of the stars in the daytime by the hypothesis that the
"sun swallows his children". In the Melanesian myth, dawn is cut out of
the body of night by Qat, armed with a knife of red obsidian. Here are
examples(2) of transparent nature-myths in which this idea occurs for
obvious explanatory purposes, and in accordance with the laws of the
savage imagination. Thus the conception of the swallowing and disgorging
being may very well have arisen out of a nature-myth. But why is the
notion attached to the legend of Cronus?

(1) The myth of Cronus and the swallowed children and the stone is
transferred to Gargantua. See Sebillot, Gargantua dans les Traditions
Populaires. But it is impossible to be certain that this is not an
example of direct borrowing by Madame De Cerny in her Saint Suliac, p.
69.

(2) Compare Tylor, Prim. Cult., i. 338.

That is precisely the question about which mythologists differ, as has
been shown, and perhaps it is better to offer no explanation. However
stories arise--and this story probably arose from a nature-myth--it is
certain that they wander about the world, that they change masters, and
thus a legend which is told of a princess with an impossible name in
Zululand is told of the mother of Charlemagne in France. The tale of
the swallowing may have been attributed to Cronus, as a great truculent
deity, though it has no particular elemental signification in connection
with his legend.

This peculiarly savage trick of swallowing each other became an
inherited habit in the family of Cronus. When Zeus reached years of
discretion, he married Metis, and this lady, according to the scholiast
on Hesiod, had the power of transforming herself into any shape she
pleased. When she was about to be a mother, Zeus induced her to assume
the shape of a fly and instantly swallowed her.(1) In behaving thus,
Zeus acted on the advice of Uranus and Gaea. It was feared that Metis
would produce a child more powerful than his father. Zeus avoided this
peril by swallowing his wife, and himself gave birth to Athene. The
notion of swallowing a hostile person, who has been changed by magic
into a conveniently small bulk, is very common. It occurs in the story
of Taliesin.(2) Caridwen, in the shape of a hen, swallows Gwion Bach,
in the form of a grain of wheat. In the same manner the princess in the
Arabian Nights swallowed the Geni. Here then we have in the Hesiodic
myth an old marchen pressed into the service of the hig