The reference to the mermaid reminds us that the sea no less than the
land bore in ancient and mediæval days its full share of wonders. Of
the mermaids we shall have occasion to say more presently, as we
propose to class together all those forms that are more or less human,
and to deal with them separately; but the sculptures of classic
antiquity or the fancies of the mediæval herald afford us
illustrations of the sea-horse, the sea-lion, and many other quaint
imaginings. On an antique seal we once even saw a sea-elephant, a
creature having the fore-legs, tusks, trunk, and great flapping ears
of the African elephant, yet terminating in the body of a fish, and
duly furnished with piscine tail and fins. The combination was of the
most outrageous character, and would seem to indicate the limit
possible to absurdity in this direction. When the ancient writers
would desire to people the vast unknown of air or sea their thoughts
naturally turned to those creatures of the land with which they were
more familiar; hence the denizens of the air or ocean are not really
creations at all, but adaptations, wings or fins being added to
horses, lions, and the like according to the new element in which they
were to figure. Of these, the sea-horses that draw the chariot of
Neptune through the waves and the winged-horse Pegasus are examples
that at once occur to one's mind.
Pegasus or Pegasos, the offspring of Medusa and Poseidon, was the
symbol of poetic inspiration. Its association with Perseus and
Bellerophon, with the fountain of Peirene and the heights of Olympus,
may all be found duly set forth in classic story and engraved or
sculptured on the gems and marbles of antiquity. It is also introduced
in mediæval heraldry, but there seems to be no reference in any book
of this period to lead us to suppose that it was then regarded as a
living verity. Shakespeare refers to it from time to time, but in one
case it is only as an inn-sign, and in another the very terms employed
indicate that the reference to it must be taken in a poetic rather
than a literal sense. The first of the two to which we allude will be
found in the "Taming of the Shrew," and runs as follows:--
"Signior Baptista may remember me,
Near twenty years ago, in Genoa,
Where we were lodgers at the Pegasus."
The second will be met with in the first part of "King Henry IV.;" it
will probably be very familiar to many of our readers:--
"I saw young Harry, with his beaver on,
His cuisses on his thighs, gallantly arm'd,
Rise from the ground like feather'd Mercury,
And vaulted with such ease into his seat
As if an angel dropp'd down from the clouds,
To turn and wind a fiery Pegasus,
And witch the world with noble horsemanship."
The arms of the Barrister Templars of the present day consist of the
Pegasus on an azure shield. The original devices of the Templars were
the Agnus Dei, a device that may still be seen carved on the Temple
buildings in London, and two knights riding one behind the other on
the same horse. This badge or device was originally chosen to denote
the poverty of the order in its earlier days, but at a later day, when
the symbol was misunderstood, these two rude figures of knights were
taken for wings, and hence we get the modern device of the winged
steed or Pegasus.
The Vampyre was another of the strange imaginings of our forefathers.
It was thought that men and women sometimes returned, body and soul,
from the other world after their death, and wandered about the earth
doing all kinds of mischief to the living, one of their favourite
pursuits being to suck the blood of those who were asleep, and these
became vampyres in turn. The superstition took deepest hold in Eastern
Europe, and is still an article of firm faith in Hungary and Servia.
One reads ghastly stories of men unconsciously entertaining and
sheltering vampyres and perishing miserably, of lonely travellers
pining suddenly away, of the bodies of the dead being disinterred and
the corpse found with the tell-tale stains of blood around its mouth,
and the like; and we can easily see how such beliefs as this, or the
wehr-wolf or loup-garou of the Germans and French, or the ghoul of the
Arabs and Persians, would have a terrible effect on the minds of the
superstitious. The vampyre was a terror of the night, since the corpse
then, after lying in the stillness of the grave throughout the day,
awoke to a fearful vitality. The forms it assumed were not always
human, but were believed to be at times those of the dog, frog, toad,
cat, flea, spider, and many other innocent creatures. Hence the
contemptuous expression one sometimes hears used to deride a needless
anxiety, "a mere flea-bite," could have had no counterpart in mediæval
days, for the anxiety such a misadventure might create would be of the
most alarming and harassing description. In old books one finds the
most circumstantial details as to how to detect when one has been
bitten, or to prevent further mischief. To this end the grave of the
suspected vampyre was opened during daylight when his powers of evil
were quiescent, the corpse was decapitated and the head buried
elsewhere, a stake was driven through the body, and many other
elaborate and horrible precautions were taken to prevent a recurrence
of the nightly resurrection. On the whole, we may well congratulate
ourselves that we do not live in "the good old times." Even now in
country districts and amongst the uneducated one comes across such
striking instances of superstitious belief and thraldom as suffice to
enable us to faintly realise what it must have been when all alike
were enwrapped in a dreadful bondage to unseen powers of evil far more
intense than is now possible even to the few.
The vampyre bat, a native of South America, is so called from its
blood-sucking propensities. It is the legend of the vampyre that has
given the name to the bat, not the habits of the bat that originated
the fable of the vampyre, for at the time that these legends of the
destroyer were articles of faith in Europe, the American animal was
quite unknown. The natural tendency towards exaggeration surrounded
the vampyre bat with a mysterious horror, and having once gained its
name of ill-omen, it became easy to rear upon it a superstructure of
morbid fancy. The researches on the spot of Waterton, Darwin, and
other reliable authorities show that the name is not altogether ill
bestowed, as both Europeans and natives suffer severely from its
attacks during the night, and the horses and cattle that are out in
the pastures frequently return in the morning with their flanks
covered with blood.
Though the Chameleon, unlike the phoenix, the griffin, or the
basilisk, is a living verity, so large a body of fable has grown up
around it that the animal is almost as mythical as those creatures of
the imagination. The name is derived from two Greek words signifying
"ground-lion," a name singularly inappropriate in every way, as it has
nothing leonine in look or nature, while its organisation fits it
especially for living on trees. When we consider the singularity of
its appearance and the peculiarity of its habits, it is by no means
surprising that it should have attracted attention; and when we recall
the numerous erroneous beliefs current amongst our rustics in England
in this nineteenth century in the matter of frogs, newts, slow-worms,
and the like, we can hardly wonder at the superstitions that have
surrounded it. The eyes of the creature are quite expressionless, and
are worked perfectly independently of each other, so that one may be
directed upwards and the other downwards at the same time, or turned
simultaneously to front and rear. Its exceeding slowness of movement
is another curious feature, and though this exposes them to easy
capture when seen, for "_un Caméléon aperçu est un Caméléon perdu_,"
it has its advantages in another direction, for a creature that takes
some hours to advance a yard or so will certainly not attract
attention by any sudden movement; and the assimilation in colour of
its skin with the surrounding foliage is another great protection. The
creature has a singular habit of puffing out its body until it is
nearly as large again, and in this state it will sometimes remain for
hours. The best known fact, however, is its capacity for changing
colour, passing from green to violet, blue, or yellow; but this power
of varying the tint has been greatly exaggerated. We have been told
that if the creature be placed on any colour, as bright scarlet, it
will assume that colour; but this is one of those fragments of
unnatural history that will not bear putting to the test. The
following lines of Prior convey aptly enough this popular but
erroneous notion:--
"As the chameleon, who is known
To have no colours of its own,
But borrows from his neighbour's hue
His white or black, his green or blue."
Aristotle was acquainted with the singular motions of the eyes of the
creature, and his description may well have been taken from nature. At
the same time, these old writers knew nothing of comparative anatomy
or dissection and conducted no scientific _post-mortem_ examinations;
hence in all matters of internal structure they are often ludicrously
in error, while the weakness of their statements is only perhaps
equalled by the strength with which they are asserted. We are,
therefore, not surprised to read in Aristotle that the chameleon has
no blood except in its head. Pliny re-states all the errors made by
Aristotle, and further adds that it lives without either eating or
drinking, deriving its nourishment wholly from the air, and that,
though ordinarily harmless, it becomes terrible during the greatest
summer heats. Even Pliny, however, could not believe everything that
was told him, though his powers of imbibing outrageous notions were of
the keenest, and whenever any old writers deal with something more
than usually incredible they fortify their statement and evade
personal responsibility by adding "as Plinie saith." Pliny, then,
rejects the still older idea that its right leg artfully cooked with
certain herbs conveys the power of invisibility on the eater, and will
not believe that the thigh of its left leg boiled in sow's milk will
induce gout in any one so injudicious as to bathe their feet in this
peculiar broth. Neither will he credit that a man may be made to incur
the hatred of all his fellow-citizens by having his gate-posts
anointed with another nasty preparation of chameleon. As a set-off to
all this very unusual incredulity he hastens to adopt the statement of
another wise man, Democritus, that it has the power of attracting to
the earth birds of prey, so that they in turn become the prey of other
animals--a most unselfish proceeding on the part of the creature, as
its own food consists of flies and such like small matters. Democritus
also asserts, and Pliny confirms him in the assertion, that if the
head and neck of the chameleon be burned on oak charcoal it will cause
thunder and heavy rain. One is lost in astonishment at the fertility
of the imagination in these old naturalists; and though it is now easy
when one has once been put on the track of discovery to surmise that
the tail of a chameleon burnt on walnut charcoal might produce snow or
possibly fog, much of the credit of the discovery should go to the
man who first gave the clue to these physiologico-meteorological
influences. Aldrovandus, another man of science gifted with a strong
imagination and the power of assimilating the fancies of others,
informs us that if a viper passes beneath a tree in the branches of
which a chameleon is resting, the latter will eject from its mouth a
poisonous secretion that effectually rids the world of the equally
venomous snake; and he further adds that elephants sometimes
unknowingly eat a chameleon in the midst of the foliage on which they
are browsing, a mishap that is rapidly fatal to them unless they can
at once have recourse to the wild olive-tree as a remedy and antidote.
[Illustration: {DRAGON}]
Many other strange beasts might engage our attention were it not that
we have much new ground yet to explore, for not only might we
discourse of the strange beliefs that have clustered round these
monsters, but of the equally strange fancies that have been associated
with such familiar creatures as cats and dogs, hares and spiders,
goats and mice, while in another section we must dwell on the equally
unnatural fancies that have been associated with various plants.
Before, however, passing to these we must refer to those strange
imaginings, such as the troglodytes, centaurs, and pigmies, that owe
more or less to the combination of the human with other forms--a large
class that deserves a measure of attention that may well suggest the
advisability of opening a new chapter for its benefit.
[Decoration]
[Decoration]
CHAPTER II.
The Sphinx--The Chimæra--The Centaurs--The Origin of the Myth--The
Onocentaur--Sagittarius--Satyrs and Fauns--The Harpys, described by
Homer, Virgil, Shakespeare, Milton, and others--The Echidna--The
Gorgon--The Hydra--The Sirens--The Lurlei--Mermaids--The Manatee--
Dog-Headed Men of Brazil--The One-Eyed Cyclops and Briaræus of the
Hundred Arms--The Headless Men or Anthropophagi--Sir Walter Raleigh's
El Dorado--Claw-Footed Men--The Marvels of Hackluyt and Mandeville--
The Long-Eared Fanesii--The Fairies--The "Discoverie of Witchcraft"--
The Little Good People--Fairy-Rings--Elf-Music--Changelings--
Elf-Possession--Spirits of the Mine, or Knockers--Robin Goodfellow--
Queen Mab--The Phoca or Storm-Spirit--The Kelpie--Jack-o'-Lantern--
The Pigmies--Giants--Early Sculptures--Gigantic Men of Antiquity.
The creatures we have hitherto been considering--the griffin, the
phoenix, the manticora or the sea-horse--have either been unmitigated
monsters of the fancy, or else, like the salamander or the chameleon,
so transformed by legend as to be scarcely less monstrous and unreal.
Having the fear of Pope's oft-quoted line upon us, "The proper study
of mankind is man," we leave for a while these fantastic imaginings,
and turn to another class of forms scarcely less grotesque, but all
agreeing in this, the presence in them of more or less of the human
form and nature. This class of forms readily subdivides itself into
three sections, which we propose to deal with in the order in which
we enumerate them. The first of these are forms compounded of the
human and the animal, as, for example, the sphinx or the centaur; the
second may be considered as human, though distorted, as the one-eyed
cyclops, or, "the men whose heads do grow beneath their shoulders;"
while the third class may be held to embrace the fairies, pigmies, and
giants, forms that are human, yet in bulk or minuteness bear no
semblance to ordinary humanity.
The Sphinx may be considered as more especially an artistic and
symbolic creation, though the old Greek myth of Oedipos would seem to
show that in very early times there was a real belief in a real
monster. The sphinx is composite in nature, being in Greek art and
legend ordinarily the combination of the head and bust of a woman with
the body of a lion and the wings of an eagle; while in Egyptian art
the creature is always wingless, and its recumbent leonine body is
surmounted by the head of a man, hawk, or other creature. Egyptian art
is full of such composite monsters, and in cases where such attributes
as the courage of the lion or the wisdom of the serpent were to be
expressed, it was held that the actual leonine body or the head of the
serpent itself would best convey the required characteristics to the
eye and mind of the beholder. A reference to Wilkinson, Rosellini, or
any other good standard work on Egypt, will reveal an immense variety
of these curious composite figures, though, as they are evidently in
most cases symbolic merely, they scarcely fall within the limits of
our present study. According to some authorities, the well-known type
of Egyptian sphinx represented the royal power by its junction in one
creation of the highest physical and mental strength. Pliny, however,
states that it is to be taken as the representation of the beneficent
Nile, as the annual rising took place while the sun was in Leo and
Virgo. As the head is masculine in type, and not that of maiden fair,
this theory will scarcely meet the case.
