The Myth of the Birth of the Hero

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Footnotes

50:1 After Preller, op. cit., Vol. II, p. 123.

51:1 For the formal demonstration of the entire identity with the other hero myths of the birth story and early history of Jesus, the author has presumed to rearrange the corresponding paragraphs from the different versions in the Gospels, irrespective of the traditional sequence and the originality of the individual parts. The age, origin, and genuineness of these parts are briefly summarized and discussed in W. Soltan: Birth History of Jesus Christ (Leipzig, 1902). The transmitted versions of the several Gospels--which according to Usener: "The Birth and Childhood of Christ," in Lectures and Essays (Leipzig, 1907), contradict and even exclude each other--have been placed, or left, in juxtaposition, precisely for the reason that the apparently contradictory elements in these birth myths are to be elucidated in the present research, no matter if these contradictions be encountered within a single uniform saga, or in its different versions (as, for example, in the Cyrus myth).

52:1 Concerning the birth of Jesus in a cave, and the furnishing of the birthplace with the typical animals (ox and ass), compare Jeremias: Babylonisches im Neuen Testament (Leipzig, 1905), p. 56; and Preuschen, "Jesu Geburt in einer Höhle," Zeitschrift für die Neutest. Wissenschaften, 1902, p. 359.

54:1 According to recent investigations, the birth history of Christ is said have the greatest resemblance with the royal Egyptian myth, over five thousand years old, which relates the birth of Amenophis III. Here again recurs the divine prophecy of the birth of a son, to the waiting queen; p. 55 her fertilization by the breath of heavenly fire; the divine cows, which nurse the newborn child; the homage of the kings; and so forth. In this connection, compare A. Malvert: Wissenschaft und Religion (Frankfort, 1904), pp. 49 ff.; also the suggestion of Professor Idleib of Bonn (Feuilleton of Frankfurter Zeitung, November 8, 1908).

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SIEGFRIED

The old Norse Thidreksaga, as recorded about the year 1250 by an Icelander, according to oral traditions and ancient songs, relates the history of the birth and youth of Siegfried. 4 King Sigmund of Tarlungaland, on his return

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from an expedition, banishes his wife Sisibe, the daughter of King Nidung of Hispania, who is accused by Count Hartvin, whose advances she has spurned, of having had illicit relations with a menial. The king's counselors advise him to mutilate the innocent queen, instead of killing her, and Hartvin is ordered to cut out her tongue in the forest, so as to bring it to the king as a pledge. His companion, Count Hermann, opposes the execution of the cruel command, and proposes to present the tongue of a dog to the king. While the two men are engaged in a violent quarrel, Sisibe gives birth to a remarkably beautiful boy; she then took a glass vessel, and after having wrapped the boy in linens, she placed him in the glass vessel, which she carefully closed again and placed beside her. Count Hartvin was conquered in the fight, and in falling kicked the glass vessel, so that it fell into the river. When the queen saw this she swooned, and died soon afterwards. Hermann went home, told the king everything, and was banished from the country. The glass vessel meantime drifted downstream to the sea, and it was not long before the tide turned. Then the vessel floated onto a rocky cliff, and the water ran off so that the place where the vessel was was perfectly dry. The boy inside had grown somewhat, and when the vessel struck the rock, it broke, and the child began to cry. The boy's wailing was heard by a doe, which seized him with her lips, and carried him to her litter, where she nursed him together with her young. After the child had lived twelve months in the den of the doe, he had grown to the height and strength of other boys four years of age. One day he ran into the forest, where dwelt the wise and skillful smith Mimir, who had lived for nine years in childless wedlock. He saw the boy, who was followed by the faithful doe, took him to his home, and resolved to bring him up as his own son. He gave him the name of Siegfried. In Mimir's home, Siegfried soon attained an enormous stature and strength, but his wilfulness

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caused Mimir to get rid of him. He sent the youth into the forest, where it had been arranged that the dragon Begin, Mimir's brother, was to kill him. But Siegfried conquers the dragon, and kills Mimir. He then proceeds to Brunhild, who names his parents to him.

