"Don't apologize," I replied, "for a constitutional peculiarity. To what do you attribute your success to night?"

"Partly to your extremely receptive condition, partly to the whisky you took in the smoking-room, but chiefly to the magnetic environment."

"Then you do not suffer at all from aphasia just now?"

"Not a touch of it at this moment, thank you; but, as a rule, we all do suffer horribly. This accounts for everything that you embodied spirits find remarkable and enigmatic in our conduct. We mean something, straight enough; but our failure is in expression. Just think how often you go wrong yourselves, though your spirits have a brain to play on, like the musician with a piano. Now we have to do as well as we can without any such mechanical advantage as a brain of cellular tissue"—here he suddenly took the form of a white lady with a black sack over her head, and disappeared in the wainscot.

"Excuse me," he said a moment afterwards, quite in his ordinary voice, "I had a touch of it, I fancy. I lost the thread of my argument, and am dimly conscious of having expressed myself in some unusual and more or less incoherent fashion. I hope it was nothing at all vulgar or distressing?"

"Nothing out of the way in haunted houses, I assure you," I replied, "merely a white lady with a black sack over her head."

"Oh, that was it," he answered with a sigh; "I often am afflicted in that way. Don't mind me if I turn into a luminous boy, or a very old man in chains, or a lady in a green gown and high-heeled shoes, or a headless horseman, or a Mauth hound, or anything of that sort. They are all quite imperfect expressions of our nature,—symptoms, in short, of the malady I mentioned."

"Then the appalling manifestations to which you allude are not the apparitions of the essential ghost? It is not in those forms that he appears among his friends?"

"Certainly not," said the spectre; "and it would be very promotive of good feeling between men and disembodied spirits if this were more generally known. I myself—"

Here he was interrupted by an attack of spirit rappings. A brisk series of sharp faint taps, of a kind I never heard before, resounded from all the furniture of the room. {265} While the disturbance continued, the spectre drummed nervously with his fingers on his knee. The sounds ended as suddenly as they had begun, and he expressed his regrets. "It is a thing I am subject to," he remarked; "nervous, I believe, but, to persons unaccustomed to it, alarming."

"It is rather alarming," I admitted.

"A mere fit of sneezing," he went on; "but you are now able to judge, from the events of to-night, how extremely hard it is for us, with the best intentions, to communicate coherently with the embodied world. Why, there is the Puddifant ghost—in Lord Puddifant's family, you know: he has been trying for generations to inform his descendants that the drainage of the castle is execrable. Yet he can never come nearer what he means than taking the form of a shadowy hearse-and-four, and driving round and round Castle Puddifant at midnight. And old Lady Wadham's ghost, what a sufferer that woman is! She merely desires to remark that the family diamonds, lost many years ago, were never really taken abroad by the valet and sold. He only had time to conceal them in a secret drawer behind the dining-room chimney-piece. Now she can get no nearer expressing herself than producing a spirited imitation of the music of the bagpipes, which wails up and down the house, and frightens the present Sir Robert Wadham and his people nearly out of their wits. And that's the way with almost all of us: there is literally no connection (as a rule) between our expressions and the things we intend to express. You know how the Psychical Society make quite a study of rappings, and try to interpret them by the alphabet? Well, these, as I told you, are merely a nervous symptom; annoying, no doubt, but not dangerous. The only spectres, almost, that manage to hint what they really mean are Banshees."

"They intend to herald an approaching death?" I asked.

"They do, and abominably bad taste I call it, unless a man has neglected to insure his life, and then I doubt if a person of honour could make use of information from—from that quarter. Banshees are chiefly the spectres of attached and anxious old family nurses, women of the lower orders, and completely destitute of tact. I call a Banshee rather a curse than a boon and a blessing to men. Like most old family servants, they are apt to be presuming."

It occurred to me that the complacent spectre himself was not an unmixed delight to the inhabitants of Castle Perilous, or at least to their guests, for they never lay in the Green Chamber themselves.

"Can nothing be done," I asked sympathetically, "to alleviate the disorders which you say are so common and distressing?"

"The old system of spiritual physic," replied the spectre, "is obsolete, and the holy-water cure, in particular, has almost ceased to number any advocates, except the Rev. Dr F. G. Lee, whose books," said this candid apparition, "appear to me to indicate superstitious credulity. No, I don't know that any new discoveries have been made in this branch of therapeutics. In the last generation they tried to bolt me with a bishop: like putting a ferret into a rabbit-warren, you know. Nothing came of that, and lately the Psychical Society attempted to ascertain my weight by an ingenious mechanism. But they prescribed nothing, and made me feel so nervous that I was rapping at large, and knocking furniture about for months. The fact is that nobody understands the complaint, nor can detect the cause that makes the ghost of a man who was perfectly rational in life behave like an uneducated buffoon afterwards. The real reason, as I have tried to explain to you, is a solution of continuity between subjective thought and will on the side of the spectre, and objective expression of them—confound it—"

Here he vanished, and the sound of heavy feet was heard promenading the room, and balls of incandescent light floated about irresolutely, accompanied by the appearance of a bearded man in armour. The door (which I had locked and bolted before going to bed) kept opening and shutting rapidly, so as to cause a draught, and my dog fled under the bed with a long low howl.

"I do hope," remarked the spectre, presently reappearing, "that these interruptions (only fresh illustrations of our malady) have not frightened your dog into a fit. I have known very valuable and attached dogs expire of mere unreasoning terror on similar unfortunate occasions."

"I'm sure I don't wonder at it," I replied; "but I believe Bingo is still alive; in fact, I hear him scratching himself."

"Would you like to examine him?" asked the spectre.

"Oh, thanks, I am sure he is all right," I answered (for nothing in the world would have induced me to get out of bed while he was in the room). "Do you object to a cigarette?"