The sphinx of classic story, a monster half-woman, half-lion, was sent
by Hera to devastate the land of Thebes in revenge for an insult that
had been offered to her. Sitting by the roadside, the sphinx put to
every passer-by the celebrated riddle, "What creature walks on four
legs in the morning, on two legs at noon, and on three in the
evening?" As one after another of these luckless travellers was
obliged to "give it up" he was cast from the rock on which the monster
sat into a deep abyss at its foot. The understanding was, that if any
one could solve this conundrum the sphinx should herself perish, a
consummation devoutly to be wished. One Oedipos hit upon the happy
idea that perhaps it was a man that was meant, his career being traced
through crawling infancy to stalwart manhood, and thence to tottering
old age. Probably the sphinx had presumed too thoroughly on the
badness of the riddle, and thought that its inane character would be
her safeguard in this perilous game for forfeits. Lord Bacon[14]
supplies a curious theory in explanation of the Greek legend; he tells
us that the creature represented science, her composite nature being
the various and different branches of which it is composed; that the
female face denoted volubility of speech, while the wings showed the
rapidity with which knowledge could be diffused. Her hooked talons are
supposed to remind us of the arguments of science laying hold of the
mind. Her position on the crag is a hint that the road to knowledge is
steep and difficult, while the riddles of science "perplex and harass
the mind." Probably our readers have already made up their minds as to
the value of this theory of Bacon's; it appears to us that fifty other
equally good explanations might be devised, and all equally wide of
the mark. Of course after so sweeping a statement we can scarcely be
expected to supply one ourselves for the other forty-nine critics to
mercilessly dissect.
[14] Appendix H.
The Chimæra was, according to Hesiod, a fire-breathing monster
compounded of lion, goat, and serpent, having three heads, one of each
of these creatures. It is in this form often represented in classic
art; but Coats, a great authority in blazonry in the last century, in
describing the monster departs somewhat from the ancient type, and in
so doing brings the creature within the scope of our present chapter.
He speaks of it as "an imaginary creature invented by the Poets, and
represented by them as having the Face of a beautiful Maiden, the two
Fore-legs and the Main of a Lyon, the Body like a Goat, the
hinder-legs like a Griffin, and the Tayl like a Serpent or Dragon
turned in a Ring." He does not, however, give his authorities. Though
Milton in his "Paradise Lost" gives us the line, "Gorgons, and Hydras,
and Chimæras dire," the myth has been received amongst ourselves with
so little faith that anything wildly improbable is branded as
chimerical, and scouted accordingly.
The Centaurs are said by Virgil and Horace to have dwelt in Thessaly,
a land then greatly famed for its breed of horses. Instances, as in
the landing of the Spaniards in America, have not been unknown where
those to whom the horse was unknown have imagined that the horse and
his rider were but one creature. The belief in centaurs is not,
therefore, so difficult a myth to trace to its origin as many others.
The usual form of representation is the conjoining of the body and
legs of a horse and the head, arms, and body of a man so far as the
waist, though in some early works, as, for example, in archaic pottery
in the British Museum, the legs of the man take the place of the
fore-legs of the horse. The celebrated statue in the Louvre known as
the Borghese Centaur, a sculpture of the most refined period of Greek
art, gives the best idea, perhaps, of the highest treatment the form
permits. Other fine examples, fragments of the sculpture of the
Parthenon, may be seen in our own national collection in London.[15]
In the works of the earlier writers, as Homer, the centaurs have
nothing unnatural in their composition; we read nothing of their being
half-horse, half-man, but they are introduced to us as a tribe of men
whose home was in the mountains and whose nature was altogether
barbarous and ferocious. The contests with centaurs, so favourite a
subject in Greek art, have been generally conceived to be the struggle
of Greek civilisation with the barbarism of the tribes with which it
came in contact in the early Pelasgian period, a struggle that
strangely enough finds its memorial not only in the grand sculptures
of the matchless Parthenon, but in the delicate beauty of a little
English wild flower, the pink centaury.[16]
[15] Appendix I.
[16] Appendix J.
Isidore refers to a creature called the Onocentaur, "which has the
shape of a man down to the waist, and behind has the make of an ass."
As the centaurs are frequently represented as bearing bows and arrows,
the Sagittarius of the heralds (such, for instance, as that assigned
as the armorial bearing of King Stephen or the sign of the Zodiac of
the same name) is ordinarily represented in this half-human,
half-equine form, though it is, of course, obvious on a moment's
consideration of the real meaning and derivation of the word, that
this is but a narrow and arbitrary limitation, and that Robin Hood,
for example, or William Tell, to say nothing of "A, the archer that
shot at a frog," might as readily, in fact, be called a Sagittarius as
any Thessalian centaur.
Other partly human, partly animal forms often found in classic art and
literature are those of the Satyrs and the Fauns. The satyrs are
represented as having bristly hair, ears sharply pointed like those of
animals, low sensual faces, small horns growing out of the top of the
forehead, and a tail like that of a horse or goat. These satyrs, Greek
in their conception, are often confounded with the fauns of the
Romans, creatures half-man and half-goat, the head, like that of the
satyrs, being horned. Our readers will doubtless recall the lines in
"Hamlet:"--
"So excellent a king, that was to this,
Hyperion to a satyr."
These woodland sprites, as attendants on Pan, Bacchus, and Silenus,
are often represented in classic art, and were a firm article of
belief in those early ages. Thorwaldsen and other modern sculptors
have also introduced them in their work, and they were often a feature
in the quaint processions of the Guilds of the Middle Ages.[17]
[17] Appendix K.
The Harpys, three in number, were creatures employed, according to the
belief of the Greeks and Romans, by the higher gods as the instruments
for the punishment of the crimes of men. Their bodies were those of
vultures, their heads those of women, and it was their evil property
to contaminate everything they touched. They are not infrequently
represented in classic art; several examples of their introduction may
be seen on vases in the British Museum, and notably on some
bas-reliefs from a monument brought from Xanthus, in Lycia, and
commonly, from the subjects of these sculptures, called the Harpy
Tomb--a monument dating probably from about the sixth century before
the Christian era. Homer mentions but one harpy, Hesiod gives two, but
all later writers mention three. Milton refers to these creatures in
his "Paradise Lost," Book II., in the lines:--
"Thither by harpy-footed Furies hal'd
At certain revolutions all the damn'd are brought."
Shakespeare, too, in his "Much Ado About Nothing," Act ii. scene 1,
mentions the creature, though in a more indirect way, using the word,
as we from time to time find it employed elsewhere, as typical of one
who wants to seize on everything and get people into his own power--"a
regular harpy." Another reference will be found in the third scene in
the third act of the "Tempest," where Ariel in the midst of thunder
and lightning enters as a harpy and addresses those before him as
follows:--"I have made you mad.... I and my fellows are ministers of
fate." In "Pericles," again, Act iv. scene 4, we find Cleon
exclaiming--
"Thou art like the harpy,
Which, to betray, dost with thine angel's face
Seize with thine eagle's talons."
In the "Monstrorum Historia" of Aldrovandus[18] we find figured a
mediæval rendering of the creature, and Guillim in his "Heraldry"
seems to frankly accept the harpy as a real thing, while the lines he
quotes in support from Virgil are powerfully descriptive:--
"Of Monsters all, most Monstrous this: no greater Wrath
God sends 'mongst Men: it comes from depth of pitchy Hell:
With Virgin's Face, but Womb like Gulf unsatiate hath,
Her Hands are Griping claws, her Colour pale and fell."
[18] Appendix L.
Virgil, it will be noticed, makes the creature wholly fearful, while
Shakespeare makes the horror yet more weird by giving the implacable
and destroying monster a face of angelic sweetness.
Upton, another old writer on heraldry, says that in blazoning arms
"the Harpy should be given to such persons as have committed
Manslaughter, to the End that by the often view of their Ensigns they
might be moved to bewail the Foulness of their Offence." This we
should imagine, is more simple in theory than in practice, and Upton
must have been very simple himself to fancy that any one could thus be
induced to blazon their misdoings abroad like that. In the earlier
days of heraldry the monarch had two powerful means of rewarding or
punishing his nobles in what were termed respectively marks of
augmentation and of abatement in their armorial bearings, but in the
later times in which Upton lived no such compulsory stigma was
possible. We fancy, too, that in the earlier days a good deal of what
a modern judge and jury would call manslaughter went on, and was not
by any means considered a foul offence to be bewailed over.
The terrible Echidna, half-woman, half-serpent, the mother of the
dread chimæra, the fierce dragon of the Hesperides, the gorgons that
turned to stone all who gazed on them, the hydra of the Lernean
marsh, the vulture that made itself so decidedly unpleasant to
Prometheus, and several other children of an equally objectionable
type, was another of the monsters once believed in, while the better
known Sirens and Mermaids, half-woman, half-fish, will naturally occur
to the minds of our readers.
The Sirens were originally nymphs, but Demeter transformed them into
beings half-women, half-birds, for reasons that may be found duly set
forth in any work on mythology. Ultimately they were again transformed
into creatures of which the upper portion was that of a beautiful
woman, while the lower was fish-like. These sirens dwelt in the cliffs
on the Sicilian shore, and by the sweetness of their voices bewitched
passing travellers, who, allured by the charms of their song, were
drawn to them, when they were lulled into insensibility and perished.
Skeletons lay thickly round their dwelling, but the warning was
useless and hopeless, as the sirens were allowed by the gods to retain
this cruel power over the hearts of men until one arose who could defy
their sweet allurements. Orpheus and Odysseus each fulfilled the
conditions, and thus the evil power of the sirens came to an end.
Orpheus, by the unsurpassable sweetness of his own music and his hymns
of praise to the gods, carried himself and his crew safely past the
spot so fatal to others; while Odysseus stopped the ears of his crew
with wax, that they might be deaf to the bewitching music, while he
himself was bound to the mast, and incapable, therefore, of yielding
to the soft fascination. It has been surmised that the whole story can
be explained by the soft beating and melodious murmur of the waves
over the hidden shoals and sands that would engulf those who would
attempt to land. However this may be, the sirens were at one time a
firm article of belief, and are often represented in ancient art or
referred to in ancient poetry, while later moralists find the simile
an apt one between the siren-song and its tragic effects and all
earthly pleasures that carry within them the seeds of death.[19] A
later legend of the same type may be seen in the myth of the Lurlei, a
water-spirit whose home was in the steep cliff that overshadows the
Rhine near St. Goar, the fairness of whose person was as great as the
unfairness of her conduct in luring to their destruction the passing
travellers. Here again, of course, matter-of-fact people have stepped
in and explained all away, a striking echo and a rock on which to
strike being all that is left to us, the moral being, that if people
will be so foolish as to awaken by bugle or song the slumbering voices
of the rocks when they ought to be giving their whole attention to
their steering, what wonder if they come to grief? A very good
reference to the siren's lulling song will be found in the second
scene in the third act of the "Comedy of Errors."
[19] Appendix M.
Mermaids and Tritons were once fully accepted facts, and illustrations
of them, literary or artistic, abound, Ariel in the "Tempest" sings of
the sea-nymphs, and Oberon in the "Midsummer Night's Dream" speaks of
"A mermaid on a dolphin's back,
Uttering such dulcet and harmonious breath,
That the rude sea grew civil at her song;
And certain stars shot madly from their spheres,
To hear the sea-maid's music."
Shakespeare seems to have made a very natural error in confounding the
mermaids and the sirens together, for in the "Comedy of Errors" his
allusion to the one is in language more adapted to the other:--
"Her fair sister,
Possessed with such a gentle sovereign grace,
Of such enchanting presence and discourse,
Hath almost made me traitor to myself.
But, lest myself be guilty to self-wrong,
I'll stop mine ears against the mermaid's song."
Another illustration of this will be found in the third part of King
Henry VI., a passage peculiarly appropriate to our present purpose, as
it embodies in a concentrated form no less than three of the items of
unnatural history we have already dealt with--the siren's
death-dealing charms, the death-giving glance of the basilisk, and the
changing tints of the chameleon, besides referring to the hypocritical
tears of the crocodile. The passage will be found in the second scene
of the third act, where Gloster exclaims--
"I can smile, and murther while I smile,
And cry, content, to that which grieves my heart;
And wet my cheeks with artificial tears,
And frame my face to all occasions.
I'll drown more sailors than the mermaid shall;
I'll slay more gazers than the basilisk;
I'll play the orator as well as Nestor;
Deceive more slily than Ulysses could;
And like a Sinon take another Troy:
I can add colours to the cameleon."
Other references will be found in "Hamlet" and in "Antony and
Cleopatra."
