Books: Ragnarok: The Age of Fire and Gravel

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"Gods and demons are watching the contest from the sky, and flowers
fall down in showers on the victorious hero."

The body of Ravana is _consumed by fire_. Sita, the furrowed earth,
goes through _the ordeal of fire_, and comes out of it purified and
redeemed from all taint of the monster Ravana; and Rama, the sun, and
Sita, the earth, are separated _for fourteen years_; Sita _is hid in
the dark jungle_, and then they are married again, and live happily
together ever after.

Here we have the battle in the air between the sun and the demon: the
earth is taken possession of by the demon; the demon is finally
consumed by fire, and perishes; the earth goes through an ordeal of
fire, a conflagration; and for fourteen years the earth and sun do
not see each other; the earth is hid in a dark jungle; but

{p. 173}

eventually the sun returns, and the loving couple are again married,
and live happily for ever after.

The Phoibos Apollo of the Greek legends was, Byron tells us--

The lord of the unerring bow,
The god of life and poetry and light,
The sun in human limbs arrayed, and brow
All radiant from his triumph in the fight.
The shaft had just been shot, the arrow bright
With an immortal's vengeance; in his eye
And nostril beautiful disdain, and might,
And majesty flash their full lightnings by,
Developing in that one glance the deity."

This fight, so magnificently described, was the sun-god's battle with
Python, the destroyer, the serpent, the dragon, the Comet. What was
Python doing? He was "stealing the springs and fountains." That is to
say, the great heat was drying up the water-courses of the earth.

"The arrow bright with an immortal's vengeance," was the shaft with
which Apollo broke the fiend to pieces and tumbled him down to the
earth, and saved the springs and the clouds and the perishing ocean.

When we turn to America, the legends tell us of the same great battle
between good and evil, between light and darkness.

Manibozho, or the Great Hare Nana, is, in the Algonquin legends, the
White One, the light, the sun. "His foe was the glittering prince of
serpents"-the Comet.[1]

Among the Iroquois, according to the Jesuit missionary, Father
Brebeuf, who resided among the Hurons in 1626, there was a legend of
two brothers, Ioskeba and Tawiscara, which mean, in the Oneida
dialect, the _White One_, the light, the sun, and the _Dark One_, the
night.

[1. Brinton's "Myths," p. 182.]

{p. 174}

They were twins, born of a virgin mother, who died in giving them
life. Their grandmother was the moon (the _water_ deity), called
_At-aeusic_, a word which signifies "she bathes herself," derived
from the word for _water_.

"The brothers quarreled, and finally came to blows, the former using
the horns of a stag, the latter the wild rose. He of the weaker
weapon was very naturally discomfited and sorely wounded. Fleeing for
life, the blood gushed from him at every step, and as it fell _turned
into flint-stones_. The victor returned to his grandmother in the
_far east_, and established his lodge on _the borders of the great
ocean_, whence the sun comes. In time he became _the father of
mankind_, and special guardian of the Iroquois. The earth was at
first arid and sterile, but he destroyed the gigantic frog which had
swallowed all the waters, and guided the torrents into smooth streams
and lakes. The woods he stocked with game; and, having learned from
the great tortoise who supports the world how to make fire, taught
his children, the Indians, this indispensable art. . . . Sometimes
they spoke of him as the sun, but this is only figuratively."[1]

Here we have the light and darkness, the sun and the night, battling
with each other; the sun fights with a younger brother, another
luminary, the comet; the comet is broken up; it flies for life, the
red blood (the red clay) streaming from it, and _flint-stones_
appearing on the earth wherever the blood (the clay) falls. The
victorious sun re-establishes himself in the east. And then the myth
of the sun merges into the legends concerning a great people, who
were the fathers of mankind who dwelt "in the east," on the borders
of the great eastern ocean, the Atlantic. "The earth was at first
arid and sterile," covered with _débris_ and stones; but the
returning sun, the White One, destroys the gigantic frog, emblem of
cold and water, the great snows and ice-deposits; this

[1. Brinton's "Myths of the New World," p. 184.]

{p. 175}

frog had "swallowed all the waters," that is to say, the falling
rains had been congealed in these great snow-banks and glaciers; the
sun melts them, and kills the frog; the waters pour forth in deluging
floods; Manibozho "guides the torrents into smooth streams and
lakes"; the woods return, and become once more full of animal life.
Then the myth again mixes up the sun and the sun-land in the east.
From this sun-land, represented as "a tortoise," always the emblem of
an island, the Iroquois derive the knowledge of "how to make fire."

