defence wakes a smile on the face of Phoibos,[1] as the Teutonic squire laughs on finding himself tricked in the northern story. In each case the robber is exalted to the same high dignity.
"Well, friend," said Apollôn with a smile, "thou wilt break into many a house, I see, and thy followers after thee ; and thy fancy for beef will set many a herdsman grieving. But come down from the cradle, or this sleep will be thy last. Only this honour can I promise thee, to be called the Master Thief for ever."[2]
The origin of the story of the Master Thief.The thief in the northern stories marries the squire's daughter, as the architect's son marries the daughter of Rhampsinitos. The marriage represents the compact made between Phoibos the all-seeing and Hermes the sweet singer. In this peaceful alliance with the squire the Teutonic tale leaves him; but there are other sides to the character of the Master Thief, and each of these describes with singular fidelity the action and power of air in motion. He is the child breathing softly in the cradle, he is the giant rooting up trees in his fury. No living thing can resist the witchery of his harping. As he draws nigh, life is wakened where before he came there had been stillness as of the dead. With him comes joy or sorrow, health or the pestilence. His lyre is the harp of Orpheus, and it discourses the music of the Vedic Ribhus, or of the Finnic Wäinämöinen, the son of Ilmatar, the daughter of the Air,[3] whose singing draws the sun and moon from heaven. The beasts of the field come to hear him, like the clouds which gather in the sky when the wind blows; the trees move along his track when he comes in his sterner moods. Nothing can remain still when he pipes. The leaf must wave on the hill-side, the Jew must dance in the thorn-bush, while the music lasts.[4] He is the Erlking, whose mysterious harmony is heard by- ↑ This is precisely reproduced by Horace in his well-known ode, with an incident which is not mentioned in the Homeric hymn, but is in close agreement with the spirit of the Norse tale.—Carm. i. x.
- ↑
τοῦτο γὰρ οὖν καὶ ἔπειτα μετ ἀθανάτοις γέρας ἕξεις,
ΑΡΧΟΣ ΦΗΛΗΤΕΩΝ κεκλήσεαι ἤματα πάντα.Hymn to Hermes, 292.This may, I think, be considered demonstrative evidence that the story of the Master Thief belongs to the class of myths which Professor Max Müller calls organic, as being legends "which were known to the primeval Aryan race, before it broke up into Hindus, Greeks, Romans, Germans, and Celts," all stories imported in later times from one literature into another being secondary or inorganic. The number of stories belonging to the latter class is probably much smaller than is generally supposed.
- ↑ As Hermes is one of the fire-bringing gods, so Wäinämöinen catches the fish that has swallowed the fire, which, struck by Ukko, the lord of the air, from the new sun and moon, has fallen into the sea. For an examination of the Finnic epic, see Gubernatis, Zoological Mythology, i. 147, et seq. As the Finnish thunder-god, Ukko has his hammer, like the Slavonic Perkunos and the Teutonic Thor.
- ↑ This story of "The Jew among the Thorns," in Grimm's Household Tales, is reproduced under a hundred forms;