"Not at all, not at all; but Lady Perilous, I assure you, is a very old fashioned chatelaine. However, if you choose to risk it—"

I found my cigarette-case in my hand, opened it, and selected one of its contents, which I placed between my lips. As I was looking round for a match-box, the spectre courteously put his forefinger to the end of the cigarette, which lighted at once.

"Perhaps you wonder," he remarked, "why I remain at Castle Perilous, the very one of all my places which I never could bear while I was alive—as you call it?"

"I had a delicacy about asking," I answered.

"Well," he continued, "I am the family genius."

"I might have guessed that," I said.

He bowed and went on. "It is hereditary in our house, and I hold the position of genius till I am relieved. For example, when the family want to dig up the buried treasure under the old bridge, I thunder and lighten and cause such a storm that they desist."

"Why on earth do you do that?" I asked. "It seems hardly worth while to have a genius at all."

"In the interests of the family morality. The money would soon go on the turf, and on dice, drink, etc., if they excavated it; and then I work the curse, and bring off the prophecies, and so forth."

"What prophecies?"

"Oh, the rigmarole the old family seer came out with before they burned him for an unpalatable prediction at the time of the '15. He was very much vexed about it, of course, and he just prophesied any nonsense of a disagreeable nature that came into his head. You know what these crofter fellows are—ungrateful, vindictive rascals. He had been in receipt of outdoor relief for years. Well, he prophesied stuff like this: 'When the owl and the eagle meet on the same blasted rowan tree, then a lassie in a white hood from the east shall make the burn of Cross-cleugh run full red,' and drivel of that insane kind. Well, you can't think what trouble that particular prophecy gave me. It had to be fulfilled, of course, for the family credit, and I brought it off as near as, I flatter myself, it could be done."

"Lady Perilous was telling me about it last night," I said, with a shudder. "It was a horrible affair,"

"Yes, no doubt, no doubt; a cruel business! But how I am to manage some of them I'm sure I don't know. There's one of them in rhyme. Let me see, how does it go?

"'When Mackenzie lies in the perilous ha', The wild Red Cock on the roof shall craw, And the lady shall flee ere the day shall daw, And the land shall girn in the deed man's thraw.'

"The 'crowing of the wild Red Cock' means that the castle shall be burned down, of course (I'm beginning to know his style by this time), and the lady is to elope, and the laird—that's Lord Perilous—is to expire in the 'deed man's thraw': that is the name the old people give the Secret Room. And all this is to happen when a Mackenzie, a member of a clan with which we are at feud, sleeps in the Haunted Chamber—where we are just now. By the way, what is your name?"

I don't know what made me reply, "Allan Mackenzie." It was true, but it was not politic.

"By Jove!" said the spectre, eagerly. "Here's a chance! I don't suppose a Mackenzie has slept here for those hundred years. And now, how is it to be done? Setting fire to the castle is simple"—here I remembered how he had lighted my cigarette—"but who on earth is to elope with Lady Perilous? She's fifty if she's a day, and evangelical a tout casser! Oh no; the thing is out of the question. It really must be put off for another generation or two. There is no hurry."

I felt a good deal relieved. He was clearly a being of extraordinary powers, and might, for anything I knew, have made me run away with Lady Perilous. And then, when the pangs of remorse began to tell on her ladyship, never a very lively woman at the best of times—However, the spectre seemed to have thought better of it.

"Don't you think it is rather hard on a family," I asked, "to have a family genius, and prophecies, and a curse, and—"

"And everything handsome about them," he interrupted me by exclaiming; "and you call yourself a Mackenzie of Megasky! What has become of family pride? Why, you yourselves have Gruagach of the Red Hand in the hall, and he, I can tell you, is a very different sort of spectre from me. Pre-Christian, you know—one of the oldest ghosts in Ross-shire. But as to 'hard on a family,' why, noblesse oblige."

"Considering that you are the family genius, you don't seem to have brought them much luck," I put in, for the house of Perilous is neither rich in gold nor very distinguished in history.

"Yes, but just think what they would have been without a family genius, if they are what they are with one! Besides, the prophecies are really responsible," he added, with the air of one who says, "I have a partner—Mr. Jorkins."

"Do you mind telling me one thing?" I asked eagerly. "What is the mystery of the Secret Chamber—I mean the room whither the heir is taken when he comes of age, and he never smiles again, nor touches a card except at baccarat?"

"Never smiles again!" said the spectre. "Doesn't he? Are you quite certain that he ever smiled before?"

This was a new way of looking at the question, and rather disconcerted me.

"I did not know the Master of Perilous before he came of age," said I; "but I have been here for a week, and watched him and Lord Perilous, and I never observed a smile wander over their lips. And yet little Tompkins" (he was the chief social buffoon of the hour) "has been in great force, and I may say that I myself have occasionally provoked a grin from the good-natured."

"That's just it," said the spectre. "The Perilouses have no sense of humour—never had. I am entirely destitute of it myself. Even in Scotland, even here, this family failing has been remarked—been the subject, I may say, of unfavourable comment. The Perilous of the period lost his head because he did not see the point of a conundrum of Macbeth's. We felt, some time in the fifteenth century, that this peculiarity needed to be honourably accounted for, and the family developed that story of the Secret Chamber, and the Horror in the house. There is nothing in the chamber whatever,—neither a family idiot aged three hundred years, nor a skeleton, nor the devil, nor a wizard, nor missing title-deeds. The affair is a mere formality to account creditably for the fact that we never see anything to laugh at—never see the joke. Some people can't see ghosts, you know" (lucky people! thought I), "and some can't see jokes."

"This is very disappointing," I said.

"I can't help it," said the spectre; "the truth often is. Did you ever hear the explanation of the haunted house in Berkeley Square?"

