I cannot do more than suggest here in passing that we have in these stories and practices the most probable origin of the common myth which accounts for the existence of river gods or river nymphs by some episode of a youth or maiden drowned there. Arethusa is the example that occurs to everyone. Grossly Euhemeristic as it may sound to say so, I yet believe that such myths of metamorphosis have their origin in the deliberate manufacture of a water-deity by immolation in the stream; and that the annual renewal of such a sacrifice was due in part to the desire to keep alive the memory of the gods--to be sure they were there, to make them “fresh and fresh,” if one may venture to say so--and in part to the analogy of those very important artificial gods of agriculture whose origin and meaning we have still to consider. I would add that the commonness of sea-horses and river-horses in the mythology of the world doubtless owes its origin partly to the natural idea of “white horses” on the waves, but partly also to the deliberate sacrifice of horses to the sea or rivers, which this notion suggested, and which tended to intensify it. It is as though the worshipper wished to keep up a continuous supply of such divine and ghostly steeds. At Rhodes, for example, four horses were annually cast into the sea; and I need hardly refer to the conventional horses of Poseidon and Neptune. The Ugly Burn in Ross-shire is the abode of a water-horse; in the remains of the Roman temple at Lydney, the god Nodens, who represents the Severn, is shown in the mosaic pavement as drawn in a chariot by four horses; and the Yore, near Middleham, is still infested by a water-horse who annually claims at least one human victim. Elsewhere other animals take the place of the horse. The Ostyaks {267}sacrifice to the river Ob by casting in a live reindeer when fish are scanty. I do not deny that in many of these cases two distinct ideas--the earlier idea of the victim as future god, and the later idea of the victim as prey or sacrifice--have got inextricably mixed up; but I do think enough’ has been said to suggest the probability that many river-gods are artificially produced, and that this is in large part the origin of nymphs and kelpies. Legend, indeed, almost always represents them so; it is only our mythologists, with their blind hatred of Euhemerism, who fail to perceive the obvious implication. And that even the accidental victim was often envisaged as a river-god, after his death, we see clearly from the Bohemian custom of going to pray on the river bank where a man has been drowned, and casting into the river a loaf of new bread and a pair of wax candles, obvious offerings to his spirit.