Similar to the early history of Siegfried is an Austrasian saga that tells of the birth and youth of Wolfdietrich. 1 His mother is likewise accused of unfaithfulness, and of intercourse with the devil, by a vassal whom she has repulsed, and who speaks evil of her to the returning king, Hugdietrich of Constantinople. 2

The king surrenders the child to the faithful Berchtung, who is to kill it, but exposes it instead in the forest, near the water, in the hope that it will fall in of its own accord and thus find its death. But the frolicking child remains unhurt, and even the wild animals--lions, bears, and wolves, which come at night to the water--do not harm it. The astonished Berchtung resolves to save the boy, and he surrenders him to a gamekeeper who, together with his wife, raises him and names him Wolfdietrich. 3

Three later hero epics may also be quoted in this connection: First, there is the thirteenth-century French saga of Horn, the son of Aluf, who, after having been exposed on the sea, finally reaches the court of King Hunlaf; after numerous adventures, he wins the king's daughter, Rimhilt, for his wife. Secondly, a detail suggestive of Siegfried appears in the saga of the skillful smith Wieland, who, after avenging his foully murdered father, floats down the river Weser, artfully enclosed in the trunk of a tree, and loaded

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with the tools and treasures of his teachers. Finally, the King Arthur legend contains the commingling of divine and human paternity, the exposure, and the early life with a lowly man.
Footnotes

56:1 Very similar traits are found in the Celtic saga of Habis, as transmitted by Justin. Born as the illegitimate son of a king's daughter, Habis is persecuted in all sorts of ways by his royal grandfather, Gargoris, but is always saved by divine providence, until he is finally recognized by his grandfather and assumes royal sway. As in the Zoroaster legend, there occurs an entire series of the most varied methods of persecution. He is at first exposed, but nursed by wild animals; then he was to be trampled upon by a herd in a narrow path; then he was cast before hungry beasts, but they again nursed him; and finally he is thrown into the sea, but is gently lapped ashore and nursed by a doe, near which he grows up.

56:2 Compare Spiegel, op. cit., Vol. I., pp. 688 ff.; also Brodbeck, op. cit.

56:3 As in the history of Jesus; compare Luke 2:41-49.

56:4 Compare August Rassmann: Die deutsche Heldensage and ihre Heimat (Hanover, 1857-8), Vol. II, pp. 7; for the sources, see Jiriczek: Die deutsche Heldensage, and Piper's introduction to the volume Die Nibelungen, in Kürschner's German National Literature.

58:1 Compare: Deutsches Heldenbuch, Vol. I, Part III (Berlin, 1871), edited by Amelung and Jaenicke, which also contains a second version of the Wolfdietrich saga.

58:2 The motive of calumniation of the wife by a rejected suitor, in combination with the exposure and nursing by an animal (doe), forms the nucleus of the story of Genovefa and her son Schmerzenreich, as told, for example, by the Grimm brothers: Deutsche Sagen (Berlin, 1818), Vol. II, pp. 280 ff. Here again the faithless calumniator proposes to drown the countess and her child. For literary and historical orientation, compare L. Zacher: Die Historie von der Pfalzgräfin Genovefa (Koenigsberg, 1860); and B. Seuffert: Die Legende von der Pfalzgräfin Genovefa (Wurzburg, 1877). Similar legends of wives suspected of infidelity and punished by exposure are discussed in Chapter xi of my Inzestmotiv.

58:3 The same accentuation of the animal motif is found in the saga of Schalû, the Hindu wolf-child. Compare Jülg, op. cit.

