Zeus : a study in ancient religion - Warburg Institute

672 The double axes of Tenedos
A childless woman prayed for a child. God sent her a boy with half a head,
half a nose, half a mouth, half a body, one hand, and one foot. He asked his
mother for an axe and a mule, went off to the forest, and cut wood. One day,
when riding to work, he caught sight of the king's daughte'r, who laughed at him
so that from chagrin he dropped first his axe and then his cord, and did not even
get down to pick them up. Staring disconsolately at a pool, he espied a fish,
netted it in his rough cloak, and learnt from it a spell to obtain all his desires.
He had but to say :
' At the first word of God, and at the second of the Fish,' this
or that will take place. On his way home he saw the princess again and tried the
spell upon her, bidding her to become pregnant. In due time she bore an ap-
parently fatherless child. The king gave the child an apple, and told him to
hand it to his father. The child handed the apple to the Half-Man. The king in
anger had an iron vessel made, packed into it the princess, the Half-Man, and
the child, and, giving them some figs for the child, flung the whole lot into the
sea. Thereupon the Half-Man, tasting fig after fig, explained the whole situation
to the princess, and at her suggestion, pronouncing his spell, brought the iron
vessel safe ashore, provided a shelter from the rain, and built a magic castle with
speaking stones, beams, and household utensils. It chanced that the king, when
hunting, came that way and was entertained by the princess. The Half-Man,
again eating a fig and using his spell, produced a splendid banquet with musicians
and dancers complete. The king was astounded. But the princess, as a last
experiment, bade the Half-Man by dint of fig and spell hide a spoon in the
king's boot. She then pretended to miss something. The speaking spoon cried
out and revealed its whereabouts. The king protested that he was being unjustly
treated. The princess retorted that the wrong he suffered was nothing to the
wrong he had committed, and told him all. So the king in amazement took his
daughter back to the palace and married her to one of his lords. The Half-Man
he made chief of his body-guard, and gave him his prettiest slave-girl to wife.
It is, no doubt, tempting to view the Half-Man with his axe as the
complement oi Hemithea, the ' Half- Goddess,' and to assume some
connexion with the coin-type of Tenedos. Nevertheless such an
assumption would be extremely rash\ Other versions show that the
Half-Man as such is not a constant feature of the folk-tale. The
inference that I wish to draw is rather that the myth of Tennes and
the earth-goddess Hemithea had as early as the time of Konon
the sea—a close parallel to Danae (W. Radloff Proben der Volkslitterattir der tiirkischen
Stiimme StuiSibiriens St. Petersburg 1870 iii. 82 f. cited by Frazer Golden Boiigli^
Balder the Beautiful i. 74 n. 2).
In another, from Ulaghdtsh, a village of Kappadokia, the boy destined to be king is
placed in a chest by his father and mother, and thrown into the sea (R. M. Dawkins
Modern Greek in Asia Minor Cambridge 1916 p. 358 f. text and translation).
See also die Brfider Grimm Kinder und Haus?ndrc/ien Gottingen 1850 i. 175 ff. no. 29,
G. O. H. Cavallius—G. Stephens Schwedische Volkssagen tend Mdrchen Wien 1848 p. 95,
A. Chodsko Fairy Tales of the Slav Feasants and Herdsmen trans. E. J. Harding London
1896 p. 313 ff. (princess and Sluggard shut up in a crystal cask and sent into the air
by means of a balloon).
' At most it may be conceded that the whimsical notion of a half-man arose from
some more serious stratum of popular belief : cp. what Zeus says of men in Plat. sy?np.
190 D ib.v S' in. 5oKui