Cox, George - Aryan Mythology Vol 2.pdf

MEDOUSA. 351
had once been beautiful, but had roused the wrath of Athene"
as becoming the mother of glorious children, or as having
dared to set her own beauty in comparison with the love-
liness of the Dawn herself. The rivalry was indeed vain.
The serene st night cannot vie with the exquisite hues of the
morning ; and henceforth, to requite her daring, the raven
locks of Medousa must be turned into hissing snakes, the
deadly glance of her joyless face should freeze all who gazed
on it into stone, and even Perseus could bring her long
agony to an end only by fixing his eye on the burnished
mirror while the sword of Phoibos fell on the neck of the
sleeping Gorgon.
The notion of these serpent enemies of the bright gods The Night
runs through the mythology of all the Aryan nations. ^'-'J^
Sometimes they have three heads, sometimes seven or even
more : but we cannot forget that the words Ahi, Echidna,
anguis, expressed an idea which had nothing in common
with the thought denoted by the dragon. The latter was
strictly the keen-sighted being, and as such belonged to the
heavenly hierarchy. The dragons who bear the chariot of
Medeia through the air, or who impart to the infant Iamos
the gift of prophecy, are connected only by the accident of
a name with the snakes whom Herakles strangles in his
cradle, whom Phoibos slays at Delphoi, or Indra smites in
the land of the Panis. 1 But when by the weakening of
memory the same word was used to denote the malignant
serpent and the beneficent dragon, the attributes of the one
became in some myths more or less blended with those of
the other. In the popular Hindu story of Yikram Maha-
rajah, the cobra who curls himself up in his throat and will
not be dislodged is clearly the snake of winter, who tab 3
away the gladness and joy of summer; for this disaster is
followed by the rajah's exile, and his people mourn his
absence as Demeter grieves while her child Persephone is
sojourning in Hades. It is in fact the story of Sigurd and
1 In Teutonic folk-lore the night or with her scarlet robe of twilight. In
darkness is commonly the ravening wolf, one version of this story Little Red I
the Fenris of the Edda. This is the escapes his malice, afl Mi mndn r
evil beast who swallows up Little Red again from Hades.
Cap or Red Riding Hood, the evening,