passionate search for the water of everlasting life and eternal youth, the hope of bliss
beyond the sufferings and trials of earthly life and the fear of eternal damnation.
The form and tone of the mythos, the environmental details, the characteristics and
attributes of the local deities, spirits and the human participants in the drama vary with
the culture that gave the stories birth. The myths of ancient Greece, which have most
influenced the Western world, reflect the pure light, the blue skies, the lofty mountains,
the plains and olive groves that shaped the lives of its people. Those of the Vikings are
starker, harsher, grimmer and icier as befits a landscape of forests, passes and ravines,
bordered by sometimes perilous seas. The myths of India and the east are more exotic,
colourful and flamboyant; those of the Australian Aborigines express a spirituality
embedded in the land itself. Myth and legend, being truly multicultural, introduce
children to a diversity of national temperaments and to different ways of confronting
universal and ongoing questions about life and human nature.
But because all races throughout time have been awed by the unknown and the
unknowable, that wonder, when expressed through myth is elevated to religion. Gods
not only demand obedience, reverence and worship but at times they require
propitiation and appeasement. Here again the ancient Greeks were more lighthearted
and less reverent than, say, the Egyptians or Sumerians. Because the Greek immortals
frequently trafficked with mortals (Zeus fathered heroes such as Perseus and Heracles
who were thus demigods) they were not always treated with the respect demanded by
the gods of other nations. And Hera, the wife of Zeus, was often driven by jealousy and
rage to shrewishness. So by exposure to a rich array of mythology young readers gain an
insight into human nature and are confronted with the essence of the divine and the
supernatural.
Because of this, mythology gives rise to ceremony and ritual, an ongoing necessity in
human behaviour. Even when ritual is minimalised, as it is in some religious groups or
sects, it tends to be replaced by even more rigid rules and regulations, often more
stringently enforced than what was abandoned.
Moreover, myth is rich in symbols, and human existence is governed largely by
metaphor. Even vehicles are controlled by road signs and highway symbols. So the
odyssey in myth, legend and epic is often dangerous and demanding, even with its
detours and resting places, but leads ultimately to home and fulfilment. It is an image of
a universal life experience, but on a vast scale. In all cultures the heroic journey involves
rivers that must be breasted, bridges to cross, mountains to climb: all symbols of life’s
progress. The monsters—be they dragons, trolls or demons— are local expressions of a
universal fear and uncertainty. On life’s journey each mortal, like the superheroes of
myth and legend often encounters a tutelary figure or receives unexpected aid from the
Immortals, often in human guise. The powers of darkness that lurk by the wayside can
be vanquished only if the traveller does not faint, is of unshakeable faith and wields the
sword of understanding and action fashioned long ages ago and passed on from
generation to generation. The slain dragon yields its gold to the victor, and if the
conqueror has the resolution of a Sigurd and plucks out the heart of a Fafnir and tastes
its blood upon the tongue, that individual will then understand the call of the birds,
comprehend what the beasts are saying and grow wise in the ways of nature.
TYPES AND GENRES 163