The ancients believed that drought was caused by the sun’s coming too close to the earth; but how could Apollo, experienced driver of the sun-chariot, ever be so careless as to drive close enough to the earth to burn it?  It was easy enough to imagine that the chariot, when it did such damage, was being driven by some reckless person who knew not how to guide it.  But then arose the necessity of explaining Apollo’s willingness to trust such a reckless person with so great a task; and what more likely than that the inexperienced charioteer was Apollo’s beloved son, who had induced his father to grant his rash request?  Gradually details were added, until the story took the form in which we have it.

As the drought of summer is often brought to a close by a storm which is accompanied by thunder and lightning, and which hides the light of the sun, so in the story Phaethon’s ruinous drive is brought to an end by the thunderbolt of Jupiter; while the horses, trotting back home before their time, leave the world in comparative darkness.

It must not be supposed that some one just sat down one day and said, “I will tell a story which shall explain drought and the ending of drought.”  This story, like all the others, grew up gradually.  Perhaps, one day, in time of drought, some one said to his neighbor, “The chariot of Apollo is coming too close to the earth,” and perhaps his neighbor replied, “Some one who knows not how to guide the white horses is driving it.”  Such language might in time easily become the common language for describing times of drought; and so, at length, would grow up, out of what was at first merely a description, in figurative language, of a natural happening, a story, in dramatic form.

THE ENGLISH ROBIN

By Harrison Weir

See yon robin on the spray;
  Look ye how his tiny form
Swells, as when his merry lay
  Gushes forth amid the storm.

Though the snow is falling fast,
  Specking o’er his coat with white,
Though loud roars the chilly blast,
  And the evening’s lost in night,

Yet from out the darkness dreary
  Cometh still that cheerful note;
Praiseful aye, and never weary,
  Is that little warbling throat.

Thank him for his lesson’s sake,
  Thank God’s gentle minstrel there,
Who, when storms make others quake,
  Sings of days that brighter were.

The English robin is not the bird we call robin redbreast in the United States.  Our robin is a big, lordly chap about ten inches long, but the English robin is not more than five and a half inches long; that is, it is smaller than an English sparrow.  The robin of the poem has an olive-green back and a breast of yellowish red, and in habits it is like our warblers.  It is a sweet singer, and a confiding, friendly little thing, so that English children are very fond of it, and English writers are continually referring to it.