CHAPTER XIII

ON TREE SPIRITS IN WESTERN POETRY

REALLY one of the very best ways in which to utilise the resources of European poetry you will find to be the establishment of the romantic or emotional relations of that poetry to Japanese literature and legend. Last year one of the literary class wrote for me a very pretty version of the wonderful old story of the Sanjiusan-gendo, and I thought, while reading it, that it was rather strange that no effort had been made to call the attention of literary students to the beautiful stories of the same class existing in western literature. To-day I am going to attempt to show you how the same idea as that of the Japanese legend produced some beautiful literature in the West.

The best stories of this class-indeed, the best of any class belonging to what has so well been called zoological mythology, are Greek. Many of the Greek stories you have heard something about. You know that the cypress tree was once a beautiful boy called Kuparissos (if we spell the name the true Greek way-otherwise Cyparissus) and that he killed, by mistake, a pet deer, and therefore would have died of grief, had not the god changed him into the tree that still bears his name. You have heard no doubt that the anemone, or "wind-flower," is the flower of young Adonisthat he was changed into it after having been mortally wounded by a wild boar. It was at that time that the rose, originally white, became red; for the goddess Aphrodite, hurrying to help Adonis, tore her beautiful feet with the thorns of the plant, whose flowers remained red with her blood. Doubtless you know that the flower Narcissus bears the name of the handsome youth who refused the love of the

nymph Echo, but thereafter, beholding his own face and figure reflected in water, fell in love with the shadow of himself, and pined away, and was turned into a flower. And there is the hyacinth, the flower of the youth Hyacinthos, accidentally killed by the god of the sun, while the two were playing at quoits; the god changed him into the plant, and the flowers of the plant bear the Greek letters "ai! ai!”— a cry of lamentation. I need not speak of the story of the laurel tree and of many others. Enough to say that in Greek mythology almost every plant, tree, bird, insect, had some such legend attached to it. These are commonly known facts. It is less generally understood that the Greeks considered everything infused with spirit,—that rocks and trees, clouds and waters, had their particular souls or animating principles. Every river, every spring, every tree had its particular god, or demi-god. To touch the subject at all satisfactorily would require a great deal of time, and I can only suggest to you in a brief way that the thoughts of the Greeks about the ubiquity of divine or halfdivine persons were much like those of the Far East in respect to the ancient gods, with some differences of a particularly humane and often beautiful kind. To-day I shall speak only of the beliefs about trees; this properly introduces the topic of the lecture.

Tree-spirits were considered by the Greeks as of two kinds. The spirits of fruit-trees were called Meliades; the spirits of all other trees were called Dryads or Hamadryads. They were principally female, and sometimes appeared in the shapes of beautiful women. They had great supernatural power, but their lives depended altogether upon the life of the tree, and when the tree died the spirits also died. Accordingly they were very anxious about their trees, and they could reward or punish men according to whether their trees were respected or injured. To cut down certain trees was therefore considered very dangerous. In Japanese legends, the enoki is often mentioned as a tree

which it is dangerous to cut down. A number of Greek trees were not only thus dreaded, but were regularly propitiated with sacrifice.

Of course the literary value of this tree mythology depends, like that of kindred Japanese myth, upon human interest,-upon the poetry or sentiment attaching to the old stories. Some are very beautiful and very sad; they not only touch our emotions, they also teach us a moral, or remind us, in a way never to be forgotten, of certain weaknesses in human will. One such story, perhaps the most beautiful of all, is the story of Rhocus (the English poet Landor, spells the name Rhaicos, but the other spelling is more correct; the true Greek word would be Rhoikos). This was a man who loved a tree spirit. It had been his intention to cut down her tree; but she came out of her tree, and pleaded with Rhocus so eloquently and so tenderly that he promised to spare the tree on condition that she would love him, because he saw that she was more beautiful than any mortal woman. Then she told him that it was dangerous to love the spirit of a tree. "I am," she said, "very jealous; and if you should ever show affection to any other person, or if you should refuse to come to me when I send for you, then all will end between us, and you will become very unhappy. It is not a trifling matter to love a daughter of the gods." Of course the young man said what a lover might be expected to say under such circumstances. But the nymph said, "There is yet another matter to remember: the life of man is not long, but the life of a tree is very long-I shall still be young and beautiful when you are old and dead. Are you not as rash as Tithonus was?" Rhocus still made sincere promises and protestations; and at last the tree spirit agreed to his wishes. "But," she said, “I can not live with you in your father's house, I must not go so far away from my tree, and you can only come to me when there is nobody else in the woods. Whenever I wish you to come I will send you a bee. When you see the bee flying