This coming of the monster, his attack upon and conquest of the sun,
his apparent swallowing of that orb, are all found represented on
both sides of the Atlantic, on the walls of temples and in great
earth-mounds, in the image of a gigantic serpent holding a globe in
its mouth.

This long-trailing object in the skies was probably the origin of
that primeval serpent-worship found all over the world. And hence the
association of the serpent in so many religions with the evil-one. In
itself, the serpent should no more represent moral wrong than the
lizard, the crocodile, or the frog; but the hereditary abhorrence
with which he is regarded by mankind extends to no other created
thing. He is the image of the great destroyer, the wronger, the enemy.

Let us turn to another legend.

An ancient authority[1] gives the following legend of the Tupi
Indians of Brazil:

"Monau, without beginning or end, author of all that is, seeing the
ingratitude of men, and their contempt for him who had made them thus
joyous, withdrew from them, and sent upon them _tata_, the divine
_fire, which burned all that was on the surface of the earth_. He

[1. "Une Fête Brésilienne célébré à Rouen en 1550," par M. Ferdinand
Denis, p. 82.]

{p. 176}

swept about the fire in such a way that _in places he raised
mountains, and in others dug valleys_. Of all men one alone, Irin
Magé, was saved, whom Monau carried into the heaven. He, seeing all
things destroyed, spoke thus to Monau: 'Wilt thou also destroy the
heavens and their garniture? Alas! henceforth where will be our home?
Why should I live, since there is none other of my kind? Then Monau
was so filled with pity that he _poured a deluging rain on the earth,
which quenched the fire_, and flowed on all sides, forming the ocean,
which we call the _parana_, the great waters."[1]

The prayer of Irin Magé, when he calls on God to save the garniture
of the heavens, reminds one vividly of the prayer of the Earth in
Ovid.

It might be inferred that heaven meant in the Tupi legend the
heavenly land, not the skies; this is rendered the more probable
because we find Irin asking where should he dwell if heaven is
destroyed. This could scarcely allude to a spiritual heaven.

And here I would note a singular coincidence: The fire that fell from
heaven was the divine _tata_. In Egypt the Dame of deity was "ta-ta,"
or "pta-pta," which signified father. This became in the Hebrew
"ya-ya," from which we derive the root of Jah, Jehovah. And this word
is found in many languages in Europe and America, and even in our
own, as, "da-da," "daddy," father. The Tupi "_tata_" was fire from
the supreme father.

Who can doubt the oneness of the human race, when millions of threads
of tradition and language thus cross each other through it in all
directions, like the web of a mighty fabric?

We cross from one continent to another, from the torrid part of South
America to the frozen regions of North America, and the same legend
meets us.

[1. Brinton's "Myths of the New World," p. 227.]

{p. 177}

The Tacullies of British Columbia believe that the earth was formed
by a musk-rat, who, diving into the universal sea, brought up the
land in his mouth and spit it out, until he had formed "quite an
island, and, by degrees, the whole earth":

"In some unexplained way, this earth became afterward peopled in
every part, and it remained, _until a fierce fire, of several days'
duration, swept over it, destroying all life_, with two exceptions;
one man and one woman _hid themselves in a deep cave in the heart of
a mountain_, and from these two has the world since been
repeopled."[1]

Brief as is this narrative, it preserves the natural sequence of
events: First, the world is made; then it becomes peopled in every
part; then a fierce fire sweeps over it for several days, consuming
all life, except two persons, who save themselves by hiding in a deep
cave; and from these the world is repeopled. How wonderfully does all
this resemble the Scandinavian story!

It has oftentimes been urged, by the skeptical, when legends of
Noah's flood were found among rude races, that they had been derived
from Christian missionaries. But these myths can not be accounted for
in this way; for the missionaries did not teach that the world was
once destroyed by fire, and that a remnant of mankind escaped by
taking refuge in a cave; although, as we shall see, such a legend
really appears in several places hidden in the leaves of the Bible
itself.

We leave the remote north and pass down the Pacific coast until we
encounter the Ute Indians of California and Utah. This is their
legend:

"The Ute philosopher declares the sun to be a living personage, and
explains his passage across the heavens along an appointed way by
giving an account of a fierce

[1. Bancroft's "Native Races," vol. iii, p. 98]

{p. 178}

personal conflict between Ta-vi, the sun-god, and Ta-wats, one of the
supreme gods of his mythology.

"In that, long ago, the time to which all mythology refers, the sun
roamed the earth at will. _When he came too near with his fierce heat
the people were scorched, and when he hid away in his cave for a long
time, too idle to come forth, the night was long and the earth cold_.
Once upon a time Ta-wats, the hare-god, was sitting with his family
by the camp-fire in the solemn woods, anxiously waiting for the
return of Ta-vi, the wayward sun-god. Wearied with long watching, the
hare-god fell asleep, and the sun-god came so near that he scorched
the naked shoulder of Ta-wats. Foreseeing the vengeance which would
be thus provoked, he fled back to his cave beneath the earth. Ta-wats
awoke in great anger, and speedily determined to go and fight the
sun-god. After a long journey of many adventures the hare-god came to
the brink of the earth, and there watched long and patiently, till at
last the sun-god coming out he shot an arrow at his face, but the
fierce heat consumed the arrow ere it had finished its intended
course; then another arrow was sped, but that also was consumed; and
another, and still another, till only one remained in his quiver, but
this was the magical arrow that had never failed its mark. Ta-wats,
holding it in his hand, lifted the barb to his eye and baptized it in
a divine tear; then the arrow was sped and _struck the sun-god full
in the face, and the sun was shivered into a thousand fragments,
which fell to the earth, causing a general conflagration_. Then
Ta-wats, the hare-god, fled before the destruction he had wrought,
and as he fled the burning earth consumed his feet, consumed his
legs, consumed his body, consumed his bands and his arms--all were
consumed but the head alone, which bowled across valleys and over
mountains, fleeing destruction from the burning earth, until at last,
swollen with heat, the eyes of the god burst and the tears _gushed
forth in a flood which spread over the earth and extinguished the
fire_. The sun-god was now conquered, and he appeared before a
council of the gods to await sentence. In that long council were
established the days and the nights, the seasons and the years, with
the length

{p. 179}

thereof, and the sun was condemned to travel across the firmament by
the same trail day after day till the end of time."[1]

Here we have the succession of arrows, or comets, found in the legend
of the Aztecs, and here as before it is the last arrow that destroys
the sun. And here, again, we have the conflagration, the fragments of
something falling on the earth, the long absence of the sun, the
great rains and the cold.

Let us shift the scene again.

In Peru--that ancient land of mysterious civilization, that brother
of Egypt and Babylon, looking out through the twilight of time upon
the silent waters of the Pacific, waiting in its isolation for the
world once more to come to it-in this strange land we find the
following legend:

"_Ere sun and moon was made_, Viracocha, the White One, rose from the
bosom of Lake Titicaca, and presided over the erection of those
wondrous cities whose ruins still dot its islands and western shores,
and whose history is totally lost in the night of time."[2]

He constructed the sun and moon and created the inhabitants of the
earth. These latter attacked him with murderous intent (the comet
assailed the sun?); but "scorning such unequal contest he manifested
his power by hurling the lightning on the hill-sides and _consuming
the forests_," whereupon the creatures he had created humbled
themselves before him. One of Viracocha names was _At-achuchu_. He
civilized the Peruvians, taught them arts and agriculture and
religion; they called him "The teacher of all things." _He came from
the east_ and disappeared in the Western Ocean. Four civilizers
followed him who _emerged from the cave_

[1. "Popular Science Monthly," October, 1879, p, 799.

2. Brinton's; "Myths of the New World," p. 192.]

{p. 180}

Pacarin Tampu, the House of Birth.[1] These four brothers were also
called Viracochas, _white men_.

Here we have the White One coming from the east, hurling his
lightning upon the earth and causing a conflagration; and afterward
civilized men emerged from a cave. They were white men; and it is to
these cave-born men that Peru owed its first civilization.

Here is another and a more amplified version of the Peruvian legend:

The Peruvians believed in a god called At-achuchu, already referred
to, the creator of heaven and earth, and the maker of all things.
From him came the first man, Guamansuri.

This first mortal is mixed up with events that seem to refer to the
Age of Fire.

He descended to the earth, and "there seduced the sister of certain
Guachemines, rayless ones, or Darklings"; that is to say, certain
Powers of Darkness, "who then possessed it. For this crime they
destroyed him." That is to say, the Powers of Darkness destroyed the
light. But not for ever.

"Their sister proved pregnant, and died in her labor, giving birth to
two eggs," the sun and moon. "From these emerged the two brothers,
Apocatequil and Piguerao."

Then followed the same great battle, to which we have so many
references in the legends, and which always ends, as in the case of
Cain and Abel, in one brother slaughtering the other. In this case,
Apocatequil "was the more powerful. By touching the corpse of his
mother (the sun?) he brought her to life, he drove off and slew the
Guachemines (the Powers of Darkness), and, directed by

[1. Brinton's "Myths of the New World," p. 193.]