It has been conjectured that the ancients derived their idea of the
mermaid from the Manatees that may be found on the shores of Africa
washed by the Atlantic, or from the Dugongs of the littoral of the
Indian Ocean. These singular animals have been placed by naturalists
in a class by themselves and called Sirenia. They have a curious habit
of swimming with their heads and necks above water. They thus bear
some grotesque and remote resemblance to the human form, and may have
given rise to the poetical tales of mermaids and sirens found in
ancient literature. When the female Dugong is nursing her offspring
the position assumed is almost identical with that of a human mother.
The sea-lions and seals have the same habit of raising themselves in a
semi-erect position in the water, and the intelligent aspect of their
faces gives them at a little distance a close resemblance to human
beings--a resemblance often equally striking when they are seen
recumbent on the rocks. It is but little strange, that early
navigators with all the superstitions of their race, and having a very
slight knowledge of natural history, should be deceived, when we find
in Scoresby's Voyages the incident narrated of the surgeon of his ship
so deceived by one of these creatures that he reported that "he had
seen a man with his head just above the surface of the water." At the
same time, it appears to us at least as probable that the mermaid,
like the sea-horses of Poseidon, was purely a creature of the
imagination.
From the graceful beauty of the mermaiden to the less pleasing
physiognomy of "Mistress Tannakin Skimker, the hog-faced gentlewoman,"
is a great step indeed, yet both beliefs bear testimony alike to the
universal desire after something wonderful and outside the ordinary
course of nature, a feeling that in its lowest form finds satisfaction
in paying a penny to see a six-legged lamb, while more cultured minds
revel in the wealth of fancy found in the myths of Hellas. The unhappy
lady who has prompted our present remarks was bewitched at her birth
on the understanding that she should recover her true shape on being
married. She was born, we are told, in 1618 in a town on "the River
Rhyne." Our authority, a book dated the year 1640, gives various
facts, but does not say whether any one was so courageous as to remove
the spell by offering her marriage. The book is embellished (or
otherwise) with a portrait of the luckless Tannakin. While referring
to the one old book our thoughts naturally turn to another of a
similar type, the "Humana Physiognomonia" of Porta, a book published
in the year 1601. It is full of curious woodcuts showing the great
resemblance sometimes seen between the features of men and those of
some of the lower animals.
Old Burton tells us, in his "Miracles of Art and Nature" (A.D. 1678),
of a creature found in Brazil that had "the face of an Ape, the foot
of a Lyon, and all the rest of a Man," and he almost needlessly adds,
"a Beast of a most terrible aspect." This is not by any means the only
wonder in that vast and distant land, and he winds up his description
by asserting that "it may be said of Brasill as once of Africk, every
day some New Object of Admiration." In his account of India he tells
us of dog-headed men, while in the Oriental Isles, besides a river
plentifully stored with fish, yet so hot that it scalds the flesh of
any man or beast thrown therein, there are men with tails.
Numerous other instances might readily be given of strange
combinations of the human form with that of some animal, but enough
has been given as an illustration of the sort of thing to be freely
met with in ancient and mediæval history; so we pass to our second
division of humanity--those who are wholly human, yet in some way of
so marked a departure from the ordinary type of mankind as to come
within the scope of our strange history. These modifications sometimes
arise from the suppression of some part, as in the case of the
headless people; in its exaggeration, as in the instance of the men of
India whose ears sweep the ground as they walk; or in the
multiplication or subtraction of various members, as in the one-eyed
Cyclops or the hundred-armed Briaræus.
One of the most notable beliefs in mediæval times was that in the
headless people:--
"The Anthropophagi, and men whose heads
Do grow beneath their shoulders."
Of the Anthropophagi we may read in Eden's "Historie of Travayle," a
book published in the year 1577. The word in its literal sense means
man-eaters or cannibals.[20] Eden, in the passage to which we have
referred, speaks of these as "the wilde and myschevous people called
Canibales or Caribes, whiche were accustomed to eate man's fleshe, and
called of the old writers Anthropophagi, molest them exceedingly,
invading their countrey, takyng them captive, kyllying and eatyng
them." Our old author, it will be seen, speaks of still older writers,
but these we have been unable to lay hands on.
[20] From the Greek words _anthropos_, a man; and _phago_, to eat.
Halliwell, in his noble edition of Shakespeare's Plays, comments on
the opinion of Pope and other writers, that the lines we have quoted
from "Othello" were perhaps originally the interpolation of the
players, or at best a mere piece of trash admitted to humour the lower
class of the audience. He, as we imagine, very justly combats this
idea, holding that the case was probably the very reverse of this, and
that the poet rather desired to commend his play to the more curious
and refined amongst his auditors by alluding here to some of the most
extraordinary passages in Sir Walter Raleigh's account of his
celebrated voyage to Guiana in 1595. Nothing excited more universal
attention than the accounts which Raleigh brought from the New World
of the cannibals, headless people, and Amazons. A short extract of the
more wonderful passages was published in several languages,
accompanied by a map of Guiana, by Jodocus Hondius, a Dutch
geographer, and adorned with copper-plates representing these
Anthropophagi, Amazons, and headless men in different points of view.
Raleigh's book was published in London in 1596, the year after his
return from these wondrous lands. Its title runs as follows:--"The
discoverie of the large, rich, and bewtiful Empire of Gviana, with a
relation of the great and golden City of Manoa, which the Spaniards
call El Dorado, performed in the year 1595, by Sir W. Ralegh, Knt."
The book is written throughout in a very fair, honest way, and with an
evident desire to gain the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the
truth. Our hero shall, however, speak for himself. "Next vnto Armi
there are two riuers Atoica and Coara, and on that braunch which is
called Coara are a nation of people whose heades appeare not aboue
their shoulders, which, though it may be thought a meere fable, yet
for mine owne parte I am resolued it is true, because euery child in
the prouinces of Arromaia and Canuri affirme the same: they are called
Ewaipanoma; they are reported to haue their eyes in their shoulders,
and their mouths in the middle of their breasts, and that a long
traine of haire groweth backward betwen their shoulders. The sonne of
Topiawari, which I brought with mee into England, told mee that they
are the most mightie men of all the lande and vse bowes, arrowes, and
clubs thrice as bigge as any of Guiana, or of the Orenoqueponi, and
that one of the Iwarawakeri took a prisoner of them the yeare before
our arriual there, and brought him into the borders of Arromaia his
father's countrey. And further, when I seemed to doubt of it hee told
me that it was no wonder among them, but that they were as great a
nation, and as common, as any other in all the prouinces, and had of
late yeares slaine manie hundreds of his father's people and of other
nations their neighbors, but it was not my chance to heare of them til
I was come away, and if I had but spoken one word of it while I was
there, I might haue brought one of them with me to put the matter out
of doubt." It appears to us that "Sir W. Ralegh, Knt.," comes out of
the matter very much better than "the sonne of Topiawari," who, to say
the least of it, and to take the most charitable view, seems to have
been under a misapprehension of the facts.
The same year saw the publication of a second book, "A relation of the
Second Voyage to Guiana, performed and written in the yeere 1596, by
Laurence Keymis, Gent." This was dedicated to "the approved, right
valorous and worthy knight Sir Walter Ralegh," and he too refers to
this mysterious people, though only on the same terms, information at
second hand, not actual inspection. He says, "Our interpreter
certified mee of the headlesse men, and that their mouthes in their
breastes are exceeding wide." He evidently feels that this is almost
as far as he may reasonably expect to gain credence from the folks at
home, for he goes on to say, "What I have heard of a sorte of people
more monstrous I omit to mention, because it is matter of no
difficultie to get one of them, and the report otherwise will appeare
fabulous." He nevertheless does mention it, for in a note on the
margin he says of these people, "They have eminent heades like dogs,
and live all the day time in the sea: they speake the Charibes
language." Probably these were some kind of seal or sea-lion, though
one does not generally associate with such creatures the idea of
linguistic acquirements. He does not seem to have found it so easy to
get hold of one of these people as he anticipated; his book at least
gives no hint that he was so far successful. Guiana, like Africke, was
in mediæval times a land of wonders, and even Hartsinck, in his work
on Guiana, published in 1770, or not very much more than a century
ago, gravely asserts the existence of a race of negroes in Surinam
whose hands and feet were forked like the claw of a lobster, the hands
consisting merely of a thumb and one broad finger, like the gloves of
one's tender infancy, while the foot was suggestive of the split hoof
of the ox or sheep.
Hackluyt in his "Voyages" dwells on the land Gaora, a tract inhabited
by a people without heads, having their eyes in their shoulders and
their mouths in their breasts. His book is dated 1598. A similar race
of men, called Blemmyes, were said to be found in Africa; and Sir John
Maundeville, in his "Voiage and Travaile, which treateth of the way to
Hierusalem and of Marvels of Inde, with other Ilands and Countries,"
gives an account of these men whose heads do grow beneath their
shoulders. The book is altogether a most curious and interesting one,
and the quaint illustrations add greatly to its value. The famous
"Nuremburg Chronicle" of the year 1493 has a very curious figure of
one of these headless men, almost a hundred years before they are
mentioned by Sir Walter Raleigh, and in 1534 we find another
representation in one of the books of Erasmus.[21] Raleigh's book, it
will be remembered, was published in 1596.
[21] Appendix N.
An extraordinary realisation of these famous and fabulous beings was
afforded to the people of Stuttgard at the great Festival held in that
city by the Grand-Duke of Wurtemburg on the occasion of his marriage
with the Margravine of Brandenburg in the year 1609. The doings of the
Festival were illustrated by Balthazar Kuchlein in a volume of 236
plates. A grand procession was a marked feature in the rejoicings, and
in this procession we see three of these headless men riding on gaily
caparisoned and prancing steeds, besides "Tempus" with his winged
hourglass; "Labor," dressed as a rustic, and bearing in one hand a
beehive, and in the other a spade; and "Fama," a winged lady-fair on
horseback, and bearing scroll and trumpet. In this grand but
heterogeneous cavalcade we also find, amongst many others, the
counterfeit presentments of Julius Cæsar, Alexander of Macedon, Hector
of Troy, Diana, Jupiter, Sol, Prudentia, Justicia, Fortitudo, and
Abundancia--a strange medley, but doubtless a pageant well pleasing to
the burghers of Stuttgard, and to the countless throngs drawn within
their city walls.
Pliny gravely writes of the Fanesii, a tribe in the far north of
Scandinavia, whose ears were so long that they could cover up their
whole body with them; while the author of "Guerino Meschino" speaks of
Indians with feet so large that they carried them over their heads as
sunshades. Their means of locomotion must have been, under these
circumstances, decidedly curious.
Amongst one-eyed people we have the Arimaspians and the Cyclops. The
former were a race in Scythia, and were legendarily supposed to be in
constant war with the gryphons, as elsewhere we find recorded the
continuous hostilities between the pigmies and the cranes. They are
referred to by Milton in his "Paradise Lost." The Cyclops were
giants, whose business it was to forge for Vulcan; their single eye
was placed in the centre of their foreheads. Of these the most notable
was the great giant Polyphemus, the defeated and blinded foe of
Ulysses:--
"Roused with the sound, the mighty family
Of one-eyed brothers hasten to the shore,
And gather round the bellowing Polypheme."[22]
[22] Addison's "Milton Imitated."
All the departures from the ordinary human type that we have hitherto
considered sink into insignificance when we come to the great
Briaræus, the fifty-headed and hundred-handed giant, and his
companions:--
"He who brandished in his hundred hands
His fifty swords and fifty shields in fight."[23]
[23] The "Jerusalem Delivered" of Tasso.
Giants of this overwhelming type may be also met with in the mythology
of Scandinavia and India, but space forbids our dwelling at greater
length on their charms. Having, therefore, so far done homage to the
dictum of Pope, "The proper study of mankind is man," by considering
in the first place the combination of the human nature with the
animal, and in the second division man himself, yet warped and
distorted from the image of God, we now, in the third place, deal with
those forms of human mould that owe their departure from the type form
to an excess of bulk or the reverse--a class that includes the men of
Lilliput and of Brobdingnag, and all their fellows in towering height
or microscopic proportion.
The Fairies were held by our ancestors to be a kind of intermediate
beings, partaking of the nature both of men and spirits. They had
material bodies, and yet possessed the power of rendering themselves
invisible at will. They had minds and hearts that could be touched by
kindly feelings, and at the same time they delighted in practical
jokes of the most pronounced description, while some displayed a cruel
and malignant ferocity. The general idea, however, of them seems to
have been of a diminutive race possessed with supernatural gifts,
animated with joyous spirits, of great beauty, and full of kindliness
to the sons of men when not crossed or slighted. We are told, for
instance, of an honest farmer who had been reduced by the badness of
the seasons to poverty, and was about to return homewards one morning
from the fields in despair, having sown what little seed he had, which
was not nearly so much as the ploughed land required. While pondering,
not knowing what to do, he imagined that he heard a voice behind him
saying--
"Tak'--an' gie
As gude to me."
