CHAPTER IV.
LIGHTNING PLANTS.
Amongst the legends of the ancient world few subjects occupy a more
prominent place than lightning, associated as it is with those myths of
the origin of fire which are of such wide distribution.[1] In examining
these survivals of primitive culture we are confronted with some of the
most elaborate problems of primeval philosophy, many of which are not
only highly complicated, but have given rise to various conjectures.
Thus, although it is easy to understand the reasons which led our
ancestors, in their childlike ignorance, to speak of the lightning as a
worm, serpent, trident, arrow, or forked wand, yet the contrary is the
case when we inquire why it was occasionally symbolised as a flower or
leaf, or when, as Mr. Fiske[2] remarks, "we seek to ascertain why certain
trees, such as the ash, hazel, white thorn, and mistletoe, were supposed
to be in a certain sense embodiments of it."
Indeed, however satisfactory our explanations may apparently seem,
in many cases they can only be regarded as ingenious theories based on
the most probable theories which the science of comparative folk-lore
may have suggested. In analysing, too, the evidence for determining the
possible association of ideas which induced our primitive forefathers to
form those mythical conceptions that we find embodied in the folk-tales
of most races, it is necessary to unravel from the relics of the past the one
common notion that underlies them. Respecting the origin of fire, for
instance, the leading idea--as handed down to us in myths of this kind--
would make us believe that it was originally stolen. Stories which point
to this conclusion are not limited to any one country, but are shared by
races widely remote from one another. This circumstance is important, as
helping to explain the relation of particular plants to lightning, and
accounts for the superstitious reverence so frequently paid to them by
most Aryan tribes. Hence, the way by which the Veda argues the
existence of the palasa--a mystic tree with the Hindus—is founded on the
following tradition:--The demons had stolen the heavenly soma, or drink
of the gods, and cellared it in some mythical rock or cloud. When the
thirsty deities were pining for their much-prized liquor, the falcon
undertook to restore it to them, although he succeeded at the cost of a
claw and a plume, of which he was deprived by the graze of an arrow
shot by one of the demons. Both fell to the earth and took root; the claw
becoming a species of thorn, which Dr. Kuhn identifies as the "Mimosa
catechu," and the feather a "palasa tree," which has a red sap and scarlet
blossoms. With such a divine origin—for the falcon was nothing less