
nine years, in a cave surrounded by water. By exchanging the reversal,
the birth (the fall into the water) is here plainly represented
as the termination of the nine months of the intrauterine life.
More common than the cave birth is the exposure in a box, which is
likewise told in the Babylonian Marduk-Tammuz myth, as well as in
the Egyptian-Phoenician Osiris-Adonis myth (compare Winckler, “Die
Weltanschauung des alten Orients, Ex Oriente Lux” I, 1, p. 43, and
Jeremias, loc. cit., p. 41). Bacchus, according to Paus, III, 24, is
also removed from the persecution of the king, through exposure in a
chest on the Nile, and is saved at the age of three months by a king’s
daughter, which is remarkably suggestive of the Moses legend. A similar
story is told of Tennes, the son of Kyknos, who has been mentioned in
another connection (Siecke: Hermes, p. 48, annotation), and of many
others.

The occurrence of the same symbolic representation among the aborigines
is illustrated by the following examples: Stucken relates the New
Zealand tale of the Polynesian Fire (and Seed) Robber, Mani-tiki-tiki,
who is exposed directly after his birth, his mother throwing him into
the sea, wrapped in an apron (chest, box). A similar story is reported
by Frobenius (_loc. cit._, p. 379) from Betsimisaraka, where the child
is exposed on the water, and is found and raised by a rich childless
woman, but finally resolves to discover his actual parents. According
to a report of Bab (_Zeitschrift für Ethnologie_, 1906, p. 281) the
wife of the Raja Besurjay was presented with a child floating on a
bubble of water-foam (from Singapore).

[83] The before-mentioned work of Abraham, “Dreams and Myths,” pp.
22, 23, English translation, Monograph Series, No. 15, contains the
analysis of a very similar although more complicated birth dream,
corresponding to the actual conditions; the dreamer, a young pregnant
woman, who was awaiting her delivery, not without fear, dreamed of the
birth of her son, and the water appeared directly as the amniotic fluid.

[84] This phantasy of an enormous water is extremely suggestive of the
large and widespread group of the Flood Myths, which actually seem to
be no more than the universal expression of the exposure myth. The
hero is here represented by humanity at large. The wrathful father is
the god; the destruction as well as the rescue of humanity likewise
follow one another in immediate succession. In this parallelization,
it is of interest to note that the ark, or pitched house, in which
Noah floats upon the water is designated in the Old Testament by the
same word (_tebah_) as the receptacle in which the infant Moses is
exposed (_Jeremias_, loc. cit., p. 250). For the motive of the great
flood, compare Jeremias, p. 226, and Lessmann, at the close of his
treatise on the Kyros saga in Europe, where the flood is described as a
possible digression of the exposure in the water. A transition instance
is illustrated by the flood saga told by Bader, in his Badensian folk
legends. When the Sunken Valley was inundated once upon a time by a
cloudburst, a little boy was seen floating upon the waters in a cradle,
who was miraculously saved by a cat (Gustav Friedrichs, loc. cit., p.
265).

The author has endeavored to explain the psychological relations
between the exposure-myth, the flood legend, and the devouring myth,
in his article on the “Overlying Symbols in Dream Awakening, and
Their Recurrence in Mythical Ideation” (“Die Symbolschichtung in
Wecktraum und ihre Wiederkehr im mythischen Denken” _Jahrbuch für
Psychoanalyse_, V, 1912).

[85] Compare the same reversal of the meanings in Winckler’s
interpretation of the etymology of the name of Moses (p. 13).

[86] The same conditions remain in the formation of dreams and in
the transformation of hysterical phantasies into seizures (compare
“Traumdeutung,” p. 238, and the annotation in the same place),
also, Freud, “Allgemeines über den hysterischen Anfall” (“General
Remarks on Hysterical Seizures”) in _Sammlung kleiner Schriften zur
Neurosenlehre_, 2 Series, p. 146 et seq.

[87] According to a pointed remark of Jung’s, this reversal in its
further mythical sublimation permits the approximation of the hero’s
life to the solar cycle (“Wandlungen und Symbole der Libido,” II Part,
_Jahrb. f. Psychoanalyse_, V, 1912, p. 253).

[88] The second item of the schedule here enters into consideration:
the voluntary continence or prolonged separation of the parents, which
naturally induces the miraculous conception and virgin birth of the
mother. The abortion phantasies, which are especially distinct in the
Zoroaster legend, also belong under this heading.

