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CEEATION. 573
been fairy tales about it, which children told each other in con
fidential chat (oapi^efjievai, airb Spyo? rjS* airb irerprj^, II. 22, 126. 1
a\\a Tit] /AOL ravra irepl Spvv rj irepl irerpTjv ; Hes. Theog. 35).
In marked unison with the myth of Askr is the statement of
Hesiod, that Zeus formed the third or brazen race out of ash-
trees (etc fjbe\iav, Op. 147) ; and if the allusion be to the stout
ashen shafts of the heroes, why, Isco or Askr may
have bran
dished them too. One remembers too those wood- wives and fays,
who, like the Greek meliads and dryads, had their sole power of
living bound up with some particular oak or ash, and, unlike the
tree-born man, had never got wholly detached from the material
of their origin. Then, a creation out of stones is recorded in
the story of Deucalion, whom after the deluge Hermes bade
throw stones behind his back : those that he threw,
all turned
into men, and those that his wife Pyrrha threw, into women. As
in the Edda, after the great flood comes a new creation ; only in
this case the rescued people are themselves the actors. 2 Even
the Jews appear to have known of a mythical creation out of
stones, for we read in Matth. 3, 9 : on, Svvarai, 6 0eo9 e/c TWV
\i6av TOVTWV eyelpai re/cva rc5 Aftpadfj, (see Suppl.).
The creation of dwarfs is described ambiguously in the Edda :
according to one story they bred as worms in the proto-giant s
flesh, and were then endowed by the gods with understanding
and human shape ; but by the older account they were created
out of the flesh and bones of another giant Brimir. All this has
to do with the black elves alone, and must not be extended to
the light ones, about whose origin we are left in the dark. And
other mythologies are equally silent.
It. is important and interesting to get a clear view of the grada
tion and sequence of the several creations. That in the Edda
giants come first, gods next, and then, after an intervening deluge,
garly spoken of as one whose father got drowned on the apple (or nut) tree. Also,
_
not to have sprung from an oak-stem, Etner s Unw. doct. 585. Min gof 1st au
niid abbem nossbom aba choh, and my dad didn t come off the nut-tree, Tobler
337 b who , wrongly refers it to the Christmas-tree.
1 Homer s phrase is : chat from oak or rock, as youth and maiden do.
TRANS.
"
As Deucalion and Pyrrha create the race of men, so (ace. to a myth in the
Eeinhartssage, whose source I never could discover) do Adam and Eve create that
of beasts by smiting the sea with rods. Only, Adam makes the good beasts, Eve
the bad so in Parsee ;
legend Ormuzd and Ahriman hold a creating match.