“Thou fell’st mature;
and in the loamy clod,
Swelling with vegetative force
instinct,
Didst burst thine, as theirs
the fabled Twins
Now stars; twor lobes protruding,
paired exact;
A leaf succeede and another
leaf,
And, all the elements thy
puny growth
Fostering propitious, thou
becam’st a twig.
Who lived when thou wast
such? Of couldst thou speak,
As in Dodona once thy kindred
trees
Oracular, I would not curious
ask
The future, best unknown,
but at thy mouth
Inquisitive, the less ambiguous
past.”
Tennyson, in his “Talking Oak,” alludes to the oaks of Dodona in these lines:
And I will work in prose and
rhyme,
And praise thee more
in both
Than bard has honored beech
or lime,
Or that Thessalian growth
In which the swarthy ring-dove
sat
And mystic sentence
spoke; etc.
Byron alludes to the oracle of Delphi where, speaking of Rousseau, whose writings he conceives did much to bring on the French revolution, he says:
“For the, he was inspired,
and from him came,
As from
the Pythian’s mystic cave of yore,
Those oracles which set the
world in flame,
Nor ceased
to burn till kingdoms were no more.”
CHAPTER XXXV
Origin of mythology—statues of gods and goddesses—poets of mythology
ORIGINS OF MYTHOLOGY
Having reached the close of our series of stories of Pagan mythology, and inquiry suggests itself. “Whence came these stories? Have they a foundation in truth or are they simply dreams of the imagination?” Philosophers have suggested various theories on the subject; and 1. The Scriptural theory; according to which all mythological legends are derived from the narratives of Scripture, though the real facts have been disguised and altered. Thus Deucalion is only another name for Noah, Hercules for Samson, Arion for Jonah, etc. Sir Walter Raleigh, in his “History of the World,” says, “Jubal, Tubal, and Tubal-Cain were Mercury, Vulcan, and Apollo, inventors of Pasturage, Smithing, and Music. The Dragon which kept the golden apples was the serpent that beguiled Eve. Nimrod’s tower was the attempt of the Giants against Heaven.” There are doubtless many curious coincidences like these, but the theory cannot without extravagance be pushed so far as to account for any great proportion of the stories.