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LOHENGRIN

The widely distributed group of sagas that have been woven around the mythical Knight with the Swan (the old French Chevalier au cigne) can be traced back to very ancient Celtic traditions. The following is the version which has been made familiar by Wagner's dramatization of this theme--the story of Lohengrin, the Knight with the Swan, as transmitted by the medieval German epic (modernized by Junghaus) and briefly rendered by the Grimm brothers under the title "Lohengrin in Brabant." 1

The Duke of Brabant and Limburg died, without leaving other heirs than a young daughter, Els, or Elsa by name; her he recommended on his deathbed to one of his retainers, Friedrich von Telramund. Friedrich, the intrepid warrior, became emboldened to demand the youthful duchess’ hand and lands, under the false claim that she had promised to marry him. She steadfastly refused to do so. Friedrich complained to Emperor Henry I ("the Fowler"), and the verdict was that she must defend herself against him, through some hero, in a so-called divine judgment, in which God would accord the victory to the innocent, and defeat the guilty. As none were ready to take her part, the young duchess prayed ardently to God to save her; and far away in distant Montsalvatsch, in the Council of the Grail, the sound of the bell was heard, showing that there was someone in

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urgent need of help. The Grail therefore resolved to despatch as a rescuer, Lohengrin, the son of Parsifal. Just as he was about to place his foot in the stirrup a swan came floating down the water drawing a skiff behind him. As soon as Lohengrin set eyes upon the swan, he exclaimed: "Take the steed back to the manger; I shall follow this bird wherever he may lead me." Having faith in God's omnipotence, he took no food with him in the skiff. After they had been afloat five days, the swan dipped his bill in the water, caught a fish, ate one half of it, and gave the other half to the prince to eat. Thus the knight was fed by the swan.

Meanwhile Elsa had summoned her chieftains and retainers to a meeting in Antwerp. Precisely on the day of the assembly, a swan was sighted swimming upstream (river Scheldt) and drawing behind him a skiff, in which Lohengrin lay asleep on his shield. The swan promptly came to land at the shore, and the prince was joyfully welcomed. Hardly had his helmet, shield, and sword been taken from the skiff, when the swan at once swam away again. Lohengrin heard of the wrong which had been done to the duchess and willingly consented to become her champion. Elsa then summoned all her relatives and subjects. A place was prepared in Mainz for Lohengrin and Friedrich to fight in the emperor's presence. The hero of the Grail defeated Friedrich, who confessed having lied to the duchess, and was executed with the axe. Elsa was awarded to Lohengrin, they having long been lovers; but he secretly insisted upon her avoiding all questions as to his ancestry, or whence he had come, saying that otherwise he would have to leave her instantaneously and she would never see him again.

For some time, the couple lived in peace and happiness. Lohengrin was a wise and mighty ruler over his land, and also served his emperor well in his expeditions against the Huns and the heathen. But it came to pass that one day in throwing the javelin he unhorsed the Duke of Cleve, so that the latter broke an arm. The Duchess of Cleve was angry, and spoke

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out amongst the women, saying, "Lohengrin may be brave enough, and he seems to be a good Christian; what a pity that his nobility is not of much account for no one knows whence he has come floating to this land." These words pierced the heart of the Duchess of Brabant, and she changed color with emotion. At night, when her spouse was holding her in his arms, she wept, and he said, "What is the matter, Elsa, my own?" She made answer, "The Duchess of Cleve has caused me sore pain." Lohengrin was silent and asked no more. The second night, the same came to pass. But in the third night, Elsa could no longer retain herself, and she spoke: "Lord, do not chide me! I wish to know, for our children's sake, whence you were born; for my heart tells me that you are of high rank." When the day broke, Lohengrin declared in public whence he had come, that Parsifal was his father, and God had sent him from the Grail. He then asked for his two children, which the duchess had borne him, kissed them, told them to take good care of his horn and sword, which he would leave behind, and said: "Now, I must be gone." To the duchess he left a little ring which his mother had given him. Then the swan, his friend, carne swimming swiftly, with the skiff behind him; the prince stepped in and crossed the water, back to the service of the Grail. Elsa sank down in a faint. The empress resolved to keep the younger boy Lohengrin, for his father's sake, and to bring him up as her own child. But the widow wept and mourned the rest of her life for her beloved spouse, who never came back to her. 1

On inverting the Lohengrin saga in such a way that the end is placed first--on the basis of the rearrangement, or even transmutation of motifs, not uncommonly found in

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myths--we find the type of saga with which we have now become familiar: The infant Lohengrin, who is identical with his father of the same name, floats in a vessel upon the sea and is carried ashore by a swan. The empress adopts him as her son, and he becomes a valorous hero. Having married a noble maiden of the land, he forbids her to inquire as to his origin. When the command is broken he is obliged to reveal his miraculous descent and divine mission, after which the swan carries him back in his skiff to the Grail.