"Yes," said I. "The bell was heard to ring thrice with terrific vehemence, and on rushing to the fatal scene they found him beautiful in death."

"Fudge!" replied the spectre. "The lease and furniture were left to an old lady, who was not to underlet the house nor sell the things. She had a house of her own in Albemarle Street which she preferred, and so the house in Berkeley Square was never let till the lease expired. That's the whole affair. The house was empty, and political economists could conceive no reason for the waste of rent except that it was haunted. The rest was all Miss Broughton's imagination, in 'Tales for Christmas Eve.'"

He had evidently got on his hobby, and was beginning to be rather tedious. The contempt which a genuine old family ghost has for mere parvenus and impostors is not to be expressed in mere words apparently, for Mauth-hounds of prodigious size and blackness, with white birds, and other disastrous omens, now began to display themselves profusely in the Haunted Chamber. Accustomed as I had become to regard all these appearances as mere automatic symptoms, I confess that I heard with pleasure the crow of a distant cock.

"You have enabled me to pass a most instructive evening, most agreeable, too, I am sure," I remarked to the spectre, "but you will pardon me for observing that the first cock has gone. Don't let me make you too late for any appointment you may have about this time—anywhere."

"Oh, you still believe in that old superstition about cock-crow, do you?" he sneered. "'I thought you had been too well educated. 'It faded on the crowing of the cock,' did it, indeed, and that in Denmark too,—almost within the Arctic Circle! Why, in those high latitudes, and in summer, a ghost would not have an hour to himself on these principles. Don't you remember the cock Lord Dufferin took North with him, which crowed at sunrise, and ended by crowing without intermission and going mad, when the sun did not set at all? You must observe that any rule of that sort about cock-crow would lead to shocking irregularities, and to an early- closing movement for spectres in summer, which would be ruinous to business—simply ruinous—and, in these days of competition, intolerable."

This was awful, for I could see no way of getting rid of him. He might stay to breakfast, or anything.

"By the way," he asked, "who does the Cock at the Lyceum just now? It is a small but very exacting part—'Act I. scene I. Cock crows.'"

"I believe Mr. Irving has engaged a real fowl, to crow at the right moment behind the scenes," I said. "He is always very particular about these details. Quite right too. 'The Cock, by kind permission of the Aylesbury Dairy Company,' is on the bills. They have no Cock at the Francais; Mounet Sully would not hear of it."

I knew nothing about it, but if this detestable spectre was going to launch out concerning art and the drama there would be no sleep for me.

"Then the glow-worm," he said—"have they a real glow-worm for the Ghost's 'business' (Act I. scene 5) when he says?—

"'Fare thee well at once, The glow-worm shows the matin to be near, And 'gins to pale his ineffectual fire.'

Did it ever strike you how inconsistent that is? Clearly the ghost appeared in winter; don't you remember how they keep complaining of the weather?

"'For this relief much thanks; 'tis bitter cold,'

and

"'The air bites shrewdly: it is very cold.'"

"Horatio blows on his hands to warm them, at the Francais," I interrupted.

"Quite right; good business," said he; "and yet they go on about the glow- worms in the neighbourhood! Most incongruous. How does Furnivall take it? An interpolation by Middleton?"

I don't like to be rude, but I admit that I hate being bothered about Shakespeare, and I yawned.

"Good night," he said snappishly, and was gone.

Presently I heard him again, just as I was dropping into a doze.

"You won't think, in the morning, that this was all a dream, will you? Can I do anything to impress it on your memory? Suppose I shrivel your left wrist with a touch of my hand? Or shall I leave 'a sable score of fingers four' burned on the table? Something of that sort is usually done."

"Oh, pray don't take the trouble," I said. "I'm sure Lady Perilous would not like to have the table injured, and she might not altogether believe my explanation. As for myself, I'll be content with your word for it that you were really here. Can I bury your bones for you, or anything? Very well, as you must be off, good night!"

"No, thanks," he replied. "By the way, I've had an idea about my apparitions in disguise. Perhaps it is my 'Unconscious Self' that does them. You have read about the 'Unconscious Self' in the Spectator?"

Then he really went.

A nun in grey, who moaned and wrung her hands, remained in the room for a short time, but was obviously quite automatic.

I slept till the hot water was brought in the morning.



THE GREAT GLADSTONE MYTH. {283}

In the post-Christian myths of the Teutonic race settled in England, no figure appears more frequently and more mysteriously than that of Gladstone or Mista Gladstone. To unravel the true germinal conception of Gladstone, and to assign to all the later accretions of myth their provenance and epoch, are the problems attempted in this chapter. It is almost needless (when we consider the perversity of men and the lasting nature of prejudice) to remark that some still see in Gladstone a shadowy historical figure. Just as our glorious mythical Bismarck has been falsely interpreted as the shadowy traditional Arminius (the Arminius of Tacitus, not of Leo Adolescens), projected on the mists of the Brocken, so Gladstone has been recognized as a human hero of the Fourth Dynasty. In this capacity he has been identified with Gordon (probably the north wind), with Spurgeon, {284} whom I have elsewhere shown to be a river god, and with Livingstone. In the last case the identity of the suffix "stone," and the resemblance of the ideas of "joy" and of "vitality," lend some air of speciousness to a fundamental error. Livingstone is ohne zweifel, a mythical form of the midnight sun, now fabled to wander in the "Dark Continent," as Bishop of Natal, the land of the sun's birthplace, now alluded to as lost in the cloud-land of comparative mythology. Of all these cobwebs spun by the spiders of sciolism, the Euhemeristic or Spencerian view—that Gladstone is an historical personage—has attracted most attention. Unluckily for its advocates, the whole contemporary documents of the Victorian Dynasty have perished. When an over-educated and over-rated populace, headed by two mythical figures, Wat Tyler and one Jo, {285a} rose in fury against the School Boards and the Department, they left nothing but tattered fragments of the literature of the time. Consequently we are forced to reconstruct the Gladstonian myth by the comparative method—that is, by comparing the relics of old Ritual treatises, hymns, imprecations, and similar religious texts, with works of art, altars, and statues, and with popular traditions and folklore. The results, again, are examined in the light of the Vedas, the Egyptian monuments, and generally of everything that, to the unscientific eye, seems most turbidly obscure in itself, and most hopelessly remote from the subject in hand. The aid of Philology will not be rejected because Longus, or Longinus, has {285b} meanly argued that her services must be accepted with cautious diffidence. On the contrary, Philology is the only real key to the labyrinths of post-Christian myth.

