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DELUGE. 581
the sole survivor of the sunken city. 1 Conf. the story of Dold at
the end of Ch. XXXII. Another and older narrative, found even
in the British Triads, comes much nearer to those given above :
When the lake of Llion overflowed and submerged all Britain,
the people were all drowned save Dwyvan and Dwyvach, who
escaped in a naked (sailless) ship, and afterwards repeopled the
land. This ship is also named that of Nevydd nav neivion, and
had on board a male and female of every creature ; again it is
told, that the oxen of Hu Gadarn dragged the avanc (beaver)
ashore out of the Llion lake, and it has never broken out since. 3
Of still narrower limits are our German tales, as that of the
dwarf seeking a lodging at Ralligen on L. Thun (no. 45), which
is very like the Philemon-myth; of Arendsee (no. Ill), where
again only a husband and wife are saved; of Seeburg (no. 131) ;
and Frauensee (no. 239). A Danish folktale is given by Thiele
1, 227. Fresh and graceful touches abound in the Servian lay of
the three angels sent by God to the sinful world, and the origin
of the Plattensee or Balatino yezero, Yuk 4, 8-13 (2nd ed. 1,
no. 207). 3
There is above all a dash of German heathenism about the
lakes and pools said to have been formed by the streaming blood
of giants (Deut. sag. no. 325), as the destructive Deluge arose
from YrmYs bipod.
It appears to me impossible to refer the whole mass of these
tales about the great Flood and the Creation of the human species
to the Mosaic record, as if they were mere perversions and dis
tortions of it the ; additions, omissions and discrepancies peculiar
to almost every one of them are sufficient to forbid that. And
I have not by a long way exhausted this cycle of legends (see
Suppl.) : in islands of the Eastern Archipelago, in Tonga and
New Zealand, among Mexicans and Caribs there start up ac
counts, astonishingly similar and yet different, of creation and
the first human pair, of a flood and deliverance, and the murder
of a brother. 4
1 Edw. Davies s Brit. Mythol. 146-7.
2
Ibid. 95. 129. Villemarque, Contes bretons 2, 294. Mabinogion 2, 341. 381.
3
Sole example of a Deluge- story among Slavs, by whom cosmogonic ideas in
seem not to have been handed down at all.
4 W. von Humboldt s Kawisprache 1, 240. 3, 449. Majer s Mythol. taschenb.
general
2, 5. 131.