Other versions of the saga of the Knight with the Swan have retained this original arrangement of the motifs, although they appear commingled with elements of fairy tales. The saga of the Knight with the Swan, as related in the Flemish People's Book, 1 contains in the beginning the history of the birth of seven children, 2 borne by Beatrix, the wife of King Oriant of Flanders. Matabruna, the wicked mother of the absent king, orders that the children be killed and the queen be given seven puppy dogs in their stead. But the servant contents himself with the exposure of the children, who are found by a hermit named Helias, and are nourished by a goat until they are grown. Beatrix is thrown into a dungeon. Later on, Matabruna learns that the children have been saved; her repeated command to kill them causes her hunter to bring her as a sign of apparent obedience the silver neck chains which the children already wore at the time of their birth. One of the boys--named Helias, after his foster father--alone keeps his chain, and is thereby saved from the fate of his brothers, who are transformed into swans as soon as their chains are removed. Matabruna volunteers to prove the relations of the queen with the dog, and upon her instigation, Beatrix

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is to be killed, unless a champion arises to defend her. In her need, she prays to God, who sends her son Helias as a rescuer. The brothers are also saved by means of the other chains, except one, whose chain has already been melted down. King Oriant now transfers the rulership to his son Helias, who causes the wicked Matabruna to be burned. One day, Helias sees his brother, the swan, drawing a skiff on the lake surrounding the castle. This he regards as a heavenly sign; he arms himself and mounts the skiff. The swan takes him through rivers and lakes to the place where God has ordained him to go. Next follows the liberation of an innocently accused duchess, in analogy with the Lohengrin saga; and his marriage to her daughter Clarissa, who is forbidden to ask about her husband's ancestry. In the seventh year of their marriage she disobeys and puts the question, after which Helias returns home in the swan's skiff. Finally, his lost brother swan is likewise released.

The characteristic features of the Lohengrin saga--the disappearance of the divine hero in the same mysterious fashion in which he has arrived; the transference of mythical motifs from the life of the older hero to a younger one bearing the same name (a universal process in myth formation)--are likewise embodied in the Anglo-Lombard saga of Sceaf, who reappears in the Prelude to the Anglo-Saxon Beowulf, the oldest Teutonic epic. Here, he is called Scyld the Scefung (meaning "son of Sceaf") and his origin as a foundling is referred to. The older legend tells that he received his name because as a very young boy he was cast ashore, as a stranger, asleep in a boat on a sheaf of grain (Anglo-Saxon: sceaf) . The waves of the sea carried him to the coast of the country he was destined to defend. The inhabitants welcomed his arrival as a miracle, raised him, and later on made him their king, considering him a divine emissary. 1 What was told of the father now is

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transferred in the Beowulf epic to his son, also called Scyld. 1 His body is exposed, as he had ordered before his death, surrounded by kingly splendor, upon a ship without a crew, which is sent out into the sea. Thus he vanished in the same mysterious manner in which his father arrived ashore, this trait being accounted for, in analogy with the Lohengrin saga, by the mythical identity of father and son.

Footnotes

59:1 Junghaus: Lohengrin (Reclam edition); Grimm brothers, op. cit., Vol. II, p. 306.

61:1 The Grimm brothers (op. cit., Vol. II., pp. 306 ff.) quote six further versions of the saga of the Knight with the Swan. Certain fairy tales of the Grimm brothers--such as "The Six Swans" (No. 49), "The Twelve Brothers" (No. 9), and the "Seven Ravens" (No. 25), with their parallels and variations, mentioned in the third volume of Kinder- and Hausmärchen--also belong to the same mythological cycle. Further material from this cycle may be found in H. Leo: Beowulf (Halle, 1839), and in Görre: Introduction to Lohengrin (Heidelberg, 1813).

