THE child Linus of Argos must be distinguished from Linus, the son of Ismenius, whom Heracles killed with a lyre. According to the Argives, Psamathe, the daughter of Crotopus, bore the child Linus to Apollo and, fearing her father’s wrath, exposed him on a mountain. He was found and reared by shepherds, but afterwards torn in pieces by Crotopus’s mastiffs. Since Psamathe could not disguise her grief, Crotopus soon guessed that she was Linus’s mother, and condemned her to death. Apollo punished the city of Argos for this double crime by sending a sort of Harpy named Poene, who snatched young children from their parents until one Coroebus took it upon himself to destroy her. A plague then descended on the city and, when it showed no sign of abating, the Argives consulted the Delphic Oracle, which advised them to propitiate Psamathe and Linus. Accordingly they offered sacrifices to their ghosts, the women and maidens chanting dirges, still called linoi; and since Linus had been reared among lambs, named the festival arnis, and the month in which it was held arneios. The plague still raging, at last Coroebus went to Delphi and confessed to Poene’s murder. The Pythoness would not let him return to Argos, but said: ‘Carry my tripod hence, and build a temple to Apollo wherever it falls from your hands!’ This happened to him on Mount Geraneia, where he founded first the temple and then the city of Tripodisci, and took up residence there. His tomb is shown in the market place at Megara; surmounted by a group of statuary, which depicts Poene’s murder-the most ancient sculptures of that kind still surviving in Greece. This second Linus is sometimes called Oetolinus, and harpists mourn him at banquets.
b. A third Linus likewise lies buried at Argos: he was the poet whom some describe as a son of Oeagrus and the Muse Calliope-thus making him Orpheus’s brother. Others call him the son of Apollo and the Muse Urania, or Arethusa, a daughter of Poseidon; or of Hermes and Urania; others, again, of Amphimarus, Poseidon s son, and Urania; still others, of Magnes and the Muse Clio. Linus was the greatest musician who ever appeared among mankind, and jealous Apollo killed him. He had composed ballads in honour of Dionysus and other ancient heroes, afterwards recording them in Pelasgian letters; also an epic of the Creation. Linus, in fact, invented rhythm and melody, was universally wise, and taught both Thamyris and Orpheus.
c. The lament for Linus spread all over the world and is the theme, for instance, of the Egyptian Song of Maneros. On Mount Helicon, as one approached the Muses grove, Linus’s portrait is carved in the wall of a small grotto, where annual sacrifices to him precede those offered to the Muses. It is claimed that he lies buffed at Thebes, and that Philip, father of Alexander the Great, after defeating the Greeks at Chaeronea, removed his bones to Macedonia, in accordance with a dream; but afterwards dreamed again, and sent them back.
2. The myth has, however, been reduced to the familiar pattent of the child exposed for fear of a jealous grandfather and reared by shepherds; which suggests that the linen industry in Argolis died out, owing to the Dorian invasion or Egyptian underselling, or both, and was replaced by a woollen industry; yet the annual dirges for the child Linus continued to be chanted. The flax industry is likely to have been established by the Cretans who civilized Argolis; the Greek word for flax-rope is merinthos, and all ‘inthos’ words are of Cretan origin.
3. Coroebus, when he killed Poene (‘punishment’), probably forbade child sacrifices at the Linus festival, and substituted lambs, renaming the month ‘Lamb Month’; he has been identified with an Elean of the same name who won the foot-race at the First Olympiad (776 BC). Tripodiscus seems to have no connection with tripods, but to be derived from tripodizein, ‘to fetter thrice’.