[89] The comparison of birth with a shipwreck, by the Roman poet
Lucretius, seems to be in perfect harmony with this symbolism: “Behold
the infant: Like a shipwrecked sailor, cast ashore by the fury of the
billows, the poor child lies naked on the ground, bereft of all means
for existence, after Nature has dragged him in pain from the mother’s
womb. With plaintive wailing he filleth the place of his birth, and
he is right, for many evils await him in life” (Lucretius, “De Nature
Rerum,” V, 222-227). Similarly, the first version of Schiller’s
“Robbers,” in speaking of Nature, says: “She endowed us with the spirit
of invention, when she exposed us naked and helpless on the shore of
the great Ocean, the World. Let him swim who may, and let the clumsy
perish!”

[90] Compare the representation of this relation and its psychic
consequences, in Freud’s Significance of Dreams.

[91] Some myths convey the impression as if the love relation with
the mother had been removed, as being too objectionable to the
consciousness of certain periods or peoples. Traces of this suppression
are still evident in a comparison of different myths or different
versions of the same myth. For example, in the version of Herodotus,
Kyros is a son of the daughter of Astyages, but according to the report
of Ktesias, he makes the daughter of Astyages, whom he conquers, his
wife, and kills her husband, who in the rendering of Herodotus is his
father. Compare Hüsing, “Contributions to the Kyros Legend,” XI. Also
a comparison of the saga of Darab, with the very similar legend of St.
Gregory, serves to show that in the Darab story the incest with the
mother is simply omitted, which otherwise precedes the recognition
of the son; here, on the contrary, the recognition prevents the
incest. This attenuation may be studied in the nascent state, as
it were, in the myth of Telephos, where the hero is married to his
mother, but recognizes her before the consummation of the incest. The
fairy-tale-like setting of the Tristan legend, which makes Isolde draw
the little Tristan from the water (_i.e._, give him birth), thereby
suggests the fundamental incest theme, which is likewise manifested in
the adultery with the wife of the uncle.

The reader is referred to Rank’s paper, “Das Inzest Motiv in Dichtung
und Sage” (“The incest motive in fiction and legend”), in which the
incest theme, which is here merely mentioned, is discussed in detail,
picking up the many threads which lead to this theme, but which have
been dropped at the present time.

[92] The mechanism of this defense is discussed in Freud’s “Hamlet
Analysis” (“Traumdeutung,” p. 183, annotation); also by Jones, _Am. Jl.
of Psychology_, 1911.

[93] In regard to further meanings of the grandfather, compare
Freud, “Analysis of the Phobia of a 5-year-old Boy” (_Jahrbuch f.
Psychoanalyse_, I, 1909, p. 7378); also the contributions by Jones,
Abraham and Ferenzi (_Internat. Zeitschrift f. ärzt. Psychoanalyse_,
Vol. I, 1913, March number).

[94] A similar identification of the father with God (heavenly
father, etc.) occurs, according to Freud, with the same regularity
in the fantasies of normal and pathological psychic activity as the
identification of the emperor with the father. It is also noteworthy in
this connection that almost all peoples derive their origin from their
god (Abraham, “Dream and Myth,” Monograph Series, No. 15).

[95] An amusing example of unconscious humor in children recently ran
through the daily press: A politician had explained to his little
son that a tyrant is a man who forces others to do what he commands,
without heeding their wishes in the matter. “Well,” said the child,
“then you and mamma are also tyrants!”

[96] See Max Müller, “Essais,” Vol. II (Leipzig, 1869), p. 20 et seq.
Concerning the various psychological contingencies of this setting,
compare p. 83 _et al._ of the author’s “Incest Book.”

[97] Compare E. Meyer (_Bericht d. Kgl. preuss. Akad. d. Wiss._, XXXI,
1905, p. 640). The Moses legends and the Levites: “Presumably Moses
was originally the son of the tyrant’s daughter (who is now his foster
mother), and probably of divine origin.” The subsequent elaboration
into the present form is probably referable to national motives.

[98] This idea which is derived from the knowledge of the neurotic
fantasy and symptom construction, was applied by Professor Freud to the
interpretation of the romantic and mythical work of poetic imagination,
in a lecture entitled: “Der Dichter und das Phantasieren” (Poets and
Imaginings) (Reprint, 2d series of Collected Short Articles), p. 1970.

[99] For ethno-psychologic parallels and other infantile sexual
theories which throw some light upon the supplementary myth of the
hero’s procreation compare the author’s treatise in _Zentralblatt für
Psychoanalyse_, II, 1911, pp. 392-425.

