Cox, George - Aryan Mythology Vol 2.pdf

CUPS AND MIRRORS. 121
inexhaustible table of the Ethiopians, in the dish of Rhyd- CHAP,
derch the Scholar, in the basket of Gwyddno, in which food / -
designed for one becomes an ample supply for a hundred;
in the table round which Arthur and his peers hold high
revelry; in the wishing-quern of Frodi; 1 in the lamp of
Allah-ud-deen, which does the bidding of its owner through
the Jin who is its servant ; in the purse of Bedreddin Hassan,
which the fairy always keeps filled in spite of his wasteful-
ness ; in the wonderful well of Apollon Thyrxis in Lykia, 2
which reveals all secrets to those who look into it. This
mysterious mirror is the glass vessel of Agrippa, and of the
cruel stepmother in the German tale of Little Snow-white,
who, like Brynhild, lies in a death-like sleep, guarded under
a case of ice by dwarfs until the piece of poisoned apple
falls from between her lips ; and we see it again in the cups
of Rhea and Demeter, the milkwoman or the gardener's wife
of Hindu folk-lore, and in the modios of Serapis. It becomes
the receptacle of occult knowledge. Before the last desperate
struggle with the Spartans, Aristomenes buried in the most
secret nook of mount Ithome a treasure which, if guarded
carefully, would insure the restoration of Messene. When
the battle of Leuktra justified the hopes of Aristomenes, the
Argive Epiteles saw a vision which bade him recover the old
woman who was well nigh at her last gasp beneath the sods
of Ithome. His search was rewarded by the discovery of a
water-jar, in which was contained a plate of the finest tin.
On this plate were inscribed the mystic rites for the worship
Edenhall. When it was seized by one perity from the wonderful quern, allowof
the family of Musgrave, the fairy ing them no sleep longer than while the
train vanished, crying aloud, cuckoo was silent. At length they
< If this glass do break or fall, SrouI \ d a P* .
8 *^a Sainsfc Fr^' »*
Farewell the luck of Edenhall.
a sea king slew him, carrying off great
booty, and with it the quern and the
The goblet, it is said, narrowly escaped two slaves. These were now made to
being broken, when it fell from the grind white salt in the ships, till they
hands of the Duke of Wharton. Of sank in Pentland Firth. There is ever
course it was caught in its fall by his since a whirlpool where the sea falls
butler, and the old idea of its inherent into the quern's eye. As the quern
fertility remained in the fancy that ' the
lees of wine are still apparent at the
roars, so does the sea roar, and thus it
was that the sea first became salt.'—
bottom.'— Scott,
277.
Border Minstrelsy, ii. Thorpe, Translation of Scemund's Edda,
ii. 150. See also the story 'Why the
1
' When
Frodi, the Norse king, pro- Sea is Salt,' in Dasent's Norse Tales.
claimed his peace, he set two women - Paus. vii. 21, 6.
slaves to grind gold, peace, and pros-