Boston University - HUB Yearbook (Boston, MA)

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i 26 BOSTON UNIVERSITY YEAR BOOK. ethnic traditions everywhere point the searcher for the cradle of humanity, not to Mesopotamia, nor U Limuria, nor Ar- menia, nor Pamir., nor Syria, but to a primeval 't mountain of the world in the highest North, - a land of light, the start- ing-point of all sublunary life, the navel of the earth, the Atlantis of the Egyptian priests, the Atlas-station of the Greeks, the Nysa ofthe Dionysia, the Tulan or Tollan of the Toltecs, the Tula of the Lenapi, the Thule of the Romans, the Avalon of the Kclts. In some instances, the evidences of this fact are curiously if not comically embarrassing to the advocates of new hypotheses respecting the cradle of humanity, or respecting the origin of the Paradisaie tradition. For striking illustrations of this last statement, it is only necessary to refer to the recently published theories of E. Beau- vois, and Abbe Brasseur de Bourbourgg the former relating to the Paradise ideas of the Kelts, and the latter to those of the prehistoric tribes of Mexico and Central America. In his learned papers entitled L'EIys6e Tmnsatlaintique, and L'Eclen Occidemalf the first of these writers has brought together a most interesting and valuable mass of materialrillus- trative of the beliefs of the different branches of the .Keltic family, touching the Earthly Paradise. Without dogmatically asserting it, he suggests that the Grmco-Roman ideas of an Elysium at the ends of the earth, of the Islands of the Blessed in or beyond the Atlantic Ocean, of Ogygia the Eden-like isle of Kalypso, of the land of the Fountain of Youth, and so on, were all borrowed from this widespread people, who, in the march ot' nations into Europe, preceded the ancestors of both those classic peoples, and at the dawn of historic times were found Echelormd along the shores of the Atlantic from Celtiberia to the British Isles? But whence did the Kelts themselves derive them? To this question also, M. Beauvois gives no dog- matic answerg but he everywhere suggests that the historic basis of all these traditions is to be sought in an early acquaintance 1 Published in the Revue de Vhistoirc des Religions. Paris, 1883. pp. 273- 318, 673-727. 2 ln a note to p. 274, M. Beauvois seems very plainly and strongly to intimate, that, in his opinion. the whole classic pantheon originated on this west coast of Europe, among the Keltic tribes.

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t ALL ROADS LEAD T0 THULE. 25 ornamentation were symbols of volcanic clouds ot' smoke ris- ing from said craters. The names of Cain's sons fGen. iv. 18j are names of lnountains and particular localities. Naamah, the sister ot' Tubal-Cain, is the oasis Oncise, both names signi- fying the lovely. The Umar-k set upon Cain, by which Gvcry one should know him, was his singular clothing, his gazelle-skin clothing. The confusion of human language at the tower of Babel consisted simply of' the rise of dialeetic dit'- ferences among the Cainites in consequence ot' some invasion of their primitive home in Northern Syria. Abraham's bosom is the oasis Ruhbe, while Dives's place of torment was the water- less volcanic northern edge ot' it, et ceterct, et cetera. To a believer in the canons ot' sane historic investigation and criti- cism, the only value which this strange production possesses, is found, first, inthe illustration which it gives ot' the imperish- able interest of the Eden problem, even to those who deny the historical character of the Bibleg and, second, in the new proof' it affords, that all attempts to solve the problem in this isolated audi micro-topographical method are predestined to perpetual failure. , The time for studies of such narrowness as tl1is is past. The problem of the original home of the human race is not barely a question of Hebrew exegesis,-it is a race-problem. Every ancient people had an ancestral line running straight back to the primeval home of undistributed humanity. Each of these peoples l1ad sacredly preserved traditions of the events of that far-oft' morning-time of the world,-traditions so full ot' resemblances that it is impossible not to ascribe to them a common origin. In attempting to locate the primitive home of the race, therefore, the comparative method of investigation is the only one from which solid results can be expected. And, as in the interpretation of the mysterious land-marks enumerated in Gen. ii. 10-14, all scholarship and all exeget- ical ingenuity have confessedly been baflled, we must conclude that key, to a correct understanding of them is to be sought outside. 'of -the record, and that it can nowhere so appropriately and 'hopefullyibe sought as in the consentient traditions of the earljf'p'eb'ples, ot' the world. But, as demonstrated beyond contradiction in the pages of Paradise Found, these oldest

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ALL ROADS LEAD T0 THULE. 27 Of prehistoric Keltic navigators with America. This Western World of ours was their sacred isle of Avalon, their Tir na n-Og QLand of perpetual Youthj, Tir na m-Beo QLand of the Living Onesj , Mag Mell QField of Delightsj, Flaith Innis Qlsle of' Heroesj, Tir Tairngire fLand of Promisej. And from all accounts of the beauty and fertility of these Paradisaic regions he feels compelled to conclude that those prehistoric voyagers not only reached America, but also explored it far down into the inter-tropical regions, seeing with their own eyes the gor- geous flowers and spontaneous fruits which gave such marvellous color and exuberance to their descriptions of the country, as these lived on in later legends. The tirst embarrassment experienced by our author in ex- pounding this general theory is met at the very threshold, where the attempt is made to identify Hesiod's and Plutarch's Sacred Isle of Saturn with Mag Mell. Somehow the due West loca- tion of' America will not fit the classic description at all. This uncompromisingly fixes the Saturnian isle in the North, high in the Oronian Sea? Moreover, according to all accounts, it was not a land of ordinary days and nights, such as we have here in America, but, on the contrary, a region of almost continuous light, -a land which, as he himself' says, corresponds to Pliny's and Mela's Ultima Thule, where at the time of the summer sol- stice there were for six months no nights at 1111.8 What can be done? There seems to M. Beauvois to be no relief from difficulty in interpreting these and other references to Saturn and his isle, until one goes more than a thousand miles due North from Ire- 1 1 Pages 720-727. 2 Son ile, qui dans cette categorie de legendes est aussi celle des Bien- heureux, devait Gtre dans la mer de Saturne, le Mare Cranium, partie sep- tentrionale de 1'0c6an Atlantique. C'est ce qui ressort clairement d'un passage de Plutarque dans son dialogue sur la Figure qui se voit dans la Lune fp. 2782. 3 Un trait qu'elle n. de commun avec Pultima Thule, en voici uvn gun-9 caraeteristiqueg le soleil n'y disparait sous Phorizon qu'une heure ou molns pendant trente jours fp. 2785. For Pliny's words, see motto to this paper. Elsewhere, speaking of the lengthening day as the sun goes north, he writes as follows: Ubi :estate luoldm noctes llaud dubie promittunt id, quod cogit ratio credi, solstitl diebus accedente sole propius verticem muudi, angusto lucis amhitu, suhjeuta teme continues dies lrubere senis mensihns, noctisque e dlverso ad brumam remoto. Quod iieri in insula flhule Pytheas Massiliensis scrlbet Cllist. Nat. ii. 1871.