Tempora purpureis tentat velare tiaris:
Sed, solitus longos ferro resecare capillos,
Viderat hoc famulus: qui, cum nec prodere visum
Dedecus auderet, cupiens efferre sub auras,
Nec posset reticere tamen, secedit; humumque
Effodit, et domini quales aspexerit aures,
Voce refert parva: terræque immurmurat haustæ.
Indiciumque suæ vocis tellure regesta
Obruit, et scrobibus tacitus discedit opertis.
Creber arundinibus tremulis ibi surgere lucus
Coepit; et, ut primum pleno maturuit anno,
Prodidit agricolam: leni jam motus ab Austro
Obruta verba refert; dominique coarguit aures."[724]
The same Greeks who held the ass up to derision, made the Phrygian
king Midas, of the ass's ears, the object of their satire. This is a
particular form of the mythico-heroic struggle between Greeks and
Phrygians or Trojans. Apollo is the enemy of the Trojans, as he is the
enemy of the Phrygian king Midas. The Trojans and Troy are
represented by the ass, and the Greeks, who vanquish and take by
assault the Trojan fortress, by the horse; the sun disperses the
night; the hero kills the centaur; the horse defeats the ass, the
Greek the Trojan; and every one can see how the fact that the Greeks
personified in the ass their enemies in Asia Minor, must have damaged
the reputation of the poor long-eared animal. The most bitter and
cutting satire is always that which is directed towards one's own
enemies; and the ass, unfortunately, had at one time the honour of
representing the Phrygian, the traditional enemy of the Greek. The ass
bore the load of this heroic war, in the same way as in the Middle
Ages he was publicly impaled by the Paduans for having had the
misfortune of being the sacred animal on the arms of the city of
Vicenza, with which the Paduans lived in rivalry.[725]
In the same eleventh book of Ovid where the transformation of the
human ears of Midas into ass's ears is described, it is very
remarkable that the new ears are called whitish, as in the Mongol
story they are said to be golden. This confirms still more the
interpretation of the myth, to the effect that the ass is the solar
steed during the night. The head and the tail of the night, conceived
as an animal, are now the two whitish or grey twilights, and now the
two golden auroras of morning and evening.
"Nec Delius aures
Humanam stolidas patitur retinere figuram,
Sed trahit in spatium villisque albentibus implet
Instabilesque illas facit et dat posse moveri."
The changeableness of the twilights must have served very well to
express the mobility of the ears of an ass.
In the story of the ass, Midas, the musical critic, the predestined ass,
pronounces in favour of Pan; and he does so not only on account of the
consanguinity between himself and the god, but also from a patriotic
feeling. Pan was born in a forest of Arcadia, of Zeus and the nymph
Kallisto; and it is well known that antiquity celebrated the asses of
Arcadia above those of every other country. The ass as a musician, the
ass as a musical critic, Pan the musician, and Pan preferred by the ass,
are the same person. Arcadia, the country of pastoral music, of
whistling shepherds, which made the Italy of the seventeenth and
eighteenth centuries bleat out so many useless verses, the country of
Pan the satyr, _par excellence_, is the country of the ass. Arcadia is
the most mountainous and wooded part of Greece,[726] and therefore, when
the Olympians came down from heaven, celestial nymphs and satyrs came to
people the forests and fountains of Arcadia. The divine guardian of the
ambrosia in the heavenly cloud takes, in the Arcadian forest, the form
of Pan, god of shepherds, who keeps guard over the honey. The
gandharvâs, who danced and sung in the Hindoo Olympus with the
apsarasas, has descended into Arcadia in the shape of Pan, to dance and
sing with the nymphs.[727] Pan who goes alone into the gloomy forest,
Pan who chases fear away, connected as he is with the story of the ass,
reminds us on the one hand of the superstition recorded by Pliny, to the
effect that an ass's skin put upon children chases fear from them[728]
(in the same way as in the province of Girgenti, in Sicily, it is
believed that shoes made of a wolf's skin, put on children's feet, make
them daring and lucky in battle), and, on the other hand, of the
unpublished Piedmontese story of the fearless Giovannino, who, in reward
for his courage in going alone to hell, brings away with him an ass
which throws gold from its tail.[729] In Tzetzas[730] I find again the
curious notion that Midas sold his own _stercus_ out of avarice, that
is, that he changed it into gold, as Vespasian used to do by selling the
excrement of his horse.