4. Since the flax-harvest was the occasion of plaintive dirges and rhythmic pounding, and since at midsummer-to judge from the Swiss and Suabian examples quoted in Frazer’s Golden Bough-young people leaped around a bonfire to make the flax grow high, another mystical Linus was presumed: one who attained manhood and became a famous musician, the inventor of rhythm and melody. This Linus had a Muse mother, and for his father, Arcadian Hermes, or Thracian Oeagrius, or Magnes, the eponymous ancestor of the Magnesians; he was, in fact, not a Hellene, but guardian of the pre-Hellenic Pelasgian culture, which included the tree-calendar and Creation lore. Apollo, who tolerated no rivals in music-as he had shown in the case of Marsyas-is said to have killed him off-hand; but this was an incorrect account, since Apollo adopted, rather than murdered, Linus. Later, his death was more appropriately laid at the door of Heracles, patron of the uncivilized Dorian invaders.
5. Linus is called Orpheus’s brother because of a similarity in their fate. In the Austrian Alps (I am informed by Margarita Schön-Wels) men are not admitted to the flax- harvest, or to the process of drying, beating, and macerating, or to the spinning-rooms. The ruling spirit is the Harpatsch: a terrifying hag, whose hands and face are rubbed with soot. Any man who meets her accidentally, is embraced, forced to dance, sexually assaulted, and smeared with soot. Moreover, the women who beat the flax, called Bechlerinnen, chase and surround any stranger who blunders to their midst. They make him lie down, step over him, tie his hands and feet, wrap him in tow, scour his face and hands with prickly flax-waste, rub him against the rough bark of a felled tree, and finally roll him downhill. Near Feldkirch, they only make the trespasser lie down and step over him; but elsewhere they open his trouser-flies and stuff them with flax-waste, which is so painful that he has to escape barelegged. Near Salzburg, the Bechlerinnen untrouser the trespasser themselves, and threaten to castrate him; after his flight, they purify the place by burning twigs and clashing sickles together.
6. Little is known of what goes on in the spinning-rooms, the women being so secretive; except that they chant a dirge called the Flachses Qual (‘Flax’s Torment’), or Leinen Klage (‘Linen Lament’). It seems likely, then, that at the flax-harvest women used to catch, sexually assault, and dismember a man who represented the flax-spirit; but since this was also the fate of Orpheus, who protested against human sacrifice and sexual orgies, Linus has been described as his brother. The Harpatsch is familiar: she is the carline-wife of the corn harvest, representative of the Earth-goddess. Sickles are clashed solely in honour of the moon; they are not used in the flax harvest. Linus is credited with the invention of music because these dirges are put into the mouth of the Flax-spirit himself, and because some lyre-strings were made from flaxen thread.
b. A third Linus likewise lies buried at Argos: he was the poet whom some describe as a son of Oeagrus and the Muse Calliope-thus making him Orpheus’s brother. Others call him the son of Apollo and the Muse Urania, or Arethusa, a daughter of Poseidon; or of Hermes and Urania; others, again, of Amphimarus, Poseidon s son, and Urania; still others, of Magnes and the Muse Clio. Linus was the greatest musician who ever appeared among mankind, and jealous Apollo killed him. He had composed ballads in honour of Dionysus and other ancient heroes, afterwards recording them in Pelasgian letters; also an epic of the Creation. Linus, in fact, invented rhythm and melody, was universally wise, and taught both Thamyris and Orpheus.
c. The lament for Linus spread all over the world and is the theme, for instance, of the Egyptian Song of Maneros. On Mount Helicon, as one approached the Muses grove, Linus’s portrait is carved in the wall of a small grotto, where annual sacrifices to him precede those offered to the Muses. It is claimed that he lies buffed at Thebes, and that Philip, father of Alexander the Great, after defeating the Greeks at Chaeronea, removed his bones to Macedonia, in accordance with a dream; but afterwards dreamed again, and sent them back.
