Amongst the legends of the ancient world few subjects occupy a more prominent place than lightning, associated as it is with those myths of the origin of fire which are of such wide distribution.[1] In examining these survivals of primitive culture we are confronted with some of the most elaborate problems of primeval philosophy, many of which are not only highly complicated, but have given rise to various conjectures.  Thus, although it is easy to understand the reasons which led our ancestors, in their childlike ignorance, to speak of the lightning as a worm, serpent, trident, arrow, or forked wand, yet the contrary is the case when we inquire why it was occasionally symbolised as a flower or leaf, or when, as Mr. Fiske[2] remarks, “we seek to ascertain why certain trees, such as the ash, hazel, white thorn, and mistletoe, were supposed to be in a certain sense embodiments of it.”

Indeed, however satisfactory our explanations may apparently seem, in many cases they can only be regarded as ingenious theories based on the most probable theories which the science of comparative folk-lore may have suggested.  In analysing, too, the evidence for determining the possible association of ideas which induced our primitive forefathers to form those mythical conceptions that we find embodied in the folk-tales of most races, it is necessary to unravel from the relics of the past the one common notion that underlies them.  Respecting the origin of fire, for instance, the leading idea—­as handed down to us in myths of this kind—­would make us believe that it was originally stolen.  Stories which point to this conclusion are not limited to any one country, but are shared by races widely remote from one another.  This circumstance is important, as helping to explain the relation of particular plants to lightning, and accounts for the superstitious reverence so frequently paid to them by most Aryan tribes.  Hence, the way by which the Veda argues the existence of the palasa—­a mystic tree with the Hindus—­is founded on the following tradition:—­The demons had stolen the heavenly soma, or drink of the gods, and cellared it in some mythical rock or cloud.  When the thirsty deities were pining for their much-prized liquor, the falcon undertook to restore it to them, although he succeeded at the cost of a claw and a plume, of which he was deprived by the graze of an arrow shot by one of the demons.  Both fell to the earth and took root; the claw becoming a species of thorn, which Dr. Kuhn identifies as the “Mimosa catechu,” and the feather a “palasa tree,” which has a red sap and scarlet blossoms.  With such a divine origin—­for the falcon was nothing less than a lightning god[3]—­the trees naturally were incorporations,[4] “not only of the heavenly fire, but also of the soma, with which the claw and feather were impregnated.”