Chapter V: Part 5

[102] The early history of Sigurd, as it is related in the Völsunga Saga (compare Rassmann, I, 99), closely resembles the Ktesian version of the Kyros saga, giving us the tradition of another hero’s wonderful career, together with its rational rearrangement. For particulars, see Bauer, p. 554. Also the biblical history of Joseph (1 Moses, 37, et seq.), with the exposure, the animal sacrifice, the dreams, the sketchy brethren, and the fabulous career of this hero, seem to belong to this type of myth.

[103] In order to avoid misunderstandings, it appears necessary to emphasize at this point the historical nucleus of certain hero-myths. Kyros, as is shown by the inscriptions which have been discovered (compare Duncker, p. 289, Bauer, p. 498), was descended from an old hereditary royal house. It could not be the object of the myth to elevate the descent of Kyros, nor must the above interpretation be regarded as an attempt to establish a lowly descent of Kyros. Similar conditions prevail in the case of Sargon, whose royal father is also known (compare Jeremias, p. 410, annotation). Nevertheless, an historian writes about Sargon as follows (Ungnad, “Die Anfänge der Staatenbildung in Babylonien” (Beginnings of State Formation in Babylonia), _Deutsche Rundschau_, July, 1905): “He was evidently not of noble descent, or no such saga could have been woven about his birth and his youth.” It would be a gross error to consider our interpretation as an argument in this sense. Again, the apparent contradiction which might be held up against our explanation, under another mode of interpretation, becomes the proof of its correctness, through the reflection that it is not the hero, but the average man who makes the myth, and wishes to vindicate himself in the same. The people imagine the hero in this manner, investing him with their own infantile fantasies, irrespective of their actual compatibility or incompatibility with historical facts. This also serves to explain the transference of the typical motives, be it to several generations of the same hero family, or be it to historical personalities in general (concerning Cæsar, Augustus and others, compare Usener, Rhein. Mus. LV, p. 271).

[104] This identification of the families is carried through to the minutest detail in certain myths, as for example in the Œdipus myth, where one royal couple is offset by another, and where even the herdsman who receives the infant for exposure has his exact counterpart in the herdsman to whom he entrusts the rescue of the boy.

[105] Compare Gubernatis, Zoological Mythology, London, 1872 (In German by Hartmann: Die Tiere in der indogermanischen Mythologie. Leipzig, 1874). Concerning the significance of animals in exposure myths, see also the contributions by Bauer (p. 574 et seq.), Goldziher (p. 274) and Liebrecht: Zur Volkskunde (Romulus und die Welfen) (Folk Lore, Romulus and the Whelps), Heilbronn, 1879.

[106] Compare Freud’s article on The Infantile Recurrence of Totemism (Imago, Vol. II, 1913). Concerning the totemistic foundation of the Roman she-wolf, compare Jones’ Nightmare (Alptraum), p. 59 et seq. The woodpecker of the Romulus saga was discussed by Jung (_loc. cit._, p. 382 et seq.).

[107] The stork is known also in mythology as the bringer of children. Siecke (Liebesgesch. d. Himmels, p. 26) points out the swan as the player of this part in certain regions and countries. The rescue and further protection of the hero by a bird is not uncommon; compare Gilgamos, Zal and Kyknos, who is exposed by his mother near the sea and is nourished by a swan, while his son Tennes floats in a chest upon the water. The interpretation of the leading motive of the Lohengrin saga also enters into present consideration. Its most important motives belong to this mythical cycle: Lohengrin floats in a skiff upon the water, and is brought ashore by a swan. No one may ask whence he has come: the sexual mystery of the origin of man must not be revealed but it is replaced by the suggestion of the stork fable: the children are fished from the water by the swan and are taken to the parents in a box. Corresponding to the prohibition of all enquiries in the Lohengrin saga, we find in other myths (for example, the Œdipus myth), a _command to investigate_, or a riddle which must be _solved_. For the psychological significance of the stork fable, compare Freud, Infantile Sexual Theories. Concerning the Hero Myth, compare the author’s extensive contribution to the elaboration of the motives and the interpretation of the Lohengrin saga (Heft 13 of this collection, Vienna and Leipzig, 1911).

[108] Compare Freud: Analysis of the Phobia of a five year old Boy. _Jahrbuch f. psychoanalyt. u. psychopath. Forschungen_, Vol. I, 1909.

[109] Usener (Stoff des griechischen Epos, S. 53—Subject Matter of Greek Epics, p. 53) says that the controversy between the earlier and the later Greek sagas concerning the mother of a divinity is usually reconciled by the formula that the mother of the general Greek saga is recognized as such while the mother of the local tradition is lowered to the rank of a nurse. There may therefore be unhesitatingly regarded as the mother, not merely the nurse of the god Ares.

[110] Abraham, _loc. cit._, p. 40; Riklin, _loc. cit._, p. 74.

[111] Brief mention is made of a case concerning a Mrs. v. Hervay, because of a few subtle psychological comments upon the same, by A. Berger (Feuilleton der Neue Freie Presse, Nov. 6, 1904, No. 14,441) which in part touch upon our interpretation of the hero myth. Berger writes as follows: “I am convinced that she seriously believes herself to be the illegitimate daughter of an aristocratic Russian lady. The desire to belong through birth to more distinguished and brilliant circles than her own surroundings probably dates back to her early years; and her wish to be a princess gave rise to the delusion that she was not the daughter of her parents, but the child of a noblewoman who had concealed her illegitimate offspring from the world by letting her grow up as the daughter of a sleight-of-hand man. Having once become entangled in these fancies, it was natural for her to interpret any harsh word that offended her, or any accidental ambiguous remark that she happened to hear, but especially her reluctance to be the daughter of this couple, as a confirmation of her romantic delusion. She therefore made it the task of her life to regain the social position of which she felt herself to have been defrauded. Her biography manifests the strenuous insistence upon this idea, with a tragic outcome.”

The female type of the family romance, as it confronts us in this case from the a-social side, has also been transmitted as a hero myth in isolated instances. The story goes of the later Queen Semiramis (in Diodos, II, 4) that her mother, the goddess Derketo, being ashamed of her, exposed the child in a barren and rocky land, where she was fed by doves and found by shepherds, who gave the infant to the overseer of the royal flocks, the childless Simmas, who raised her as his own daughter. He named her Semiramis, which means Dove in the Syrian language. Her further career, up to her autocratic rulership, thanks to her masculine energy, is a matter of history.

Other exposure myths are told of Atalante, Kybele, and Aërope (v. Roscher).

[112] Freud: Three Contributions to the Sexual Theory, Nervous and Mental Disease Monograph, No. 7. Also: Psychopathologie des Altagslebens, II ed., Berlin, 1909. Also: Hysterische Phantasien und ihre Beziehung zur Bisexualität.

[113] This is especially evident in the myths of the Greek gods, where the son (Kronos, Zeus) must first remove the father, before he can enter upon his rulership. The form of the removal, namely through castration, obviously the strongest expression of the revolt against the father, is at the same time the proof of its sexual provenance. Concerning the revenge character of this castration, as well as the infantile significance of the entire complex, compare Freud, Infantile Sexual Theories and Analysis of the Phobia of a five year old Boy (Jahrbuch f. Psychoanalyse).

[114] Compare the contrast between Tell and Parricida, in Schiller’s Wilhelm Tell, which is discussed in detail in the author’s Incest Book.

[115] Compare in this connection the unsuccessful homicidal attempt of Tatjana Leontiew, and its subtle psychological illumination in Wittels: Die sexuelle Not (Vienna and Leipzig, 1909).