He turned round, and perceived a large sack standing at the end of the
field, and on opening it he found it to be full of the most excellent
seed-oats. Without hesitation he sowed them; the sample was admirable,
and the harvest no less luxuriant. The man carefully preserved the
sack, and as soon as possible filled it full of the best grain that
his field produced, and set it down on the spot on which he had
received the fairy oats. A voice called to him--
"Turn roun' your back,
Whill I get my sack."
The farmer averted his face, and then immediately looked round, but
all was gone. Things ever after prospered with him; for, according to
the popular belief--
"Meddle and mell
Wi' the fien's o' hell,
An' a weirdless wicht ye'll be;
But tak' and len',
Wi' the fairy men,
Ye'll thrive ay whill ye dee."
In the same dearth, and in the same parish, an old woman who was
nearly perishing of hunger, having tasted no food for two or three
days, was one morning astonished to find one of her pans full of
oatmeal. This seasonable supply she attributed to some of her
benevolent neighbours, who she imagined had been wishing to give her a
little surprise. Notwithstanding the care, however, with which she
husbanded her meal, it by-and-by was expended, and she was again
almost reduced to starvation. After passing another day without food
her pan was again replenished, which was regularly done whenever the
supply was exhausted, always allowing her to remain one day without
food. Her store was replenished so regularly that at last she became
careless, and presumed on the generosity of her invisible benefactors.
One day, on receiving her new supply, she baked the whole of it into
cakes, and having by some means obtained a little meat, invited all
her acquaintances to a treat. The guests were just going to fall to
when, to their astonishment, they beheld the cakes turn into withered
leaves. After this the store was never renewed.
The origin of the belief in fairies is lost in the mists of time. Some
supposed them to be the spirits of those who had inhabited the land
before the birth of the Saviour, shut out until the final judgment
from the joys of Paradise, yet undeserving of a place amongst the
lost souls in Hades. Others tell us that they are the Druids thus
transformed because they would not give up their idolatrous rites, and
that they are continually growing smaller and smaller, until they
eventually turn into ants.[24] They may be divided into four classes.
1. The white or good fairies who live above ground, the joyous
dancers, the ethereal beings the poets delight to portray. 2. The dark
or underground spirits, trolds and brownies, a more irritable race,
working in mines and smithies, and doing good or evil offices in a
somewhat arbitrary and uncertain fashion. 3. The fairy of the
homestead, of whom Puck and Robin Goodfellow are good examples, fond
of cleanliness and order, rewarding and helping the industrious and
punishing the idle and careless. 4. The water-fairies, the more sombre
spirits of the woods and mountains, the Kelpies and Nixies, luring men
to destruction. We nevertheless find that the fairies of the sylvan
shades interest themselves at times in the affairs of men, and though
it is easy to define four very distinct classes, we at the same time
find that these classes are blended together a good deal. The whole
thing is so purely a creation of the imagination, not of one mind but
of thousands, that it is impossible to reduce the subject to
mathematical exactness.
[24] Appendix O.
The fairies of the poets are ordinarily those of the woodland, while
those of the legends of the countryside are at least equally often the
fairies of the homestead in their association with the daily life, the
trivial round, the common task.
The earliest account of the fairies of England will be found in the
writings of Gervase, in the thirteenth century, and after that date
allusion to them may frequently be found; grave chroniclers like
Reginald Scot, poets like Chaucer, Spenser, Shakespeare, and Milton,
all make mention of them. The first of these, Scot, in his "Discoverie
of Witchcraft," tells us that "the faeries do principally inhabit the
mountains and caverns of the earth, whose nature is to make strange
apparitions on the earth, in meadows or in mountains, being like men
and women, soldiers, kings, and ladies, children, and horsemen clothed
in green." Many unfortunate women were persecuted as witches during
the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, and their connection with the
fairies was often one of the leading charges against them, as we may
see in the indictment of Alison Pearson; she was convicted of
associating with the fairies, the definite charge against her being
"for haunting and reparing with the Queene of Elfland." Another woman
was found guilty of "taking employment from a woman to speak in her
behalf to the Queene of Faerie;" and many other such cases might be
brought forward.
Fairies have ordinarily been invisible, and though they have at times
permitted mortals to be present at their revels, more frequently they
would appear to have resented any intrusion. In Poole's "English
Parnassus" the most circumstantial details are given: the robes are of
snowy cobweb and silver gossamer; the lamps are the mystic lights of
glowworms; the minstrelry is the music of the nightingale or the chirp
of the cricket. Their emperor was Oberon, and his royal consort and
empress was the sweet but mischievous Mab:--
"There is Mab, the mistress fairy,
That doth nightly rob the dairy;
And can help or hurt the churning
As she please without discerning.
This is she that empties cradles,
Takes out children, puts in ladles."
The fairies--the good people as they were often called--were on the
whole kindly and beneficent. During the Middle Ages these little
beings had obtained so much credit that the clergy, who wished to
reserve to themselves the power of blessing or banning, grew seriously
jealous, and endeavoured earnestly to disestablish them from the
hearts of men. That this was by no means in accordance with the
feelings of the laity may be very well seen in the following extract
from the "Canterbury Tales":--
"I speke of many hundred yeres ago;
_But now can no man see non elves mo_;
For now the grete charitee and prayeres
Of limetoures and other holy freres
That searchen every land and every streme
As thikke as motes in the sonne beme,
Blessing halles, chambers, kichenes and bowres,
Cities, and burghes, castles highe and toures,
Thropes and bernes, shepines and dairies
_This maketh that there ben no fairies_;
For thir as wont to walken was an elf,
Their walketh now the limetour himself."
The fairy rings to be seen in the meadows and woodlands were accepted
with undoubted faith as the scenes of midnight revelry, and in most
cases were regarded with some little dread from the belief that they
were enchanted ground. Hence when people went to look after their
cattle in the morning they were always careful to avoid walking too
near these rings:--
"Some say the screech-owl, at each midnight hour,
Awakes the Fairies in yon ancient tower.
Their nightly dancing ring I always dread,
Nor let my sheep within that circle tread;
Where round and round all night in moonlight fair,
They dance to some strange music of the air."
The effect produced on those who incautiously entered these charmed
circles seems to have been sufficiently startling, if we may credit
the old popular beliefs, to justify the greatest precautions and the
most open-eyed watchfulness. In some cases the victim of carelessness
or short-sightedness would imagine that he had been absent but a few
minutes with the fairies, when he had really been away a century or
more; while in other cases a man would suppose that he had lived for a
long period in Elf-land when he had been but away an hour. Probably in
some cases the spirits were alcoholic. We read of a young man who went
out one morning and probably trod in one of these rings; however that
may be, he was attracted by the especially sweet singing of some
unknown bird. After waiting, as he thought, some few minutes, he
resumed his journey, when he noticed to his surprise that the fresh
and verdant tree in which the sweet songster had been embowered was
scathed and leafless. The well-known house to which he was going had
disappeared with all its inhabitants, and in its place a new structure
had arisen. On going up to it an old man, who was evidently the owner,
came out and asked his business, and on learning his name, told him
that he had been away a hundred years or more. "I remember when I was
a child hearing my grandfather speak of your disappearance one day
many years before I was born, and that, after searching for you far
and wide, he learned from a wise woman that you had fallen amongst the
fairies, and that you would only be released when the sap had ceased
to flow in yonder aged tree!" He had scarcely uttered the words when
he beheld his long-lost kinsman fall away to a heap of dry dust!!
A popular Welsh legend tells us that two countrymen were one night
crossing the mountains, when one of them, thinking he heard some
strains of music, lingered a little behind, and could not afterwards
be found. After fruitless search, his friends learned from a Seer that
he had fallen amongst the fairies, and that the only way to recover
him was to go on the anniversary of his absence to the place where he
had disappeared, and that they must then pull him out of a fairy ring.
Some few bold spirits were equal to the occasion, and on going to the
place at the stipulated time they discovered their lost relative in
the midst of an immense number of very small people, who were all
dancing round in a circle. They pulled him out, but he died of
exhaustion almost directly, as he had been dancing without
intermission for the twelve months he had been missing. Another
tradition current in Wales tells us of a young shepherd who peacefully
tended his flock on the steeps of Brynnan Mawr. One day setting forth
as usual at daybreak from his homestead near the hills, the lofty
summit was enveloped in mist, but, as he proceeded, it gradually
cleared away towards the Pembrokeshire side, a sure sign of a fine
day. Our shepherd felt all the elevation of spirit which youth and the
early dawn of a day in the "leafy month of June" might be expected to
produce. Whilst trudging on his way gaily up the steep, he discerned
the extraordinary spectacle of a party of persons, brilliantly
dressed, and in active movement near the summit of the mountain. He
gazed for some time before he could be convinced that what he saw was
real. He climbed farther and farther, forgetting his sheep and all
else in the world at the apparition of so many bright beings at that
desolate spot. At last he drew very near the party, whom he was now
convinced were either the Fairies, or some kindred sprites, concluding
their nightly revels. Bursts of gentle music, like the melodious
murmuring of an Æolian harp, ever and anon entranced him with
delight. They were comely little beings to behold, and seemed very
merry, while their habiliments of white, or green, or red, glistened
with more than earthly beauty. The male sex wore red bonnets, and
their fair companions flaunted in head-dresses outrivalling the
gossamer in their texture; and many either galloped about on tiny
white steeds, or pursued each other with the swiftness of the breeze.
The greater portion of the party, however, were intently engaged in
their favourite sport of dancing in the circle. Our shepherd did not
know how it was, but he felt an irresistible inclination to make one
of this joyous group, and growing bolder as the actors in the scene
became more familiar to him, he at last ventured forward, and being
encouraged by the friendly signals from all around, he advanced one
step within the ring. The most exquisite melody now filled the air,
and in an instant all was changed. Brynnan Mawr, with its well-known
scenery, was seen no more. He was suddenly transported to a gorgeous
palace radiant with gold and precious stones. Groves of odoriferous
shrubs, intermingled with flowers unknown in this world, which might
have rivalled those of the Valley of Gardens in "Lalla Rookh," shed
around a fragrance excelling that of the "spicy East." Here did our
shepherd wander from day to day amidst porphyry halls, and pavilions
of pearl. Time sped away, but years seemed insufficient to explore all
the wonders of that veritable Fairyland. He was attended in his
wanderings by kind and gentle beings, who anticipated every want, and
even invented sports and pastimes to amuse him. In the midst of the
gardens there was a well of the clearest water, filled with many
rainbow-tinted fish. There was but one limitation affixed to his
movements and his curiosity: he was forbidden to drink of this well,
on pain of having all his happiness blasted. It might be thought that,
surrounded as he was with all that he could desire, there would have
been no danger of his violating this command, but the result proved
the error of this Utopian way of viewing the probabilities. One day he
cautiously advanced toward the forbidden spot, and placing his hand
within the well, drew forth some water in his palm and drank it. The
shrieks of many voices instantly filled the air, all the fair scenes
of enchanting loveliness vanished, and the luckless and too curious
shepherd found himself on the summit of Brynnan Mawr with his sheep
quietly grazing around him in the early morning just as when he had
first entered the fairy-ring. Though years apparently had passed away
while he was under the magic spell yet it was evident that in reality
not many minutes could have elapsed.
Our readers will doubtless recall Shakespeare's reference to these
"fairy rings," in the first scene of the fifth act in the "Tempest":--
"Ye elves of hills, brooks, standing lakes, and groves;
And ye, that on the sands with printless foot
Do chase the ebbing Neptune, and do fly him,
When he comes back; you, demi-puppets, that
By moon-shine do the green-sour ringlets make,
Whereof the ewe not bites; and you, whose pastime
Is to make midnight mushrooms; that rejoice
To hear the solemn curfew; by whose aid
(Weak masters though ye be,) I have be-dimm'd
The noon-tide sun, called forth the mutinous winds,
And 'twixt the green sea and the azure vault
Set roaring war."
The flint arrow-heads or celts so dear to antiquaries, and so commonly
to be found in and near the tumuli that mark the resting-places of our
remote ancestors, are popularly called fairy-darts or elf-bolts.
Though the wound of an elf-bolt was supposed to cause instant death to
man and beast when directed by an aggrieved or mischievous fairy, the
possession of one of these celts secured its owner from all ill
consequences. When cattle or horses fell lame without the reason being
forthcoming, it was concluded that they had been wounded by these
invisible archers, in which case it was only necessary to touch the
tender place with another elf-bolt or to make the animal drink the
water in which one had been dipped.
Any money found by the roadside was in the same way ascribed by our
rustics to the fairies, some kindly spirit having dropped it by the
way for the benefit of the battered wayfarer. As a boy one day in
Anglesea was going out just before daybreak, he saw before him in the
grey and obscure light a party of little beings dancing, as usual, in
a circle. He hastened home in alarm and without making any further
investigation, and on his return found a groat on a stone. He often
saw the fairies afterwards at the same place, and as regularly found
the money laid for him at the same spot. His possession of funds
awakened the paternal curiosity, and he at last confessed the whole
matter. Ever after this, though he often passed by the scene of the
revels and scanned the wayside stone intently, he never saw either
fairy frolic or fairy fee again.
