Indo-European Poetry and Myth

parallel tendencies. The brother/sister symbolism, at least, operates in the same way in Greek and Lithuanian riddles.^75 The ri ...

какую чудовину, ‘I saw a certain prodigy’.^76 I do not find any examples in Schleicher’s collection of Lithuanian riddles, but t ...

There is on earth a two-footed and four-footed creature with a single voice, and three-footed, changing its form alone of all cr ...

The solution: a myopic eunuch, dimly descrying a bat that was clinging to a fennel-stalk, threw a pumice-stone at it but failed ...

himself in a treaty with Vr ̇ tra under which the latter may not be killed ‘with matter dry or wet, rock or wood, thunderbolt or ...

tree with twelve branches, each supporting numbers of birds’ nests with eggs in them; or (4) a grand edifice with twelve rooms, ...

(There are) seven herds of cows, and as many fair flocks of sheep, andfifty in each; they give birth to no young, and never peri ...

The six pegs of the loom (like the six wheel-naves of MBh. 3. 133. 21 cited above) represent the six seasons. The male is perhap ...

operated by two women, one on each side to pass the shuttle back to the other.^94 The goddesses Night and Day fit neatly into th ...

10 Mortality and Fame The gods are of heaven, and immortal; mankind is of the earth, and subject to death. Each of us is conscio ...

we are told that ‘dark Earth put him forth (qνδωκεν) in the wooded mountains, so that there might be a mortal race’. There are ...

with his sister and of his being sawn in two (Chapter 9). But he was remem- bered chiefly in association with the transition to ...

brightness for a hundred autumns; may we live for a hundred autumns’ (ibid. 7. 66. 16, cf. 2. 18. 10; 3. 36. 10; 7. 101. 6; 10. ...

might know more. The tortoise was called forth and after much pondering recognized the seer, who had formerly built his fire alt ...

in Bronze Age Anatolia. In many traditions the goddesses determine fates by spinning. Their names are different in different cou ...

at the same time the personification of what is allotted to one in life and the agent that allots it. Hesiod (Th. 904–6) registe ...

belief, in circumstances where its presence is unlikely to be due to Classical influence. In Nordic mythology the relevant figur ...

fated death. In Old English Wyrd is a power that weaves destinies: Rhyme Poem 70 me þæt Wyrd gewa ̄f, ‘Wyrd wove that for me’;Gu ...

century denounce the people’s foolish superstitious belief in the three sisters anciently called the Parcae, who determine a man ...

Croat Rodjenice, the Serbian Sudjenice, the Bulgarian Narecˇnice or Urisnice, are supernatural females who appear at midnight wi ...