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But the myth existed already in the Veda! And the unseemliness is precisely what we have to account for; that is our enigma. Once more, Demeter is a goddess of Earth, not of Dawn. How, then, does the explanation of a hypothetical Dawn-myth apply to the Earth? Phonetic explanations follow. Here, as regards the Asvins and the Dioskouroi, Mannhardt may be regarded as Mr.
Mannhardt now examines the explanations of Demeter Erinnys, and her legend, given by Preller, E. Curtius, O. Muller, A. Kuhn, W. Sonne, Max Muller, E. Burnouf, de Gubernatis, Schwartz, and H. D. Muller. 'Here, he cries, 'is a variegated list of hypotheses! Demeter is Storm-cloud Sun Goddess Earth and Moon Goddess Dawn Night. Poseidon is Sea Storm God Cloud-hidden Sun Rain God. Despoina is
Similarly, he seems to have inclined to the view that the animals which used to be burnt in the bonfires represented the cornspirit, which, as we saw in an earlier part of this work, is often supposed to assume the shape of an animal. This theory is no doubt tenable, and the great authority of W. Mannhardt entitles it to careful consideration.
Really the sword has an obvious purpose and meaning, and is used as a symbol in proxy-marriages. The blood shed by Achilles in his latest victories is elsewhere explained as red clouds round the setting Sun, which is conspicuously childish. Mannhardt leans, at least, in this direction. 'The Two Brothers' Mannhardt takes the old Egyptian tale of 'The Two Brothers, Bitiou and Anepou.
There were, in most cases, as many opinions as to the etymology and meaning of each name and myth, as there were philologists engaged in the study. Mannhardt, who began, in 1858, as a member of the philological school, in his last public utterance described the method and results, including his own work of 1858, as 'mainly failures.
The practice subsists in Indian ritual to this hour, and the surviving traces in European Folk-custom have been noted in full by Mannhardt in his exhaustive work on Wald und Feld-Kulte; its existence in Classic times is well known, and it is certainly one of the living Folk-customs for which a well-attested chain of descent can be cited.
Hence, seeing that the fertility of the land was apparently supposed to depend upon the due performance of these sacrifices, Mannhardt interpreted the Celtic victims, cased in osiers and grass, as representatives of the tree-spirit or spirit of vegetation.
Yet he sometimes does this. My Relations to Mannhardt If anything could touch and move an unawakened anthropologist it would be the conversion of Mannhardt. My own relations with his ideas have the interest of illustrating mental coincidences. His name does not occur, I think, in the essay, 'The Method of Folklore, in the first edition of my Custom and Myth.
H. Gaidoz, "Le dieu gaulois du soleil et le symbolisme de la roue," Revue Archéologique, iii. série, iv. pp. 139 sq. Compare W. Mannhardt, Der Baumkultus, p. 501; and below, pp. 163 sq. Thus it appears that the ceremony of rolling the fiery wheel down hill was observed twice a year at Konz, once on the first Sunday in Lent, and once at Midsummer. See The Dying God, p. 239.
But in Mecklenburg, Pomerania, and probably elsewhere, villages have their own local Blocksberg, which is generally a hill or open place in the neighbourhood; a number of places in Pomerania go by the name of the Blocksberg. L. Lloyd, op. cit. pp. 261 sq. I.V. Zingerle, op. cit. p. 159, §§ 1353, 1355, 1356; W. Mannhardt, Der Baumkultus, p. 513. W. Mannhardt, l.c. Th. The Dying God, p. 262.
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