* * * * *

We cannot go much lower than the Bushmen, and among Bushman divine myths
is room for the 'swallowing trick' attributed to Cronus by Hesiod.  The
chief divine character in Bushman myth is the Mantis insect.  His adopted
daughter is the child of Kwai Hemm, a supernatural character, 'the all-
devourer.'  The Mantis gets his adopted daughter to call the swallower to
his aid; but Kwai Hemm swallows the Mantis, the god-insect.  As Zeus made
his own wife change herself into an insect, for the convenience of
swallowing her, there is not much difference between Bushman and early
Greek mythology.  Kwai Hemm is killed by a stratagem, and all the animals
whom he has got outside of, in a long and voracious career, troop forth
from him alive and well, like the swallowed gods from the maw of Cronus.
{54a}  Now, story for story, the Bushman version is much less offensive
than that of Hesiod.  But the Bushman story is just the sort of story we
expect from Bushmen, whereas the Hesiodic story is not at all the kind of
tale we look for from Greeks.  The explanation is, that the Greeks had
advanced out of a savage state of mind and society, but had retained
their old myths, myths evolved in the savage stage, and in harmony with
that condition of fancy.  Among the Kaffirs {54b} we find the same
'swallow-myth.'  The Igongqongqo swallows all and sundry; a woman cuts
the swallower with a knife, and 'people came out, and cattle, and dogs.'
In Australia, a god is swallowed.  As in the myth preserved by
Aristophanes in the 'Birds,' the Australians believe that birds were the
original gods, and the eagle, especially, is a great creative power.  The
Moon was a mischievous being, who walked about the world, doing what evil
he could.  One day he swallowed the eagle-god.  The wives of the eagle
came up, and the Moon asked them where he might find a well.  They
pointed out a well, and, as he drank, they hit the Moon with a stone
tomahawk, and out flew the eagle. {54c}  This is oddly like Grimm's tale
of 'The Wolf and the Kids.'  The wolf swallowed the kids, their mother
cut a hole in the wolf, let out the kids, stuffed the wolf with stones,
and sewed him up again.  The wolf went to the well to drink, the weight
of the stones pulled him in, and he was drowned.  Similar stories are
common among the Red Indians, and Mr. Im Thurn has found them in Guiana.
How savages all over the world got the idea that men and beasts could be
swallowed and disgorged alive, and why they fashioned the idea into a
divine myth, it is hard to say.  Mr. Tylor, in 'Primitive Culture,' {55a}
adds many examples of the narrative.  The Basutos have it; it occurs some
five times in Callaway's 'Zulu Nursery Tales.'  In Greenland the Eskimo
have a shape of the incident, and we have all heard of the escape of
Jonah.

It has been suggested that night, covering up the world, gave the first
idea of the swallowing myth.  Now in some of the stories the night is
obviously conceived of as a big beast which swallows all things.  The
notion that night is an animal is entirely in harmony with savage
metaphysics.  In the opinion of the savage speculator, all things are men
and animals.  'Ils se persuadent que non seulement les hommes et les
autres animaux, mais aussi que toutes les autres choses sont animees,'
says one of the old Jesuit missionaries in Canada. {55b}  'The wind was
formerly a person; he became a bird,' say the Bushmen.

G' oo ka! Kui (a very respectable Bushman, whose name seems a little hard
to pronounce), once saw the wind-person at Haarfontein.  Savages, then,
are persuaded that night, sky, cloud, fire, and so forth, are only the
schein, or sensuous appearance, of things that, in essence, are men or
animals.  A good example is the bringing of Night to Vanua Lava, by Qat,
the 'culture-hero' of Melanesia.  At first it was always day, and people
tired of it.  Qat heard that Night was at the Torres Islands, and he set
forth to get some.  Qong (Night) received Qat well, blackened his
eyebrows, showed him Sleep, and sent him off with fowls to bring Dawn
after the arrival of Night should make Dawn a necessary.  Next day Qat's
brothers saw the sun crawl away west, and presently Night came creeping
up from the sea.  'What is this?' cried the brothers.  'It is Night,'
said Qat; 'sit down, and when you feel something in your eyes, lie down
and keep quiet.'  So they went to sleep.  'When Night had lasted long
enough, Qat took a piece of red obsidian, and cut the darkness, and the
Dawn came out.' {56}

Night is more or less personal in this tale, and solid enough to be cut,
so as to let the Dawn out.  This savage conception of night, as the
swallower and disgorger, might start the notion of other swallowing and
disgorging beings.  Again the Bushmen, and other savage peoples, account
for certain celestial phenomena by saying that 'a big star has swallowed
his daughter, and spit her out again.'  While natural phenomena,
explained on savage principles, might give the data of the swallow-myth,
we must not conclude that all beings to whom the story is attached are,
therefore, the Night.  On this principle Cronus would be the Night, and
so would the wolf in Grimm.  For our purposes it is enough that the feat
of Cronus is a feat congenial to the savage fancy and repugnant to the
civilised Greeks who found themselves in possession of the myth.  Beyond
this, and beyond the inference that the Cronus myth was first evolved by
people to whom it seemed quite natural, that is, by savages, we do not
pretend to go in our interpretation.

* * * * *

To end our examination of the Myth of Cronus, we may compare the
solutions offered by scholars.  As a rule, these solutions are based on
the philological analysis of the names in the story.  It will be seen
that very various and absolutely inconsistent etymologies and meanings of
Cronus are suggested by philologists of the highest authority.  These
contradictions are, unfortunately, rather the rule than the exception in
the etymological interpretation of myths.

* * * * *

The opinion of Mr. Max Muller has always a right to the first hearing
from English inquirers.  Mr. Muller, naturally, examines first the name