The philological analysis of the name of Gladstone is attempted, with very various results, by Roth, Kuhn, Schwartz, and other contemporary descendants of the old scholars. Roth finds in "Glad" the Scotch word "gled," a hawk or falcon. He then adduces the examples of the Hawk-Indra, from the Rig Veda, and of the Hawk-headed Osiris, both of them indubitably personifications of the sun. On the other hand, Kuhn, with Schwartz, fixes his attention on the suffix "stone," and quotes, from a fragment attributed to Shakespeare, "the all-dreaded thunder-stone." Schwartz and Kuhn conclude, in harmony with their general system, that Gladstone is really and primarily the thunderbolt, and secondarily the spirit of the tempest. They quote an isolated line from an early lay about the "Pilot who weathered the storm," which they apply to Gladstone in his human or political aspect, when the storm-spirit had been anthropomorphised, and was regarded as an ancestral politician. But such scanty folklore as we possess assures us that the storm, on the other hand, weathered Gladstone; and that the poem quoted refers to quite another person, also named William, and probably identical with William Tell—that is, with the sun, which of course brings us back to Roth's view of the hawk, or solar Gladstone, though this argument in his own favour has been neglected by the learned mythologist. He might also, if he cared, adduce the solar stone of Delphi, fabled to have been swallowed by Cronus. Kuhn, indeed, lends an involuntary assent to this conclusion (Ueber Entwick. der Myth.) when he asserts that the stone swallowed by Cronus was the setting sun. Thus we have only to combine our information to see how correct is the view of Roth, and how much to be preferred to that of Schwartz and Kuhn. Gladstone, philologically considered, is the "hawkstone," combining with the attributes of the Hawk-Indra and Hawk-Osiris those of the Delphian sun-stone, which we also find in the Egyptian Ritual for the Dead. {287} The ludicrous theory that Gladstone is a territorial surname, derived from some place ("Gledstane" Falkenstein), can only be broached by men ignorant of even the grammar of science; dabblers who mark with a pencil the pages of travellers and missionaries. We conclude, then, that Gladstone is, primarily, the hawk-sun, or sun-hawk.

From philology we turn to the examination of literary fragments, which will necessarily establish our already secured position (that Gladstone is the sun), or so much the worse for the fragments. These have reached us in the shape of burned and torn scraps of paper, covered with printed texts, which resolve themselves into hymns, and imprecations or curses. It appears to have been the custom of the worshippers of Gladstone to salute his rising, at each dawn, with printed outcries of adoration and delight, resembling in character the Osirian hymns. These are sometimes couched in rhythmical language, as when we read—

"[Gla] dstone, the pillar of the People's hopes,"—

to be compared with a very old text, referring obscurely to "the People's William," and "a popular Bill," doubtless one and the same thing, as has often been remarked. Among the epithets of Gladstone which occur in the hymns, we find "versatile," "accomplished," "philanthropic," "patriotic," "statesmanlike," "subtle," "eloquent," "illustrious," "persuasive," "brilliant," "clear," "unambiguous," "resolute." All of those are obviously intelligible only when applied to the sun. At the same time we note a fragmentary curse of the greatest importance, in which Gladstone is declared to be the beloved object of "the Divine Figure from the North," or "the Great White Czar." This puzzled the learned, till a fragment of a mythological disquisition was recently unearthed. In this text it was stated, on the authority of Brinton, that "the Great White Hare" worshipped by the Red Indians was really, when correctly understood, the Dawn. It is needless to observe (when one is addressing students) that "Great White Hare" (in Algonkin, Manibozho) becomes Great White Czar in Victorian English. Thus the Divine Figure from the North, or White Czar, with whom Gladstone is mythically associated, turns out to be the Great White Hare, or Dawn Hero, of the Algonkins. The sun (Gladstone) may naturally and reasonably be spoken of in mythical language as the "Friend of the Dawn." This proverbial expression came to be misunderstood, and we hear of a Liberal statesman, Gladstone, and of his affection for a Russian despot. The case is analogous to Apollo's fabled love for Daphne = Dahana, the Dawn. While fragments of laudatory hymns are common enough, it must not be forgotten that dirges or curses (Dirae) are also discovered in the excavations. These Dirae were put forth both morning and evening, and it is interesting to note that the imprecations vented at sunset ("evening papers," in the old mythical language) are even more severe and unsparing than those uttered ("morning papers") at dawn.

