Sabine Baring-Gould

“ Gunâdhya then ascends a mountain, and lights a great pile of firewood. He reads aloud his tales, and as he finishes each page, he casts it into the flames. Thus perish one hundred thousand slokas. Whilst the poet reads, stags, deer, bears, buffaloes, and roebucks, in short all the beasts of the forest, assemble and weep tears of delight at the beauty of the tales. In the mean time, the king falls ill, and the doctors order him game. But game is not to be found in the forest, for every living creature of the woods is listening to Gunâdhya. ”

“ I am satisfied that we have in Hermes two entirely distinct divinities run into one, through the confusion of similar names, that the Pelasgic, Ithyphallic Hermes is an entirely distinct god from the tricksy, thievish youth with winged feet and fluttering mantle. The Pelasgic Hermes (from ἔρμα) is the sun as generator of life, whilst the other Hermes (from ὁρμή) is the impetuous wind, whose representative Saramâ exists as the gale in Indian mythology. Hermes Psychopompos is therefore the wind bearing away the souls of the dead. ”

“ The very name of Siren is from συρίζω, to pipe or whistle [7] , just as their representatives in Vedic mythology, the Ribhus, draw their name from rebh, to sound, to which the Greek ῥοιβδέω is akin. The Sirens are themselves winged beings [8] , rushing over the earth, seeking every where the lost Persephone.
But the piping wind does not merely carry with it the souls of the dead, and give the mariner warning of approaching wreck: it does something besides. Let us lie on a hill-side, and watch the rising gale. All is still and motionless. ”

“ A trace of the myth appears in the ancient German heroic Gudrunlied, where the powers are ascribed to Horant, Norse Hjarrandi, who is described as singing a song which no one could learn. “These strains he sang, and they were wondrous. To none were they too long, who heard the strains. The time it would take one to ride a thousand miles passed, whilst listening to him, as a moment. The wild beast of the forest and the timid deer hearkened, the little worms crept forth in the green meadows, fishes swam up to listen, each forgetting its nature, so long as he chanted his song.” ”

“ But another magical harp—that is, the spring breeze— restores all to vigour. The sorcerer enchants with the tones of his guzla, and all is hushed,—that is, the winter god sends the earth to sleep at the sound of his frozen gale ”

“ It is because the soul is thought to travel on the wind, that we open the window to let a dying person breathe his last. Often have I had it repeated to me that the person in extremis could not die, that he struggled to die, but was unable till the casement was thrown open, and then at once his spirit escaped.
In one of the Icelandic sagas we have a strange story of a man standing at his house-door, and seeing the souls go by in the air, and among the souls was his own; he told the tale and died.
In Greek mythology, Hermes Psychopompos carries the spirits of the dead to Hades ”

“ All are set dancing, and cannot stop till the piping has ceased. In this we have the rudiment of another myth, that of the musical instrument which, when played, sets every thing a-capering.
Grimm has a story to this effect: a lad obtains a bow which will bring down any thing he aims at, and a fiddle which, when scraped, will make all who hear it dance. He shoots a bird, and it falls into a bush of thorns; a Jew goes into the bush to get the bird, then the lad strikes up a tune on his instrument, and makes the Jew dance in the bush till he has paid him a large sum to obtain rest. ”

“ Among the Quiches of Guatemala, not a litt to our surprise, the magic pipe which causes dance is to be found. In their sacred book, the Popol-Vuh, the twins Hunahpu and Xbalanque turn their half-brothers into apes. ”

“ In the Hartz mountains once passed a strange musician with a bagpipe. Each time that he played a tune a maiden died. In this manner he caused the death of fifty girls, and then he vanished with their souls [3] .
It is singular that a similar story should exist in Abyssinia. It is related by Harrison, in his “Highlands of Æthiopia,” that the Hadjiuji Madjuji are dæmon pipers, who, riding on a goat, traverse a hamlet, and, by their music, irresistibly draw the children after them to destruction.
The soul, in German mythology, is supposed to bear some analogy to a mouse. ”

“ Of the bones of this fish he constructed a harp, just as Hermes made his lyre of the tortoise-shell. But he dropped this instrument into the sea, and thus it fell into the power of the sea-gods, which accounts for the music of the ocean on the beach. The hero then made another from the forest wood, and with it descended to Pohjola, the realm of darkness, in quest of the mystic Sampo; just as in the classic myth Orpheus went down to Hades, to bring thence Eurydice. When in the realm of gloom perpetual the Finn demi-god struck his kantele, and sent all the inhabitants of Pohjola to sleep ”

“ Then they begin to play on their pipes; at the sound, the transformed brothers, Hunbatz and Hunchouen, are attracted from the forest to the house, they enter it and begin to dance. Their mother laughs at their comical gestures, and they vanish (Popol-Vuh, b. ii. c. 5) .
I very much fear that I am leading my readers a sad dance, like one of these strange pipers; I only hope that I shall not, like the Sclavonic dæmon harper, send them to sleep. We must go a little further.
It is curious that the lyre-god Apollo should be called Smintheus, because he delivered Phrygia from a plague of rats. ”

“ How he performed this feat we do not know; probably it was, after the manner of the Hameln piper, with his lyre, for we find that in Greek fable that instrument has powers attractive to the beasts attributed to it. The rats, as animals loving darkness, may have been regarded as symbols of night, and Apollo driving them from the land may have typified the sun scattering darkness.
Orpheus with his strains allured birds and beasts around him, and made the trees and herbs to grow. ”

“ In a Walachian story it is the Almighty who gives the lad a bagpipe. The tale runs thus: a boy runs away from his brother with a quern; on the approach of night he hides in a tree. Some robbers come beneath the tree, and spread out their spoils. The lad drops the mill-stone, which puts the robbers to flight, and he thus obtains the gold. ”

“ He plays the harp, and the knives and plates, the tables and stools, then the guests, and lastly the monarch himself, are set dancing. He keeps them capering till they are too exhausted to move a limb; then he casts the bride over his shoulder and makes off [11] .
In the mediæval romance of Huon de Bordeaux, Oberon’s horn has the same properties; and in a Spanish tale of the Fandango, at the strains of the tune, the Pope and cardinals are made to dance and jig about. ”