. The people even try by firing off guns, shrieking, and
clashing cymbals, to frighten the beast (wolf, pig, dragon, or what not)
from his prey. What the hungry monster in the sky is doing when he is
not biting the sun or moon we are not informed. Probably he herds with
the big bird whose wings, among the Dacotahs of America and the Zulus
of Africa, make thunder; or he may associate with the dragons, serpents,
cows and other aerial cattle which supply the rain, and show themselves
in the waterspout. Chinese, Greenland, Hindoo, Finnish, Lithunian and
Moorish examples of the myth about the moon-devouring beasts are vouched
for by Grimm.(2) A Mongolian legend has it that the gods wished to
punish the maleficent Arakho for his misdeeds, but Arakho hid so
cleverly that their limited omnipotence could not find him. The sun,
when asked to turn spy, gave an evasive answer. The moon told the truth.
Arakho was punished, and ever since he chases sun and moon. When he
nearly catches either of them, there is an eclipse, and the people
try to drive him off by making a hideous uproar with musical and other
instruments.(3) Captain Beeckman in 1704 was in Borneo, when the natives
declared that the devil "was eating the moon".

(1) Tylor, Primitive Culture, vol. i.; Lefebure, Les Yeux d'Horus.

(2) Teutonic Mythology, English trans., ii. 706.

(3) Moon-Lore by Rev. T. Harley, p. 167.

Dr. Brinton in his Myths and Myth-Makers gives examples from Peruvians,
Tupis, Creeks, Iroquois and Algonkins. It would be easy, and is perhaps
superfluous, to go on multiplying proofs of the belief that sun and moon
are, or have been, persons. In the Hervey Isles these two luminaries are
thought to have been made out of the body of a child cut in twain by his
parents. The blood escaped from the half which is the moon, hence her
pallor.(1) This tale is an exception to the general rule, but reminds us
of the many myths which represent the things in the world as having
been made out of a mutilated man, like the Vedic Purusha. It is hardly
necessary, except by way of record, to point out that the Greek myths
of sun and moon, like the myths of savages, start from the conception
of the solar and lunar bodies as persons with parts and passions, human
loves and human sorrows. As in the Mongolian myth of Arakho, the sun
"sees all and hears all," and, less honourable than the Mongolian sun,
he plays the spy for Hephaestus on the loves of Ares and Aphrodite. He