Ferdinand Raimund - "Der Diamant des Geisterkoenigs"

Burton Egbert Stevenson - "The Home Book of Verse, Volume 1"

Frank E. Smedley - "Frank Fairlegh"

Thomas Carlyle - "Sartor Resartus, and On Heroes, Hero Worship, and the Heroic in History"

Annual Bibliography of Commonwealth Literature 2007
This paper argues that discourses of love in Ghanaian market literature for youth offer a view into complex negotiations of agency and empowerment. Drawing on Deborah Durham's notion of youth as "social `shifters'" and Francis Nyamnjoh's conception of the "interconnectedness" of agency, I take Ghanaian market literature as one specific case of how African literature for youth foregrounds questions of continuity and change as African societies enter into increasingly complex global relations. In this literature for youth, received notions of love, often constructed out of impressions from American pop and hip hop music, carry new notions of agency that compete with existing "domesticated" forms. Authors like Ike Tandoh and Evelyn Tay employ discourses of love to offer youth alternative avenues for empowerment in a context of socio-economic disenfranchizement. In a creative process of "straddling", this writing both reveals and reproduces the contradictions that obtain in youth configurations of agency.

The Antediluvian World

I >> Ignatius Donnelly >> The Antediluvian World




Here we find that the land that was destroyed was the "first land;" that
it was an island "beyond the great ocean." In all early age the people
were happy and peaceful; they became wicked; "snake worship" was
introduced, and was associated, as in Genesis, with the "fall of man;"
Nana-Bush became the ancestor of the new race; his name reminds us of
the Toltec Nata and the Hebrew Noah. After the flood came a dispersing
of the people, and a separation into hunters and tillers of the soil.

Among the Mandan Indians we not only find flood legends, but, more
remarkable still, we find an image of the ark preserved from generation
to generation, and a religious ceremony performed which refers plainly
to the destruction of Atlantis, and to the arrival of one of those who
escaped from the Flood, bringing the dreadful tidings of the disaster.
It must be remembered, as we will show hereafter, that many of these
Mandan Indians were white men, with hazel, gray, and blue eyes, and all
shades of color of the hair from black to pure white; that they dwelt in
houses in fortified towns, and manufactured earthen-ware pots in which
they could boil water--an art unknown to the ordinary Indians, who
boiled water by putting heated stones into it.

I quote the very interesting account of George Catlin, who visited the
Mandans nearly fifty years ago, lately republished in London in the
"North American Indians," a very curious and valuable work. He says
(vol. i., p. 88):

"In the centre of the village is an open space, or public square, 150
feet in diameter and circular in form, which is used for all public
games and festivals, shows and exhibitions. The lodges around this open
space front in, with their doors toward the centre; and in the middle
of this stands an object of great religious veneration, on account of
the importance it has in connection with the annual religious
ceremonies. This object is in the form of a large hogshead, some eight
or ten feet high, made of planks and hoops, containing within it some of
their choicest mysteries or medicines. They call it the 'Big Canoe.'"

This is a representation of the ark; the ancient Jews venerated a
similar image, and some of the ancient Greek States followed in
processions a model of the ark of Deucalion. But it is indeed surprising
to find this practice perpetuated, even to our own times, by a race of
Indians in the heart of America. On page 158 of the first volume of the
same work Catlin describes the great annual mysteries and religious
ceremonials of which this image of the ark was the centre. He says:

"On the day set apart for the commencement of the ceremonies a solitary
figure is seen approaching the village.

"During the deafening din and confusion within the pickets of the
village the figure discovered on the prairie continued to approach with
a dignified step, and in a right line toward the village; all eyes were
upon him, and he at length made his appearance within the pickets, and
proceeded toward the centre of the village, where all the chiefs and
braves stood ready to receive him, which they did in a cordial manner by
shaking hands, recognizing him as an old acquaintance, and pronouncing
his name, Nu-mohk-muck-a-nah (the first or only man). The body of this
strange personage, which was chiefly naked, was painted with white clay,
so as to resemble at a distance a white man. He enters the medicine
lodge, and goes through certain mysterious ceremonies.

"During the whole of this day Nu-mohk-muck-a-nah (the first or only man)
travelled through the village, stopping in front of each man's lodge,
and crying until the owner of the lodge came out and asked who he was,
and what was the matter? To which he replied by narrating the sad
catastrophe which had happened on the earth's surface by the overflowing
of the waters, saying that 'he was the only person saved from the
universal calamity; that he landed his big canoe on a high mountain in
the west, where he now resides; that he has come to open the medicine
lodge, which must needs receive a present of an edged tool from the
owner of every wigwam, that it may be sacrificed to the water; for,' he
says, 'if this is not done there will be another flood, and no one will
be saved, as it was with such tools that the big canoe was made.'

