Indo-European Poetry and Myth

Finally, the ninth-century Norwegian poet Thiodolf uses the phrase sæ ́var
niþr‘grandson/descendant of the sea’ as a kenning for fire (Ynglingatal 4. 3).
That so distinctive an expression, asserting a paradoxical kinship between fire
and water, should have been created in the Nordic tradition independently of
the Indo-Iranian parallel is difficult to credit. The Norse kenning may derive
ultimately from a sacral formula of Indo-European hymnic poetry, based on a
cosmological myth.^118

The acquisition of fire

Fire is the most ostentatiously supernatural element in the world around us:
spectacular, constantly changing, difficult to control, unstable. Peoples the
world over have felt that it must have somehow been brought to earth from
heaven, the home of the burning sun and the source of the lightning. There
are sundry myths about how it was first obtained.^119 On the other hand it can
be conjured out of stones and wood. The inference is often drawn that it lies
hidden in these, and especially in the trees from which fire-sticks are made,
having been lodged there by the god of lightning.
This is probably Indo-European. We saw earlier that Perkunas and Perun
were believed to put fire into oaks. Hesiod must have a similar idea in mind
when he says that Zeus, to withhold fire from mankind, ‘would not give it to
the ash-trees’.^120 In the Indian tradition, where Agni is treated as a god with a
will of his own, he is said to have hidden from the gods, usually in the waters
(as above) or in plants, and been sought and found.

Thee, Agni, laid in concealment, the Angirases

tracked down, that wert distributed tree by tree.

As such thou art born through drilling, a great force;

they call thee the son of Force, O Angiras.^121

An extended narrative in the Maha ̄bha ̄rata tells how, after being betrayed in a
series of hiding-places, Agni settled in a s ́amı ̄ tree. There the gods found him,
‘and so they made that tree the sacred abode of fire, for all rituals. From that

(^118) W. Krause, NGG 1925, 140; Schmitt (1967), 280 f.; Campanile (1977), 109 f.
(^119) Cf. J. G. Frazer, Apollodorus. The Library (Cambridge, Mass.–London 1921), ii. 326–50; id.,
Myths of the Origin of Fire (London 1930).
(^120) Hes. Th. 563; see West (1966), 323 f., where a reference to Soph. Phil. 296 f. may be added
for the idea that fire is latent in stones.
(^121) RV 5. 11. 6; cf. 3. 9. 4 f.; Br
̇
haddevata ̄ 7. 61–7, 73–80; Macdonell (1898), 92; Hillebrandt
(1927–9), i. 149–55. The Angirases are prototypical Brahman priests.
272 6. Storm and Stream