How are the imprecations to be explained? The explanation is not difficult, nothing is difficult—to a comparative mythologist. Gladstone is the sun, the enemy of Darkness. But Darkness has her worshippers as well as Light. Set, no less than Osiris, was adored in the hymns of Egypt, perhaps by kings of an invading Semitic tribe. Now there can be no doubt that the enemies of Gladstone, the Rishis, or hymn- writers who execrated him, were regarded by his worshippers as a darkened class, foes of enlightenment. They are spoken of as "the stupid party," as "obscurantist," and so forth, with the usual amenity of theological controversy. It would be painful, and is unnecessary, to quote from the curses, whether matins or vespers, of the children of night. Their language is terribly severe, and, doubtless, was regarded as blasphemy by the sun-worshippers. Gladstone is said to have "no conscience," "no sense of honour," to be so fugitive and evasive in character, that one might almost think the moon, rather than the sun, was the topic under discussion. But, as Roth points out, this is easily explained when we remember the vicissitudes of English weather, and the infrequent appearances of the sun in that climate. By the curses, uttered as they were in the morning, when night has yielded to the star of day, and at evening, when day is, in turn, vanquished by night, our theory of the sun Gladstone is confirmed beyond reach of cavil; indeed, the solar theory is no longer a theory, but a generally recognized fact.

Evidence, which is bound to be confirmatory, reaches us from an altar and from works of art. The one altar of Gladstone is by some explained as the pedestal of his statue, while the anthropological sciolists regard it simply as a milestone! In speaking to archaeologists it is hardly necessary even to touch on this preposterous fallacy, sufficiently confuted by the monument itself.

On the road into western England, between the old sites of Bristol and London, excavations recently laid bare the very interesting monument figured here.

[Sketch of monument: image1.jpg]

Though some letters or hieroglyphs are defaced, there can be no doubt that the inscription is correctly read G. O. M. The explanation which I have proposed (Zeitschrift fur Ang. Ant) is universally accepted by scholars. I read Gladstonio Optimo Maximo, "To Gladstone, Best and Greatest," a form of adoration, or adulation, which survived in England (like municipal institutions, the game laws, and trial by jury) from the date of the Roman occupation. It is a plausible conjecture that Gladstone stepped into the shoes of Jupiter Optimus Maximus. Hence we may regard him (like Osiris) as the sum of the monotheistic conception in England.

This interpretation is so manifest, that, could science sneer, we might laugh at the hazardous conjectures of smatterers. They, as usual, are greatly divided among themselves. The Spencerian or Euhemeristic school,—if that can be called a school

"Where blind and naked Ignorance Delivers brawling judgments all day long On all things, unashamed,"—

protests that the monument is a pedestal of a lost image of Gladstone. The inscription (G. O. M.) is read "Grand Old Man," and it is actually hinted that this was the petit nom, or endearing title, of a real historical politician. Weak as we may think such reasonings, we must regard them as, at least, less unscholarly than the hypothesis that the inscription should be read

"90 M."

meaning "ninety miles from London." It is true that the site whence the monument was excavated is at a distance of ninety miles from the ruins of London, but that is a mere coincidence, on which it were childish to insist. Scholars know at what rate such accidents should be estimated, and value at its proper price one clear interpretation like G. O. M.= Gladstonio Optimo Maximo.

It is, of course, no argument against this view that the authors of the Dirae regard Gladstone as a maleficent being. How could they do otherwise? They were the scribes of the opposed religion. Diodorus tells us about an Ethiopian sect which detested the Sun. A parallel, as usual, is found in Egypt, where Set, or Typhon, is commonly regarded as a maleficent spirit, the enemy of Osiris, the midnight sun. None the less it is certain that under some dynasties Set himself was adored—the deity of one creed is the Satan of its opponents. A curious coincidence seems to show (as Bergaigne thinks) that Indra, the chief Indo-Aryan deity, was occasionally confounded with Vrittra, who is usually his antagonist. The myths of Egypt, as reported by Plutarch, say that Set, or Typhon, forced his way out of his mother's side, thereby showing his natural malevolence even in the moment of his birth. The myths of the extinct Algonkins of the American continent repeat absolutely the same tale about Malsumis, the brother and foe of their divine hero, Glooskap. Now the Rig Veda (iv. 18, 1-3) attributes this act to Indra, and we may infer that Indra had been the Typhon, or Set, or Glooskap, of some Aryan kindred, before he became the chief and beneficent god of the Kusika stock of Indo-Aryans. The evil myth clung to the good god. By a similar process we may readily account for the imprecations, and for the many profane and blasphemous legends, in which Gladstone is represented as oblique, mysterious, and equivocal. (Compare Apollo Loxias.) The same class of ideas occurs in the myths about Gladstone "in Opposition" (as the old mythical language runs), that is, about the too ardent sun of summer. When "in Opposition" he is said to have found himself in a condition "of more freedom and less responsibility," and to "have made it hot for his enemies," expressions transparently mythical. If more evidence were wanted, it would be found in the myth which represents Gladstone as the opponent of Huxley. As every philologist knows, Huxley, by Grimm's law, is Huskley, the hero of a "husk myth" (as Ralston styles it), a brilliant being enveloped in a husk, probably the night or the thunder-cloud. The dispute between Gladstone and Huskley as to what occurred at the Creation is a repetition of the same dispute between Wainamoinen and Joukahainen, in the Kalewala of the Finns. Released from his husk, the opponent becomes Beaconsfield = the field of light, or radiant sky.

In works of art, Gladstone is represented as armed with an axe. This, of course, is probably a survival from the effigies of Zeus Labrandeus, den Man auf Munsen mit der streitaxt erblickt (Preller, i. 112). We hear of axes being offered to Gladstone by his worshippers. Nor was the old custom of clothing the image of the god (as in the sixth book of the "Iliad") neglected. We read that the people of a Scotch manufacturing town, Galashiels, presented the Midlothian Gladstone (a local hero), with "trouserings," which the hero graciously accepted. Indeed he was remarkably unlike Death, as described by AEschylus, "Of all gods, Death only recks not of gifts." Gladstone, on the other hand, was the centre of a lavish system of sacrifice—loaves of bread, axes, velocipedes, books, in vast and overwhelming numbers, were all dedicated at his shrine. Hence some have identified him with Irving, also a deity propitiated (as we read in Josephus Hatton) by votive offerings. In a later chapter I show that Irving is really one of the Asvins of Vedic mythology, "the Great Twin Brethren," or, in mythic language, "the Corsican Brothers" (compare Myriantheus on the Asvins). His inseparable companion is Wilson-Barrett.

