2.  Ibid., p. 291.]

{p. 241}

misery of the Drift Age.  They have each a large company of attendants armed with staves; they fight with each other until winter (the age of darkness and cold) is subdued.  They pretend to pluck his eyes out and throw him in the water.  Winter is slain.

Here we have the victory of Osiris over Seb; of Adonis over Typhon, of Balder over Hodur, of Indra over Vritra, of Timandonar over Ariconte, brought down to almost our own time.  To a late period, in England, the rejoicing over the great event survived.

Says Horatio Smith: 

“It was the custom, both here and in Italy, for the youth of both sexes to proceed before daybreak to some neighboring wood, accompanied with music and horns, about sunrise to deck their doors and windows with garlands, and to spend the afternoon dancing around the May-pole.”

Stow tells us, in his “Survey of London”: 

“Every man would walk into the sweet meddowes and green woods, there to rejoice their spirits with the beauty and savour of sweet flowers, and with the harmony of birds praising God in their kindes."[2]

Stubbs, a Puritan of Queen Elizabeth’s days, describing the May-day feasts, says: 

“And then they fall to banquet and feast, to leape and dance about it,” (the May-pole), “as the heathen people did at the dedication of their idolles, whereof this is a perfect picture, or rather the thing itself."[3]

Stubbs was right:  the people of England in the year 1550 A. D., and for years afterward, were celebrating the end of the Drift Age, the disappearance of the darkness and the victory of the sun.

[1.  “Festivals, Games,” etc., p. 126.

2.  Ibid., p. 127.

3.  Ibid.]

{p. 242}

The myth of Hercules recovering his cows from Cacus is the same story told in another form: 

A strange monster, Cacus, (the comet,) stole the cows of Hercules, (the clouds,) and dragged them backward by their tails into a cave, and vomited smoke and flame when Hercules attacked him.  But Hercules killed Cacus with his unerring arrows, and released the cows.

This signifies that the comet, breathing fire and smoke, so rarefied the air that the clouds disappeared and there followed an age of awful heat.  Hercules smites the monster with his lightnings, and electrical phenomena on a vast scale accompany the recondensation of the moisture and the return of the clouds.

“Cacus is the same as Vritra in Sanskrit, Azbidihaka in Zend, Python in Greek, and the worm Fafnir in Norse."[1]

The cows everywhere are the clouds; they are white and soft; they move in herds across the fields of heaven; they give down their milk in grateful rains and showers to refresh the thirsty earth.

We find the same event narrated in the folk-lore of the modern European nations.

Says the Russian fairy-tale: