Ignatius Donnelly - Antediluvian world

The American doctors practised phlebotomy. They bled the sick man because they believed the evil spirit which afflicted him would come away with the blood. In Europe phlebotomy only continued to a late period, but the original superstition out of which it arose, in this case as in many others, was forgotten.

There is opportunity here for the philosopher to meditate upon the perversity of human nature and the persistence of hereditary error. The superstition of one age becomes the science of another; men were first bled to withdraw the evil spirit, then to cure the disease; and a practice whose origin is lost in the night of ages is continued into the midst of civilization, and only overthrown after it has sent millions of human beings to untimely graves. Dr. Sangrado could have found the explanation of his profession only among the red men of America.

Folk-lore.—Says Max Mueller: “Not only do we find the same words and the same terminations in Sanscrit and Gothic; not only do we find the same name for Zeus in Sanscrit, Latin, and German; not only is the abstract Dame for God the same in India, Greece, and Italy; but these very stories, these ‘Maehrchen’ which nurses still tell, with almost the same words, in the Thuringian forest and in the Norwegian villages, and to which crowds of children listen under the Pippal-trees of India—these stories, too, belonged to the common heirloom of the Indo-European race, and their origin carries us back to the same distant past, when no Greek had set foot in Europe, no Hindoo had bathed in the sacred waters of the Ganges.”

And we find that an identity of origin can be established between the folk-lore or fairy tales of America and those of the Old World, precisely such as exists between the, legends of Norway and India.

Mr. Tylor tells us the story of the two brothers in Central America who, starting on their dangerous journey to the land of Xibalba, where their father had perished, plant each a cane in the middle of their grandmother’s house, that she may know by its flourishing or withering whether they are alive or dead. Exactly the same conception occurs in Grimm’s “Maehrchen,” when the two gold-children wish to see the world and to leave their father; and when their father is sad, and asks them how he shall bear news of them, they tell him, “We leave you the two golden lilies; from these you can see how we fare. If they are fresh, we are well; if they fade, we are ill; if they fall, we are dead.” Grimm traces the same idea in Hindoo stories. “Now this,” says Max Mueller, “is strange enough, and its occurrence in India, Germany, and Central America is stranger still.”

Compare the following stories, which we print in parallel columns, one from the Ojibbeway Indians, the other from Ireland:

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THE

OJIBBEWAY

STORY

.

THE

IRISH

STORY

.

The birds met together one day

The birds all met together one

to try which could fly the

day, and settled among themselves

highest. Some flew up very

that whichever of them could fly

swift, but soon got tired, and

highest was to be the king of

were passed by others of

all. Well, just as they were on

stronger wing. But the eagle

the hinges of being off, what

went up beyond them all, and

does the little rogue of a wren

was ready to claim the victory,

do but hop up and perch himself

when the gray linnet, a very

unbeknown on the eagle’s tail. So

small bird, flew from the

they flew and flew ever so high,

eagle’s back, where it had

till the eagle was miles above

perched unperceived, and, being

all the rest, and could not fly

fresh and unexhausted,

another stroke, he was so tired.

succeeded in going the highest.

“Then,” says he, “I’m king of the

When the birds came down and

birds.” “You lie!” says the wren,

met in council to award the

darting up a perch and a half

prize it was given to the

above the big fellow. Well, the

eagle, because that bird had

eagle was so mad to think how he

not only gone up nearer to the

was done, that when the wren was

sun than any of the larger

coming down he gave him a stroke

birds, but it had carried the

of his wing, and from that day to

linnet on its back.

this the wren was never able to

fly farther than a hawthorn-bush.

For this reason the eagle’s

feathers became the most

honorable marks of distinction

a warrior could bear.

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Compare the following stories:

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THE

ASIATIC

STORY

.

THE

AMERICAN

STORY

.

In Hindoo mythology Urvasi came

Wampee, a great hunter, once

down from heaven and became the

came to a strange prairie,

wife of the son of Buddha only on

where he heard faint sounds of

condition that two pet rams

music, and looking up saw a

should never be taken from her

speck in the sky, which proved

bedside, and that she should

itself to be a basket

never behold her lord undressed.

containing twelve most

The immortals, however, wishing

beautiful maidens, who, on

Urvasi back in heaven, contrived

reaching the earth, forthwith

to steal the rams; and, as the

set themselves to dance. He

king pursued the robbers with his

tried to catch the youngest,

sword in the dark, the lightning

but in vain; ultimately he

revealed his person, the compact

succeeded by assuming the

was broken, and Urvasi

disguise of a mouse. He was

disappeared. This same story is

very attentive to his new wife,

found in different forms among

who was really a daughter of

many people of Aryan and Turanian

one of the stars, but she

descent, the central idea being

wished to return home, so she

that of a man marrying some one

made a wicker basket secretly,

of an aerial or aquatic origin,

and, by help of a charm she

and living happily with her till

remembered, ascended to her

he breaks the condition on which

father.

her residence with him depends,

stories exactly parallel to that

of Raymond of Toulouse, who

chances in the hunt upon the

beautiful Melusina at a fountain,

and lives with her happily until

he discovers her fish-nature and

she vanishes.

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If the legend of Cadmus recovering Europa, after she has been carried away by the white bull, the spotless cloud, means that “the sun must journey westward until he sees again the beautiful tints which greeted his eyes in the morning,” it is curious to find a story current in North America to the effect that a man once had a beautiful daughter, ‘whom he forbade to leave the lodge lest she should be carried off by the king of the buffaloes; and that as she sat, notwithstanding, outside the house combing her hair, “all of a sudden the king of the buffaloes came dashing on, with his herd of followers, and, taking her between his horns, away be cantered over plains, plunged into a river which bounded his land, and carried her safely to his lodge on the other side,” whence she was finally recovered by her father.

Games.—The same games and sports extended from India to the shores of Lake Superior. The game of the Hindoos, called pachisi, is played upon a cross-shaped board or cloth; it is a combination of checkers and draughts, with the throwing of dice, the dice determining the number of moves; when the Spaniards entered Mexico they found the Aztecs playing a game called patolli, identical with the Hindoo pachisi, on a similar cross-shaped board. The game of ball, which the Indians of America were in the habit of playing at the time of the discovery of the country, from California to the Atlantic, was identical with the European chueca, crosse, or hockey.