Though fairies had the power of making themselves invisible, and
generally resented the intrusion of any human spectator, they were
willing to show themselves sometimes, it would appear, though
frequently the consequences were not altogether agreeable to the
person so favoured. One evening the curiosity of a countryman, in his
progress homewards, was powerfully excited by a wild though gentle
melody which apparently proceeded from amidst some rocks, resting in
picturesque confusion on the slopes of the mountain. After listening
for some time he lost his track, and suddenly found himself close
beside a troop of elves, who were dancing round a mysterious circle of
"stocks and stones." Before he had much time for thought the
elfin-troop surrounded him and quickly hurried him aloft, one of the
party first asking the question whether he would prefer to be conveyed
with a high, a moderate, or a low wind? Had he chosen the first, or
"above the wind," he would instantly have soared into the most
elevated regions; but our poor bewildered farmer unwisely made choice
of the low wind, thus rejecting (as is too often the case in life) the
middle course, or "with the wind," where he would have enjoyed an easy
and pleasant aerial excursion. The mischievous little spirits then
hurried him along the surface of the ground, over bog and briar, thorn
and ditch, until at last they threw him in a most miserable plight
head foremost in the mire.
In Shakespeare's time it was a belief that no one could see the
fairies and live, for he makes Falstaff exclaim, "They are fairies, he
who looks on them shall die;" but any one who desires to see them
through the eye of a poet should read most carefully the altogether
delightful "Midsummer Night's Dream." The temptation to quote
liberally from it is extreme, but its beauty requires it to be read in
its entirety.
The references in that play to changelings reminds us that we have not
yet referred to this notable piece of family practice.
Both the good and the bad fairies used to recruit their numbers by
carrying off children, or young men and women. The malignant race
delighted in spiriting away the unbaptized offspring (for it was only
over these that they had any power) of affectionate parents,
particularly when heirs, that they might produce as much mischief and
vexation as possible; while the benignant fairies never took any
recruits but the orphans of pious parents, who had no protectors, or
were oppressed by cruel and unjust guardians. Such protégés, or rather
naturalised fairies, were permitted twice to resume their original
state, and appear to their kindred and acquaintance. The first time
was at the end of seven years, when, if they had been children when
they were taken away, they appeared to their nearest relatives, and
declared to them their state, whether they were pleased with their
condition as fairies, or wished to be restored to that of men. If they
had been boys or girls when they were removed from this upper earth,
and had by this time grown to men or women, they always appeared to
persons of a different sex to themselves, with whom they had fallen in
love, to whom they declared their state and passion, and, according to
circumstances, either wished their lover to accompany them to
Fairyland, or suggested to them a method whereby to recover them out
of the hands of their elfish lords.
The second appearance, at the end of fourteen years, was for the same
purpose, and on this occasion they were either rescued from the power
of the fairies or confirmed under their dominion for ever.
When the bad fairies carried off a child, they always left one of
their own number in its place. This equivocal creature was always
distinguished by being insatiable for food, and if kept, seldom failed
to draw its supposed mother into a consumption.
Whenever a family suspected that a child had been changed for a
fairy, they had recourse to the following strange, but, in the opinion
of the country, infallible ordeal. A sufficient quantity of clay was
produced from the eastern side of a hill, with which all the windows,
doors, and every aperture through the house, excepting the chimney,
were built up. A large fire was then made of peats, and the supposed
fairy, wrapped in the sheets or blankets of the woman's bed, was laid
on the fire when it was at the briskest, while one of the bystanders
repeated--
"Come to me
Gin mine ye be;
But gin ye be a fairy wicht,
Fast and flee till endless nicht."
If the child actually was the woman's it instantly rolled off the fire
upon the floor; but, if it was a fairy, it flew away up the chimney
with a tremendous shriek, and was never more seen, while the real
infant was found lying upon the threshold.
"Oh, that it could be proved
That some night tripping fairy had exchanged,
In cradle-clothes, our children as they lay;
And called mine Percy, his Plantagenet!
Then would I have his Harry, and he mine."[25]
[25] Shakespeare, 1. Henry IV.
Spenser also refers to this belief in the following lines:--
"And her base elfin breed there for thee left,
Such men do changelings call, so changed by fairie's theft."
In some parts of the country, it is, or perhaps we should more
correctly say was, customary to protect a child against fairy
influences by tying a red thread round its throat or by letting its
head hang down for awhile in the early morning. One does not of
course see why either of these remedies should be efficacious against
fairies or against anything else; but any one who has had occasion to
talk matters over with rustics will have found that all their
remedies, whether for ills spiritual or material, are of the most
inconsequent character, and that the gift of faith in them is one of
the most necessary accompaniments. This belief in fairy changelings is
of great antiquity, for we read in Holingshead's "Chronicles" that the
common people, on the death of King Arthur, held that he was not
really dead at all, "but carried away by fairies into some place,
where he would remain for a time and then return again and reign in as
great authority as ever." It was also an old belief that people who
had once lived with the fairies never again looked quite like other
people, an ingenious way of accounting for any peculiarity in any one.
Sir Walter Scott, in speaking of elf-possession, says that even
"full-grown persons, especially such as in an unlucky hour were doomed
to the execration of parents or of masters, or those who were found
asleep after sunset under a rock or on a green hill belonging to the
fairies, or finally those who unwarily joined their orgies, were
believed to be subject to their power. The accounts they gave of their
situation differ in some particulars. Sometimes they were represented
as living a life of constant restlessness and wandering by moonlight.
According to others, they inhabited a pleasant region, where, however,
their situation was rendered horrible by the sacrifice of one or more
individuals to the devil every seventh year. This is the popular
reason assigned for the desire of the fairies to abstract young
children as substitutes for themselves in this dreadful tribute."
Persons, as we have seen, could occasionally be recovered from the
fairies, and if changelings were taken before dark to a place where
three rivers met, the stolen child would be brought back in the night
and the fairy youngster would return whence it came. A poor woman who
once had twins had them adroitly carried away soon after birth, and
two of these elf-changelings substituted. For some months the change
was not suspected, but as the mother began to perceive that the
children never increased in size her suspicions were aroused, and she
consulted one of the wise men of the district. This friend in need
amply confirmed her suspicions, and in answer to her appeal for help
and counsel, told her that she must get two eggshells, fill them with
wort and hops, place them where these dubious infants could see them,
and then secretly observe what came next. After a few minutes of
watching the children began to stir, and these sweet little innocents,
who were supposed to be unable to either walk or talk, crept up to the
table, and after studying the matter awhile, one said to the other,
"We were born before the acorn which produced the oak of which these
cottage beams are made, but this is the first time we ever saw anybody
brewing in an egg-shell!" The secret was now fairly out, and the woman
was so exasperated at the trick played on her, that she fell on the
changelings with the greatest fury, and only desisted when she got a
solemn promise that her own dear children should at once be returned
to her. One egg-shell story leads to another, and in an old book we
came across the following:--
"My mother lived in the immediate neighbourhood of a farm-house that
was positively infested by fairies. It was one of those old-fashioned
houses among the hills of Cambria, constructed after the manner of
ancient days, when farmers considered the safety and comfort of their
cattle as much us that of their children and domestics, and the
kitchen and cow-house were on the same floor adjoining each other,
with a half-door over, so that the good man could see the animals from
his chimney-corner without moving. My mother and the farmer's wife
were intimate friends, and she used often to complain to her that the
fairies annoyed her and her family to that degree that they had no
peace;--that whenever the family dined, or supped, or ate any meal, or
were together, these mischievous little beings would assemble in the
next apartment. For instance, when they were sitting in the kitchen,
they were at high gambols in the dairy, or when they were yoking the
cows, they would see the fairies in the kitchen, dancing and laughing,
and provokingly merry. One day, as there was a great number of reapers
partaking of a harvest-dinner, which was prepared with great care and
nicety by the housewife, they heard music and dancing and laughing
above, and a great shower of dust fell down, and covered all the
victuals which were upon the table. The pudding in particular was
completely spoiled, and the keen appetites of the party were most
grievously disappointed. Just at this moment of trouble and despair an
old woman entered, who saw the confusion and heard the whole affair
explained. 'Well,' said she in a whisper to the farmer's wife, 'I'll
tell you how to get rid of the fairies. To-morrow morning ask six of
the reapers to dinner, and be sure that you let the fairies hear you
ask them. Then make no more pudding than will go into an egg-shell,
and put it down to boil. It may be a scanty meal for six hungry
reapers, but it will be quite sufficient to banish the fairies; and if
you follow these directions you will not be troubled with them any
more.' She did accordingly, and when the fairies heard that a pudding
for six reapers was boiling in an egg-shell there was a great noise in
the next apartment and an angry voice called out, 'We have lived long
in this world. We were born just after the earth was made, and before
an acorn was planted, and yet we never saw a harvest dinner prepared
in an egg-shell. Something must be wrong in this house, and we will no
longer stop under its roof.' From that time the disturbances ceased,
and the fairies were never seen or heard there any more."
Some authorities on the subject--and there are no greater authorities
on it than the most superstitious old crones one can lay hold of--have
averred that if any persons find themselves unwillingly in the company
of the fairies they can cause their instantaneous departure by drawing
out their knives. This acts not as a threat, for these puny immortals
have no need to fear the weapons of carnal warfare, but from some
inherent property in the cold bright steel.
Many of the fairies are such kindly, genial little souls that one is
rather grieved to find that they are entirely antagonistic to any
religious influence. Many stories illustrate this unfortunate
peculiarity, but to give one only will suffice. As a village fiddler
was returning home one evening from some festivities that had
doubtless owed much of their success to his enlivening strains, he was
met in the darkness by a stranger. This stranger wished to make a
somewhat curious arrangement with him, to the effect that on the
following night at midnight he should bring his fiddle to a certain
wild spot on the moorland, while he promised him ample reward for so
doing. Though the fiddler presently agreed to do so, the more he
thought it over the less he liked the bargain, and he would have
gladly thrown it up had he dared. In his strait he bethought him of
the minister of the parish, and determined to lay the whole matter
before him and take his advice upon it. His clerical adviser liked the
look of the affair no better than he did, but he advised him to keep
to his bargain, while he strongly cautioned him to play nothing but
psalm tunes. The fiddler kept his appointment, but no sooner had the
sacred strains arisen than a great shriek rent the air and he was
thrown violently down, and after receiving no slight castigation from
invisible adversaries he returned home sore and stiff in the early
morning. Unbelievers will no doubt say that the germ of truth in the
story will be found in the fact, that if the jovial musician so far
yielded to the charms of the revels as to be unable to steer a
straight course home within reasonable hours, the early morning would
probably find him stiff and sore with rheumatism.
The spirits of the mine were as firmly believed in amongst the miners
as the woodland and meadow sprites were by the dwellers on the country
side. They were generally called knockers, and any sound heard in the
stillness of the earth, that was evidently not the work of a
fellow-toiler, was at once attributed to supernatural agency. The
miners assert that these fairies may be frequently heard assiduously
at work in the remoter parts, and that by their knocking they draw the
attention of the workmen to the richest veins of ore. In the
"Gentleman's Magazine" for 1754 we found a curious letter from a
mine-owner, and the extract we give shows that the belief in such
beings was not by any means confined to the rude and uncultivated
miners, men a great part of whose lives were spent in the bowels of
the earth, far removed from the cheering light of day, and who were in
an especial degree under the influence of superstition:--
"People who know very little of arts or sciences, or the powers of
nature, will laugh at us Cardiganshire miners, who maintain the
existence of knockers in mines, a kind of good-natured impalpable
people, not to be seen but heard, and who seem to us to work in the
mines; that is to say, they are types or forerunners of working in
mines, as dreams are of some accidents which happen to us. Before the
discovery of the _Esgair y Mwyn_ mine, these little people worked hard
through day and night, and there are abundance of sober honest people
who have heard them. But after the discovery of the great mine they
were heard no more. When I began to work at Lwyn Lwyd, they worked so
fresh there for a considerable time, that they frightened away some
young workmen. This was when they were driving levels, and before we
had got any ore, but when we came to the ore they then gave over, and
I heard no more of them. These are odd assertions, but they are
certainly facts, although we cannot and do not pretend to account for
them. We have now (October 1754) very good ore at Lwyn Lwyd, where the
knockers were heard to work. But they have now yielded up the place,
and are heard no more. Let who will laugh; we have the greatest reason
to rejoice and thank the knockers, or rather God, who sends these
notices."
In the coal districts one meets with a similar belief in goblin
miners. These spirits are ordinarily of a friendly disposition, and
perform such kindly offices for their human fellow-workers as
assisting to pump up superfluous water or loosening masses of coal. Of
course one can readily see that when the men went to their work and
found their toil diminished, owing to a heavy fall of coal in the
working, superstition would at once have material to work on. Some of
these spirits would appear to have been of less amiable disposition,
and the sounds heard were at times the warnings and forerunners of
coming disaster. As the fairies of the household or of the moonlighted
forest glades were of uncertain and variable natures, though inclining
on the whole to beneficence, so the spirits of the earth were
divisible into those of gentle race and others of fierce and
malevolent disposition. In Milton's "Comus" we find these earth
spirits referred to in the following passage:--
"No goblin, or swart fairy of the mine,
Hath hurtful power o'er true virginity;"
and in Pope's prefatory letter to the "Rape of the Lock" we find a
further allusion--"The four elements are inhabitated by spirits called
sylphs, gnomes, nymphs, and salamanders. The gnomes, or demons of the
earth, delight in mischief; but the sylphs, whose habitation is in
air, are the best-conditioned creatures imaginable."
A belief in kindly spirits of the household was widely spread, for
besides our own Robin Goodfellow we find the Nis of Denmark and
Norway, the Kobold of Germany, the Brownie of Scotland, and many
others. Brownie, we may remark, is a tawny, good-natured spirit, and
derives his name from his colour as distinctive from fair-ie. Robin
Goodfellow was a merry domestic sprite, full of practical jokes, a
terror to the lazy, but a diligent rewarder of industry:--
"When mortals are at rest,
And snoring in their nest,--
Un-heard or un-espied,
Through key-hole we do glide:
Over tables, stools, and shelves,
We trip it with our fairy elves.
And if the house be foule,
Of platter, dish or bowle,
Upstairs we nimbly creepe
And find the sluts asleepe:
Then we pinch their armes and thighes,
None escapes, nor none espies.
But if the house be swept,
And from uncleannesse kept,
We praise the house and maid,
And surely she is paid:
For we do use before we go
To drop a tester in her shoe."
The "shrewd and knavish sprite" and the good luck he brings to the
deserving are referred to very happily again in the "Midsummer Night's
Dream."
Prudent and considerate housewives who wished to gain the goodwill of
these spirits of the night were careful to leave a bowl of milk on the
table for their use. Milton, in his poem of "L'Allegro"--
"Tells how the drudging goblin swet,
To earn his cream-bowl duly set;"
the task he set himself in recompense for the attention shown him
being the threshing during the night of as much corn as would have
required the labour of ten men. What thrifty housewife would grudge a
bowl of milk or cream for so great a reward!
Queen Mab shares with Robin his functions as critic of household
management, for it will be remembered that in the "English Parnassus"
we find her described as--
"She that pinches country wenches
If they rub not clean their benches;
And with sharper nail remembers,
When they rake not up their embers.
And if so they chance to feast her,
In their shoe she drops a tester."
Housewives would see their account in keeping such a belief vividly
before the eyes of their serving-maids, and may even themselves have
sometimes dropped a tester where their diligent hand-maidens would
fancy it a fairy-reward for their zeal in her service, while the vague
threats of fairy vengeance would come in most opportunely in support
of their own chidings of the careless and indolent.
We turn, in conclusion, to the fourth class, the evil spirits of the
water and the storm. Of such is the Cornish Bucca, a weird goblin of
the winds, whose scream was heard amid the roar of the elements as
some gallant vessel was hurled to destruction on the rocks. In Ireland
the same creature was the dreaded Phoca or Pooka, in Wales the Pwcca,
while in Scottish legends it is the Kelpie. The creature sometimes
assumed the human form, and at others that of the eagle or the horse;
thus in Graham's "Sketches of Perthshire" we read--"Every lake has its
kelpie or water-horse, often seen by the shepherd sitting upon the
brow of a rock, dashing along the surface of the deep, or browsing
upon the pasture on its verge." The Nech is a similar creature in the
folk-lore of Scandinavia. In Wales we meet with the belief in a
creature called Cyoeraeth, so named, we are told, from its deadly
chilling voice. We find it thus described in an old book:--"The
Cyoeraeth is a being in the dress of a female, with tangled hair, a
bloodless and ghastly countenance, long black teeth, and withered arms
of great length;" in short, it is invested with a description which
conveys to the mind the idea of a blasted tree as compared to the
flourishing monarch of the forest, rather than as possessing the
similitude of anything human. This being (fortunately for the people)
seldom made itself visible, but its scream or shriek at night had a
terrible and overpowering effect on all who heard it. It generally
foreboded death or fearful disaster, and always occurred when the
spirit approached a cross road or drew near to a river or _llyn_, when
it would commence to splash and agitate the water with its long
bloodless hands, wailing all the time so as to 'make night hideous.'
Those who heard its dreary moaning (or thought they did, the case
doubtless of the majority) fled in horror, fearing for their reason,
while many were really affected in mind, and ever after had the shriek
resounding in memory.
In Brecon a romantic gorge called the Cwm Pwcca bears record in its
name of the old belief in the phoca. As a justification of its title
we read the following story:--A countryman was wandering in the
darkest of dreary winter nights in vain endeavour to find the path
that would have guided him to his home, when he saw a light before him
on the dreary waste, which he naturally took for the lantern of some
wayfarer. He quickened his steps and made for it. As he rapidly neared
it he was on the point of hailing its bearer when the roar of waters
smote his ear in the silence of the night, and, barely arresting his
steps in time, he found himself at the edge of a lofty chasm, the
awful gulf at the base of which the torrent was sweeping with
resistless fury. At this instant the bearer of the lantern took a
flying leap to the opposite side of the gorge, burst into a scornful
and unearthly peal of laughter, and vanished from the eyes of the
affrighted rustic.
The _ignis fatuus_, will-of-the-wisp, or Jack o' lantern was doubtless
at the bottom of such a story as this, and in Milton's "Paradise Lost"
we find the following powerful illustrative passage, referring both to
the natural phenomenon and the myth built upon it:--
"'Lead, then,' said Eve. He, leading, swiftly rolled
In tangles, and made intricate seem straight,
To mischief swift. Hope elevates, and Joy
Brightens his crest; as when a wandering fire,
Compact of unctuous vapour, which the night
Condenses, and the cold environs round,
Kindled through agitation to a flame,
Which oft, they say, some evil spirit tends,
Hovering and blazing with delusive light,
Misleads the amazed night wanderer from his way,
To bogs and mires, and oft through ponds or pool;
There swallowed up and lost, from succour far,
So glistered the dire snake."
In the same author's poem of "L'Allegro" we find the will-of-the-wisp
again referred to, this time under the title of "Friar's lantern;"
while Sir Walter Scott in his "Marmion" writes--
"Better we had through mire and bush
Been lantern-led by Friar Rush."
Shakespeare in 1 "Henry IV." calls it a "ball of wildfire," and also
used the Latin name, _ignis fatuus_.
This bewilderment of the rustics by false fires does not always seem
to have been the result of diabolical malice on the part of the
fairies, but sometimes assumed the form of a practical joke. Like most
practical jokes, it was probably much more amusing to the joker than
the joked, and the benighted wanderer had little cause to thank him of
whom it could be said--
"Whene'er such wanderers I meete
As from their night-sports they trudge home;
With counterfeiting voice I grete
And call them on, with me to roam
Thro' woods, thro' lakes,
Thro' bogs, thro' brakes;
Or else, unseene, with them I go
All in the nicke
To play some tricke,
And frolic it, with ho, ho, ho!"
An old legend tells us how on the advent of Christianity great Pan and
all the woodland deities deserted their old haunts and were never seen
of men again; and in the same way the march of science and the spread
of education must ere now have killed off all the fairies, except in
the most out-of-the-way districts. Once coaxed and propitiated, or
shudderingly dreaded, they now but serve to make a pleasant fancy for
a Christmas-card, or aid in the grand spectacular effects of the
Christmas pantomime. Those, then, who would see these denizens of
elf-land and all the grace and beauty that even the very name of
fairy-land suggests, will seek them no longer in the ferny glades of
some fair woodland or beneath the silvery beams of the moon, but
reduce the matter to a prosaic visit to some great theatre, and
endeavour to find in the great array of "supers" and the glowing of
coloured fires the realisation of their fair ideal. The fairies are,
in fact, as dead, as hopelessly defunct, as the proverbial door-nail,
which seems to have been accepted by the wisdom of our ancestors as
the most expressive symbol of mortality and the stern decrees of
irreversible Fate.[26]
[26] Appendix P.
The Pigmies had not the same glamour of romance about them that was
associated with the dwellers in elf-land. The consideration of them
nevertheless comes well within the same chapter, as, like the fairies,
they were a race of beings of human mould, but differing from the
ordinary standard of humanity by reason of the exceeding smallness of
their stature.
References to them will be found in the writings of Herodotus,
Philostratus, Pliny, and many other authors, the first allusion to
them being in the third book of the Iliad, where the Trojans are
compared to cranes fighting against pigmies:--
"Thus by their leaders' care each martial band
Moves into ranks, and stretches o'er the land.
With shouts the Trojans, rushing from afar,
Proclaim their motions, and provoke the war:
So when inclement winters vex the plain
With piercing frosts, or thick-descending rain,
To warmer seas the cranes embodied fly,
With noise, and order, through the mid-way sky:
To pigmy nations wounds and death they bring,
And all the war descends upon the wing."[27]
[27] "Marking the tracts of air, the clamorous cranes
Wheel their due flight in varied ranks descried;
And each with outstretched neck his rank maintains,
In marshalled order through th' ethereal void."
These combats between the pigmies and the cranes were also dwelt on by
Oppian, Juvenal, and others; and what was, to quote an old writer,
"only a pleasant figment in the fountain, became a solemn story in the
stream." Strabo in his Geography considered the belief as fabulous,
and so also did another old writer, Julius Scaliger; and even
Aldrovandus, though ready to accept almost anything, found a
difficulty in crediting it. Albertus Magnus, another of the old and
over-credulous writers, found as much difficulty as Aldrovandus, but
suggested that probably the belief arose from some big species of
monkey having been taken for a diminutive man. Even the home of the
pigmies was a point quite open to dispute. Some writers placed them in
the extreme north, where the growth of all nature was feeble and
stunted, while Aristotle placed them at the head of the Nile;
Philostratus affirmed that they were to be found on the banks of the
Ganges, and Pliny placed them in Scythia. Even their size was open to
question, for some would have us believe that the mounted men in their
armies rode on partridges, while others placed them on the backs of
rams. If the warrior and his steed bore any due proportion to each
other, this seems to point to a considerable divergence of ideas as to
the size of a pigmy. They were said to have been found by Hercules in
the great desert, and to have assailed him with their bows and arrows
as the Lilliputians did Gulliver. Their valour, however, in this case
seems to have outrun discretion, as the smiling demi-god carried a
number of them off in his lion's skin. Ctesias says that they were
negroes, and places a kingdom of them in the centre of India.
Shakespeare mentions them, but gives no local habitation. "Will your
Grace command me any service to the world's end? I will go on the
slightest errand now to the Antipodes that you can devise to send me
on: I will fetch you a tooth-picker now from the farthest inch of
Asia; bring you the length of Prester John's foot; fetch you a hair
off the great Cham's beard; do you any embassage to the Pigmies!"
Others of our poets have adopted the myth, though of course without
committing themselves to an expression of their belief in it. In
Dryden's "Absalom and Achitophel," for example, we find the lines--
"A fiery soul, which, working out its way,
Fretted the pygmy-body to decay,
And o'er informed the tenement of clay"--
and in Young's "Night Thoughts" we read--
"Pygmies are pygmies still, though perched on Alps;
And pyramids are pyramids in vales."
Another English writer whose book is before us does commit himself to
an expression of belief, for his title runs as follows:--"Gerania, a
New Discoverie of a Little Sort of People called Pygmies, with a
Lively Description of their Stature, Habit, Manners and Customs." The
author was one Joshua Barnes, and his book is dated 1675.
Though spelt indifferently as pigmy and pygmy, the latter is the more
correct, though perhaps a little pedantic-looking; the word is derived
from the Greek name for them, the Pygmaioi.
Tennant in his work on "Ceylon" makes the following very just
remark:--"We ought not to be too hasty in casting ridicule upon the
narratives of ancient travellers. In a geographical point of view they
possess great value, and if sometimes they contain statements which
appear marvellous, the mystery is often explained away by a more
careful and minute inquiry." Against the statements of the geographers
and historians of antiquity many modern critics have specially
delighted to break a lance, condemning them as more or less fabulous
and untrustworthy, though in some cases, as that of De Chaillu, the
narratives of modern travellers have been almost as mercilessly
analysed.
Probably the African race known at the present time as Bosjesmen or
Bushmen are the modern representatives of the pigmies, for in their
cave-dwelling, reptile-eating, and other peculiarities they agree
entirely with those given by Pliny, Aristotle, and Herodotus. The
tales of the battles fought with the cranes may have been but a satire
on their diminutive size, or they may very possibly have been the
records of actual facts. The Maori traditions tell of the contests
with the moa and other gigantic birds which formerly inhabited the
islands of New Zealand, while the Jesuit missionaries give accounts of
enormous birds that were once found in Abyssinia, but are now, like
the dodo, extinct. It is, therefore, quite possible that there is more
truth in the story of these mannikins and their struggles with their
feathered foes than we are at first prepared to admit, and that while
many of the details of these old fables are evidently imaginative,
there was in more cases than we at once realise a solid foundation of
truth at the bottom of them.
Of giants, the opposite extreme in the scale, we need say but little.