The Æsopian ass, when he goes to battle, terrifies by his braying all
the animals of the forest; so Pan defeats his enemies by means of his
terrible voice; and according to Herodotus,[731] in the heroic battle
of Marathon, the Athenians were helped by the powerful voice of the
god Pan. Finally, as we have seen Apollo to be the rival of Pan and
the enemy of the Phrygian Midas, the predestined ass, as well as of
the Trojans, so, in the eleventh of the Pythic odes of Pindar, we find
the hero Perseus, among the Hyperboreans,[732] eating asses.[733] The
morning sun devours the ass of night, as we have seen the solar hero
Rustem do in the _Shah-Name_, where he eats the wild asses.
But we must look for more mythical personages in connection with the
ass Midas in Arcadia, as the region of Pan and of asses. The ass Midas
is considered as a rich progenitor of races, and is supposed to have
been the first Phrygian. Windischmann has already observed (with the
examples of Yamas, Yima, Manus, Minos, and Radamanthüs) the connection
between the rich progenitor of races and the rich king or judge of
hell. To Midas the progenitor and to Midas the judge, corresponds the
ass whose excrements are of gold, the ass judge and prophet, the
Arcadian and prophetic Pan. The Arcadians considered themselves not
only autocthonoi, but proselênoi, or anterior to the moon. But they
are also considered in the light of inhabitants of an infernal region.
In Arcadia was situated the lake Stümphalos, the demoniacal birds of
which were slain by Hêraklês in Arcadia; in a chasm formed of wild
rocks was the source of the Styx, the principal infernal river, that
by which the Hellenic infernal beings were accustomed to swear. Greek
and Latin writers used to narrate of the ass (and the mule) that it
had an especial aversion to the water of the Styx, as being poisonous.
This superstition, when referred to the myth, appears to mean that,
when the solar hero drinks this water--the water of the dark or cloudy
ocean--he becomes a dark ass. (We find in Russian stories the hero who
is transformed into a bull, a horse, or a he-goat, when he drinks
water of which a demoniacal bull, horse, or he-goat has previously
drunk.) Ælianos, in his tenth book relative to animals, speaking of
the horned asses of Scythia, writes that they held in their horns the
water of the Styx. A similar narrative is given by Philostratos in the
third book of his romantic Life of Apollonios, concerning the fabulous
horned ass of India. "It is said," he writes, "that in the marshy
ground near the Indian river Hyphasis many wild asses are to be found;
and that these wild beasts have on their heads a horn with which they
fight bravely like bulls" (this seems to be a reminiscence of the
Indian rhinoceros); "and that the Indians form out of these horns
drinking-cups, affirming that those who drink out of these cups are
delivered from every illness for all that day; when wounded they feel
no pain, they pass safely through flames, nor, when they have drunk
out of it, can they be hurt by any poison. They say that these cups
belong to kings alone, nor is it permitted to any other than a king to
hunt the animal. It is narrated that Apollonios (the hero of the
romance) had seen this animal and observed its nature with wonder.
Moreover, to Damis, who asked him whether he had faith in what was
commonly said concerning the virtue of this cup, he answered 'I will
believe it when I shall have learned that in this country the king is
immortal.'" And no doubt Apollonios would have believed had it been
impossible for him to divine that the king who makes use of this
marvellous cup is the immortal sun, to whom alone it is reserved to
kill the ass of the nocturnal forest, the ass whose hairy ears are
like horns,[734] whose ears are of gold.
