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TRANSLATIONS
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2.
The cradle should move to and from like a canoe on the
waves, giving the
baby a sense of security. The undulating
movement maybe resembles the movement of his mother.
"The
swinging doors theme, which is found all the world over, belongs most certainly
to the oldest mythic tradition known to man.
The same is probably true of the
swing, around which the American Indians built up a whole mythology ...;
swings existed in real life, particularly among the Salish, whose
various dialects distinguished between the cradle-swing - 'suspended
from a long thin pole stuck in the ground and the upper end bent
over ... the weight of the child being sufficient ... to allow the
cradle to swing gently up and down with the movements of the child,
which were kept up by a cord attached to the cradle and given to the
mother or one of the old women of the household to pull from time to
time' ... and
the seat swing, which at least among certain groups had a ceremonial
or ritual use, reserved, it would seem, for adult women ..." (The
Naked Man)
The waves will transport, in myth, the divine little sun child to
his destination (an event which must take place before he is old
enough to roll over by himself).
Instead of referring to Moses in the Nile as an example I wish to
quote from The White Goddess and from Black Canoe, which two sources
are much more informative:
"... Llew visits the
Castle of Arianrhod in a coracle of weed and sedge. The coracle is
the same old harvest basket in which nearly every antique Sun-god
makes his New Year voyage; and the virgin princess, his mother, is
always waiting to greet him on the bank
..."
(Link to the surrounding text in The White
Goddess)
"... The Raven stole the skin and form of the newborn child. Then he
began to cry for solid food, but he was offered only mother's milk.
That night, he passed through the town stealing an eye from each
inhabitant. Back in his foster parents' house, he roasted the eyes
in the coals and ate them, laughing. Then he returned to his cradle,
full and warm ..."
(Link to the surrounding text in Black Canoe) |
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"Gronw Pebyr, who figures as the lord of Penllyn - 'Lord of the Lake' - which
was also the title of Tegid Voel, Cerridwen's husband, is really Llew's twin and
tanist
... Gronw reigns during the
second half of the year, after Llew's sacrificial murder; and the weary stag
whom he kills and flays outside Llew's castle stands for Llew himself (a 'stag
of seven fights').
This constant shift in
symbolic values makes the allegory difficult for the prose-minded
reader to follow, but to the poet who remembers the fate of the
pastoral Hercules the sense is clear: after despatching Llew with
the dart hurled at him from Bryn Kyvergyr, Gronw flays him, cuts him
to pieces and distributes the pieces among his merry-men. The clue
is given in the phrase 'baiting his dogs'.
Math had similarly made a stag of his rival Gilvaethwy, earlier in the story. It
seems likely that Llew's mediaeval successor, Red Robin Hood, was also once
worshipped as a stag. His presence at the Abbot's Bromley Horn Dance would be
difficult to account for otherwise, and 'stag's horn' moss is sometimes called
'Robin Hood's Hatband'. In May, the stag puts on his red summer coat.
Llew visits the Castle of Arianrhod in a coracle of weed and sedge. The coracle
is the same old harvest basket in which nearly every antique Sun-god makes his
New Year voyage; and the virgin princess, his mother, is always waiting to greet
him on the bank.
As
has already been mentioned, the Delphians worshipped Dionysus once a year as the
new-born child, Liknites, 'the Child in the Harvest Basket', which was a
shovel-shaped basket of rush and osier used as a harvest basket, a cradle, a
manger, and a winnowing-fan for tossing the grain up into the air against the
wind, to separate it from the chaff.
The worship of the Divine Child was established in Mioan Crete, its most famous
early home in Europe. In 1903, on the site of the temple of Dictaean Zeues - the
Zeus who was yearly born in Rhea's cave at Dicte near Cnossos, where Pythagoras
spent 'thrice nine hallowed days' of his initiation - was found a Greek hymn
which seems to preserve the original Minoan formula in which the
gypsum-powdered, sword-dancing Curetes, or tutors, saluted the Child at his
birthday feast. In it he is hailed as 'the Cronian one' who comes yearly to
Dicte mounted on a sow and escorted by a spirit-throng, and begged for peace and
plenty as a reward for their joyful leaps.
The
tradition preserved by Hyginus in his Poetic Astronomy that the
constellation Capricorn ('He-goat') was Zeus's foster-brother Aegipan, the Kid
of the Goat Amalthea whose horn Zeus also place among the stars, shows that Zeus
was born at mid-winter when the Sun entered the house of Capricorn.
The date is confirmed by the alternative version of the myth, that he was
suckled by a sow - evidently the one on whose back he yearly rode into Dicte -
since in Egypt swine's flesh and milk were permitted food only at the mid-winter
festival.
That the Sun-gods Dionysus, Apollo and Mithras were all also reputedly born at
the Winter solstice is well known, and the Christian Church first fixed the
Nativity feast of Jesus Christ at the same season, in the year A.D. 273. St.
Chrysostom, a century later, said that the intention was that 'while the heathen
were busied with their profane rites the Christians might perform their holy
ones without disturbance', but justified the date as suitable for one who was
'the Sun of Righteousness'.
Another confirmation of the date is that Zeus was the son of Cronos, whom we
have securely identified with Fearn, or Bran, the god of the F month in the
Beth-Luis-Nion. If one reckons back 280 days from the Winter Solstice, that is
to say ten months of the Beth-Luis-Nion calendar, the normal period of human
gestation, one comes to the first day of Fearn.
