Cook, Arthur B.: Zeus: a study in ancient religion (Band 1): Zeus god of the bright sky (Cambridge, 1914)

Zeus superseded by Saint Elias 185

To these a cross-bearing procession was made when a change in
the weather was desired : to the former in times of drought, to the
latter when injury was being done to the crops by rain. Diseases
being considered to be evil spirits, invalids used to pray to the
thunder-god for relief. And so, at the present day, a zagovor or
spell against the Siberian cattle-plague entreats the " Holy Prophet
of God Ilya" to send " thirty angels in golden array, with bows
and with arrows" to destroy it1.' Similarly J. Grimm argued that
Saint Elias had stepped into the shoes, not only of the Slavonic

Fig- 135-

Perun, Perkun, but also of the Germanic thunder-god Thor or
Donar. As Thor overcame the Midhgardh-serpent and yet,
touched by its venomous breath, sank dead upon the ground, so in
the ninth-century Bavarian poem Muspilli Eliah does indeed destroy
Antichrist, but in the act himself receives a deadly wound2. 'The
comparison,' says Grimm, ' becomes still more suggestive by the
fact that even half-christian races in the Caucasus worship Elias

1 W. R. S. Ralston Russian Folk-tales London 1873 p. 337 ff., cp- his earlier work
The Songs of the Russian People2, London 1872 p. 246 f., where however the date of Ilya's
festival should be given as July 20, not July 29.

2 J. Grimm op. cit. i. 173 f., cp. ib. 810 ff., 1341, P. D. Chantepie de la Saussaye The
Religion oj the Teutons trans. B. J. Vos Boston and London 1902 p. i3of.