but without let-up, the plant or tree
of life?[15]

THE CERBERI IN THE NORSE MYTH.

Norse mythology also contains certain animal pairs which seem to reflect
the two dualities, sun and moon, and day and night. There is here no
certainty as to detail; the Norse myth is advanced and congealed, if not
spurious, as Professor Bugge and his school would have us believe. At
the feet of Odin lie his two wolves, Geri and Freki, "Greedy" and
"Voracious." They hurl themselves across the lands when peace is broken.
Who shall say that they are to be entirely dissociated from Yama's two
dogs of death? The virgin Mengloedh sleeps in her wonderful castle on the
mountain called Hyfja, guarded by the two dogs Geri and Gifr, "Greedy"
and "Violent," who take turns in watching; only alternately may they
sleep as they watch the Hyfja mountain. "One sleeps by night, the other
by day, and thus no one may enter" (_Fioelsvinnsmal_, 16). It is not
necessary to suppose any direct connection between this fable and the
Vedic myth, but the root of the thought, no matter from how great a
distance it may have come, and how completely it may have been worked
over by the Norse skald, is, after all, alternating sun and moon and
their partners, day and night.

CERBERUS IN THE PERSIAN AVESTA.

No reasonable student of mythology will demand of a myth so clearly
destined for fructification an everlasting virginal inviolateness. From
the start almost the two dogs of Yama are the brood of Saram[=a]. Why?
Saram[=a] is the female messenger of the gods, at the root identical
with Hermes or Hermeias; she is therefore the predestined mother of
those other messengers, the two four-eyed dogs of Yama. And as the
latter are her litter the myth becomes retroactive; she herself is
fancied later on as a four-eyed bitch (_Atharva-Veda_, iv. 20. 7).
Similarly the epithet "broad-nosed" stands not in need of mythic
interpretation, as soon as it has become a question of life-hunting
dogs. Elusive and vague, I confess, is the persistent and important
attribute "four-eyed." This touch is both old and widespread. The
_Avesta_, the bible of the ancient Iranians, has reduced the Cerberus
myth to stunted rudiments. In _Vendidad_, xiii. 8. 9, the killing of
dogs is forbidden, because the soul of the slayer "when passing to the
other world, shall fly amid louder howling and fiercer pursuit than the
sheep does when the wolf rushes upon it in the lofty forest. No soul
will come a