round your head, then come you must. If

you can not come, I shall know that something terrible has happened." Everything was happy after that for a long time. But one day Rhocus, together with a number of young friends, began to play a game of draughts; and while he was playing the bee came. Then he forgot all about the tree spirit and struck the bee with his hand impatiently. The bee came back again, and he hit it again. All of a sudden he remembered-jumped up from the draught board and ran to the forest. But he was too late. The bee had been there before him; the tree of the nymph was withered and dead— she was gone forever. Then Rhocus could not be comforted. He sat down before the dead tree, and presently he himself died of grief. That is the whole story in sub

stance.

You will see that from a literary point of view, such a story may be treated in a variety of ways. The American poet Lowell treated it from a moral point of view; and I believe that it had been treated from a merely romantic point of view by several French poets. But Landor has certainly succeeded best with it; he retells it after the fashion of the idyllic poet, in a dialogue, and his scholarly knowledge of Greek literature and life shows to advantage in this version. I may remark that the Greek text of the original story is lost-probably forever. It was the work of a writer called Charon, of Lampsacus-a name easy to remember, being the same as that of the ghostly ferryman who rowed the souls of the dead over the shadowy river Styx.

Now we shall read some extracts from Landor's beautiful rendering of the legend, to which he gives the title of "The Hamadryad." We need not read the introduction, as the composition is rather long. It begins with an account of how the father of Rhocus orders his son to go and help a household servant cut down an oak tree in the wood. He goes to the tree and finds the servant axe in hand before it,

and he notices that the servant hesitates to strike. "What is the matter?" asks the lad.

"There are bees about,

Or wasps, or hornets," said the cautious eld,
"Look sharp, O son of Thallinos!" The youth
Inclined his ear, afar, and warily,

And cavern'd in his hand. He heard a buzz
At first, and then the sound grew soft and clear,
And then divided into what seemed tune,
And there were words upon it, plaintive words.
He turned, and said, "Echeion! do not strike
That tree; it must be hollow; for some god
Speaks from within. Come thyself near." Again
Both turned toward it; and behold! there sat
Upon the moss below, with her two palms
Pressing it on each side, a maid in form.
Downcast were her long eyelashes, and pale
Her cheek, but never mountain-ash displayed
Berries of colour like her lips so pure,

Nor were the anemones about her hair

Soft, smooth, and wavering, like the face beneath.

The ghostly character of the tree is first revealed by a humming noise, which both men imagined to be made by bees. But listening carefully, they are startled to find that this is not the sound of humming, but the sound of a thin sweet voice that is uttering words, very sad words of fear and grief. And before this surprise is over, suddenly they see, sitting under the tree, a beautiful shape like a young girl, very pale, but with strangely red lips. Looking at her face, its lines appeared as uncertain and wavering as shapes of ripples on the surface of water; but there were living flowers in her hair, real, not ghostly flowers; for they were quite distinctly seen. There is something in the appearance that frightens both men, in spite of the beauty and the softness; the supernatural character is revealed by the fact that all the outlines of the shadow seem to be flowering -ready to vanish like smoke in another moment. But presently the sweet strange thin voice speaks, calling Rhocus by