coffer:  this was opened; and men—­who, according to Hesiod, had hitherto lived exempt from ’maladies that bring down Fate’—­were overwhelmed with the ‘diseases that stalk abroad by night and day.’  Now, in Hesiod (Works and Days, 70-100) there is nothing said about unholy curiosity.  Pandora simply opened her casket and scattered its fatal contents.  But Philodemus assures us that, according to a variant of the myth, it was Epimetheus who opened the forbidden coffer, whence came Death.

Leaving the myths which turn on the breaking of a taboo, and reserving for consideration the New Zealand story, in which the Origin of Death is the neglect of a ritual process, let us look at some African myths of the Origin of Death.  It is to be observed that in these (as in all the myths of the most backward races) many of the characters are not gods, but animals.

The Bushman story lacks the beginning.  The mother of the little Hare was lying dead, but we do not know how she came to die.  The Moon then struck the little Hare on the lip, cutting it open, and saying, ’Cry loudly, for your mother will not return, as I do, but is quite dead.’  In another version the Moon promises that the old Hare shall return to life, but the little Hare is sceptical, and is hit in the mouth as before.  The Hottentot myth makes the Moon send the Hare to men with the message that they will revive as he (the Moon) does.  But the Hare ’loses his memory as he runs’ (to quote the French proverb, which may be based on a form of this very tale), and the messenger brings the tidings that men shall surely die and never revive.  The angry Moon then burns a hole in the Hare’s mouth.  In yet another Hottentot version the Hare’s failure to deliver the message correctly caused the death of the Moon’s mother (Bleek, Bushman Folklore). {185} Compare Sir James Alexander’s Expedition, ii. 250, where the Namaquas tell this tale.  The Fijians say that the Moon wished men to die and be born again, like herself.  The Rat said, ‘No, let them die, like rats;’ and they do. {186}

The Serpent

In this last variant we have death as the result of a failure or transgression.  Among the more backward natives of South India (Lewin’s Wild Races of South India) the serpent is concerned, in a suspicious way, with the Origin of Death.  The following legend might so easily arise from a confused understanding of the Mohammedan or Biblical narrative that it is of little value for our purpose.  At the same time, even if it is only an adaptation, it shows the characteristics of the adapting mind:—­God had made the world, trees, and reptiles, and then set to work to make man out of clay.  A serpent came and devoured the still inanimate clay images while God slept.  The serpent still comes and bites us all, and the end is death.  If God never slept, there would be no death.  The snake carries us off while God is asleep.  But the oddest part