Probably in many cases the early peoples, who desired to honour their
great champions, felt that the marvels they delighted to credit them
with must have been the work of men of more than human power and
parts. We see much the same feeling in the sculptures of antiquity,
the monuments of Egypt and Assyria, where the monarch far outweighs
even in mere physical bulk the subjects that surround him. Hence, like
Goliath, the champions of old are generally giants; while at other
times they themselves are of slender frame, striplings like David, and
it is the foes they subdue that are gigantic in bulk. The struggles,
for instance, of the gallant few against the crying and mighty wrong
of human slavery would have in earlier times been handed down to
posterity as a contest with an evil giant; and in the allegories of
the Middle Ages we meet, in the same way, with Giant Pope, Giant
Pagan, and Giant Despair.
Though in one's earlier years we read the exploits of Jack the
Giant-Killer with great complacency, and give him full meed of praise
for his valour, on fuller reflection we cannot help seeing that the
giants he encountered had intellects that bore no proportion to their
bodily bulk, and that it was the easiest thing possible to outwit
them; that according to the doctrine which by men of science is called
"the survival of the fittest," or in more popular parlance "the
weakest going to the wall," their destruction was strictly according
to the inexorable laws of nature. While dwarfs have been accredited
with a spiteful vindictiveness that served them in some sort as a
defence, giants have ordinarily been considered as great good-natured
fellows, fully bearing out Bacon's remark about tall houses being
often unfurnished in their upper story. Perhaps it is a merciful
arrangement of nature that this should be so, for a combination of the
maliciousness of the dwarf with the physical strength of the giant
would be something altogether _de trop_.
We very early in the Bible narrative meet with references to giants,
but it is by no means agreed by commentators that the word nephilim
thus translated means men remarkable for their stature. The context in
the case of the first reference to them, for instance, seems to render
it more probable that these were men not of gigantic stature, but of
gigantic wickedness--men who had departed from the true religion, and
were sustaining their apostasy by acts of violence and oppression, and
endeavouring by these means to gain to themselves power on the earth.
At the same time in other passages the references to the size of the
couch or the spear clearly implies their ownership by a man of much
more than the ordinary stature. According to Jewish tradition Og lived
three thousand years, and walked beside the Ark during the deluge,
while after his death one of his bones was used as a bridge for
crossing a river. According to Moses his bedstead was not quite
sixteen feet long, so that it seems the brook that any single bone
would span could scarcely have required bridging at all; while the
depth at what we may be allowed to term "high water" during the
Noachic deluge must have been very much less than all one's
preconceived notions would suggest, if its volume was a thing of
indifference to the owner of this sixteen-feet couch. The nearest
approach to a giant in modern times was an Irishman named Murphy, who
attained to a height of eight feet ten inches. Many of our readers
will remember seeing the Chinese Chang, or at least hearing of him, as
he was exhibited to the curious in London in 1866 and 1880. His height
was eight feet two inches. Patrick Cotter, an Irishman, who died in
1802, exceeded this by six inches; and one fine youth named Magrath,
an orphan adopted by Bishop Berkeley, died at the age of twenty, after
reaching a height of seven feet eight inches. There is no absolutely
authenticated instance of any one in modern times reaching nine feet,
though, of course, when tradition and hearsay have taken the place of
the measuring-tape, there is no difficulty in going considerably
beyond that limit. Plutarch tells of a giant eighty-five feet high,
and Pliny of another who only reached sixty-six. Many of the skeletons
of giants that were then supposed to be found during the Middle Ages
were really the remains of extinct animals. In the imperfect state of
surgical and osteological knowledge, the leg or blade bone of some
gigantic antediluvian monster was ascribed to some hero of the past,
and a very pretty little giant story promptly built upon it.
Any curious natural phenomena were generally ascribed by our ancestors
to diabolical influence, or else recognised as the labour of giants.
The Giant's Causeway is a notable and very familiar illustration of
this, and there are few mountains in Wales that are not invested with
some fairy tradition or legend of the marvellous. Trichrug, in
Cardiganshire, which derives its name from three united hills, is
believed to have been a favourite resort of the giants, and, like
Cader Idris, this lofty elevation was once the special seat or chair
of a giant whose grave is still pointed out. In a match at quoits
which took place here between the giants of Cambria, he of Trichrug is
said to have thrown one across St. George's Channel to the opposite
coast of Ireland, thus winning the contest triumphantly. His grave was
fabled to possess such extraordinary capabilities that it not only
adapted itself to the size of any one that lay down in it, but also
gifted the individual with greatly renewed strength. All defensive
weapons placed in this grave were either destroyed or swallowed up.
The rocky fortification, or _carnedd_, on the summit of Cader Idris is
in like manner invested by the surrounding peasantry with a mysterious
tradition respecting the giant Idris.
The warring of the giants against the rule of Jehovah finds its
parallel in the Greek myth of the sons of Tartaros and Ge attempting
to storm the gate of heaven and the seat of Zeus, only to meet with
signal discomfiture. The common expression for adding difficulty to
difficulty and embarrassment to embarrassment, the piling of Pelion on
Ossa, refers to this struggle, as the giants piled two mountains of
these names on each other as a scaling ladder to reach the heights of
high Olympus.
In "Measure for Measure" we find two well-known allusions to giants:--
"O! it is excellent
To have a giant's strength; but it is tyrannous
To use it like a giant."
The second of these is equally familiar:--
"The sense of death is most in apprehension,
And the poor beetle that we tread upon,
In corporal sufferance finds a pang as great
As when a giant dies."
In Matthew Green's play of "The Spleen," written at the beginning of
the eighteenth century, we find an evident allusion to the struggle
between David and Goliath in the line--
"Fling but a stone, the giant dies."
Coleridge, again, writes--"A dwarf sees further than the giant, when
he has the giant's shoulder to rest on." This idea is not, however,
his own, for in Herbert's "Jacula Prudentum" we find the line, "A
dwarf on giant shoulders sees further of the two;" and in Fuller's
"Holy State" he says--"Grant them but dwarfs, yet stand they on
giants' shoulders and may see the further." Many other illustrations
might, of course, readily be given of what may be termed the literary
existence of giants, but enough has been quoted to show how valuable
these personages have in poesy and general literature. In the West
"Gulliver's Travels" and in the East the "Arabian Nights'
Entertainments" are two examples that at once occur to one's mind.
[Decoration]
[Decoration]
CHAPTER III.
Comparatively Small Number of Mythical Bird-Forms--The Martlet--The
Bird of Paradise--The Humma--The Huppe--The Ibis--The Roc--The Hameh
Bird--Reptiles, Fish, &c.--The Sea-Serpent--The Adissechen of Hindu
Mythology--The Iormungandur of Scandinavian Mythology--The Egg
Talisman--Fire-Drake--Aspis--Amphisbena--Kraken--Cetus--Leviathan--
Behemoth--Nautilus--Dolphin--The Acipenser--The Remora--The Fish Nun--
The Chilon--The Dies--Sea-Bishops and Sea-Monks--Davy Jones and his
Locker--Ojibiway Legend of the Great Serpent--Fabledom in the Vegetable
Kingdom--The Barnacle Tree--The Kalpa-Tarou--The Lote Tree--The Tree of
Life--Lotus-Eating--Amaranth--Lotus Wreaths at Kew from the Egyptian
Tombs--Asphodel--Mediæval Herbals--Ambrosia--The Upas Tree--The Umdhlebi
Tree of Zululand--The Kerzereh Flower--The Mandrake--"Miracles of Art
and Nature"--Travellers' Tales--The Dead Sea Apple--Alimos--The Meto--
The Herb Viva--Cockeram on Herb-Lore--The Pseudodoxia of Dr. Browne--
Herb Basil--The "Eikon Basilike"--Fitzherbert's "Boke of Husbandry."
While we find numerous extraordinary beliefs clustering round the
so-called natural history of various birds, such as the legend of the
pelican nourishing its young with its own blood, or the eagle teaching
its offspring to gaze on the brightness of the mid-day sun, it is
curious to note how little of absolute myth-creation has been
developed in the direction of strange forms of bird life. On the other
hand, many of the weird creations of fancy, such as the dragon or the
phoca, have their terrors greatly enhanced by the gift to them of the
essential bird characteristic, the power of soaring in mid-air, and
thus gaining a great additional power for evil over their victims. We
have already referred, in our first chapter, to the phoenix, and it
now only remains to mention some few other mythical bird-forms, less
widely known, before we pass to other creations of fancy. Even in
heraldry, the home of much that is marvellous and unnatural, the bird
forms depart but little from natural types, and the only instance to
the contrary that occurs to us is the well-known Martlet, used not
only as "a charge" in blazonry, but also as a mark of cadency to
distinguish the arms of contemporary brothers in the same family or to
identify different branches of the same family connection.[28]
[28] Appendix Q.
The martlet is very similar in form to a swallow, but is always
represented as without feet, while the French heralds also deprive it
of beak. A good early example of its use may be seen in the arms of
William de Valence, emblazoned on his shield at Westminster, and
dating from the year 1296; later instances of its employment are so
common that it is hardly worth while to particularise any special
illustration. The martlet, according to Gwillim, in his elaborate
treatise on heraldry, "hath leggs exceeding short, that they can by no
means go: and therefore it seemeth the Grecians do call them _Apodes,
quasi sine pedibus_; not because they do want feet, but because they
have not such use of their feet as other birds have. And if perchance
they fall upon the ground, they cannot raise themselves upon their
feet as others do, and so prepare themselves to flight. For this cause
they are accustomed to make their Nests upon Rocks or other high
Places, from whence they may easily take their flight, by means of
the support of the Air. Hereupon it came that this Bird is painted in
Arms without feet: and for this cause it is also given as a difference
of younger Brethren, to put them in mind to trust to their wings of
vertue and merit to raise themselves, and not to their leggs, having
little Land to set their foot on."
In mediæval days the Bird of Paradise was in like manner thought to be
without feet. The error arose in a very natural but most prosaic way,
and simply sprang from the fact that the natives who bartered the
skins of the birds with the merchants cut off the legs before bringing
them, naturally thinking that they were of no value, and that it was
for the richness of the plumage alone that the skins were esteemed.
The lovers of the marvellous in the West built upon this weak
foundation a most poetic superstructure, and believed that the bird
was indeed the denizen of paradise, fed upon the dew of heaven,
incapable of contact with earth, building no nest, but hatching its
eggs in a cavity upon its own back; ever soaring in the sunlight far
above earth, and independent of all mundane association.
Tavernier supplies another explanation, equally prosaic, of their
footless condition--one in fact, that entirely removes the poor birds
from all poetic association, and reduces them to the "drunk and
incapable" state that some other bipeds are prone to indulge in. He
tells us in his book that the birds of paradise come in flocks during
the nutmeg season to the plantations, and that the odour so
intoxicates them that they fall helplessly to the earth, and that the
ants eat off their feet while they are thus incapacitated. Moore, in
his "Lalla Rookh," thus refers, it will be remembered, to this
Tavernier tale in writing of--
"Those golden birds that in the spice-time drop
Upon the gardens drunk with that sweet food
Whose scent hath lured them o'er the summer flood."
"The sublime bird which flies always in the air, and never touches the
earth," mentioned by the princess in the introduction to "Paradise and
the Peri," was the Humma, an altogether fabulous creature. Like the
bird of paradise, it was supposed to pass its whole time in the blue
vault of heaven, and to have no contact with earth; it was regarded as
a bird of good omen, and that every head it overshadowed would in time
be encircled with a crown. The splendidly jewelled bird suspended over
the throne of Tippoo Sultan at Seringapatam was an artistic embodiment
of this poetic fancy, and we can well imagine that all good courtiers
who had any regard for keeping their necks free from the scimitar
would take uncommonly good care to avoid that prophetic overshadowing,
that would make them the possible rivals and successors of so very
resolute an autocrat.
The Huppe, one of the birds believed in by our forefathers in mediæval
days, seems morally to have been a somewhat peculiar and, on the
whole, objectionable compound, reminding one in some degree of those
uncomfortable people who attach an immense importance to their own
belongings, but whose sympathies towards the members of the clan are
scarcely more marked than their antipathy to all beyond this narrow
circle. Such, at least, is the idea we should gather from the
description of it by De Thaun, for he tells us that "when it sees its
father or mother fallen into old age that they cannot see nor fly, it
takes them under its wings and cherishes them. The huppe has such a
nature that if any shall anoint a man with its blood while he is
sleeping, devils will come and strangle him." The huppe was described
as being like a peacock, but it seems impossible to even imagine how
such a belief in its evil powers could ever have taken root. It would
be difficult to conceive such a notion growing up in connection with
any creature whatever, but when the first cause is itself non-existent
the difficulty is greatly intensified; one has not even a foothold of
fact as a starting-point. What a picture, again, of cold-blooded
fiendishness does it not open out to us as we see with the mind's eye
the treacherous anointing of some perchance innocent sleeper with a
preparation of _Sanguis huppæ_ and then the operator walking off and
posing in the eyes of the world as an honourable burgess, while his
accomplices from the bottomless pit finish the job off for him while
he has gone to Mass or is engaged on 'Change! It is worse even than
that little affair with the babes in the wood, bad as that was in many
of its details.
