MYTHICAL MONSTERS.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LX, Issue 18553, 10 November 1923, Page 1 (Supplement)

MYTHICAL MONSTERS.

CREATURES OF IMAGINATION.

I BY MONA GORDON.

If everything is traceable to some ■ cause or origin, it is surely natural to connect these weird creatures of mythology, embracing U. dragons, « gorgons, taniwhas, and strange half-human, creatures, with those early inhabitants of the earth who flourished in the reptile age. The rock has preserved their bones and their history '• accurately; but the myth has preserved their spirit— or rather a spirit attributed to theminaccurately but persistently. ' -'.'■■■'.;,■ .. Rocks tell' us that the age ,of the Flying Reptiles was a wonderful age, strange as any legend reveals; that the great mammoth creatures that existed before man grew to enormous size but were possessed of very few brains. * Myths tell a different story— not only had brains but very savage and cunning ones, and mixed with their ferocity was an element of the divine, a base immortality making -them doubly fearful. Imagination transformed a single monster into a creature compounded of two or three animals possessing the characteristics of all. Imagination put on a head here and there or a limb, and produced snakes and other parisitical forms growing therefrom. Imagination breathed the spirit of fire into her creation, so that its breath devastated or its glance froze into stone; and finally, fancy threw over the whole her mantle of horror, until a great and terrible creature arose of which the bravest hero stood in awe. The Heroes of Mythology. Thus grew up legends of the heroes— men who went out against these monsters which ravaged the country in which they dwelt. To destroy the destroyer was tne great ideal, the pinnacle of accomplishment in the Heroic Age. Perseus and Medusa, Bellerophon and the Chimaera, Theseus and the Minotaur, Hercules and the Hydra—Greek Myths gave to each of these heroes a monster to overcome, and the story of their several triumphs is ageless, endless; and tho horror of the creatures against which they struggled holds a terror all its own thousands of years afterwards. Perhaps the most fearful creature in all mythology is the Gorgon Medusa, all the moro arresting because of "her pathetic origin. Once a beautiful maiden loved by Poseidon, Athena in her jealousy changed her into a monster with a head covered with hissing serpents, and a face so awn., that it petrified into stone all who gazed upon it. She dwelt with her two sister gorgons at Tartessus " on the coast of the ocean;" and all had scales like serpents, brazen hands and golden wings. Imagine the lair of these creatures, ghastly in its loneliness near the surge and thunder of the sea, and Perseus hovering over them in his winged sandals, armed with mirror and sickle with which to find and strike his prey. Cutting-off. Medusa's head, ho escapes, eluding the other gorgons who were immortal; and here the incongruity of immortalising *•' ch monsters as the sisters of Medusa strikes us, while, for her one-time beauty. Medusa herself is consigned to a fearful death. 'Tis the tempestuous loveliness of terror A woman's countenance -with serpent locks. Gazing in death on Heaven from those wot rocks. ~ . The ( Chimaera was the great .„ firebreathing creature which Bellerophon destroyed with arrow*. In the words of the Iliad:— A minted monster of no mortal kind; Behind. a dragon'« fiery tail was spread: A goat's rough body bore a lion'a head; Her pitchy nostrils, flaky ; tow »xpira; Her gasping throat eraita infernal fire. ' ; This can be nothing but imaginative treatment of an active volcano. The Chimaera is the mythical monster of the spirit of eruption. - Legendary, Monsters. The Minotaur was one of those ' halfbreed creatures . like the Centaur, but he had the head of a bull and a man's body. Minos, King of Crete, kept him in a huge labyrinth which he had built for the purpose ; and every year the Athenians were obliged to send a living sacrifice of men and maidens to be devoured by the monster. Of course the hero, Theseus, determines to rid Athens iof this ghastly tribute, and then comes the well-known story of Ariadne's lending him a clue with which to thread the labyrinth and a sword to slay the bull. e;:" V So Theseus down the savage monster dashed, •.';■•'•!■•■»..:-•>-•■. ~«;-.i---«■-..-■.- -«w.--..*•« Which . with its horns the unheeding breezes gashed. ~, : >.';'; ';■ ,w : Hercules and the Hydra is an instance of a nine-headed monster, one of which was immortal/' It was a swamp-dweller, and caused great havoc •in the surrounding country; and for every head ; which the hero cut off it quickly developed two new ones. Even this difficulty was overcome by cauterizing the neck to prevent the heads from growing (the Greeks were inimitable about getting their heroes out of difficulties), and all the bends were burnt but the immortal one, which was buried under a rock. v,. -- These are but a few and the best known of the monsters stalking through Greek legends. There was the dog Cerberus, who guarded the gate of Hades; "th ere Yas the dreadful, hungry Scylla whom Odysseus evaded; there was the great python . which Apollo killed— passing over all these, we come to the '-tniwha, New Zealand's own particular and exclusive monster, who, ages after all thpse had vanished from the ancient world, still held its terror for the Maori. \ ; ' Hew Zealand's Tanlwha. The taniwha was * a great reptile of saurian origin and, though remains __ of taniwha-saurus have been found in New Zealand, it is improbable that the. Maoris ever saw them here, but brought, perhaps, crocodile legends from other lands. Their traditions describe them as ■] possessing scales, claws, spines and glittering: • eyns like clear greenstone. Some , dwelt" in the o"ean; others in lakes, rivers or .beneath cliffs. The Maori heroes spent their j time ridding the country of these pests, just as the Greek heroes did with their monsters. Taniwha legends arc innumerable; and the favourite way of killing the reptiles' was to entice them into snares and then beat them to death. ; ",' { , Kaiwhare, the man-eater, lived in a cave ' under the ses. at the entrance Manukau Harbour, and TJreia, a denizen of Hauraki, often came to visit it. The former was destroyed in its own haunt by a herochief, and the latter decoyed into a trap., The giant reptile, Horomatangi, lived in the centre of Lake Taupo. and no Maori dared venture across the lake ;' anywhere: near his haunt. Hotupukn, 'the greatlizard who endangered the Tauno-Rotorua track for years, was snared and beaten to death by 170 warriors. The winged taniwha of Cook Strait was snared and cap tured in, a pit. Two others guarded Hokianga Bar. and a leviathan creature lived outside Kawhia ; Harbour. ■> There are traditions connected with all these taniwhas and more; but the follow-i ing legend of the Blue Lake and the origin of its wonderful colour is probably * little known. Once a Maori chiefJloved a maiden who dwelt on the shores of Tiki- ■''. tapu, Rotor ' She promised to marry; him on one condition'only—that he would' fetch for her the blue stone set in theforehead of a great dragon who lived r.t the bottom of the lake. There followed a terrible struggle under water, a r man against a monster; and, having secured the stone, the hero dragged himself to the'' girl's feet, there to die from a wound inflicted by his savage adversary. And, taking the glittering stone in her hand, the price of a chief's blood—(in the words of the Blue Lake) She flung it forth to my waters clear, ■ Far into my wavelets - free, : r "a And I Lave remained for centuries lone More sapphire than the'sea.: