THE DEATH OF MYTHOLOGY

New Zealand Mail, Issue 1847, 31 July 1907, Page 19

THE DEATH OF MYTHOLOGY

Mythology is the result of the exercise of the popular imagination, the fancy of the people playing upon neroic and religions themes. From this myth-making faculty has oome half the beauty or tne world. The tendency of modern life is, of course, to destroy it everywhere, but there are countries where it is still nine, and even where it bas iong been dead, one may eee in the name© oi places, and in customs and rite© anu turns of speecu that still survive, how strong and iiv mg, it must once have been. Time was when the persons of sacred drama and romantic story filled the popular mind, and when fresh fancies were unceasingly woven around them. Helen of Troy, Charlemagne and Roland, Arthur and his sister Morgan le i-ay, to tne mans of the people now are not even names. But for generations they were houi-.enoid words all over Europe. To give an mstance: the phantasmagoria of Sicilian ~ 6©as, as everyone knows, is called ‘fata. Morgana.” This is simply the name of “the fairy Morgan,” Arthur’s sister, skilled in all witchery and enchantment. The mirage must have suggested her tTmgmal working, perhaps' to Norman sailors, for it is a Northern myth, and bo the appearance was called by her name. Religion, of course, was incomparably the most fruitful source of myth-making. It is hard for us to imagine a time in which the “Alleluia,” the cry of joy which had been silent through Lent, became for the people a living person who on Easter Eve came back with the daffodils. But this personification took place everywhere. There was, in the thirteenth century, an Office for the Burial of Alleluia performed at Septuagesinm. In somo places hymns of fa.rowell were sung to it. “Be with us still to-day, Alleluia; To-morrow thou wilt leave us, Alleluia; The Angels of God with thee, Alleluia.” In Sicily pn oly Saturday children are sent “to look for the Alleluia.” In the Russian legend Alleluia was a man of Bethlehem whoee wife hid the Infant Jesus when the soldiers of King Herod were seeking for .Him, and gave up her own child to them. Around the actual persons of Sacred story the weaving of legend never ceased. There was a whole stream or legendary lore, for instance, about St. John the Evangelist, coming down from the time when first “the saying went abroad that that disciple should not die.” It was said that he had only fallen asleep at Ephesus. Students of Dante wiLl remember how in “Purgatorio” the symbolical procession of the books of the New Testament is closed by “un veglio solo, ■ dormendo,” representing the Apocalypse. "Some say and affirm that he died without pain of death” says the Golden Legend, “and that he was in that clearness borne into. Heaven, body and eoul whereof God knoweth the certainty ” The “Assumption of St. John” is often represented in early Tuscan and Umbrian pictures. His empty grave was found filled with manna, as that of the Madonna was with lilies. The one story is almost forgotten, while the other has become all but an article of rcith all over Christendom. He was said to inhabit the Earthly Paradise together with Enoch and Elias, the nJTt' two of Adam's race who had not d?eJ the common death of all men. The two last named, believed to be still in the living flesh, have exercised a mysSrious fascination over the popular ST both among Jews and Christians Thov are the "two witnesses, of. the uatnstfo tradition, whose coming is to S the end,. andJ h ? “ftribulatiT Russian gaigmts n ome of the returning wheels of fiery '«» . in whioh he disappea red. In . legend he still walks the earth, a gentle ami simple old man the friend of little ohildren. The very dogs frolic and re ——————— l —

joice when he enters a town. On Passover Eve the door is left open, and a place is set for him, in the hope that be will oome and share the feast. How the lost Paradise, again, was fabled and dreamed of by Jews and Christians all through the Early and Middle Age 3 and beyond them! St. Basil says that Christians pray towards the East, as seeking their lost country. It was a mountain higher than all the mountains of the earth. It was surrounded by a wall, sometime! of bronze or crystal or diamond, sometimes of live flame. the Wall of Flame” is marked on medieval maps. Sometimes it is represented not as a garden, but as a castle with gates and towers. It was an island far m the immeasurable sea, for Ceitic peoples m Brittany and Ireland, ans ail western lands of Finisterre. Purgatory, too, in those countries of the He profundis, was pictured as an island in the remote Atlantic.

All this splendour of the religious imagination has passed, or is passing, away from the earth, in England it has been dead for centuries, it is l.npossib.e to 'describe the atrophy of the sense ex all these things, the want of sympathy with religious rites and legends and commemorations, indeed the blankness as to their meaning which prevails among the English poor. A poor yroman was talking to tne present writer the other day about a project which ©he had of to a big house to ask for work from the incoming tenants, who happened to be Jews. “You Eee it’s no uea for me to go on Good Friday/ 1 she explained, tor we all know Jew 3 are most particu ar about Good Friday. There’s nobody thinks so much of Good Friday.as the Jews do. You see how i know tney set such store on it is because i used to live next door to Lazareeh s, the pawnbroker’s. They used to keep it up all night, praying and preaching alter their manner. I’m a Church c-f England wonan myself, but I never heard anything like it in my life. I can only compare it to the wailing and moaning of wild animals.” The Lazarechs were no doubt chanting the Haggadah of tlrn Passover, and inviting the attendance of Elias. It is pleasant to think that hidden from the dusty street, behind the grimy ©hop with its sad spoils—the watches of luckless prodigals and the sewing-machine© of harassed mothers —there is a little room l'.o .. which the surrounding equator is at times shut out, and that once a year at least becomes alive with splendid memories.—“ The Outlook.”