"Having visited every lodge in the village during the day, and having
received such a present from each as a hatchet, a knife, etc. (which is
undoubtedly always prepared ready for the occasion), be places them in
the medicine lodge; and, on the last day of the ceremony, they are
thrown into a deep place in the river--'sacrificed to the Spirit of the
Waters."'

Among the sacred articles kept in the great medicine lodge are four
sacks of water, called Eeh-teeh-ka, sewed together, each of them in the
form of a tortoise lying on its back, with a bunch of eagle feathers
attached to its tail. "These four tortoises," they told me, "contained
the waters from the four quarters of the world--that those waters had
been contained therein ever since the settling down of the waters," "I
did not," says Catlin, who knew nothing of an Atlantis theory, "think it
best to advance anything against such a ridiculous belief." Catlin tried
to purchase one of these water-sacks, but could not obtain it for any
price; he was told they were "a society property."

He then describes a dance by twelve men around the ark: "They arrange
themselves according to the four cardinal points; two are painted
perfectly black, two are vermilion color, some were painted partially
white. They dance a dance called Bel-lohck-na-pie,'" with horns on their
heads, like those used in Europe as symbolical of Bel, or Baal.

Could anything be more evident than the connection of these ceremonies
with the destruction of Atlantis? Here we have the image of the ark;
here we have a white man coming with the news that "the waters had
overflowed the land," and that all the people were destroyed except
himself; here we have the sacrifice to appease the spirit that caused
the Flood, just as we find the Flood terminating, in the Hebrew,
Chaldean, and Central American legends, with a sacrifice. Here, too, we
have the image of the tortoise, which we find in other flood legends of
the Indians, and which is a very natural symbol for an island. As one of
our own poets has expressed it,

"Very fair and full of promise
Lay the island of St. Thomas;
Like a great green turtle slumbered
On the sea which it encumbered."

Here we have, too, the four quarters of Atlantis, divided by its four
rivers, as we shall see a little farther on, represented in a dance,
where the dancers arrange themselves according to the four cardinal
points of the compass; the dancers are painted to represent the black
and red races, while "the first and only man" represents the white race;
and the name of the dance is a reminiscence of Baal, the ancient god of
the races derived from Atlantis.

But this is not all. The Mandans were evidently of the race of Atlantis.
They have another singular legend, which we find in the account of Lewis
and Clarke:

"Their belief in a future state is connected with this theory of their
origin: The whole nation resided in one large village, underground, near
a subterranean lake. A grape-vine extended its roots down to their
habitation, and gave them a view of the light. Some of the most
adventurous climbed up the vine, and were delighted with the sight of
the earth, which they found covered with buffalo, and rich with every
kind of fruit. Returning with the grapes they had gathered, their
countrymen were so pleased with the taste of them that the whole nation
resolved to leave their dull residence for the charms of the upper
region. Men, women, and children ascended by means of the vine, but,
when about half the nation had reached the surface of the earth, a
corpulent woman, who was clambering up the vine, broke it with her
weight, and closed upon herself and the rest of the nation the light of
the sun."

This curious tradition means that the present nation dwelt in a large
settlement underground, that is, beyond the land, in the sea; the sea
being represented by "the subterranean lake." At one time the people had
free intercourse between this "large village" and the American
continent, and they founded extensive colonies on this continent;
whereupon some mishap cut them off from the mother country. This
explanation is confirmed by the fact that in the legends of the Iowa
Indians, who were a branch of the Dakotas, or Sioux Indians, and
relatives of the Mandans (according to Major James W. Lynd), "all the
tribes of Indians were formerly one, and all dwelt together on an
island, or at least across a large water toward the east or sunrise.
They crossed this water in skin canoes, or by swimming; but they know
not how long they were in crossing, or whether the water was salt or
fresh." While the Dakotas, according to Major Lynd, who lived among them
for nine years, possessed legends of "huge skiffs, in which the Dakotas
of old floated for weeks, finally gaining dry land"--a reminiscence of
ships and long sea-voyages.

