Having the last laugh

Hard to define Lewis Hyde. Antiquarian, classicist, story-teller, mythographer, connoisseur, philologist, teacher and scholar, he is as multifarious as the trickster archetype which forms the subject of his new book. In Greece trickster appears as Hermes, and Hyde begins with the Homeric Hymn written around 420 BC which deals with Hermes’s birth and career. Zeus runs off with Maia and together they produce a cunning, wily boy, full of flattery and schemes. Hermes stumbles across a turtle and turns it into the first lyre. Longing for meat, he steals cattle from Apollo and evades discovery by driving them backwards across sandy ground so that their hoofprints point away from their destination. Rubbing sticks together, he makes a fire and burns a sacrificial offering. He’s tempted to eat the cooking meat — ‘The sweet smell weakened him, god though he was’ — but resists and stores the flesh in an ample barn.

Here are the key components of trickster’s character. He’s a thief and a liar, a ‘faithless go-between’ who transcends the boundaries between gods and men. His nature is plural and morally ambiguous. Though capable of crime, he’s also a musician and an inventor. And his malicious actions often have positive outcomes. At a crucial moment he defers instant pleasure in favour of future benefits, storing rather than eating the cooked meat.

Hyde sets off on an enthralling tour of the world’s mythologies, finding trickster characters everywhere. In west Africa he’s called Eshu. One folk tale reads like a piece of anti-war propaganda. Eshu puts on a special hat, white on the left, black on the right, and rides between two lifelong friends as they work in the fields. Later, the two friends discuss the rider but they come to blows over the colour of his hat.