Ragnarok : the age of fire and gravel

THE CONFLAGRATION OF PHAETON. 163

Jace overcast with bitter sorrow, and, if only we can believe it, they say that one day passed without the sun. The flames” (of the fires on the earth) “afforded light, and there was some advantage in that disaster.”

As there was no daily return of the sun to mark the time, that one day of darkness was probably of long duration ; it may have endured for years.

Then follows Ovid’s description of the mourning of Clymene and the daughters of the Sun and the Naiads for the dead Phaéton. Cyenus, king of Liguria, grieves for Phaéton until he is transformed into a swan ; reminding one of the Central American legend, (which I shall give hereafter,) which states that in that day all men were turned into goslings or geese, a reminiscence, perhaps, of those who saved themselves from the fire by taking refuge in the waters of the seas :

*“Cyenus becomes a new bird ; but he trusts himself not to the heayens or the air, as being mindful of the Jive unjustly sent from thence. Ue frequents the pools and the wile lakes, and, abhorring fire, he chooses the streams, the very contrary of flames.

“Meanwhile, the father of Phaéton” (the Sun), “in squalid garb and destitute of his comeliness, just as he is wont to be when he suffers an eclipse of his disk, abhors both the light, himself, and the day; and gives his mind up to grief, and adds resentment to his sorrow. Tn other words, the poet is now describing the age of darkness, which, as we have seen, must have followed the conflagration, when the condensing vapor wrapped the world in a yast cloak of cloud.

The Sun refuses to go again on his daily journey ; just as we shall see hereafter, in the American legends, he refuses to stir until threatened or coaxed into action.