Myth, Ritual and Religion (Vol. 1&2). Andrew Lang

      (1) Relations de la Nouvelle France, 1636, p. 103 (Paris, Cramoisy, 1637).

      Now where, outside of North America, do we find this frog who swallowed all the water? We find him in Australia.

      "The aborigines of Lake Tyers," remarks Mr. Brough Smyth, "say that at one time there was no water anywhere on the face of the earth. All the waters were contained in the body of a huge frog, and men and women could get none of them. A council was held, and … it was agreed that the frog should be made to laugh, when the waters would run out of his mouth, and there would be plenty in all parts."

      To make a long story short, all the animals played the jester before the gigantic solemn frog, who sat as grave as Louis XV. "I do not like buffoons who don't make me laugh," said that majestical monarch. At last the eel danced on the tip of his tail, and the gravity of the prodigious Batrachian gave way. He laughed till he literally split his sides, and the imprisoned waters came with a rush. Indeed, many persons were drowned, though this is not the only Australian version of the Deluge.

      The Andaman Islanders dwell at a very considerable distance from Australia and from the Iroquois, and, in the present condition of the natives of Australia and Andaman, neither could possibly visit the other. The frog in the Andaman version is called a toad, and he came to swallow the waters in the following way: One day a woodpecker was eating honey high up in the boughs of a tree. Far below, the toad was a witness of the feast, and asked for some honey. "Well, come up here, and you shall have some," said the woodpecker. "But how am I to climb?" "Take hold of that creeper, and I will draw you up," said the woodpecker; but all the while he was bent on a practical joke. So the toad got into a bucket he happened to possess, and fastened the bucket to the creeper. "Now, pull!" Then the woodpecker raised the toad slowly to the level of the bough where the honey was, and presently let him down with a run, not only disappointing the poor toad, but shaking him severely. The toad went away in a rage and looked about him for revenge. A happy thought occurred to him, and he drank up all the water of the rivers and lakes. Birds and beasts were perishing, woodpeckers among them, of thirst. The toad, overjoyed at his success, wished to add insult to the injury, and, very thoughtlessly, began to dance in an irritating manner at his foes. But then the stolen waters gushed out of his mouth in full volume, and the drought soon ended. One of the most curious points in this myth is the origin of the quarrel between the woodpecker and the toad. The same beginning—the tale of an insult put on an animal by hauling up and letting him down with a run—occurs in an African Marchen.(1)

      (1) Brough Smyth, Aborigines of Victoria, i. 429, 430; Brinton, American Hero Myths, i. 55. Cf. also Relations de la Nouvelle France, 1636, 1640, 1671; (Sagard, Hist. du Canada, 1636, p. 451;) Journal Anthrop. Inst., 1881.

      Now this strangely diffused story of the slaying of the frog which had swallowed all the water seems to be a savage myth of which the more heroic conflict of Indra with Vrittra (the dragon which had swallowed all the waters) is an epic and sublimer version.(1) "The heavenly water, which Vrittra withholds from the world, is usually the prize of the contest."

      (1) Ludwig, Der Rig-Veda, iii. p. 337. See postea, "Divine Myths of India".

      The serpent of Vedic myth is, perhaps, rather the robber-guardian than the swallower of the waters, but Indra is still, like the Iroquois Ioskeha, "he who wounds the full one".(1) This example of the wide distribution of a myth shows how the question of diffusion, though connected with, is yet distinct from that of origin. The advantage of our method will prove to be, that it discovers an historical and demonstrable state of mind as the origin of the wild element in myth. Again, the wide prevalence in the earliest times of this mental condition will, to a certain extent, explain the DISTRIBUTION of myth. Room must be left, of course, for processes of borrowing and transmission, but how Andamanese, Australians and Hurons could borrow from each other is an unsolved problem.