Among animals the cow is sacred to Gladstone; and, in works of art, gems and vases (or "jam-pots"), he is represented with the cow at his feet, like the mouse of Horus, of Apollo Smintheus, and of the Japanese God of Plenty (see an ivory in the Henley Collection). How are we to explain the companionship of the cow? At other times the Sun-hero sits between the horns of the Cow-Goddess Dilemma, worshipped at Westminster. (Compare Brugsch, "Religion und Mythologie der alten Aegypter," p. 168, "Die Darstellungen Zeigen uns den Sonnengott zwischen den Hornern der Kuh sitzend.") The idea of Le Page Renouf, and of Pierret and De Rouge, is that the cow is a symbol of some Gladstonian attribute, perhaps "squeezability," a quality attributed to the hero by certain Irish minstrels. I regard it as more probable that the cow is (as in the Veda) the rain-cloud, released from prison by Gladstone, as by Indra. At the same time the cow, in the Veda, stands for Heaven, Earth, Dawn, Night, Cloud, Rivers, Thunder, Sacrifice, Prayer, and Soma. We thus have a wide field to choose from, nor is our selection of very much importance, as any, or all, of these interpretations will be welcomed by Sanskrit scholars. The followers of McLennan have long ago been purged out of the land by the edict of Oxford against this sect of mythological heretics. They would doubtless have maintained that the cow was Gladstone's totem, or family crest, and that, like other totemists, he was forbidden to eat beef.

It is curious that on some old and worn coins we detect a half-obliterated male figure lurking behind the cow. The inscription may be read "Jo," or "Io," and appears to indicate Io, the cow-maiden of Greek myth (see the "Prometheus" of AEschylus).

Another proof of the mythical character of Gladstone is the number of his birthplaces. Many cities claimed the honour of being his cradle, exactly as in the cases of Apollo and Irving. Their claims were allowed by the Deity. (Compare Callimachus, Hymn to Apollo.)

In addressing scholars it is needless to refute the Euhemeristic hypothesis, worthy of the Abbe Banier, that the cow is a real cow, offered by a real historical Gladstone, or by his companion, Jo, to the ignorant populace of the rural districts. We have already shown that Jo is a mythological name. The tendency to identify Gladstone with the cow (as the dawn with the sun) is a natural and edifying tendency, but the position must not be accepted without further inquiry. The Sun-god, in Egyptian myth, is a Bull, but there is a difference, which we must not overlook, between a bull and a cow. Caution, prudence, a tranquil balancing of all available evidence, and an absence of preconceived opinions,—these are the guiding stars of comparative mythology.



MY FRIEND THE BEACH-COMBER.

"Been in some near things in the islands?" said my friend the beach-comber; "I fancy I have."

The beach-comber then produced a piece of luggage like a small Gladstone bag, which he habitually carried, and thence he extracted a cigar about the size of the butt of a light trout-rod. He took a vesuvian out of a curious brown hollowed nut-shell, mounted in gold (the beach-comber, like Mycenae in Homer, was polychrysos, rich in gold in all his equipments), and occupied himself with the task of setting fire to his weed. The process was a long one, and reminded me of the arts by which the beach- comber's native friends fire the root of a tree before they attack it with their stone tomahawks. However, there was no use in trying to hurry the ancient mariner. He was bound to talk while his cigar lasted, thereby providing his hearer with plenty of what is called "copy" in the profession of letters.

The beach-comber was a big man, loose (in physique only of course), broad, and black-bearded, his face about the colour of a gun-stock. We called him by the nickname he bore {304} (he bore it very good-naturedly), because he had spent the years of his youth among the countless little islands of the South Seas, especially among those which lie at "the back of beyond," that is, on the far side of the broad shoulder of Queensland. In these regions the white man takes his life and whatever native property he can annex in his hand, caring no more for the Aborigines' Protection Society than for the Kyrle Company for diffusing stamped-leather hangings and Moorish lustre plates among the poor of the East-End. The common beach-comber is usually an outcast from that civilization of which, in the islands, he is the only pioneer. Sometimes he deals in rum, sometimes in land, most frequently in "black- birds"—that is, in coolies, as it is now usual to call slaves. Not, of course, that all coolies are slaves. My friend the beach-comber treated his dusky labourers with distinguished consideration, fed them well, housed them well, taught them the game of cricket, and dismissed them, when the term of their engagement was up, to their island homes. He was, in fact, a planter, with a taste for observing wild life in out-of-the- way places.

"Yes, I have been in some near things," he went on, when the trunk of his cigar was fairly ignited. "Do you see these two front teeth?"

The beach-comber opened wide a cavernous mouth. The late Mr. Macadam, who invented the system of making roads called by his name, allowed no stone to be laid on the way which the stone-breaker could not put in his mouth. The beach-comber could almost have inserted a milestone.

I did not see "these two front teeth," because, like the Spanish Fleet, they were not in sight. But I understood my friend to be drawing my attention to their absence.

"I see the place where they have been," I answered.

"Well, that was a near go," said the beach-comber. "I was running for my life before a pack of screeching naked beggars in the Admiralty Islands. I had emptied my revolver, and my cartridges, Government ones, were all in a parcel—a confounded Government parcel—fastened with a strong brass wire. Where's the good of giving you cartridges, which you need in a hurry if you need them at all, in a case you can't open without a special instrument? Well, as I ran, and the spears whizzed round me, I tore at the wire with my teeth. It gave at last, or my head would now be decorating a stake outside the chief's pah. But my teeth gave when the brass cord gave, and I'll never lift a heavy table with them again."