(Similarly, reckoning 280 days forward from the Winter Solstice, one comes to
the first day of the G month, Gore, sacred to Dionysus; Dionysus the vine
and ivy-god, as opposed to the Sun-god, was son to Zeus.) Cuchulain was born as
the result of his mother's swallowing a may-fly; but in Ireland may-flies often
appear in late March, so his birthday was probably the same." (The White Goddess) |
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"In the morning of the world, there
was nothing but water. The Loon was calling, and the old man who at that time
bore the Raven's name, Nangkilstlas, asked her why. 'The gods are
homeless', the Loon replied.
'I'll see to it', said the old man,
without moving from the fire in his house on the floor of the sea.
Then as the old man continued to
lie by his fire, the Raven flew over the sea. The clouds broke. He flew upward,
drove his beak into the sky and scrambled over the rim to the upper world. There
he discovered a town, and in one of the houses a woman had just given birth.
The Raven stole the skin and
form of the newborn child. Then he began to cry for solid food, but he was
offered only mother's milk. That night, he passed through the town stealing an
eye from each inhabitant. Back in his foster parents' house, he roasted the eyes
in the coals and ate them, laughing. Then he returned to his cradle, full and
warm.
He had not seen the old woman
watching him from the corner - the one who never slept and who never moved
because she was stone from the waist down. Next morning, amid the wailing that
engulfed the town, she told what she had seen. The one-eyed people of the sky
dressed in their dancing clothes, paddled the child out to mid-heaven in their
canoe and pitched him over the side.
He turned round and round to the
right as he fell from the sky back to the water. Still in his cradle, he floated
on the sea. Then he bumped against something solid. 'Your illustrious
grandfather asks you in', said a voice. The Raven saw nothing. He heard the same
voice again, and then again, but still he saw nothing but water. Then he peered
through the hole in his marten-skin blanket. Beside him was a grebe.
'Your illustrious grandfather
asks you in', said the grebe and dived. Level with the waves beside him, the
Raven discovered the top of a housepole made of stone. He untied himself from
his cradle and climbed down the pole to the lowermost figure.
Hala qaattsi ttakkin-gha,
a voice said: 'Come inside, my grandson.' Behind the fire, at the rear of the
house, was an old man white as a gull. 'I have something to lend you', said the
old man. 'I have something to tell you as well. Dii hau dang iiji: I am
you.'
Slender bluegreen things with
wings were moving between the screens at the back of the house. Waa'asing
dang iiji, said the old man again: 'That also is you.'
The old man gave the Raven two
small sticks, like gambling sticks, one black, one multicoloured. He gave him
instructions to bite them apart in a certain way and told him to spit the pieces
at one another on the surface of the sea.
The Raven climbed back up the
pole, where he promptly did things backwards, just to see if something
interesting would occur, and the pieces bounced apart. It may well be some bits
were lost. But when he gathered what he could and tried again - and this time
followed the instructions he had been given - the pieces stuck and rumpled and
grew to become the mainland and Haida Gwaii."
(Black Canoe) |
There is an old man with fire at
the bottom of the sea and he is not moving. Surely it is the old sun at
winter solstice.
The gods are homeless - there is
no land to build new ones on - the water is everywhere.
The old man, named Raven, could
fly, maybe because by the power of names.
Raven stole the skin and form of a
newborn baby. The outer garment is just fake.
"fake ...
'do', do for, do up (orig. thieves' sl.) ... Later form of
†feak, †feague beat, thrash ... G. fegen
polish, furbish, sweep (sl.) thrash, scold, rate ..." (English Etymology)
Raven is the trickster hero, similar
to Maui
(who was born in the 'topknot').
... Uru manu.
Those who do not belong to the Miru tribe and who, for that reason,
are held in lesser esteem. Úru-úru.
To catch small fish to use as bait. Uru-uru-hoa.
Intruder, freeloader (person who enters someone else's house and eats food
reserved for another) ...
When the Miru
had established itself as the dominant tribe on the island, the rest - of
course - must be inferior. They were not real men but just uru. Like
fake men. Nothing but hollow dead old trees, snags:
But dead old trees
are good for making fires.
Roasted eyes (making the
inhabitants one-eyed like cyclopes) is proper food for a sun-child, who
should have hot stuff.
Small gambling sticks floating on
the surface of the sea refers to the hazard taking place at new year - it
can become a good year of a bad year. I remember how as a child we used to
melt lead (the metal of Saturn) and pour it into water to see what the
shapes would be. It happened only at new year.
From the small flotsam on the
surface of the sea some good planks would be found. All pieces must be
gathered, though. It should happen at Te Piringa Aniva:
... The cult place of Vinapu
is located between the fifth and sixth segment of the dream voyage of Hau
Maka. These segments, named 'Te Kioe Uri' (inland from Vinapu)
and 'Te Piringa Aniva' (near Hanga Pau Kura) flank Vinapu
from both the west and the east. The decoded meaning of the names 'the dark
rat' (i.e., the island king as the recipient of gifts) and 'the gathering
place of the island population' (for the purpose of presenting the island
king with gifts) links them with the month 'Maro' ...
With enough planks a canoe can be
built, just like a new island. The new canoe, or new island, represents the
coming year, and the king is its medium.
The mother of Cuchulain swallowed
a may-fly (just as if she had been a swallow), which recycled into
Cuchulain, born late in March (i.e. at spring equinox - appearing when sun
returned). Raven swallowed roasted eyes and we know the result must be a
recycled sun.
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