knowledge. Rue was called 'herb of grace' in English, holy water was sprinkled with it, and the name is a translation of Homer's φάρμακον ἐσθλόν. Perhaps rue was used in sprinkling, because in pre-Christian times rue had, by itself, power against sprites and powers of evil. Our ancestors may have thought it as well to combine the old charm of rue and the new Christian potency of holy water. Thus there would be a distinct analogy between Homeric moly and English 'herb of grace.'

'Euphrasy and rue' were employed to purge and purify mortal eyes. Pliny is very learned about the magical virtues of rue. Just as the stolen potato is sovereign for rheumatism, so 'rue stolen thriveth the best.' The Samoans think that their most valued vegetables were stolen from heaven by a Samoan visitor. It is remarkable that rue, according to Pliny, is killed by the touch of a woman in the same way as, according to Josephus, the mandrake is tamed.2 These passages prove that the classical peoples had the same extraordinary superstitions about women as the Bushmen and Red Indians. Indeed Pliny describes a magical manner of defending the crops from blight, by aid of women, which is actually practised in America by the Red Men.1

Here, then, are proofs enough that rue was magical outside of Cappadocia. But this is not an argument

1 Turner's Samoa.

2 Josephus, loc. cit. For this, and many other references, I am indebted to Schwartz's Prähistorisch-anthropologische Studien. In most magic herbs the learned author recognises thunder and lightning—a theory no less plausible than Mr. Brown's.

6

on Mr. Brown's lines. The Cappadocians called rue moly'; what language, he asks, was spoken by the Cappadocians? Prof. Sayce (who knows so many tongues) says that 'we know next to nothing of the language of the Cappadocians, or of the Moschi who lived in the same locality.' But where Prof. Sayce is, the Hittites, if we may say so respectfully, are not very far off. In this case he thinks the Moschi (though he admits we know next to nothing about it) 'seem to have spoken a language allied to that of the Cappadocians and Hittites.' That is to say, it is not impossible that the language of the Moschi, about which next to nothing is known, may have been allied to that of the Cappadocians, about which we know next to nothing. All that we do know in this case is, that four hundred years after Christ the dwellers in Cappadocia employed a word 'moly,' which had been Greek for at least twelve hundred years. But Mr. Brown goes on to quote that one of the languages of which we know next to nothing, Hittite, was probably allied to ProtoArmenian, and perhaps Lykian, and was above all not Semitic.' In any case 'the cuneiform mode of writing was used in Cappadocia at an early period.' As even Professor Sayce declines to give more than a tentative reading of a Cappadocian cuneiform inscription, it seems highly rash to seek in this direction for an interpretation of a Homeric word 'moly,' used in Cappadocia very many centuries after the tablets were scratched. But, on the evidence of the Babylonian character of the cuneiform writing on Cappadocian tablets, Mr. Brown establishes a con

nection between the people of Accadia (who probably introduced the cuneiform style) and the people of Cappadocia. The connection amounts to this. Twelve hundred years after Homer, the inhabitants of Cappadocia are said to have called rue 'moly.' At some unknown period, the Accadians appear to have influenced the art of writing in Cappadocia. Apparently Mr. Brown thinks it not too rash to infer that the Cappadocian use of the word 'moly' is not derived from the Greeks, but from the Accadians. Now in Accadian, according to Mr. Brown, mul means 'star.' 'Hence ulu or mulu μώλυ, the mysterious Homerik counter-charm to the charms of Kirkê' (p. 60). Mr. Brown's theory, therefore, is that moly originally meant star.' 'star.' Circe is the moon, Odysseus is the sun, and 'what watches over the solar hero at night when exposed to the hostile lunar power, but the stars?' especially the dog-star.

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The truth is, that Homer's moly, whatever plant he meant by the name, is only one of the magical herbs in which most peoples believe or have believed. Like the Scottish rowan, or like St. John's wort, it is potent against evil influences. People have their own simple reasons for believing in these plants, and have not needed to bring down their humble, early botany from the clouds and stars. We have to imagine, on the other hand (if we follow Mr. Brown), that in some unknown past the Cappadocians turned the Accadian word for a star into a local name of a plant, that this word reached Homer, that the supposed old Accadian myth of the star which watches over the solar hero retained its vitality in Greek, and leaving

the star clung to the herb, that Homer used an Akkado-Kappadokian' myth, and that, many ages after, the Accadian star-name in its perverted sense of 'rue' survived in Cappadocia. This structure of argument is based on tablets which even Prof. Sayce cannot read, and on possibilities about the alliances of tongues concerning which we know next to nothing.' A method which leaves on one side the common, natural, widely-diffused beliefs about the magic virtue of herbs (beliefs which we have seen at work in Kensington and in Central Africa), to hunt for moly among stars and undeciphered Kappadokian inscriptions, seems a dubious method. We have examined it at full length because it is a specimen of an erudite, but, as we think, a mistaken way in folklore. M. Halévy's warnings against the shifting mythical theories based on sciences so new as the lore of Assyria and Akkadia' are by no means superfluous. 'Akkadian' is rapidly become as ready a key to all locks as Aryan' was a few years ago.1

1 Mr. Brown (Academy, Jan. 3, 1885) says he freely acknowledges that his suggestion might be quite incorrect '—which seems possible— and that if Odysseus and Kirkê were sun and moon here is a good starting-point for the theory that the moly was stellar.' This reminds one of the preacher who demonstrated the existence of the Trinity thus: 'For is there not, my brethren, one sun, and one moon,-and one multitude of stars?'

'KALEVALA'; OR, THE FINNISH
NATIONAL EPIC.

IT is difficult to account for the fact that the scientific curiosity which is just now so busy in examining all the monuments of the primitive condition of our race, should, in England at least, have almost totally neglected to popularise the 'Kalevala,' or national poem of the Finns. Besides its fresh and simple beauty of style, its worth as a storehouse of every kind of primitive folklore, being as it is the production of an Urvolk, a nation that has undergone no violent revolution in language or institutions-the 'Kalevala ' has the peculiar interest of occupying a position between the two kinds of primitive poetry, the ballad and the epic. So much difficulty has been introduced into the study of the first developments of song, by confusing these distinct sorts of composition under the name of popular poetry, that it may be well, in writing of a poem which occupies a middle place, between epic and ballad, to define what we mean by each.

The author of our old English Art of Poesie begins his work with a statement which may serve as a text: 'Poesie,' says Puttenham, writing in 1589, 'is more ancient than the artificiall of the Greeks and