[100] The fairy tales, which have been left out of consideration in
the context, precisely on account of these complications, include
especially: “The Devil with the Three Golden Hairs” (Grimm, No. 29),
and the very similar “Saga of Emperor Henry III” (Grimm, Deutsche
Sagen, II, p. 177), “Water-Peter,” with numerous variations (Grimm,
III, p. 103), “Fundevogel,” No. 51, “The Three Birdies” (No. 96),
“The King of the Golden Mountain” (No. 92), with its parallels, as
well as some foreign fairy tales, which are quoted by Bauer, at the
end of his article. Compare also, in Hahn, “Greek and Albanese Fairy
Tales” (Leipsic, 1864), the review of the exposure stories and myths,
especially 20 and 69.

[101] A connection is here supplied with the motive of the twins, in
which we seem to recognize the two boys born at the same time, one of
which dies for the sake of the other, be it directly after birth, or
later, and whose parents appear divided in our myths into two or more
parent couples. Concerning the probable significance of this shadowy
twin-brother as the after-birth, compare the author’s discussion in his
Incest Book (p. 457, etc.).

[102] The early history of Sigurd, as it is related in the Völsunga
Saga (compare Rassmann, I, 99), closely resembles the Ktesian version
of the Kyros saga, giving us the tradition of another hero’s wonderful
career, together with its rational rearrangement. For particulars, see
Bauer, p. 554. Also the biblical history of Joseph (1 Moses, 37, et
seq.), with the exposure, the animal sacrifice, the dreams, the sketchy
brethren, and the fabulous career of this hero, seem to belong to this
type of myth.

[103] In order to avoid misunderstandings, it appears necessary to
emphasize at this point the historical nucleus of certain hero-myths.
Kyros, as is shown by the inscriptions which have been discovered
(compare Duncker, p. 289, Bauer, p. 498), was descended from an
old hereditary royal house. It could not be the object of the myth
to elevate the descent of Kyros, nor must the above interpretation
be regarded as an attempt to establish a lowly descent of Kyros.
Similar conditions prevail in the case of Sargon, whose royal father
is also known (compare Jeremias, p. 410, annotation). Nevertheless,
an historian writes about Sargon as follows (Ungnad, “Die Anfänge
der Staatenbildung in Babylonien” (Beginnings of State Formation in
Babylonia), _Deutsche Rundschau_, July, 1905): “He was evidently
not of noble descent, or no such saga could have been woven about
his birth and his youth.” It would be a gross error to consider our
interpretation as an argument in this sense. Again, the apparent
contradiction which might be held up against our explanation, under
another mode of interpretation, becomes the proof of its correctness,
through the reflection that it is not the hero, but the average man
who makes the myth, and wishes to vindicate himself in the same. The
people imagine the hero in this manner, investing him with their own
infantile fantasies, irrespective of their actual compatibility or
incompatibility with historical facts. This also serves to explain the
transference of the typical motives, be it to several generations of
the same hero family, or be it to historical personalities in general
(concerning Cæsar, Augustus and others, compare Usener, Rhein. Mus. LV,
p. 271).

[104] This identification of the families is carried through to the
minutest detail in certain myths, as for example in the Œdipus myth,
where one royal couple is offset by another, and where even the
herdsman who receives the infant for exposure has his exact counterpart
in the herdsman to whom he entrusts the rescue of the boy.

[105] Compare Gubernatis, Zoological Mythology, London, 1872 (In German
by Hartmann: Die Tiere in der indogermanischen Mythologie. Leipzig,
1874). Concerning the significance of animals in exposure myths, see
also the contributions by Bauer (p. 574 et seq.), Goldziher (p. 274)
and Liebrecht: Zur Volkskunde (Romulus und die Welfen) (Folk Lore,
Romulus and the Whelps), Heilbronn, 1879.

[106] Compare Freud’s article on The Infantile Recurrence of Totemism
(Imago, Vol. II, 1913). Concerning the totemistic foundation of the
Roman she-wolf, compare Jones’ Nightmare (Alptraum), p. 59 et seq. The
woodpecker of the Romulus saga was discussed by Jung (_loc. cit._, p.
382 et seq.).