The Ibis, beloved as it was by the Egyptians for its services to them
as the destroyer of venomous snakes, and from its association with the
Sacred Nile and the great deity Thoth, was not altogether allowed to
bring forth its progeny in peace, for it was believed that its
fondness for a serpent diet might so develop in it evil properties,
that its eggs were diligently sought for and destroyed, lest from them
should issue some strange serpentine forms of horror that in their
mysterious nature would be a still greater scourge than the
sufficiently objectionable grey and brown and diversely spotted and
chequered denizens of the desert that coil or glide unseen amidst the
expanses of burning sand, and whose fangs convey swift death to those
unfortunates who come within reach of their fatal power.
By far the grandest creation of bird-fancy is the Roc. This fabulous
bird was of enormous size, and of such strength of talon and digestion
that it was said to be able to carry away an elephant to its mountain
home, and there devour it at a meal; while one old traveller, not to
be outdone in particularity of detail, calculates that one roc's egg
is equal in amount to one hundred and forty-eight hens' eggs. The
belief in the roc was altogether an Eastern weakness, and those who
would know more of it must turn to such romances as that of "Sindbad
the Sailor" and the narratives of such-like Asiatic Barons Munchausen.
In the Second Voyage of Sindbad he tells us how he saw in the distance
some mysterious object, which, on closer inspection, proved to be the
egg of a roc. "Casting my eyes," he says, "towards the sea, I could
discern only the water and the sky; but perceiving on the land side
something white, I descended from the tree, and taking with me the
remainder of my provisions, I walked towards the object, which was so
distant that at first I could not distinguish what it was. As I
approached I perceived it to be a white ball of a prodigious size. I
walked round it, to find whether there was an opening, but could find
none; and it appeared so even that it was impossible to get up it. The
circumference might be about fifty paces. The sun was then near
setting; the air grew suddenly dark, as if obscured by a thick cloud.
I was surprised at this change, but much more so when I perceived it
to be occasioned by a bird of a most extraordinary size which was
flying towards me. I recollected having heard sailors speak of a bird
called a roc, and I conceived that the great white ball which had
drawn my attention must be the egg of this bird. I was not mistaken,
for shortly afterwards it alighted upon it and placed itself to sit
upon it." He tells us also in this same voyage of the furious strife
waged between the rhinoceros and the elephant, a struggle that often
continues till the roc, hearing the disturbance, swoops down upon them
and seizes them both in his claws and flies away with them, in much
the same manner apparently as the schoolmaster who, appearing suddenly
in the midst of a fight between two truculent youngsters, chills their
martial ardour by his stony glance, and leads off each culprit by ear
or collar to his den.
In another of Sindbad's sea-ventures, the fifth, we find an awful
warning against trifling with the parental feelings of the roc. In the
course of their voyage the crew landed on a desert island, and very
soon found a gigantic egg. Sindbad at once recognised what it was, and
earnestly advised them not to meddle with it, but his remonstrances
were unheeded; they boldly attacked the mass with hatchets, and on
finding a young roc within, cut it into divers pieces and roasted it.
These reckless tars had scarcely finished their meal, when two immense
clouds appeared in the air at a considerable distance. The captain,
knowing by experience what this portended, or haply making a lucky
guess, cried out that it was the father and mother of the young roc,
and warned all to re-embark as quickly as possible, and so avoid, if
possible, the vengeance of the outraged owners of the egg. All
accordingly scrambled on board, and sail was set immediately. The two
rocs in the meantime rapidly approached, uttering the most frightful
screams, which they redoubled on finding the state of their egg, and
that their young one was defunct. They then flew away, and a faint
hope began to dawn upon the mariners that they had not come so badly
out of the business after all, when to their blood-chilling horror the
birds again rapidly approached, each with an enormous mass of rock in
its talons. When they were immediately over the ship they stopped in
mid-air, and one of them let fall the piece of rock he held. The
pilot, his wits sharpened by the imminent peril the vessel was in,
deftly turned the ship aside, and the great mass plunged into the
depths of the sea alongside; but the other bird, more fortunate in his
aim, let his piece fall so immediately on the ship that it smashed it
into a thousand pieces, and, with the exception of Sindbad, all the
passengers and crew were either crushed beneath tons of stone or
drowned in the surging billows that such a monstrous mass created.
Lest a suspicion may cross the reader's mind that the gallant sailor
and enterprising merchant was romancing somewhat when he narrated
these stirring adventures, we hasten to mention that the third
calender, in the same veracious history, met with other experiences of
an equally surprising nature in which this gigantic bird played as
leading a part, all of which may be found duly set forth in the
"Arabian Nights."
Another curious belief of the Arabs is in the existence of a bird
called the Hameh. This uncomfortable creation of the Arab fancy is
said to spring from the blood of a murdered man. Its weird cry is
continuously "Iskoonee," a word signifying "give me to drink," and it
rests not, day nor night, till its thirst is quenched in the
murderer's blood. When the death of the victim is avenged it flies
away to some place left altogether indefinite in the Eastern legend,
but probably it wends its way to the spirit-land with the welcome news
that the victim's blood no longer cries in vain for vengeance. To an
Arab already suffering from an evil conscience the belief in the hameh
must be a terrible one, as he hears in fancy the troubled air filled
with the wailing cry and fierce demand for vengeance, and knows that,
day or night, the haunting sound will never leave his ears until the
desert feud be avenged and his own life blood be poured out like
water upon the burning sand.
The depths of ocean, so impressive in their mystery and vastness, have
been peopled by the lovers of the marvellous in all ages with a
special fauna of their own, and have been made the home of divers
strange and wondrous creatures, some purely reptilian, others
fish-like, or still more commonly a weird combination of the two. The
depths and recesses of the great tropical forests, as impressive
almost in their vastness as the ocean itself, or the far-reaching
swamps and morasses in their mysterious shades, have in like manner
been tenanted in the imagination of the savage tribes that thread
their depths or probe their treacherous surface with forms more
wonderful even than those of Nature herself, weird and bizarre as
these in tropical regions so frequently are. Hence amongst all savage
tribes we find a belief in serpentine forms more terrible even than
the boa or python that they have such cause to dread. The widely
spreading worship of the serpent, a form of religion that we find in
so many lands and throughout centuries of time, is a most interesting
subject of study, though we can here only regret that exigencies of
space compel us to do no more than merely mention it.
The belief in sea-serpents does not appear in itself to be an
unreasonable one, much as it is from time to time ridiculed. Many
species of tropical snakes are aquatic in a greater or less degree,
and though some naturalists will tell us that a serpent is not adapted
by its structure and organs for a purely aquatic existence, one finds
in nature so many wonderful adaptations of form to abnormal
circumstances, that it is perhaps wiser to feel that in the great and
almost boundless expanse of ocean there may be mysterious forms that
science has not yet tabulated and described, rather than to at once
assert the contrary. Be this as it may, there is no doubt that while
the great mystery of the ocean depths has been tenanted by the
credulous with impossible creations of the fancy, we have numerous
testimonies from sea-captains and others of appearances that cannot
always be so lightly dismissed. A Captain Harrington, for instance,
commanding the "Castilian," during a voyage from Bombay to Liverpool
in the year 1857, sends the following account to the _Times_
newspaper:--"While myself and officers were standing on the lee side
of the poop, looking towards the island of St. Helena, then some ten
miles away, we were startled by the sight of a large marine animal,
which reared its head out of the water within twenty yards of the
ship, when it suddenly disappeared for about half a minute, and then
made its appearance in the same manner again, showing us distinctly
its neck and head about ten or twelve feet out of the water. Its head
was shaped like a long buoy, and I suppose the diameter to have been
seven or eight feet in the largest part, with a kind of scroll or tuft
of loose skin encircling it about two feet from the top. The second
appearance assured us that it was a monster of extraordinary length,
which appeared to be moving slowly towards the island. The ship was
going too fast to enable us to reach the mast-head in time to form a
correct estimate of its extreme length, but from what we saw from the
deck we conclude that it must have been over two hundred feet long.
The boatswain and several of the crew, who observed it from the
forecastle, state that it was more than double the length of the ship,
in which case it must have been five hundred feet. Be that as it may,
I am convinced that it belonged to the serpent tribe; it was a dark
colour about the head, and was covered with several white spots.
Having a press of canvas on the ship at the time, I was unable to
round to without risk, and therefore was precluded from getting
another sight of this leviathan of the deep." This precise description
was endorsed by the chief and second officers of the ship--men, like
the captain, of practised vision, and not at all likely to be deceived
by floating sea-weed or any of the other matters brought forward to
cast doubt on such stories.
It is curious that another apparently well-authenticated account of
some such creature should also hail from the neighbourhood of St.
Helena. Her Majesty's ship "Dædalus," in August 1848, when on the
passage between that island and the Cape of Good Hope, came into close
proximity with a strange-looking creature that was travelling through
the water at an estimated speed of ten miles an hour. Captain
McQuahee was unable, owing to the direction of the wind, to bring
the ship into pursuit, but, as the creature passed within two hundred
yards of them, they were enabled to bring it well within observation,
its form and colour being distinctly visible from the vessel.
Olaus Magnus, Archbishop of Upsal some three centuries ago, was a firm
believer in the marvellous, and in his writings, amongst many other
things, he gives details of a sea-serpent two hundred feet long by
twenty feet thick, having a dense hairy mane and eyes of fire. This
monster, he further tells us, "puts up its head on high like a pillar
and devours men." He also tells of another kind, that is forty cubits
long and no thicker than a child's arm; this is blue and yellow in
colour. His writings also furnish a more detailed account of a vast
monster thrown ashore in 1532 on the English coast near "Tinmouth."
This creature was ninety feet long and twenty-five feet thick, having
thirty ribs on each side, a head twenty-one feet long, and two fins of
fifteen feet each. This creature, from its proportions, fins, and so
forth, was evidently not serpentine in character, though it may fairly
be classed amongst monsters of the deep.
A Greenland missionary, Egede, tells in his journal of a frightful
sea-monster that he saw on July 6, 1734. It raised itself so high out
of the water, he says, that its head overtopped the mainsail. It had a
long and pointed snout, and spouted like a whale; its fins were like
great wings. Another very circumstantial account is that given by
Captain Laurent de Ferry of Bergen in 1746. His creature had a
horse-like head, raised some two feet out of the water; in colour it
was grey, but it had a white mane and large black eyes. Seven or eight
coils of the creature were visible, a fathom or so of space between
each. De Ferry says that he shot at and wounded the monster, and that
the water was reddened with its blood for some time after. He does not
specify whether the weapon used was the longbow or not, but it seems
highly probable that it was.
Where the account given is so exceedingly definite as it is, for
example, in these two last instances, we are placed in the awkward
predicament of either having to believe in the monster so graphically
described, or to disbelieve the narrators of the stories; to conclude,
in plain words, that Egede, despite his professions, was lying
deliberately--a very Munchausen--and that De Ferry was either a
credulous idiot himself, or wilfully concluded that the landsmen's
credulity might be safely played upon.
It has been suggested that a long line of tumbling porpoises, rolling
after each other in the quaint way that they do, may have deceived
people into a belief that what they saw were the coils of one of these
great mythical monsters of the deep; but, however such an appearance
might deceive a landsman, it is evident that those who go down to the
sea in ships and occupy themselves in the great waters are too
familiar with the appearance of a shoal of porpoises to be thus
deceived.
The ribbon fish may in some cases have given rise to the idea of a
serpent of the sea, as the appearance of their elongated, band-like
bodies swimming through the water with a gentle serpentine or
undulatory motion would be very suggestive. They have been known to
attain a length of sixty feet; specimens of this size have actually
been captured by trawlers, though even yet we are a long way from the
sea serpents gravely mentioned by Pontoppidan in his "Natural History
of Norway" as being over six hundred feet long.
On the occasion of the reported appearance of the sea serpent to
Captain McQuahee, Professor Owen in a letter published in the _Times_
suggested that the creature seen may have been one of the larger
species of seals found in the Southern Seas. At the Falkland Islands
and in the Kerguelen and Crozet groups the sea elephant attains a size
of some twenty feet in length, and some such creature as this,
swimming rapidly through a calm sea with its head raised, and with a
long wake behind it, caused by the action of its paddles, placed at
the posterior extremity of the body, like the screw of a steamer, may
have been the foundation of some of the stories told of these
mysterious monsters of the deep.
A good sea-serpent story is found in Captain Taylor's "Reminiscences."
One day, when his ship was lying at anchor in Table Bay, "an enormous
monster" about one hundred feet in length was seen advancing with
snake-like motion round Green Point into the harbour. The head
appeared to be crowned with long hair, and the keener-sighted amongst
the observers could see the eyes and distinguish the features of the
monster. The military were called out, and after peppering the object
at a distance of five hundred yards, and making several palpable hits,
it was observed to become quite still, and boats ventured off to
complete the destruction. The "sea serpent" proved to be a mass of
gigantic sea-weed, which had been undulated by the ground swell, and
had become quiescent when it reached the still waters of the bay.
Probably if mariners would attack the "monster" in the same manner
whenever it is seen, we should hear little more of the sea serpent.
Stories of sea serpents are almost as old as the hills, and in many
cases quite as difficult to digest.