nature-myth

Six-Pence_ has been explained as a nature-myth, the pie being the earth and sky, the birds the twenty-four hours, the king the sun, the queen the moon, and the opening of the pie, day-break.

A Study of Fairy Tales Laura F. Kready

In the course of time this nature-myth became transformed into a hero-saga; the liberating power of light was humanized into the person of the light-hero Siegfried.

The Nibelungenlied Translated into Rhymed English Verse in the Metre of the Original George Henry Needler 1914

Though modern authorities differ greatly in their conjectures, it is generally agreed that the Siegfried story was in its original form a nature-myth.

The Nibelungenlied Translated into Rhymed English Verse in the Metre of the Original George Henry Needler 1914

This stage of development had already been reached at the time of our earliest records, and the evidences point to the Rhine Franks, a West Germanic tribe settled in the fifth century in the country about Cologne, as the people among whom the transformation from nature-myth to hero-saga took place, for it is among them that the saga in its earliest form is localized.

The Nibelungenlied Translated into Rhymed English Verse in the Metre of the Original George Henry Needler 1914

The fact that the sea was to be found on the earth, not in heaven, and the damage wrought by the incessant winter-rain and the inundation of great rivers, transferred the myth from heaven to earth, changing the ether-myth into a nature-myth.

The Catholic Encyclopedia, Volume 4: Clandestinity-Diocesan Chancery 1840-1916 1913

The Deluge story is by others considered as a nature-myth, representing the phenomena of winter, which in Babylonia especially is the time of rain.

The Catholic Encyclopedia, Volume 4: Clandestinity-Diocesan Chancery 1840-1916 1913

This nature-myth again is by some writers believed to have grown out of an archaic ether-myth, according to which the sun was imagined as a man voyaging on a boat in the heavenly ocean.

The Catholic Encyclopedia, Volume 4: Clandestinity-Diocesan Chancery 1840-1916 1913

The introduction of Tammuz and Gishzida introduces a widely spread nature-myth into the story.

The Religion of Babylonia and Assyria Morris Jastrow 1891

The disappearance of the planet fitted in well with the original nature-myth.

The Religion of Babylonia and Assyria Morris Jastrow 1891

If the story ended here, we would have a pure nature-myth -- the same myth in a different form that we encountered in the Creation epic, in the Deluge story, and in the Zu legend.

The Religion of Babylonia and Assyria Morris Jastrow 1891