The Mandans celebrated their great religious festival above described in
the season when the willow is first in leaf, and a dove is mixed up in
the ceremonies; and they further relate a legend that "the world was
once a great tortoise, borne on the waters, and covered with earth, and
that when one day, in digging the soil, a tribe of white men, who had
made holes in the earth to a great depth digging for badgers, at length
pierced the shell of the tortoise, it sank, and the water covering it
drowned all men with the exception of one, who saved himself in a boat;
and when the earth re-emerged, sent out a dove, who returned with a
branch of willow in its beak."

The holes dug to find badgers were a savage's recollection of mining
operations; and when the great disaster came, and the island sunk in the
sea amid volcanic convulsions, doubtless men said it was due to the deep
mines, which had opened the way to the central fires. But the recurrence
of "white men" as the miners, and of a white man as "the last and only
man," and the presence of white blood in the veins of the people, all
point to the same conclusion--that the Mandans were colonists from
Atlantis.

And here I might add that Catlin found the following singular
resemblances between the Mandan tongue and the Welsh:

+----------------------+--------------+------------+-------------+
| English. | Mandan. | Welsh. | Pronounced. |
+----------------------+--------------+------------+-------------+
| I | Me. | Mi. | Me. |
+----------------------+--------------+------------+-------------+
| You. | Ne. | Chwi. | Chwe. |
+----------------------+--------------+------------+-------------+
| He. | E. | A. | A. |
+----------------------+--------------+------------+-------------+
| She. | Ea. | E. | A. |
+----------------------+--------------+------------+-------------+
| It. | Ount. | Hwynt. | Hooynt. |
+----------------------+--------------+------------+-------------+
| We. | Noo. | Ni. | Ne. |
+----------------------+--------------+------------+-------------+
| They. | Eonah. | Hona, fem. | Hona. |
+----------------------+--------------+------------+-------------+
| No; or there is not. | Megosh. | Nagoes. | Nagosh. |
+----------------------+--------------+------------+-------------+
| No. | | Na. | |
+----------------------+--------------+------------+-------------+
| Head. | Pan. | Pen. | Pan. |
+----------------------+--------------+------------+-------------+
| The Great Spirit. | Maho Peneta. | Mawr | Mosoor |
| | | Penaethir. | Panaether. |
+----------------------+--------------+------------+-------------+

Major Lynd found the following resemblances between the Dakota tongue
and the languages of the Old World:

COMPARISON OF DAKOTA, OR SIOUX, WITH OTHER LANGUAGES.

