is really no more than—­Somebody.  There is nothing this wondrous creature cannot achieve; one only restriction binds him at all—­that the name he assumes shall have some sort of congruity with the office he undertakes, and even from this he oftentimes breaks loose.’ {5} We may be pretty sure that the adventures of Jason, Perseus, OEdipous, were originally told only of ‘Somebody.’  The names are later additions, and vary in various lands.  A glance at the essay on ‘Cupid and Psyche’ will show that a history like theirs is known, where neither they nor their counterparts in the Veda, Urvasi and Pururavas, were ever heard of; while the incidents of the Jason legend are familiar where no Greek word was ever spoken.  Finally, the names in common use among savages are usually derived from natural phenomena, often from clouds, sky, sun, dawn.  If, then, a name in a myth can be proved to mean cloud, sky, sun, or what not (and usually one set of scholars find clouds, where others see the dawn), we must not instantly infer that the myth is a nature-myth.  Though, doubtless, the heroes in it were never real people, the names are as much common names of real people in the savage state, as Smith and Brown are names of civilised men.

For all these reasons, but chiefly because of the fact that stories are usually anonymous at first, that names are added later, and that stories naturally crystallise round any famous name, heroic, divine, or human, the process of analysis of names is most precarious and untrustworthy.  A story is told of Zeus:  Zeus means sky, and the story is interpreted by scholars as a sky myth.  The modern interpreter forgets, first, that to the myth-maker sky did not at all mean the same thing as it means to him.  Sky meant, not an airy, infinite, radiant vault, but a person, and, most likely, a savage person.  Secondly, the interpreter forgets that the tale (say the tale of Zeus, Demeter, and the mutilated Ram) may have been originally anonymous, and only later attributed to Zeus, as unclaimed jests are attributed to Sheridan or Talleyrand.  Consequently no heavenly phenomena will be the basis and explanation of the story.  If one thing in mythology be certain, it is that myths are always changing masters, that the old tales are always being told with new names.  Where, for example, is the value of a philological analysis of the name of Jason?  As will be seen in the essay ‘A Far-travelled Tale,’ the analysis of the name of Jason is fanciful, precarious, disputed, while the essence of his myth is current in Samoa, Finland, North America, Madagascar, and other lands, where the name was never heard, and where the characters in the story have other names or are anonymous.

For these reasons, and others too many to be adduced here, I have ventured to differ from the current opinion that myths must be interpreted chiefly by philological analysis of names.  The system adopted here is explained in the first essay, called ’The Method of Folklore.’  The name, Folklore, is not a good one, but ’comparative mythology’ is usually claimed exclusively by the philological interpreters.