"But you got out the cartridges?"

"Oh yes. I shot two of the beggars, and 'purwailed on them to stop,' and then I came within sight of the boats, and Thompson shouted, and the others bolted. What a voice that fellow had! It reminded me of that Greek chap I read about at school; he went and faced the Trojans with nothing in his hand, and they hooked it when they only heard him roar. Poor Thompson! "and the beach-comber drank, in silence, to the illustrious dead.

"Who shot him?"

"A scientific kind of poop, a botanizing shaloot that was travelling around with a tin box on his back, collecting beetles and bird-skins. Poor Thompson! this was how it happened. He was the strongest fellow I ever saw; he could tear a whole pack of cards across with his hands. That man was all muscle. He and I had paddled this botanizing creature across to an island where some marooned fellow had built a hut, and we kept a little whisky in a bunk, and used the place sometimes for shooting or fishing. It was latish one night, the botanist had not come home, I fell asleep, and left Thompson with the whisky. I was awakened by hearing a shot, and there lay Thompson, stone-dead, a bullet in his forehead, and the naturalist with a smoking revolver in his hand, and trembling like an aspen leaf. It seems he had lost his way, and by the time he got home, Thompson was mad drunk, and came for him with his fists. If once he hit you, just in play, it was death, and the stranger knew that. Thompson had him in a corner, and I am bound to say that shooting was his only chance. Poor old Thompson!"

"And what was done to the other man?"

"Done! why there was no one to do anything, unless I had shot him, or marooned him. No law runs in these parts. Thompson was the best partner I ever had; he was with me in that lark with the tabooed pig."

"What lark?"

"Oh, I've often spun you the yarn."

"Never!"

"Well, it was like this. Thompson and I, and some other chaps, started in a boat, with provisions, just prospecting about the islands. So we went in and out among the straits—horrid places, clear water full of sharks, and nothing but mangroves on every side. One of these sounds is just like another. Once I was coming home in a coasting steamer, and got them to set me down on a point that I believed was within half-a-mile of my place. Well, I was landed, and I began walking homewards, when I found I was on the wrong track, miles and miles of mangrove swamp, cut up with a dozen straits of salt water, lay between me and the station. The first stretch of water I came to, gad! I didn't like it. I kept prospecting for sharks very close before I swam it, with my clothes on my head. I was in awful luck all the way, though,—not one of them had a snap at me."

"But about the taboo pig? Revenons a nos cochons!"

"I'm coming to that. Well, we landed at an island we had never been on before, where there was a village of Coast natives. A crowd of beehive- shaped huts, you know, the wall about three feet high, and all the rest roof, wattle, and clay, and moss, built as neat as a bird's-nest outside, not very sweet inside. So we landed and got out the grub, and marched up to the village. Not a soul to be seen; not a black in the place. Their gear was all cleaned out too; there wasn't a net, nor a spear, nor a mat, nor a bowl (they're great beggars for making pipkins), not a blessed fetich stone even, in the whole place. You never saw anything so forsaken. But just in the middle of the row of huts, you might call it a street if you liked, there lay, as happy as if he was by the fireside among the children in Galway, a great big fat beast of a hog. Well, we couldn't make out what had become of the people. Thought we had frightened them away, only then they'd have taken the hog. Suddenly, out of some corner, comes a black fellow making signs of peace. He held up his hands to show he had no weapon in them, and then he held up his feet ditto."

"Why on earth did he hold up his feet?"

"To show he wasn't trailing a spear between his toes; that is a common dodge of theirs. We made signs to him to come up, and up he came, speaking a kind of pigeon English. It seems he was an interpreter by trade, paying a visit to his native village; so we tried to get out of him what it was all about. Just what we might have expected. A kid had been born in the village that day."

"What had the birth of a kid got to do with it?"

"It's like this, don't you know. Every tribe is divided into Coast natives and Bush natives. One set lives by the sea, and is comparatively what you might call civilized. The other set, their cousins, live in the Bush, and are a good deal more savage. Now, when anything out of the way, especially anything of a fortunate kind, happens in one division of the tribe, the other division pops down on them, loots everything it can lay hands on, maltreats the women, breaks what's too heavy to carry, and generally plays the very mischief. The birth of a child is always celebrated in that way."

"And don't the others resist?"

"Resist! No! It would be the height of rudeness. Do you resist when people leave cards at your house, 'with kind inquiries'? It's just like that; a way they have of showing a friendly interest."

"But what can be the origin of such an extraordinary custom?"

"I don't know. Guess it has a kind of civilizing effect, as you'll see. Resources of civilization get handed on to the Bush tribes, but that can't be what it was started for. However, recently the tribes have begun to run cunning, and they hide themselves and all their goods when they have reason to expect a friendly visit. This was what they had done the day we landed. But, while we were jawing with the interpreter, we heard a yell to make your hair stand on end. The Bush tribe came down on the village all in their war paint,—white clay; an arrangement, as you say, in black and white. Down they came, rushed into every hut, rushed out again, found nothing, and an awful rage they were in. They said this kind of behaviour was most ungentlemanly; why, where was decent feeling? where was neighbourliness? While they were howling, they spotted the hog, and made for him in a minute; here was luncheon, anyhow,—pork chops. So they soon had a fire, set a light to one of the houses in fact, and heaped up stones; that's how they cook. They cut you up in bits, wrap them in leaves—"

"En papillotte?"

"Just that, and broil you on the hot stones. They cook everything that way."

"Are they cannibals?"

"Oh yes, in war-time. Or criminals they'll eat. I've often heard the queer yell a native will give, quite a peculiar cry, when he is carrying a present of cold prisoner of war from one chief to another. He cries out like that, to show what his errand is, at the border of the village property."

