speaks of human sacrifices to Cronus in Rhodes, and the Greeks recognised
Cronus in the Carthaginian god to whom children were offered up.

Hartung {61c} takes Cronus, when he mutilates Uranus, to be the fire of
the sun, scorching the sky of spring.  This, again, is somewhat out of
accord with Schwartz's idea, that Cronus is the storm-god, the
cloud-swallowing deity, his sickle the rainbow, and the blood of Uranus
the lightning. {61d}  According to Prof. Sayce, again, {62a} the blood-
drops of Uranus are rain-drops.  Cronus is the sun-god, piercing the dark
cloud, which is just the reverse of Schwartz's idea.  Prof. Sayce sees
points in common between the legend of Moloch, or of Baal under the name
of Moloch, and the myth of Cronus.  But Moloch, he thinks, is not a god
of Phoenician origin, but a deity borrowed from 'the primitive Accadian
population of Babylonia.'  Mr. Isaac Taylor, again, explains Cronus as
the sky which swallows and reproduces the stars.  The story of the sickle
may be derived from the crescent moon, the 'silver sickle,' or from a
crescent-shaped piece of meteoric iron--for, in this theory, the fetich-
stone of Delphi is a piece of that substance.

* * * * *

It will be observed that any one of these theories, if accepted, is much
more 'minute in detail' than our humble suggestion.  He who adopts any
one of them, knows all about it.  He knows that Cronus is a purely Greek
god, or that he is connected with the Sanskrit Krana, which Tiele, {62b}
unhappily, says is 'a very dubious word.'  Or the mythologist may be
quite confident that Cronus is neither Greek nor, in any sense, Sanskrit,
but Phoenician.  A not less adequate interpretation assigns him
ultimately to Accadia.  While the inquirer who can choose a system and
stick to it knows the exact nationality of Cronus, he is also well
acquainted with his character as a nature-god.  He may be Time, or
perhaps he is the Summer Heat, and a horned god; or he is the harvest-
god, or the god of storm and darkness, or the midnight sky,--the choice
is wide; or he is the lord of dark and light, and his children are the
stars, the clouds, the summer months, the light-powers, or what you will.
The mythologist has only to make his selection.

The system according to which we tried to interpret the myth is less
ondoyant et divers.  We do not even pretend to explain everything.  We do
not guess at the meaning and root of the word Cronus.  We only find
parallels to the myth among savages, whose mental condition is fertile in
such legends.  And we only infer that the myth of Cronus was originally
evolved by persons also in the savage intellectual condition.  The
survival we explain as, in a previous essay, we explained the survival of
the bull-roarer by the conservatism of the religious instinct.




CUPID, PSYCHE, AND THE 'SUN-FROG.'


'Once upon a time there lived a king and a queen,' says the old woman in
Apuleius, beginning the tale of Cupid and Psyche with that ancient
formula which has been dear to so many generations of children.  In one
shape or other the tale of Cupid and Psyche, of the woman who is
forbidden to see or to name her husband, of the man with the vanished
fairy bride, is known in most lands, 'even among barbarians.'  According
to the story the mystic prohibition is always broken: the hidden face is
beheld; light is brought into the darkness; the forbidden name is
uttered; the bride is touched with the tabooed metal, iron, and the union
is ended.  Sometimes the pair are re-united, after long searchings and
wanderings; sometimes they are severed for ever.  Such are the central
situations in tales like that of Cupid and Psyche.

In the attempt to discover how the ideas on which this myth is based came
into existence, we may choose one of two methods.  We may confine our
investigations to the Aryan peoples, among whom the story occurs both in
the form of myth and of household tale.  Again, we may look for the
shapes of the legend which hide, like Peau d'Ane in disguise, among the
rude kraals and wigwams, and in the strange and scanty garb of savages.
If among savages we find both narratives like Cupid and Psyche, and also
customs and laws out of which the myth might have arisen, we may
provisionally conclude that similar customs once existed among the
civilised races who possess the tale, and that from these sprang the
early forms of the myth.

In accordance with the method hitherto adopted, we shall prefer the
second plan, and pursue our quest beyond the limits of the Aryan peoples.

The oldest literary shape of the tale of Psyche and her lover is found in
the Rig Veda (x. 95).  The characters of a singular and cynical dialogue
in that poem are named Urvasi and Pururavas.  The former is an Apsaras, a
kind of fairy or sylph, the mistress (and a folle maitresse, too) of
Pururavas, a mortal man. {65}  In the poem Urvasi remarks that when she
dwelt among men she 'ate once a day a small piece of butter, and
therewith well satisfied went away.'  This slightly reminds one of the
common idea that the living may not eat in the land of the dead, and of
Persephone's tasting the pomegranate in Hades.

Of the dialogue in the Rig Veda it may be said, in the words of Mr.
Toots, that 'the language is coarse and the meaning is obscure.'  We only
gather that Urvasi, though she admits her sensual content in the society
of Pururavas, is leaving him 'like the first of the dawns'; that she
'goes home again, hard to be caught, like the winds.'  She gives her
lover some hope, however--that the gods promise immortality even to him,
'the kinsman of Death' as he is.  'Let thine offspring worship the gods
with an oblation; in Heaven shalt thou too have joy of the festival.'

In the Rig Veda, then, we dimly discern a parting between a mortal man