62:1 Grimm: Deutsche Sagen, Vol. I., p. 29.

62:2 The ancient Lombard tale of the exposure of King Lamissio, related by Paulus Diaconus (L, 15), gives a similar incident. A public woman had thrown her seven newborn infants into a fishpond. King Agelmund passed by and looked curiously at the children, turning them around with his spear. But when one of the children took hold of the spear, the king considered this as a good augury; he ordered this boy to be taken out of the pond, and to be given to a wet nurse. As he had taken him from the pond, which in his language is called lama, he named the boy Lamissio. He grew up into a stalwart champion, and after Agelmund's death, became king of the Lombards.

63:1 Compare Grimm: Deutsche Sagen, Vol. I, p. 306; Vol. III, p. 391; and Leo, op. cit., p. 24.

64:1 Scaf is the High German Schaffing ("barrel"), which leads Leo (op cit.) to assume, in connection with Scyld's being called Scefing, that he had no father Sceaf or Schaf at all, but was himself the boy cast ashore by the waves, and was named the "son of the barrel" (Schaffing). The name Beowulf itself, explained by Grimm as Bienen-Wolf ("bee-wolf"), seems to mean originally, according to H. von Wolzogen (translator into German of the Reclam edition of Beowulf), Bärwelf, namely Jungbär ("bear cub" or "bear whelp"), which is suggestive of the saga of the origin of the Guelphs (Grimm: Deutsche Sagen, Vol. II, p. 233), where the boys are to be thrown into the water as "whelps."

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III. The Interpretation of the Myths

A CURSORY review of these variegated hero myths forcibly brings out a series of uniformly common features, with a typical groundwork, from which a standard saga, as it were, may be constructed. This schedule corresponds approximately to the ideal human skeleton that is constantly seen, with minor deviations, on transillumination of figures that outwardly differ from one another. The individual traits of the several myths, and especially the apparently crude variations from the prototype, can be entirely elucidated only by myth interpretation.

The standard saga itself may be formulated according to the following outline: The hero is the child of most distinguished parents, usually the son of a king. His origin is preceded by difficulties, such as continence, or prolonged barrenness, or secret intercourse of the parents due to external prohibition or obstacles. During or before the pregnancy, there is a prophecy, in the form of a dream or oracle, cautioning against his birth, and usually threatening danger to the father (or his representative). As a rule, he is surrendered to the water, in a box. He is then saved by animals, or by lowly people (shepherds), and is suckled by a female animal or by an humble woman. After he has grown up, he finds his distinguished parents, in a highly versatile fashion. He takes his revenge on his father, on the one hand, and is acknowledged, on the other. Finally he achieves rank and honors. 1

Since the normal relations of the hero toward his father and his mother regularly appear impaired in all these

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myths, as shown by the outline, there is reason to assume that something in the nature of the hero must account for such a disturbance, and motives of this kind are not very difficult to discover. It is readily understood--and may be noted in the modern imitations of the heroic age--that for the hero, who is exposed to envy, jealousy, and calumny to a much higher degree than all others, the descent from his parents often becomes the source of the greatest distress and embarrassment. The old saying that "A prophet is not without honour, save in his own country and in his father's house," has no other meaning but that he whose parents, brothers and sisters, or playmates, are known to us, is not so readily conceded to be a prophet. There seems to be a certain necessity for the prophet to deny his parents; the well-known Meyerbeer opera is based upon the avowal that the prophetic hero is allowed, in favor of his mission, to abandon and repudiate even his tenderly loving mother.