{p. 181}

_At-achuchu_, released the race of Indians from the soil by turning
it up with a golden spade."

That is to say, he dug them out from the cave in which they were
buried.

"For this reason they adored him as their maker. He it was, they
thought, who produced the thunder and the lightning by _hurling
stones with his sling;_ and the thunder-bolts that fall, said they,
are his children. Few villages were willing to be without one or more
of these. They were in appearance _small, round, smooth stones_, but
had the admirable properties of securing fertility to the fields,
protecting from lightning," etc.[1]

I shift the scene again; or, rather, group together the legends of
three different localities. I quote:

"The Takahlis" (the Tacullies already referred to) "of the North
Pacific coast, the Yurucares of the Bolivian Cordilleras, and the
Mbocobi of Paraguay, each and all attribute the destruction of the
world to a _general conflagration_, which swept over the earth,
consuming everything living _except a few who took refuge in a deep
cave_."[2]

The Botocudos of Brazil believed that the world was once destroyed by
the moon falling upon it.

Let us shift the scene again northward:

There was once, according to the Ojibway legends, a boy; the sun
burned and spoiled his bird-skin coat; and he swore that he would
have vengeance. He persuaded his sister to make him a noose of her
own hair. He fixed it just where the sun would strike the land as it
rose above the earth's disk; and, sure enough, he caught the sun, and
held it fast, so that it did not rise.

"The animals who ruled the earth were immediately put into _great
commotion. They had no light._ They called a council to debate upon
the matter, and to appoint

[1. Brinton's "Myths of the New World," p. 165.

2. Ibid., p. 217.]

{p. 182}

some one to go and cut the cord, for this was a very hazardous
enterprise, as the rays of the sun would _burn up whoever came so
near_. At last the dormouse undertook it, for at this time the
dormouse was the largest animal in the world" (the mastodon?); "when
it stood up it looked like a mountain. When it got to the place where
the sun was snared, its back began to _smoke and burn with the
intensity of the heat_, and the top of its carcass was reduced to
_enormous heaps of ashes_. It succeeded, however, in cutting the cord
with its teeth and freeing the sun, but it was _reduced to very small
size_, and has remained so ever since."

This seems to be a reminiscence of the destruction of the great
mammalia.[1] The "enormous heaps of ashes" may represent the vast
deposits of clay-dust.

Among the Wyandots a story was told, in the seventeenth century, of a
boy whose father was killed and eaten by a bear, and his mother by
the Great Hare. He was small, but of prodigious strength. He climbed
a tree, like Jack of the Bean-Stalk, until he reached heaven.

"He set his snares for game, but when he got up at night to look at
them he found _everything on fire_. His sister told him he had caught
the sun unawares, and when the boy, Chakabech, went to see, so it
was. But he dared not go near enough to let him out. But by chance he
found a little mouse, and blew upon her until she grew so big" (again
the mastodon) "that she could set the sun free, and he went on his
way. But while he was held in the snare, _day failed down here on
earth_."

It was the age of darkness[2]

The Dog-Rib Indians, far in the northwest of America, near the
Esquimaux, have a similar story: Chakabech becomes Chapewee. He too
climbs a tree, but it is in pursuit

[1. Tylor's "Early History of Mankind," p. 848.

2. Le Jeune (1637), in "Rélations des Jesuits dans la Nouvelle
France," vol. i, p. 54.]

{p. 183}

of a squirrel, until he reaches heaven. He set a snare made of his
sister's hair and caught the sun. "_The sky was instantly darkened_.
Chapewee's family said to him, 'You must have done something wrong
when you were aloft, _for we no longer enjoy the light of day_.' 'I
have,' replied he, 'but it was unintentionally.' Chapewee sent a
number of animals to cut the snare, but the intense _heat reduced
them all to ashes_." At last the ground-mole working in the earth cut
the snare but lost its sight, "and its nose and teeth have ever since
been brown as if burnt."[1]

The natives of Siberia represented the mastodon as a great mole
burrowing in the earth and casting up ridges of earth--the sight of
the sun killed him.

These sun-catching legends date back to a time when the races of the
earth had not yet separated. Hence we find the same story, in almost
the same words, in Polynesia and America.

