ter a while, a common and popular superstition
that Hamadryads haunted the hollow forest trees, Naiads the wells,
and Oreads the lawns. Somewhat thus, I presume, did the more
cheerful Hellenic myths displace the darker superstitions of the
Pelasgis and those rude Arcadian tribes who offered, even as late as
the Roman Empire, human sacrifices to gods whose original names were
forgotten.

But even the cultus of nymphs would be defiled after awhile by a
darker element. However fair, they might be capricious and
revengeful, like other women. Why not? And soon, men going out
into the forest would be missed for awhile. They had eaten narcotic
berries, got sun-strokes, wandered till they lost their wits. At
all events, their wits were gone. Who had done it? Who but the
nymphs? The men had seen something they should not have seen; done
something they would not have done; and the nymphs had punished the
unconscious rudeness by that frenzy. Fear, everywhere fear, of
Nature--the spotted panther as some one calls her, as fair as cruel,
as playful as treacherous. Always fear of Nature, till a Divine
light arise, and show men that they are not the puppets of Nature,
but her lords; and that they are to fear God, and fear naught else.

And so ends my true myth of the wasp-tree. No, it need not end
there; it may develop into a yet darker and more hideous form of
superstition, which Europe has often seen; which is common now among
the Negros; {223} which we may hope, will soon be exterminated.

This might happen. For it, or something like it, has happened too
many times already.

That to the ancient women who still kept up the irrational remnant
of the wasp-worship, beneath the sacred tree, other women might
resort; not merely from curiosity, or an excited imagination, but
from jealousy and revenge. Oppressed, as woman has always been
under the reign of brute force; beaten, outraged, deserted, at best
married against her will, she has too often gone for comfort and
help--and those of the very darkest kind--to the works of darkness;
and there never were wanting--there are not wanting, even now, in
remote parts of these isles--wicked old women who would, by help of
the old superstitions, do for her what she wished. Soon would
follow mysterious deaths of rivals, of husbands, of babes; then
rumours of dark rites connected with the sacred tree, with poison,
with the wasp and his sting, with human sacrifices; lies mingled