Wedded to Pharaoh, the wicked wife, pursuing her vengeance on Bitiou, cuts down his life-tree.  Anepou, his brother, however, recovers his concealed heart (life), and puts it in water.  Bitiou revives.  He changes himself into the sacred Bull, Apis—­a feature in the story which is practically possible in Egypt alone.  The Bull tells the king his story, but the wicked wife has the Bull slain, as by Cambyses in Herodotus.  Two of his blood-drops become two persea trees.  One of them confesses the fact to the wicked wife.  She has them cut down; a chip flies into her mouth, she becomes a mother by the chip, the boy (Bitiou) again becomes king, and slays his mother, the wicked wife.

In the tree, any tree, acacia or persea, Mannhardt wishes to recognise the Sun-tree of the Lett songs.  The red blossoms of the persea tree are a symbol of the Sun-tree:  of Horus.  He compares features, not always very closely analogous, in European Marchen.  For example, a girl hides in a tree, like Charles II. at Boscobel.  That is not really analogous with Bitiou’s separable life in the acacia!  ‘Anepou’ is like ‘Anapu,’ Anubis.  The Bull is the Sun, is Osiris—­dead in winter.  Mr. Frazer, Mannhardt’s disciple, protests a grands cris against these identifications when made by others than Mannhardt, who says, ’The Marchen is an old obscure solar myth’ (p. 242).  To others the story of Bitiou seems an Egyptian literary complex, based on a popular set of tales illustrating furens quid femina possit, and illustrating the world-wide theory of the separable life, dragging in formulas from other Marchen, and giving to all a thoroughly classical Egyptian colouring. {61a} Solar myths, we think, have not necessarily anything to make in the matter.

The Golden Fleece

Mannhardt reasons in much the same way about the Golden Fleece.  This is a peculiarly Greek feature, interwoven with the world-wide Marchen of the Lad, the Giant’s helpful daughter, her aid in accomplishing feats otherwise impossible, and the pursuit of the pair by the father.  I have studied the story—­as it occurs in Samoa, among Red Indian tribes, and elsewhere—­in ‘A Far-travelled Tale.’ {61b} In our late Greek versions the Quest of the Fleece of Gold occurs, but in no other variants known to me.  There is a lamb (a boy changed into a lamb) in Romaic.  His fleece is of no interest to anybody.  Out of his body grows a tree with a golden apple.  Sun-yarns occur in popular songs.  Mannhardt (pp. 282, 283) abounds in solar explanations of the Fleece of Gold, hanging on the oak-tree in the dark AEaean forest.  Idyia, wife of the Colchian king, ’is clearly the Dawn.’  Aia is the isle of the Sun.  Helle=Surya, a Sanskrit Sun-goddess; the golden ram off whose back she falls, while her brother keeps his seat, is the Sun.  Her brother, Phrixus, may be the Daylight.  The oak-tree in Colchis is the Sun-tree of the Lettish songs.  Perseus is a hero of Light, born in the Dark Tower (Night) from the shower of gold (Sun-rays).