Maui is the Polynesian god of the ancient days. He concluded, as did
Ta-wats, that the days were too short. He wanted the sun to slow-up,
but it would not. So he proceeded to catch it in a noose like the
Ojibway boy and the Wyandot youth. The manufacture of the noose, we
are told, led to the discovery of the art of rope-making. He took his
brothers with him; he armed himself, like Samson, with a jaw-bone,
but instead of the jaw-bone of an ass, he, with much better taste,
selected the jawbone of his mistress. She may have been a lady of
fine conversational powers. They traveled far, like Ta-wats, even to
the very edge of the place where the sun rises. There he set his
noose. The sun came and put his head and fore-paws into it; then the
brothers pulled the ropes

[1. Richardson's "Narrative of Franklin's Second Expedition," p. 291.]

{p. 184}

tight and Maui gave him a great whipping with the jawbone; he
screamed and roared; they held him there for a long time, (the Age of
Darkness,) and at last they let him go; and weak from his wounds,
(obscured by clouds,) he crawls slowly along his path. Here the jaw
of the wolf Fenris, which reached from earth to heaven, in the
Scandinavian legends, becomes a veritable jaw-bone which beats and
ruins the sun.

It is a curious fact that the sun in this Polynesian legend is _Ra_,
precisely the same as the name of the god of the sun in Egypt, while
in Hindostan the sun-god is Ra-ma.

In another Polynesian legend we read of a character who was satisfied
with nothing, "even pudding would not content him," and this
unconscionable fellow worried his family out of all heart with his
new ways and ideas. He represents a progressive, inventive race. He
was building a great house, but the days were too short; so, like
Maui, he determined to catch the sun in nets and ropes; but the sun
went on. At last he succeeded; he caught him. The good man then had
time to finish his house, but the sun cried and cried "until the
island of Savai was nearly drowned."[1]

And these myths of the sun being tied by a cord are, strange to say,
found even in Europe. The legends tell us:

"In North Germany the townsmen of Bösum sit up in their church-tower
and hold the sun by a cable all day long; taking care of it at night,
and letting it up again in the morning. In 'Reynard the Fox,' the day
is bound with a rope, and its bonds only allow it to come slowly on.
The Peruvian Inca said the sun is like a tied beast, who goes ever
round and round, in the same track."[2]

That is to say, they recognized that he is not a god, but the servant
of God.

[1. Tyler's "Early Mankind," p. 347.

2. Ibid., p. 352.]

{p. 185}

Verily the bands that knit the races of the earth together are
wonderful indeed, and they radiate, as I shall try to show, from one
spot of the earth's surface, alike to Polynesia, Europe, and America.

Let us change the scene again to the neighborhood of the Aztecs:

We are told of two youths, the ancestors of the Miztec chiefs, who
separated, each going his own way to conquer lands for himself:

"The braver of the two, coming to the vicinity of Tilantongo, armed
with buckler and bow, was _much vexed and oppressed by the ardent
rays of the sun_, which he took to be the lord of that district,
striving to prevent his entrance therein. Then the young man strung
his bow, and advanced his buckler before him, and drew shafts from
his quiver. He shot these against the great light even till the going
down of the same; then he took possession of all that land, seeing
that he had _grievously wounded the sun_ and forced him to hide
behind the mountains. Upon this story is founded the lordship of all
the caciques of Mizteca, and upon their descent from this mighty
archer, their ancestor. Even to this day, the chiefs of the Miztecs
blazon as their arms a plumed chief with bow and arrows and shield,
and the sun in front of him setting behind gray clouds."[1]

Are these two young men, one of whom attacks and injures the sun, the
two wolves of the Gothic legends, the two comets, who devoured the
sun and moon? And did the Miztec barbarians, in their vanity, claim
descent from these monstrous creatures of the sky? Why not, when the
historical heroes of antiquity traced their pedigree back to the
gods; and the rulers of Peru, Egypt, and China pretended to be the
lineal offspring of the sun? And there are not wanting those, even in
Europe, who

[1. Bancroft's "Native Races," vol. iii, p. 73.]

{p. 186}

yet believe that the blood-royal differs in some of its constituents
from the blood of the common people

"What, will the aspiring blood of Lancaster
Sink in the ground? "

In the Aztec legends there were four ages, or suns, as they were
termed. The first terminated, according to Gama, in a destruction of
the people of the world by hunger; the second ended in a destruction
by winds; in the third, _the human race was swept away by fire_, and
the fourth destruction was by water. And in the Hindoo legends we
find the same series of great cycles, or ages: one of the Shastas
teaches that the human race has been destroyed four times--first by
water, secondly by winds, thirdly the earth swallowed them, and
_lastly fire consumed them_.[1]

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