ear
Lake Titicaca, to make the only successful experiment in pure tyranny
that the world has ever witnessed. Teutonic legend gives forth Wieland
the Smith, who made himself a dress with wings and, clad in it, rose
and descended against the wind and in spite of it. Indian mythology, in
addition to the story of the demons and their rigid dirigible, already
quoted, gives the story of Hanouam, who fitted himself with wings by
means of which he sailed in the air and, according to his desire, landed
in the sacred Lauka. Bladud, the ninth king of Britain, is said to have
crowned his feats of wizardry by making himself wings and attempting
to fly--but the effort cost him a broken neck. Bladud may have been as
mythic as Uther, and again he may have been a very early pioneer. The
Finnish epic, 'Kalevala,' tells how Ilmarinen the Smith 'forged an eagle
of fire,' with 'boat's walls between the wings,' after which he 'sat
down on the bird's back and bones,' and flew.

Pure myths, these, telling how the desire to fly was characteristic of
every age and every people, and how, from time to time, there arose an
experimenter bolder than his fellows, who made some attempt to translate
desire into achievement. And the spirit that animated these pioneers,
in a time when things new were accounted things accursed, for the most
part, has found expression in this present century in the utter daring
and disregard of both danger and pain that stamps the flying man, a type
of humanity differing in spirit from his earthbound fellows as fully as
the soldier differs from the priest.

Throughout mediaeval times, records attest that here and there some man
believed in and attempted flight, and at the same time it is clear that
such were regarded as in league with the powers of evil. There is the
half-legend, half-history of Simon the Magician, who, in the third year
of the reign of Nero announced that he would raise himself in the air,
in order to assert his superiority over St Paul. The legend states that
by the aid of certain demons whom he had prevailed on to assist him, he
actually lifted himself in the air--but St Paul prayed him down again.
He slipped through the claws of the demons and fell headlong on the
Forum at Rome, breaking his neck. The 'demons' may have been some
primitive form of hot-air balloon, or a glider with which the magician
attempted to rise into the wind; more probably, however, Simon
threatened to ascend and made the attempt