with the rain-gods of several of the American aboriginal races—deities who lived on the tops of high mountains. The Mayas of Yucatan, it may be noted, called their rain-god Chac. But it is also possible that the whole myth may come from further west. Among primitive races, rain was very generally traced to a similar origin. In Kamtchatka we meet with the idea in its crudest form. When the modern Greek peasant indicates rain by the phrase κατουράει ὁ θεός, he is merely employing an image at least as old as Aristophanes, who makes one of his characters in 'The Clouds' (v. 373) remark that formerly when it rained he used to believe Zeus διὰ κοσκίνου οὐρεῖν. The same idea, more or less disguised, and generally with a touch of the jocose in it, reappears in many popular expressions current in Germany, Belgium, Norway, and elsewhere. They have all their root in a belief of primeval antiquity which can also be traced among many other races—for example, among the old heathen Arabians, and even among the Jews.[1]
In their beliefs or superstitious the Eskimos used to be, and still are on the east coast, instructed by their priests or exorcisers, the angekoks (angakok,
- ↑ See Schwartz, Die poetischen Naturanschauungen, i. pp. 138, 259; ii. p. 198; Schmidt, Das Volksleben der Neugriechen, i. p. 31; Belgisch. Museum, v. p. 215; Ign. Goldziher, Der Mythos bei den Hebräern, p. 88.