***
1. Pausanias connects the myth of the Child Linus with that of Maneros, the Egyptian Corn-spirit, for whom dirges were chanted at harvest time; but Linus seems to have been the spirit of the flax-plant (linos), sown in spring and harvested in summer. He had Psamathe for mother because, according to Pliny (Natural History), ‘they sowed flax in sandy soil.’ His grandfather, and murderer, was Crotopus because -again according to Pliny-the yellowing flax-stalks, after having been plucked out by the roots, and hung up in the open air, were bruised with the ‘pounding feet’ of tow-mallets. And Apollo, whose priests wore linen, and who was patron of all Greek music, fathered him. Linus’s destruction by dogs evidently refers to the maceration of the flax-stems with iron hatchets, a process which Pliny describes in the same passage. Frazer suggests, although without supporting evidence, that Linus is a Greek mishearing of the Phoenician ai lanu, ‘woe upon us’. Oetolinus means ‘doomed Linus’.2. The myth has, however, been reduced to the familiar pattent of the child exposed for fear of a jealous grandfather and reared by shepherds; which suggests that the linen industry in Argolis died out, owing to the Dorian invasion or Egyptian underselling, or both, and was replaced by a woollen industry; yet the annual dirges for the child Linus continued to be chanted. The flax industry is likely to have been established by the Cretans who civilized Argolis; the Greek word for flax-rope is merinthos, and all ‘inthos’ words are of Cretan origin.
3. Coroebus, when he killed Poene (‘punishment’), probably forbade child sacrifices at the Linus festival, and substituted lambs, renaming the month ‘Lamb Month’; he has been identified with an Elean of the same name who won the foot-race at the First Olympiad (776 BC). Tripodiscus seems to have no connection with tripods, but to be derived from tripodizein, ‘to fetter thrice’.
4. Since the flax-harvest was the occasion of plaintive dirges and rhythmic pounding, and since at midsummer-to judge from the Swiss and Suabian examples quoted in Frazer’s Golden Bough-young people leaped around a bonfire to make the flax grow high, another mystical Linus was presumed: one who attained manhood and became a famous musician, the inventor of rhythm and melody. This Linus had a Muse mother, and for his father, Arcadian Hermes, or Thracian Oeagrius, or Magnes, the eponymous ancestor of the Magnesians; he was, in fact, not a Hellene, but guardian of the pre-Hellenic Pelasgian culture, which included the tree-calendar and Creation lore. Apollo, who tolerated no rivals in music-as he had shown in the case of Marsyas-is said to have killed him off-hand; but this was an incorrect account, since Apollo adopted, rather than murdered, Linus. Later, his death was more appropriately laid at the door of Heracles, patron of the uncivilized Dorian invaders.
5. Linus is called Orpheus’s brother because of a similarity in their fate. In the Austrian Alps (I am informed by Margarita Schön-Wels) men are not admitted to the flax- harvest, or to the process of drying, beating, and macerating, or to the spinning-rooms. The ruling spirit is the Harpatsch: a terrifying hag, whose hands and face are rubbed with soot. Any man who meets her accidentally, is embraced, forced to dance, sexually assaulted, and smeared with soot. Moreover, the women who beat the flax, called Bechlerinnen, chase and surround any stranger who blunders to their midst. They make him lie down, step over him, tie his hands and feet, wrap him in tow, scour his face and hands with prickly flax-waste, rub him against the rough bark of a felled tree, and finally roll him downhill. Near Feldkirch, they only make the trespasser lie down and step over him; but elsewhere they open his trouser-flies and stuff them with flax-waste, which is so painful that he has to escape barelegged. Near Salzburg, the Bechlerinnen untrouser the trespasser themselves, and threaten to castrate him; after his flight, they purify the place by burning twigs and clashing sickles together.
6. Little is known of what goes on in the spinning-rooms, the women being so secretive; except that they chant a dirge called the Flachses Qual (‘Flax’s Torment’), or Leinen Klage (‘Linen Lament’). It seems likely, then, that at the flax-harvest women used to catch, sexually assault, and dismember a man who represented the flax-spirit; but since this was also the fate of Orpheus, who protested against human sacrifice and sexual orgies, Linus has been described as his brother. The Harpatsch is familiar: she is the carline-wife of the corn harvest, representative of the Earth-goddess. Sickles are clashed solely in honour of the moon; they are not used in the flax harvest. Linus is credited with the invention of music because these dirges are put into the mouth of the Flax-spirit himself, and because some lyre-strings were made from flaxen thread.
Comments
Post a Comment