In La Mythologie (pp. 185-195) I have put together a small collection of savage myths of the theft of fire. {195b} Our text is the line of Hesiod (Theogony, 566), ’Prometheus stole the far-seen ray of unwearied fire in a hollow stalk of fennel.’  The same stalk is still used in the Greek isles for carrying fire, as it was of old—­whence no doubt this feature of the myth. {195c} How did Prometheus steal fire?  Some say from the altar of Zeus, others that he lit his rod at the sun. {196a} The Australians have the same fable; fire was obtained by a black fellow who climbed by a rope to the sun.  Again, in Australia fire was the possession of two women alone.  A man induced them to turn their backs, and stole fire.  A very curious version of the myth occurs in an excellent book by Mrs. Langloh Parker. {196b} There was no fire when Rootoolgar, the crane, married Gooner, the kangaroo rat.  Rootoolgar, idly rubbing two sticks together, discovered the art of fire-making.  ‘This we will keep secret,’ they said, ‘from all the tribes.’  A fire-stick they carried about in their comebee.  The tribes of the Bush discovered the secret, and the fire-stick was stolen by Reeargar, the hawk.  We shall be told, of course, that the hawk is the lightning, or the Dawn.  But in this savage Jungle Book all the characters are animals, and Reeargar is no more the Dawn than is the kangaroo rat.  In savage myths animals, not men, play the leading roles, and the fire-stealing bird or beast is found among many widely scattered races.  In Normandy the wren is the fire-bringer. {196c} A bird brings fire in the Andaman Isles. {196d} Among the Ahts a fish owned fire; other beasts stole it.  The raven hero of the Thlinkeets, Yehl, stole fire.  Among the Cahrocs two old women possessed it, and it was stolen by the coyote.  Are these theftuous birds and beasts to be explained as Fire-gods?  Probably not.  Will any philologist aver that in Cahroc, Thlinkeet.  Australian, Andaman, and so forth, the word for ‘rub’ resembled the word for ‘rob,’ and so produced by ‘a disease of language’ the myth of the Fire-stealer?

Origin of the Myth of Fire-stealing

The myth arose from the nature of savage ideas, not from unconscious puns.  Even in a race so civilised as the Homeric Greeks, to make fire was no easy task.  Homer speaks of a man, in a lonely upland hut, who carefully keeps the embers alive, that he may not have to go far afield in search of the seed of fire. {197} Obviously he had no ready means of striking a light.  Suppose, then, that an early savage loses his seed of fire.  His nearest neighbours, far enough off, may be hostile.  If he wants fire, as they will not give it, he must steal it, just as he must steal a wife.  People in this condition would readily believe, like the Australian blacks, that the original discoverers or possessors of a secret so valuable as fire would not give it away, that others