ction. The mist is described as
'dark,' 'swallowing,' 'one that fears the wind,' and so forth. The
_words_ are pellucid.

Thus 'ordinary appellatives' (i. 99) are _not_ 'avoided' in riddles,
though _names_ (sun, mist) cannot be used in the question because they
give the answer to the riddle.

For all these reasons ancient riddles cannot explain the obscurity of
mythological names. As soon as the name was too obscure, the riddle and
the name would be forgotten, would die together. So we know as little as
ever of the purely hypothetical process by which a riddle, or popular
poetical saying, remains intelligible in a language, while the mot
d'enigme, becoming unintelligible, turns into a proper name--say, Cronos.
Yet the belief in this process as a vera causa is essential to our
author's method.

Here Mr. Max Muller warns us that his riddle theory is not meant to
explain 'the obscurities of _all_ mythological names. This is a
stratagem that should be stopped from the very first.' It were more
graceful to have said 'a misapprehension.'

Another 'stratagem' I myself must guard against. I do not say that _no_
unintelligible strings of obsolete words may continue to live in the
popular mouth. Old hymns, ritual speeches, and charms may and do
survive, though unintelligible. They are reckoned all the more potent,
because all the more mysterious. But an unintelligible riddle or
poetical saying does not survive, so we cannot thus account for mythology
as a disease of language.

Mordvinian Mythology

Still in the very natural and laudable pursuit of facts which will
support the hypothesis of a disease of language, Mr. Max Muller turns to
Mordvinian mythology. 'We have the accounts of real scholars' about
Mordvinian prayers, charms, and proverbs (i. 235). The Mordvinians,
Ugrian tribes, have the usual departmental Nature-gods--as Chkai, god of
the sun (chi=sun). He 'lives in the sun, or is the sun' (i. 236). His
wife is the Earth or earth goddess, Vediava. They have a large family,
given to incest. The morals of the Mordvinian gods are as lax as those
of Mordvinian mortals. (Compare the myths and morals of Samos, and the
Samian Hera.) Athwart the decent god Chkai comes the evil god
Chaitan--obviously Shaitan, a Mahommedan contamination. There are plenty
of minor gods, and spirits good and bad. Dawn was a Mordvinian girl; in
Australia she was a lubra addicted to lubricity.

_How does this help philo