BOOK II.
Humour
of the
myth.
love for the sun. The wind has a way of doing men mischief while ' they sleep.
The idea which has explained every incident of the hymn accounts also for the humour which runs through it. It is a humour depending not upon the contrast between the puny form and the mighty exploits of Hermes or on the supernatural element which in Colonel Mure's belief alone gives point to what would otherwise be mere extravagance. It is the result of an exquisitely faithful noting of outward phenomena, and, as such, it was not the invention of the Homeric or post-Homeric poets, but a part of the rich inheritance which gave them likewise the chief features in the characters of Achilleus, Meleagros, Odysseus, and other mythical heroes. For those who have eyes to see it, nature has her comedy not less than her sad and mournful tragedy. If some have seen in the death of the ambitious or grasping man, cut off in the midst of his schemes, an irony which would excite a smile if the subject were less awful, we may enter into the laughter of Hermes, as he pries into nooks and crannies, or uproots forests, or tears down, as the pastime of an hour, fabrics raised with the toil of many years. The idea of the sun as bringing forth rich harvests from the earth in many lands, and passing from one to the other with an imperturbable indifference, may suggest the notion of a selfish sensuality which may run into broad burlesque.^ On these grounds we should expect to find a ludicrous side to the stories told of Zeus, Herakles, and Hermes as representing the sky, the sun, and the wind; but in each case the humour, whether coarse or refined, was involved in the very truthfulness of the conception, although this conception was worked out with an unconscious fidelity which is indeed astonishing. The burlesque with which the adventures of Herakles may easily be invested, arose from no intention of disparaging the hero's great- ness. The Greek spoke as the needs of his subject required him to speak ; and the sly humour which marks the theft of Hermes in Pieria no more detracts from the dignity of Hermes, than the " frolicsome and irregular " - exploits of Samson degraded the Jewish hero in the estimation of his countrymen. Even if the hymn-writer had failed to identify Hermes with the winds of heaven as con- fidently as, when he spoke of Selene watching over Endymion, he must have felt that he was speaking really of the moon and the sun, this would prove only that the original conception of the mytli led
- Hence, while Herakles is a good-
humoured glutton in the Alkestis of I'Airipides, he becomes the Valiant Little Tailor of the German story, ho succeeds in all his exploits by sheer force of boasting.
- Stanley, Lectures on the Jeivish
CInircli.