      (1) Gubernatis, Zoological Myth. ii. 395, note 2. "When Indra kills the serpent he opens the torrent of the waters" (p. 393). See also Aitareya Brahmana, translated by Haug, ii. 483.

      Finally, our hypothesis is not involved in dubious theories of race. To us, myths appear to be affected (in their origins) much less by the race than by the stage of culture attained by the people who cherish them. A fight for the waters between a monstrous dragon like Vrittra and a heroic god like Indra is a nobler affair than a quarrel for the waters between a woodpecker and a toad. But the improvement and transfiguration, so to speak, of a myth at bottom the same is due to the superior culture, not to the peculiar race, of the Vedic poets, except so far as culture itself depends on race. How far the purer culture was attained to by the original superiority of the Aryan over the Andaman breed, it is not necessary for our purpose to inquire. Thus, on the whole, we may claim for our system a certain demonstrable character, which helps to simplify the problems of mythology, and to remove them from the realm of fanciful guesses and conflicting etymological conjectures into that of sober science. That these pretensions are not unacknowledged even by mythologists trained in other schools is proved by the remarks of Dr. Tiele.(1)

      (1) Rev. de l'Hist. des Rel., "Le Mythe de Cronos," January, 1886. Dr. Tiele is not, it must be noted, a thorough adherent of our theory. See Modern Mythology: "The Question of Allies".

      Dr. Tiele writes: "If I were obliged to choose between this method" (the system here advocated) "and that of comparative philology, it is the former that I would adopt without the slightest hesitation. This method alone enables us to explain the fact, which has so often provoked amazement, that people so refined as the Greeks, … or so rude, but morally pure, as the Germans, … managed to attribute to their gods all manner of cowardly, cruel and disorderly conduct. This method alone explains the why and wherefore of all those strange metamorphoses of gods into beasts and plants, and even stones, which scandalised philosophers, and which the witty Ovid played on for the diversion of his contemporaries. In short, this method teaches us to recognise in all those strange stories the survivals of a barbaric age, long passed away, but enduring to later times in the form of religious traditions, of all traditions the most persistent. … Finally, this method alone enables us to explain the origin of myths, because it endeavours to study them in their rudest and most primitive shape, thus allowing their true significance to be much more clearly apparent than it can be in the myths (so often touched, retouched, augmented and humanised) which are current among races arrived at a certain degree of culture."

      The method is to this extent applauded by a most competent authority, and it has been warmly accepted by a distinguished French school of students, represented by M. Gaidoz. But it is obvious that the method rests on a double hypothesis: first, that satisfactory evidence as to the mental conditions of the lower and backward races is obtainable; second, that the civilised races (however they began) either passed through the savage state of thought and practice, or borrowed very freely from people in that condition. These hypotheses have been attacked by opponents; the trustworthiness of our evidence, especially, has been assailed. By way of facilitating the course of the exposition and of lessening the disturbing element of controversy, a reply to the objections and a defence of the evidence has been relegated to an Appendix.(1) Meanwhile we go on to examine the peculiar characteristics of the mental condition of savages and of peoples in the lower and upper barbarisms.

      (1) Appendix B.

      CHAPTER III. THE MENTAL CONDITION OF SAVAGES—CONFUSION WITH NATURE—TOTEMISM.

       Table of Contents

      The mental condition of savages the basis of the irrational element in myth—Characteristics of that condition: (1) Confusion of all things in an equality of presumed animation and intelligence; (2) Belief in sorcery; (3) Spiritualism; (4) Curiosity; (5) Easy credulity and mental indolence—The curiosity is satisfied, thanks to the credulity, by myths in answer to all inquiries—Evidence for this—Mr. Tylor's opinion—Mr. Im Thurn—Jesuit missionaries' Relations—Examples of confusion between men, plants, beasts and other natural objects—Reports of travellers—Evidence from institution of totemism—Definition of totemism—Totemism in Australia, Africa, America, the Oceanic Islands, India, North Asia—Conclusions: Totemism being found so