The correctness of this supposition seems to be shown by a prevailing superstition among the Aztecs about twins, and which strikingly illustrates the uniformity of mythological conceptions throughout the world.  All readers are familiar with the twins Romulus and Remus in Roman story, one of whom was fated to destroy their grandfather Amulius; with Edipus and Telephos, whose father Laios, was warned that his death would be by one of his children; with Theseus and Peirithoos, the former destined to cause the suicide of his father Aigeus; and with many more such myths.  They can be traced, without room for doubt, back to simple expressions of the fact that the morning and the evening of the one day can only come when the previous day is past and gone; expressed figuratively by the statement that any one day must destroy its predecessor.  This led to the stories of “the fatal children,” which we find so frequent in Aryan mythology.[1]

[Footnote 1:  Sir George W. Cox, The Science of Comparative Mythology and Folk Lore, pp. 14, 83, 130, etc.]

The Aztecs were a coarse and bloody race, and carried out their superstitions without remorse.  Based, no doubt, on this mythical expression of a natural occurrence, they had the belief that if twins were allowed to live, one or the other of them would kill and eat his father or mother; therefore, it was their custom when such were brought into the world to destroy one of them.[1]

[Footnote 1:  Geronimo de Mendieta, Historia Eclesiastica Indiana.  Lib.  II, cap.  XIX.]

We shall see that, as in Algonkin story Michabo strove to slay his father, the West Wind, so Quetzalcoatl was in constant warfare with his father, Tezcatlipoca-Camaxtli, the Spirit of Darkness.  The effect of this oft-repeated myth on the minds of the superstitious natives was to lead them to the brutal child murder I have mentioned.

It was, however, natural that the more ordinary meaning, “the feathered or bird-serpent,” should become popular, and in the picture writing some combination of the serpent with feathers or other part of a bird was often employed as the rebus of the name Quetzalcoatl.

He was also known by other names, as, like all the prominent gods in early mythologies, he had various titles according to the special attribute or function which was uppermost in the mind of the worshipper.  One of these was Papachtic, He of the Flowing Locks, a word which the Spaniards shortened to Papa, and thought was akin to their title of the Pope.  It is, however, a pure Nahuatl word,[1] and refers to the abundant hair with which he was always credited, and which, like his ample beard, was, in fact, the symbol of the sun’s rays, the aureole or glory of light which surrounded his face.

[Footnote 1:  “Papachtic, guedejudo; Papachtli, guedeja o vedija de capellos, o de otra cosa assi.”  Molina, Vocabulario de la Lengua Mexicana. sub voce.  Juan de Tobar, in Kingsborough, Vol. viii, p. 259, note.]