This derivation is confirmed by the myth of Alcyone and Ceyx, and the manner of their punishment by Zeus and Hera. Halcyon cannot therefore mean halcyon, ‘sea-hound’, as is usually supposed, but must stand for alcy-one, ‘the queen who wards off evil’. Homer connects the halcyon with Alcyone, a title of Meleager’s wife Cleopatra (Iliad), and with a daughter of Aeolus, guardian of the winds. But because the winter solstice does not always coincide with the same phase of the moon, ‘every year’ must be understood as ‘every Great Year’, of one hundred lunations, in the last of which solar and lunar time were roughly synchronized, and the sacred king’s term ended. The English poet Robert Graves, in his The Greek Myths, explained the origin of Alcyone's myth as follows: The legend of the halcyon’s, or kingfisher’s, nest (which has no foundation in natural history, since the halcyon does not build any kind of nest, but lays eggs in holes by the waterside) can refer only to the birth of the new sacred king at the winter solstice-after the queen who represents his mother, the Moon-goddess, has conveyed the old king’s corpse to a sepulchral island.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |