Zeus : a study in ancient religion - Warburg Institute

The axe and the sacred oak at Dodona 679
Afterwards the she-bear had a child, who grew up strong, but being unlike
the other bear-children got called a bastard. So one day the youngster asked
his mother whether what his brothers said about him was true. And she made
answer : " You have the axe for father." " Oh !
mother,
can the axe then beget
children ?" asked the boy, and pressed his mother for an answer till she said :
"Take the axe, stand with it before the church, and ask —To whom does this
axe belong.'' And, whoever recognises it, that man is your father." The boy did
as he was bidden ;
but one after the other the people came out of church, and
nobody would claim the axe. At last the priest too came out, and asked the
boy : " Where did you get that axe from .? It is mine ! " And he replied : " If it
is yours, so am I !" "Hush, blasphemer !" "Why so? You are in truth my
father." So the boy went home with the priest, who said to his wife : " See, I've
brought you this boy to serve you." The wife was pleased and said : " That's
capital ! Many thanks."
The first day the boy ate a loaf of bread. The second, he ate as much as
the priest took in a whole month. Thereupon the priest said "You're no good
to us ! " and handed him over to a baker. Here the boy ate all the bread that
the baker baked.
Then the king's cook came to the oven and, having had a look at him, told
his master that he had seen such a fellow. The king was astonished, had the
lad brought before him, and asked : "Can you load sixty mules with timber?"
"Certainly," said he ; " only you must have an axe made to suit me." Then the
"That's
king had an axe made that weighed a hundred pounds. But the lad took it in
his hands, broke it in pieces, and said : I must have
no good to me ;
a stouter one." After this they made him one that weighed five hundred pounds.
He swung it with a single hand, and said : " That's the right axe for me !
" He
took the mules, went with them into a coppice, brought his axe to bear on the
trees, and promptly had his sixty mules laden. On his way back he passed a
plane-tree, seized it with his hands, wrenched it out of the ground, and carried
it over his shoulder. Coming into the town like this, he tore down with his tree
the roofs of the huts which stood beside his way. When the king saw him
marching along, he was astonished and said to the baker: " He does indeed eat
much, but he works much too ; I will take him into my service." As time went
on, the bear-child grew stronger and stronger. This great strength began to
cause the king so much anxiety that he feared for his life. So he sent the lad
forth to fetch the treasures of the Dogs-heads, hoping that these heads would
devour him. But first they agreed that the king should give half his kingdom
to the bear's son, if he brought the treasures. Off he went, beat the Dogs-heads,
won thereby half the kingdom, and lived happily. But we here live more happily
still.'
This folk-tale, which in part falls under J. G. von Hahn's thirty-
seventh /i>;';«?^/«— 'Strong Hans^'—and contains obvious parallels
to the myth of Herakles, belongs to a very ancient stratum of
human thought, and we need not hesitate to recognise in the axe-
father and the tree-mother of the hero a genuine echo of primitive
belief
^ J. G. von Hahn Griechische und albanesische Mdrchen Leipzig 1864 i. 59. The
closest resemblance to our tale is borne by one from Argyllshire entitled ' The son of the
Strong Man of the Wood' (J. Macdougall Folk and Hero Tales London 1891 p. 187 ff.).