especially when named after anyone; if "Jack Frost," and "Old Father Christmas," which are but names, seem also persons to the mind of a little child, we may readily see how natural it is for savages to think that the flame licking up the wood is a living thing whose head could be cut off; to believe that the gnawing feeling of hunger is caused by a lizard or a bird in the stomach; to imagine that the echoes which the hills threw back came from the dwarfs who dwelt among them, and that the thunder was the rumbling of the Heaven-God's chariot wheels.

Myths have changed their form in different ages, but they remain among us even now, and live in many a word still used, the first meaning of which has died out. To show you what is meant: we often speak of a cross or sullen person being in a bad humour, which word rests on a very old and false notion that there were four moistures or humours in the body, on the proper mixing of which the good or bad temper of a person depended.

In telling you a little about myths I cannot attempt to show you where the simple early

myths become later on stiffened into the legends of heroes, with loves and fears and hates and mighty deeds, such as make up so much of the early history of Greece and Rome, for that you will learn from other and larger books than this.

XIX. Myths about Sun and Moon.

Among many savage tribes, the sun and moon are thought to be man and wife, or brother and sister. One of the most curious myths of this kind comes from the Esquimaux, the dwellers in the far North. It relates that when a girl was at a party, some one told his love for her by shaking her shoulders after the manner of the country. She could not see who it was in the dark hut, so she smeared her hands with soot, and when he came back she blackened his cheek with her hand. When a light was brought she saw that it was her brother, and fled. He ran after her and followed her as she came to the end of the earth and sprang out into the sky. There she became the sun and he the moon, and this is why the moon

is always chasing the sun through the heavens, and why the moon is sometimes dark as he turns his blackened cheek towards the earth.

In all the languages known as Teutonic the moon was of the male gender and the sun of the female gender.

Among other people, and in later times, the sun is spoken of as the lover of the dawn, who went before him, killing her with his bright spear-like rays, while night was a living thing which swallowed up the day. If the sun is a face streaming with locks of light, the moon is a silver boat, or a mermaid living half her time under the water. When the sun shone with a pleasant warmth he was called the friend of man; when his heat scorched the earth he was said to be slaying his children. You have perhaps heard that the dark patches on the moon's face, which look so very much like a nose and two eyes, gave rise to the notion of a "man in the moon," who was said to be set up there for picking sticks on a Sunday!

XX. Myths about Eclipses.

There is something so weird and gloomy in eclipses of the sun and moon, that we can readily understand how through all the world they have been looked upon as the direct work of some dreadful power.

The Chinese imagine them to be caused by great dragons trying to devour the sun and moon, and beat drums and brass kettles to make the monsters give up their prey. Some of the tribes of American Indians speak of the moon as hunted by huge dogs, catching and tearing her till her soft light is reddened and put out by the blood flowing from her wounds. To this day in India the native beats his gong as the moon passes across the sun's face, and it is not so very long ago that in Europe both eclipses and rushing comets were thought to show that troubles were near.

Fear is the daughter of Ignorance, and departs when knowledge enlightens us as to the cause of things.

We know that an eclipse (which comes from

F

Greek words meaning to leave out or forsake) is caused either by the moon passing in such a line between the earth and the sun as to cause his light to be in part or altogether hidden, left out for a short time, or by the earth so passing between the sun and moon as to throw its shadow upon the moon and partly or wholly hide her light. Our fear would arise if eclipses did not happen at the very moment when astronomers have calculated them to occur.

XXI. Myths about Stars.

There is a curious Asian myth about the stars which tells that the sun and moon are both women. The stars are the moon's children, and the sun once had as many. Fearing that mankind could not bear so much light, each agreed to eat up her children. The moon hid hers away, but the sun kept her word, which no sooner had she done than the moon brought her children from their hiding-place. When the sun saw them she was filled with rage and chased the moon to kill her, and the chase has lasted ever since. Sometimes the sun comes