[107] The stork is known also in mythology as the bringer of children.
Siecke (Liebesgesch. d. Himmels, p. 26) points out the swan as the
player of this part in certain regions and countries. The rescue and
further protection of the hero by a bird is not uncommon; compare
Gilgamos, Zal and Kyknos, who is exposed by his mother near the sea and
is nourished by a swan, while his son Tennes floats in a chest upon
the water. The interpretation of the leading motive of the Lohengrin
saga also enters into present consideration. Its most important motives
belong to this mythical cycle: Lohengrin floats in a skiff upon the
water, and is brought ashore by a swan. No one may ask whence he has
come: the sexual mystery of the origin of man must not be revealed
but it is replaced by the suggestion of the stork fable: the children
are fished from the water by the swan and are taken to the parents
in a box. Corresponding to the prohibition of all enquiries in the
Lohengrin saga, we find in other myths (for example, the Œdipus myth),
a _command to investigate_, or a riddle which must be _solved_. For
the psychological significance of the stork fable, compare Freud,
Infantile Sexual Theories. Concerning the Hero Myth, compare the
author’s extensive contribution to the elaboration of the motives and
the interpretation of the Lohengrin saga (Heft 13 of this collection,
Vienna and Leipzig, 1911).

[108] Compare Freud: Analysis of the Phobia of a five year old Boy.
_Jahrbuch f. psychoanalyt. u. psychopath. Forschungen_, Vol. I, 1909.

[109] Usener (Stoff des griechischen Epos, S. 53—Subject Matter of
Greek Epics, p. 53) says that the controversy between the earlier and
the later Greek sagas concerning the mother of a divinity is usually
reconciled by the formula that the mother of the general Greek saga is
recognized as such while the mother of the local tradition is lowered
to the rank of a nurse. There may therefore be unhesitatingly regarded
as the mother, not merely the nurse of the god Ares.

[110] Abraham, _loc. cit._, p. 40; Riklin, _loc. cit._, p. 74.

[111] Brief mention is made of a case concerning a Mrs. v. Hervay,
because of a few subtle psychological comments upon the same, by A.
Berger (Feuilleton der Neue Freie Presse, Nov. 6, 1904, No. 14,441)
which in part touch upon our interpretation of the hero myth. Berger
writes as follows: “I am convinced that she seriously believes herself
to be the illegitimate daughter of an aristocratic Russian lady. The
desire to belong through birth to more distinguished and brilliant
circles than her own surroundings probably dates back to her early
years; and her wish to be a princess gave rise to the delusion that she
was not the daughter of her parents, but the child of a noblewoman who
had concealed her illegitimate offspring from the world by letting her
grow up as the daughter of a sleight-of-hand man. Having once become
entangled in these fancies, it was natural for her to interpret any
harsh word that offended her, or any accidental ambiguous remark that
she happened to hear, but especially her reluctance to be the daughter
of this couple, as a confirmation of her romantic delusion. She
therefore made it the task of her life to regain the social position of
which she felt herself to have been defrauded. Her biography manifests
the strenuous insistence upon this idea, with a tragic outcome.”

The female type of the family romance, as it confronts us in this case
from the a-social side, has also been transmitted as a hero myth in
isolated instances. The story goes of the later Queen Semiramis (in
Diodos, II, 4) that her mother, the goddess Derketo, being ashamed of
her, exposed the child in a barren and rocky land, where she was fed
by doves and found by shepherds, who gave the infant to the overseer
of the royal flocks, the childless Simmas, who raised her as his own
daughter. He named her Semiramis, which means Dove in the Syrian
language. Her further career, up to her autocratic rulership, thanks to
her masculine energy, is a matter of history.

Other exposure myths are told of Atalante, Kybele, and Aërope (v.
Roscher).

[112] Freud: Three Contributions to the Sexual Theory, Nervous
and Mental Disease Monograph, No. 7. Also: Psychopathologie des
Altagslebens, II ed., Berlin, 1909. Also: Hysterische Phantasien und
ihre Beziehung zur Bisexualität.

[113] This is especially evident in the myths of the Greek gods, where
the son (Kronos, Zeus) must first remove the father, before he can
enter upon his rulership. The form of the removal, namely through
castration, obviously the strongest expression of the revolt against
the father, is at the same time the proof of its sexual provenance.
Concerning the revenge character of this castration, as well as the
infantile significance of the entire complex, compare Freud, Infantile
Sexual Theories and Analysis of the Phobia of a five year old Boy
(Jahrbuch f. Psychoanalyse).

[114] Compare the contrast between Tell and Parricida, in Schiller’s
Wilhelm Tell, which is discussed in detail in the author’s Incest Book.

[115] Compare in this connection the unsuccessful homicidal attempt of
Tatjana Leontiew, and its subtle psychological illumination in Wittels:
Die sexuelle Not (Vienna and Leipzig, 1909).

*** End of this LibraryBlog Digital Book "The Myth of the Birth of the Hero _ A psychological interpretation of mythology" ***

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