14

Chapter XIV

  1. See for Ireland, W. Stokes, “The Prose Tales in the Rennes Dindsenchas,” RC 16 (1895), no. 145: “A great whirlpool there is between Ireland and Scotland on the North. It is the meeting of many seas (from NSEW) — it resembles an open caldron which casts the draught down (and) up, and its roaring is heard like far off thunder . . .”

  2. I. Gollancz, Hamlet in Iceland (1898), pp. xvii.

  3. M. Haavio, Vainamoinen, Eternal Sage (1952), pp. 191-98.

  4. V. Rydberg, Teutonic Mythology (1907), p. 320.

  5. We meet the name again at a rather unexpected place, in the Roman circus or hippodrome, as we know from J. Laurentius Lydus (De Mensibus 1.12.), who states that the center of the circus was called Euripos; that in the middle of the stadium was a pyramid, belonging to the Sun; that by the Sun’s pyramid were three altars, of Saturn, Jupiter, Mars, and below the pyramid, altars of Venus, Mercury and the Moon, and that there were not more than seven circuits (kykloi) around the pyramid, because the planets were only seven. (See also F. M. Cornford’s chapter on the origin of the Olympic games in J. Harrison’s Themis (1962), 228; G. Higgins’ Anacalypsis (1927), vol. 2, pp. 377ff.) This brings to mind (although not called Euripus, obviously, but “the god’s place of skulls”) the Central American Ball Court which had a round hole in its center, termed by Tezozomoc “the enigmatic significance of the ball court,” and from this hole a lake spread out before Uitzilo pochtli was born. See W. Krickeberg, “Der mittelamerikanische Ballspielplatz und seine religiöse Symbolik,” Paideuma 3 (1948). pp. 135ff., 155, 162.

  6. J. Mooney, Myths of the Cherokee (1900), p. 340.

  7. See illustrations (p.60) showing Mount Meru in the shape or an hourglass.

  8. Grimnismal 26; cf. Snorri, Gylf. 15.

  9. Rydberg, pp. 414, 421f. Cf. the notions about the nun Saint Gertrude, patron of travelers, particularly on sea voyages, who acted also as patron saint of inns “and finally it was claimed that she was the hostess of a public house, where the souls spent the first night after death” (M. Hako; Das Wiesel in der europäischen Volksüberlieferung, FFC 167 [1956], p. 119).

  10. See chapter XXII, “The Adventure and the Quest.”

  11. The last learned attempt to locate it — by H. H. and A. Wolf, Der Weg des Odysseus (1968) proves as illusionistic as the previous ones.

  12. Vocatur mors. W. Gundel, Neue Astrologische Texte des Hermes Trismegistos (1936), pp. 196f., 216f.

  13. Sphaera (1903), pp. 57,164-67.

  14. “The Mouth of the Rivers,” AJSL 35 (1919), pp. 161-95.

  15. “The Thirty-six Stars,” JNES 8 (1949), p. 14. “The bright southern star Canopus was Ea’s town Eridu (NUNki dE-a).”

  16. See P. F. Gössmann, Planetarium Babylonicum (1950), 306.

  17. The equinoctial colure is the great circle which passes through the celestial poles and the equinoctial points: the solstitial colure runs through both the celestial and ecliptic poles and through the solstitial points. Macrobius has it, strange to say, that “they are not believed to extend to the South Pole,” whence kolouros, meaning “dock-tailed”, “which are so called because they do not make complete circles” (Comm. Somn. Scip. 1.15.14). The translator, W. H. Stahl (p. 151), refers, among others, to Geminus 5.49-50. Geminus, however (5-49, Manitius, pp. 60, 61), does not claim such obvious nonsense; he states the following: “Kolouroi they are called, because certain of their parts are not visible (dia to merē tina autōn atheōrēta ginesthai). Whereas the other circles become visible in their whole extension with the revolution of the cosmos, certain parts of the Colures remain invisible, ‘docked’ by the antarctical circle below the horizon.”