“15.  My brethren” (my fellow-men) “have dealt deceitfully” (have sinned) “as a brook, and as the stream of brooks they pass away.

16.  Which are blackish by reason of the ice, and wherein the snow is hid.

“17.  What time they wax warm, they vanish:  when it is hot, they are consumed out of their place.

18.  The paths of their way are turned aside; they go to nothing and perish.”

The Douay version has it: 

“16.  They” (the people) “that fear the hoary frost, the snow shall fall upon them.

“17.  At the time when they shall be scattered they shall perish; and after it groweth hot they shall be melted out of their place.

“18.  The paths of their steps are entangled; they shall walk in vain and shall perish.”

There is a great deal of perishing here—­some by frost and snow, some by heat; the people are scattered, they lose their way, they perish.

{p. 289}

Job’s servants and sheep were also consumed in their place; they came to naught, they perished.

Job begins to think, like the Aztec priest, that possibly the human race has reached its limit and is doomed to annihilation (chap. vii): 

“1.  Is there not an appointed time to man upon earth?  Are not his days also like the days of an hireling?”

Is it not time to discharge the race from its labors?

“4.  When I lie down, I say, When shall I arise, and the night be gone? and I am full of tossings to and fro unto the dawning of the day.”

He draws a picture of his hopeless condition, shut up in the cavern, never to see the light of day again. (Douay ver., chap. vii): 

“12:  Am I sea or a whale, that thou hast inclosed me in a prison?”

“7.  My eyes shall not return to see good things.

“8.  Nor shall the sight of man behold me; thy eyes are upon me, and I shall be no more”; (or, as one translates it, thy mercy shall come too late when I shall be no more.)

“9.  As a cloud is consumed and passeth away, so he that shall go down to hell” (or the grave, the cavern) shall not come up.

“10.  Nor shall he return any more into his house, neither shall his place know him any more.”

How strikingly does this remind one of the Druid legend, given on page 135, ante: 

“The profligacy of mankind had provoked the Great Supreme to send a pestilential wind upon the earth.  A pure poison descended, every blast was death.  At this time the patriarch, distinguished for his integrity, was shut up, together with his select company, in the inclosure with the strong door.  Here the just ones were safe from injury.  Presently a tempest of fire arose,” etc.

{p. 290}

Who can doubt that these widely separated legends refer to the same event and the same patriarch?