A number of difficulties arise, however, as we proceed to a deeper inquiry into the motives which oblige the hero to sever his family relations. Numerous investigators have emphasized that the understanding of myth formation requires our going back to their ultimate source, namely the individual faculty of imagination. 1 The fact has also been pointed out that this imaginative faculty is found in its active and unchecked exuberance only in childhood. Therefore, the imaginative life of the child should first be studied, in order to facilitate the understanding of the far more complex and also more handicapped mythological and artistic imagination in general.

Meanwhile, the investigation of the juvenile faculty of imagination has hardly commenced, instead of being sufficiently advanced to permit the utilization of the findings for the explanation of the more complicated psychic activities. The reason for this imperfect understanding of the psychic life of the child is traceable to the lack of a suitable instrument, as well as of a reliable avenue, leading into the intricacies of this very delicate and rather inaccessible domain. These juvenile emotions can by no means be

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studied in the normal human adult, and it may actually be charged, in view of certain psychic disturbances, that the normal psychic integrity of normal subjects consists precisely in their having overcome and forgotten their childish vagaries and imaginations; so that the way has become blocked. In children, on the other hand, empirical observation (which as a rule must remain merely superficial) fails in the investigation of psychic processes because we are not as yet enabled to trace all manifestations correctly to their motive forces; so that we are lacking the instrument. There is a certain class of persons, the so-called psycho-neurotics, shown by the teachings of Freud to have remained children, in a sense, although otherwise appearing grown-up. These psychoneurotics may be said not to have given up their juvenile psychic life, which on the contrary, in the course of maturity has become strengthened and fixed, instead of modified. In psychoneurotics, the emotions of the child are preserved and exaggerated, thus becoming capable of pathological effects, in which these humble emotions appear broadened and enormously magnified. The fancies of neurotics are, as it were, the uniformly exaggerated reproductions of the childish imaginings. This would point the way to a solution of the problem. Unfortunately, however, access is still much more difficult to establish in these cases than to the child mind. There is only one known instrument which makes this road practicable, namely the psychoanalytic method, which has been developed through the work of Freud. Constant handling of this instrument will clear the observer's vision to such a degree that he will be enabled to discover the identical motive forces, only in delicately shaded manifestations, also in the psychic life of those who do not become neurotics later on.

Professor Freud had the kindness to place at the author's disposal his valuable experience with the psychology of the neuroses; and on this material are based the following comments on the imaginative faculty of the child as well as of the neurotic.

The detachment of the growing individual from the authority of the parents is one of the most necessary, but also

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one of the most painful achievements of evolution. It is absolutely necessary for this detachment to take place, and it may be assumed that all normal grown individuals have accomplished it to a certain extent. Social progress is essentially based upon this opposition between the two generations. On the other hand, there exists a class of neurotics whose condition indicates that they have failed to solve this very problem. For the young child, the parents are, in the first place, the sole authority and the source of all faith. To resemble them, i.e., the progenitor of the same sex--to grow up like father or mother--this is the most intense and portentous wish of the child's early years. Progressive intellectual development naturally brings it about that the child gradually becomes acquainted with the category to which the parents belong. Other parents become known to the child, who compares these with his own, and thereby becomes justified in doubting the incomparability and uniqueness with which he had invested them. Trifling occurrences in the life of the child, which induce a mood of dissatisfaction, lead up to a criticism of the parents; and the gathering conviction that other parents are preferable in certain ways is utilized for this attitude of the child toward the parents.

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From the psychology of the neurosis, we have learned that very intense emotions of sexual rivalry are also involved in this connection. The causative factor evidently is the feeling of being neglected. Opportunities arise only too frequently when the child is neglected, or at least feels himself neglected, when he misses the entire love of the parents, or at least regrets having to share this with the other children of the family. The feeling that one's own inclinations are not entirely reciprocated seeks its relief in the idea--often consciously remembered from very early years--of being a stepchild, or an adopted child. Many persons who have not become neurotics very frequently remember occasions of this kind, when the hostile behavior of the parents was interpreted and reciprocated by them in this fashion, usually under the influence of storybooks. The influence of sex is already evident, in so far as the boy shows a far greater tendency to harbor hostile feelings

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