presence there
is simple enough. Like the erratic blocks in a modern plain, like the
flint-heads in a meadow, the story is a relic of a very distant past.
The glacial age left the boulders on the plain, the savage tribes of
long ago left the arrow-heads, the period of savage fancy left the
story of Cronus and the rites of the fetich-stone. Similar rites are
still notoriously practised in the South Sea Islands, in Siberia, in
India and Africa and Melanesia, by savages. And by savages similar
tales are still told.

* * * * *

We cannot go much lower than the Bushmen, and among Bushman divine
myths is room for the 'swallowing trick' attributed to Cronus by
Hesiod. The chief divine character in Bushman myth is the Mantis
insect. His adopted daughter is the child of Kwai Hemm, a supernatural
character, 'the all-devourer.' The Mantis gets his adopted daughter to
call the swallower to his aid; but Kwai Hemm swallows the Mantis, the
god-insect. As Zeus made his own wife change herself into an insect,
for the convenience of swallowing her, there is not much difference
between Bushman and early Greek mythology. Kwai Hemm is killed by a
stratagem, and all the animals whom he has got outside of, in a long
and voracious career, troop forth from him alive and well, like the
swallowed gods from the maw of Cronus.[41] Now, story for story, the
Bushman version is much less offensive than that of Hesiod. But the
Bushman story is just the sort of story we expect from Bushmen,
whereas the Hesiodic story is not at all the kind of tale we look for
from Greeks. The explanation is, that the Greeks had advanced out of a
savage state of mind and society, but had retained their old myths,
myths evolved in the savage stage, and in harmony with that condition
of fancy. Among the Kaffirs[42] we find the same 'swallow-myth.' The
Igongqongqo swallows all and sundry; a woman cuts the swallower with a
knife, and 'people came out, and cattle, and dogs.' In Australia, a
god is swallowed. As in the myth preserved by Aristophanes in the
'Birds,' the Australians believe that birds were the original gods,
and the eagle, especially, is a great creative power. The Moon was a
mischievous being, who walked about the world, doing what evil he
could. One day he swallowed the eagle-god. The wives of the eagle came
up, and the Moon asked them where he might find a well. They pointed
out a well, and, as he drank, they hit the Moon with