"Before entering the Mark?" I said, for I had been reading Sir Henry Maine.

"The pah, the beggars about me call it," said the beach-comber; "perhaps some niggers you've been reading about call it the Mark. I don't know. But to be done with this pig. The fire was ready, and they were just going to cut the poor beast's throat with a green-stone knife, when the interpreter up and told them 'hands off.' 'That's a taboo pig,' says he. 'A black fellow that died six months ago that pig belonged to. When he was dying, and leaving his property to his friends, he was very sorry to part with the pig, so he made him taboo; nobody can touch him. To eat him is death.'

"Of course this explained why that pig had been left when all the other live stock and portable property was cleared out. Nobody would touch a taboo pig, and that pig, I tell you, was tabooed an inch thick. The man he belonged to had been a Tohunga, and still 'walked,' in the shape of a lizard. Well, the interpreter, acting most fairly, I must say, explained all this to the Bush tribe, and we went down to the boat and lunched. Presently a smell of roast pork came drifting down on the wind. They had been hungry and mad after their march, and they were cooking the taboo pig. The interpreter grew as white as a Kaneka can; he knew something would happen.

"Presently the Bush fellows came down to the boat, licking their lips. There hadn't been much more than enough to go round, and they accepted some of our grub, and took to it kindly.

"'Let's offer them some rum,' says Thompson; he never cruised without plenty aboard. 'No, no,' says I; 'tea, give them tea.' But Thompson had a keg of rum out, and a tin can, and served round some pretty stiff grog. Now, would you believe it, these poor devils had never tasted spirits before? Most backward race they were. But they took to the stuff, and got pretty merry, till one of them tried to move back to the village. He staggered up and down, and tumbled against rocks, and finally he lay flat and held on tight. The others, most of them, were no better as soon as they tried to move. A rare fright they were in! They began praying and mumbling; praying, of all things, to the soul of the taboo pig! They thought they were being punished for the awful sin they had committed in eating him. The interpreter improved the occasion. He told them their faults pretty roundly. Hadn't he warned them? Didn't they know the pig was taboo? Did any good ever come of breaking a taboo? The soberer fellows sneaked off into the bush, the others lay and snoozed till the Coast tribe came out of hiding, and gave it to them pretty warm with throwing sticks and the flat side of waddies. I guess the belief in taboo won't die out of that Bush tribe in a hurry."

"It was like the companions of Odysseus devouring the oxen of the Sun," I said.

"Very likely," replied the beach-comber. "Never heard of the parties. They're superstitious beggars, these Kanekas. You've heard of buying a thing 'for a song'? Well, I got my station for a whistle. They believe that spirits twitter and whistle, and you'll hardly get them to go out at night, even with a boiled potato in their hands, which they think good against ghosts, for fear of hearing the bogies. So I just went whistling, 'Bonny Dundee' at nights all round the location I fancied, and after a week of that, not a nigger would go near it. They made it over to me, gratis, with an address on my courage and fortitude. I gave them some blankets in; and that's how real property used to change hands in the Pacific."



Footnotes:

{1} From Wandering Sheep, the Bungletonian Missionary Record.

{6} 1884. Date unknown. Month probably June.

{23a} The original text of this prophecy is printed at the close of Mr. Gowles's narrative.

{23b} It has been suggested to me that some travelled priest or conjurer of this strange race may have met Europeans, seen hats, spectacles, steamers, and so forth, and may have written the prophecy as a warning of the dangers of our civilization. In that case the forgery was very cunningly managed, as the document had every appearance of great age, and the alarm of the priest was too natural to have been feigned.

{25} How terribly these words were afterwards to be interpreted, the reader will learn in due time.

{30} I afterwards found it was blue smalt.

{74} I have never been able to understand Mr. Gowles's infatuation for this stuck-up creature, who, I am sure, gave herself airs enough, as any one may see.—MRS. GOWLES.

{76} This was the name of a native vintage.

{95} Mr. Gowles was an ardent Liberal, but at the time when he wrote, the Union Jack had not been denounced by his great leader. We have no doubt that, at a word from Mr. Gladstone, he would have sung, Home Rule, Hibernia!—ED. Wandering Sheep.

{106} From Wandering Sheep.

{124} From Mr. E. Myers's "Pindar."

{128} Poor Figgins always called M. Baudelaire "the Master."

{208} His photograph, thus arrayed, may be purchased at Mentone.

{256} "Lift" is English for "elevator," or "elevator" is American for "lift."

{261} This article was originally written for "Mind," but the author changed his. The reference is to Kant's Philosophy.

{265} A similar phenomenon is mentioned in Mr. Howell's learned treatise, "An Undiscovered Country."

{283} A chapter from Prof. Boscher's "Post-Christian Mythology." Berlin and New York, A.D. 3886.

{284} Both these names are undoubtedly Greek neuter substantives.

{285a} Lieblein speaks ("Egyptian Religion," 1884, Leipzig,) of "the mythical name Jo." Already had Continental savants dismissed the belief in a historical Jo, a leader of the Demos.

{285b} There seems to be some mistake here.

{287} "Le pierre sorti du soleil se retrouve au Livre des Souffles." Lefebure, "Osiris," p. 204. Brugsch, "Shai-n. sinsin," i. 9.

{304} "Beach-comber" is the local term for the European adventurers and long-shore loafers who infest the Pacific Archipelagoes. There is a well- known tale of an English castaway on one of the isles, who was worshipped as a deity by the ignorant people. At length he made his escape, by swimming, and was taken aboard a British vessel, whose captain accosted him roughly. The mariner turned aside and dashed away a tear: "I've been a god for months, and you call me a (something alliterative) beach-comber!" he exclaimed, and refused to be comforted.

THE END