Custom and Myth Part 12

{108a} The Mouse, according to Dalton, is still a totem among the Oraons of Bengal. A man of the Mouse 'motherhood,' as the totem kindred is locally styled, may not eat mice (esteemed a delicacy), nor marry a girl who is a Mouse.

{108b} xiii. 604. Casaub. 1620.

{108c} There were Sminthiac feasts at Rhodes, Gela, Lesbos, and Crete (De Witte, Revue Numismatique, N.S. iii. 3-11).

{109a} Iliad, i. 39.

{109b} aelian, H. A. xii. 5.

{110a} The bas-relief is published in Paoli's Della Religione de' Gentili, Naples, 1771, p. 9; also by Fabretti, Ad Cal. Oper. de Colum. Trajan. p. 315. Paoli's book was written after the discovery in Neapolitan territory of a small bronze image, hieratic in character, representing a man with a mouse on his hand. Paoli's engraving of this work of art, unluckily, does not enable us to determine its date or provenance. The book is a mine of mouse-lore.

{110b} Colden, History of the Five Nations, p. 15 (1727).

{110c} Onomast., ix. 6, segm. 84, p. 1066.

{110d} De Witte says Pollux was mistaken here. In the Revue Numismatique, N.S. iii., De Witte publishes coins of Alexandria, the more ancient Hamaxitus, in the Troad. The Sminthian Apollo is represented with his bow, and the mouse on his hand. Other coins show the G.o.d with the mouse at his foot, or show us the lyre of Apollo supported by mice. A bronze coin in the British Museum gives Apollo with the mouse beside his foot.

{111a} Spanheim, ad Fl. Joseph., vi. I, p. 312.

{111b} Della Rel., p. 174.

{111c} Herodotus, ii. 141.

{112a} Liebrecht (Zur Volkskunde, p. 13, quoting Journal Asiatique, 1st series, 3, 307) finds the same myth in Chinese annals. It is not a G.o.d, however, but the king of the rats, who appears to the distressed monarch in his dream. Rats then gnaw the bowstrings of his enemies. The invaders were Turks, the rescued prince a king of Khotan. The king raised a temple, and offered sacrifice-to the rats?

{112b} Herodotos, p. 204.

{113a} Wilkinson, iii. 294, quoting the Ritual x.x.xiii.: 'Thou devourest the abominable rat of Ra, or the sun.'

{113b} Mr. Loftie has kindly shown me a green mouse containing the throne-name of Thothmes III. The animals thus used as subst.i.tutes for scarabs were also sacred, as the fish, rhinoceros, fly, all represented in Mr. Loftie's collection. See his Essay of Scarabs, p. 27. It may be admitted that, in a country where Cats were G.o.ds, the religion of the Mouse must have been struggling and oppressed.

{114a} Strabo, xiii. 604.

{114b} Eustathius on Iliad, i. 39.

{114c} A Strange and True Relation of the Prodigious Mult.i.tude of Mice, 1670.

{115a} Journal of Philol., xvii. p. 96.

{115b} Leviticus xi. 29.

{116} Samuel i. 5, 6.

{117a} Zool. Myth, ii. 68.

{117b} Melusine, N.S. i.

{118a} De Iside et Osiride, lxxvi.

{118b} This hypothesis does not maintain that totemism prevailed in Greece during historic times. Though Plutarch mentions an Athenian ye???, the Ioxidae, which claimed descent from and revered asparagus, it is probable that genuine totemism had died out of Greece many hundreds of years before even Homer's time. But this view is not inconsistent with the existence of survivals in religion and ritual.

{119} Rolland, Faune populaire.

{121} The attempt is not to explain the origin of each separate name but only of the general habit of giving animal or human names stars.

{125} Mr. Herbert Spencer believes that the Australians were once more civilised than at present. But there has never been found a trace of pottery on the Australian continent, which says little for their civilisation in the past.

{128} Brugsch, History of Egypt, i. 32.

{130} Brough Smith.

{131} Amazonian Tortoise Myths, p. 39.

{132a} Sahagun, vii. 3.

{132b} Grimm, D. M., Engl. transl., p. 716.

{133} Hartt, op. cit., p. 40.

{134a} Kaegi, Der Rig Veda, p. 217.

{134b} Mainjo-i-Khard, 49, 22, ed. West.

{134c} Op. cit. p. 98.

{137} Prim. Cult., i. 357.

{140} Lectures on Language, pp. 359, 362.

{144} Grimm, D. M., Engl., Trans. p. 1202.

{145} Tom Sawyer, p. 87.

{146a} Rep. vi. 488. Dem. 10, 6.

{146b} Journal Anthrop. Inst., Feb. 1881.

{147a} Gregor, Folklore of North-east Counties, p, 40.

{147b} Wars of Jews, vii. 6, 3.

{147c} Var. Hist., 14, 27.

{148} Max Muller, Selected Essays, ii. 622.

{151} Myth of Kirke, p. 80.