+--------+----------+---------+-----------+---------+----------+-----------+------------+----------------+
| Latin. | English. | Saxon | Sanscrit. | German. | Danish. | Sioux. | Other | Primary |
| | | | | | | | Languages. | Signification. |
+--------+----------+---------+-----------+---------+----------+-----------+------------+----------------+
| | See, | Seon | | Sehen | Sigt | Sin | | Appearing, |
| | seen | | | | | | | visible. |
+--------+----------+---------+-----------+---------+----------+-----------+------------+----------------+
| Pinso | Pound | Punian | | | | Pau | W., | Beating |
| | | | | | | | Pwynian | |
+--------+----------+---------+-----------+---------+----------+-----------+------------+----------------+
| Vado | Went | Wendan | | | | Winta | | Passage. |
| | Wend | | | | | | | |
+--------+----------+---------+-----------+---------+----------+-----------+------------+----------------+
| | Town | Tun | | Zaun | Tun | Tonwe | Gaelic, | |
| | | | | | | | Dun | |
+--------+----------+---------+-----------+---------+----------+-----------+------------+----------------+
| Qui | Who | Hwa | Kwas | Wir | | Tuwe | | |
+--------+----------+---------+-----------+---------+----------+-----------+------------+----------------+
| | Weapon | Wepn | | Wapen | Vaapen | Wipe | | Sioux dimin. |
| | | | | | | | | Wipena |
+--------+----------+---------+-----------+---------+----------+-----------+------------+----------------+
| Ego | I | Ic | Agam | Ich | Jeg | Mish | | |
+--------+----------+---------+-----------+---------+----------+-----------+------------+----------------+
| Cor | Core | | | | | Co | Gr., Kear | Centre, heart |
+--------+----------+---------+-----------+---------+----------+-----------+------------+----------------+
| | Eight | Achta | Aute | Acht | Otte | Shaktogan | Gr., Okto | |
+--------+----------+---------+-----------+---------+----------+-----------+------------+----------------+
| Canna | Cane | | | | | Can | Heb., Can | Reed, weed, |
| | | | | | | | W., Cawn | wood. |
+--------+----------+---------+-----------+---------+----------+-----------+------------+----------------+
| Pock | Pock | Poc | | Pocke | Pukkel | Poka | Dutch, | Swelling. |
| | | | | | | | Poca | |
+--------+----------+---------+-----------+---------+----------+-----------+------------+----------------+
| | With | With | | Wider | | Wita | Goth., | |
| | | | | | | | Gewithan. | |
+--------+----------+---------+-----------+---------+----------+-----------+------------+----------------+
| | Doughty | Dohtig | | Taugen | Digtig | Dita | | Hot, brave, |
| | | | | | | Ditaya | | daring. |
+--------+----------+---------+-----------+---------+----------+-----------+------------+----------------+
| | Tight | Tian | | Dicht | Digt | Titan | | Strain. |
+--------+----------+---------+-----------+---------+----------+-----------+------------+----------------+
| Tango | Touch | Taecan | | Ticken | Tekkan | Tan | | Touch, take. |
| Tactus | Take | | | | | Htaka | | |
+--------+----------+---------+-----------+---------+----------+-----------+------------+----------------+
| | Child | Cild | | Kind | Kuld | Cin | | Progeny. |
+--------+----------+---------+-----------+---------+----------+-----------+------------+----------------+
| | Work | Wercan | | | | Woccas | Dutch, | Labor, motion. |
| | | | | | | Hecon | Werk | |
| | | | | | | | Span., | |
| | | | | | | | Hecho | |
+--------+----------+---------+-----------+---------+----------+-----------+------------+----------------+
| | Shackle | Seoacul | | | | Shka | Ar., | to bind (a |
| | | | | | | | Schakala, | link). |
| | | | | | | | Dutch, | |
| | | | | | | | Schakel | |
| | | | | | | | Teton, | |
| | | | | | | | Shakalan | |
+--------+----------+---------+-----------+---------+----------+-----------+------------+----------------+
| Query | | | | | | Kuiva | | |
+--------+----------+---------+-----------+---------+----------+-----------+------------+----------------+
| Shabby | | | | Schabig | Schabbig | Shabya | | |
+--------+----------+---------+-----------+---------+----------+-----------+------------+----------------+

According to Major Lynd, the Dakotas, or Sioux, belonged to the same
race as the Mandans; hence the interest which attaches to these verbal
similarities.

"Among the Iroquois there is a tradition that the sea and waters
infringed upon the land, so that all human life was destroyed. The
Chickasaws assert that the world was once destroyed by water, but that
one family was saved, and two animals of every kind. The Sioux say there
was a time when there was no dry land, and all men had disappeared from
existence." (See Lynd's "MS. History of the Dakotas," Library of
Historical Society of Minnesota.)

"The Okanagaus have a god, Skyappe, and also one called Chacha, who
appear to be endowed with omniscience; but their principal divinity is
their great mythical ruler and heroine, Scomalt. Long ago, when the sun
was no bigger than a star, this strong medicine-woman ruled over what
appears to have now become a lost island. At last the peace of the
island was destroyed by war, and the noise of battle was heard, with
which Scomalt was exceeding wroth, whereupon she rose up in her might
and drove her rebellious subjects to one end of the island, and broke
off the piece of land on which they were huddled and pushed it out to
sea, to drift whither it would. This floating island was tossed to and
fro and buffeted by the winds till all but two died. A man and woman
escaped in a canoe, and arrived on the main-land; and from these the
Okanagaus are descended." (Bancroft's "Native Races," vol. iii., p. 149.)

Here we have the Flood legend clearly connected with a lost island.

The Nicaraguans believed "that ages ago the world was destroyed by a
flood, in which the most part of mankind perished. Afterward the teotes,
or gods, restored the earth as at the beginning." (Ibid., p. 75.) The
wild Apaches, "wild from their natal hour," have a legend that "the
first days of the world were happy and peaceful days;" then came a great
flood, from which Montezuma and the coyote alone escaped. Montezuma
became then very wicked, and attempted to build a house that would reach
to heaven, but the Great Spirit destroyed it with thunderbolts.
(Bancroft's "Native Races," vol. iii., p. 76.)

The Pimas, an Indian tribe allied to the Papagos, have a peculiar flood
legend. The son of the Creator was called Szeu-kha (Ze-us?). An eagle
prophesied the deluge to the prophet of the people three times in
succession, but his warning was despised; "then in the twinkling of an
eye there came a peal of thunder and an awful crash, and a green mound
of water reared itself over the plain. It seemed to stand upright for a
second, then, cut incessantly by the lightning, goaded on like a great
beast, it flung itself upon the prophet's hut. When the morning broke
there was nothing to be seen alive but one man--if indeed he were a man;
Szeu-kha, the son of the Creator, had saved himself by floating on a
ball of gum or resin." This instantaneous catastrophe reminds one
forcibly of the destruction of Atlantis. Szeu-kha killed the eagle,
restored its victims to life, and repeopled the earth with them, as
Deucalion repeopled the earth with the stones.

CHAPTER VI.

SOME CONSIDERATION OF THE DELUGE LEGENDS.

The Fountains of the Great Deep.--As Atlantis perished in a volcanic
convulsion, it must have possessed volcanoes. This is rendered the more
probable when we remember that the ridge of land of which it was a part,
stretching from north to south, from Iceland to St. Helena, contains
even now great volcanoes--as in Iceland, the Azores, the Canaries,
etc.--and that the very sea-bed along the line of its original axis is,
to this day, as we have shown, the scene of great volcanic disturbances.

If, then, the mountains of Atlantis contained volcanoes, of which the
peaks of the Azores are the surviving representatives, it is not
improbable that the convulsion which drowned it in the sea was
accompanied by great discharges of water. We have seen that such
discharges occurred in the island of Java, when four thousand people
perished. "Immense columns of hot water and boiling mud were thrown out"
of the volcano of Galung Gung; the water was projected from the mountain
"like a water-spout." When a volcanic island was created near Sicily in
1831, it was accompanied by "a waterspout sixty feet high."

In the island of Dominica, one of the islands constituting the Leeward
group of the West Indies, and nearest to the site of Atlantis, on the
4th of January, 1880, occurred a series of convulsions which reminds us
forcibly of the destruction of Plato's island; and the similarity
extends to another particular: Dominica contains, like Atlantis, we are
told, numerous hot and sulphur springs. I abridge the account given by
the New York Herald of January 28th, 1880:

"A little after 11 o'clock A.M., soon after high-mass in the Roman
Catholic cathedral, and while divine service was still going on in the
Anglican and Wesleyan chapels, all the indications of an approaching
thunder-storm suddenly showed themselves; the atmosphere, which just
previously had been cool and pleasant--slight showers falling since
early morning--became at once nearly stifling hot; the rumbling of
distant thunder was heard, and the light-blue and fleecy white of the
sky turned into a heavy and lowering black. Soon the thunder-peals came
near and loud, the lightning flashes, of a blue and red color, more
frequent and vivid; and the rain, first with a few heavy drops,
commenced to pour as if the floodgates of heaven were open. In a moment
it darkened, as if night had come; a strong, nearly overpowering smell
of sulphur announced itself; and people who happened to be out in the
streets felt the rain-drops falling on their heads, backs, and shoulders
like showers of hailstones. The cause of this was to be noted by looking
at the spouts, from which the water was rushing like so many cataracts
of molten lead, while the gutters below ran swollen streams of thick
gray mud, looking like nothing ever seen in them before. In the mean
time the Roseau River had worked itself into a state of mad fury,
overflowing its banks, carrying down rocks and large trees, and
threatening destruction to the bridges over it and the houses in its
neighborhood. When the storm ceased--it lasted till twelve, mid-day--the
roofs and walls of the buildings in town, the street pavement, the
door-steps and back-yards were found covered with a deposit of volcanic
debris, holding together like clay, dark-gray in color, and in some
places more than an inch thick, with small, shining metallic particles
on the surface, which could be easily identified as iron pyrites.
Scraping up some of the stuff, it required only a slight examination to
determine its main constituents--sandstone and magnesia, the pyrites
being slightly mixed, and silver showing itself in even smaller
quantity. This is, in fact, the composition of the volcanic mud thrown
up by the soufrieres at Watton Waven and in the Boiling Lake country,
and it is found in solution as well in the lake water. The Devil's
Billiard-table, within half a mile of the Boiling Lake, is composed
wholly of this substance, which there assumes the character of stone in
formation. Inquiries instituted on Monday morning revealed the fact
that, except on the south-east, the mud shower had not extended beyond
the limits of the town. On the north-west, in the direction of Fond Colo
and Morne Daniel, nothing but pure rain-water had fallen, and neither
Loubiere nor Pointe Michel had seen any signs of volcanic disturbance. .
. .

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