The horn of the Scythian ass full of Stygian water, the horn of the
ass which, when used as a cup, gives health and happiness to him who
drinks out of it, remind us (not to speak of Samson's jaw-bone of an
ass, which makes water flow) especially of the myth of the cornucopia
and that of the goat, with which the satyrs and fauns, having goat's
feet, stand in particular connection. It is also for this reason that
the ass is found in relation with Pan; wherefore it is too that
Silenos rides upon an ass, and appears, as we have already seen, in
the story of Midas, in his garden of roses; indeed the mythical
centaurs or onocentaurs, satyr, faun, ass, and goat are equivalent
expressions. We have seen, a few pages back, the Zendic three-legged
ass; in the following chapter we shall find the lame goat.
As the ass was ridden by Silenos,[735] so was he the animal dedicated to
Bacchus and to Priapos, whose mysteries were celebrated in the Dionysian
feasts. It is said that when Bacchus had to traverse a marsh, he met
with two young asses, and was conveyed by one of them, who was endowed
with human speech, to the other side without touching the water. (The
116th hymn of the first book of the _Rigvedas_ merits being especially
compared with this. In it, immediately after having represented the
Açvinâu as drawn by winged asses, the poet celebrates the Açvinâu as
delivering the hero Bhugyus out of the waters upon a vessel that moved
of itself in the air.)[736] On this account it is said that Bacchus, in
gratitude, placed the two young asses among the stars.[737] This is
another confirmation of the fact that the mythical ass really had the
virtue of flying; and the proverb "Asinus si volat habet alas"[738]
alludes to this myth. The fable of the ass who wishes to fly, and the
flight of the ass, are derisive allusions, applied to the earthly ass.
The celestial myth lingers in the memory, but is no longer understood.
In the myth of Prometheus, in _Ælianos_ (vi. 5), we have the ass who
carries the talisman which makes young again, which Zeus intended for
him who should discover the robber of the divine fire (Prometheus). The
ass, being thirsty, approaches a fountain, and is about to drink, when a
snake who guards the fountain prevents him from doing so. The ass offers
the snake the charm which he is carrying, upon which the serpent strips
off its old age, and the ass, drinking at the fountain, acquires the
power of becoming young again. The ass of night, when he drinks the dew
of the dawn, grows young and handsome again every day. It is on this
account, I repeat, that youth is celebrated as a peculiar virtue of the
ass; it is on this account that the Romans attributed a great cosmetic
virtue to ass's milk[739] (the white dawn, or moon).
The mythical ass seems to die every day, whereas, on the contrary it
is born anew every day, and becomes young again; whence the Greek
proverb does not celebrate the death in the singular, but the deaths
of the ass ("Onou thanatous").
The Italian proverb of the ass that carries wine and drinks water,
probably alludes to the ass that carries the water of youth, and then,
being thirsty, drinks at the fountain in the legend of Prometheus. The
wine of the Hellenic and Latin myth corresponds to the inebriating
drink or somas in which Indras delights so much in the _Rigvedas_. The
ass bears the drunken Silenos on its back.
The sun, who in the cloud is covered with the skin of an ass, carries
the rain; whence the Greek proverb the ass is wetted by the rain
("Onos hüetai"), and the popular belief that when the ears of the ass
or of a satyr (that is to say, of the ass itself) move, it is an
indication of rainy weather (or dew). When the sun comes out of the
shadows of night, he drinks the milk or white humour of the early
morning sky, the same white foaming humour which caused the birth of
Aphroditê, the same humour out of which, by the loves of Dionysos (or
of Pan, of a satyr, or of the ass itself) and Aphroditê, the satyr was
procreated--Priapos, whose phallic loves are discovered by the ass.
The satyr serves as a link between the myth of the ass and that of the
goat. On this account (that is, on account of the close relation
between the mythical ass and the mythical goat) two ancient Greek and
Latin proverbs--_i.e._, to dispute about the shadow of the ass ("Peri
onou skias") and to dispute, "De lana caprina"--have the same meaning,
a dispute concerning a bagatelle (but which is no trifle in the myth,
where the skin of the goat or of the ass is sometimes changed into a
golden fleece), which seems so much the more probable, as the Greeks
have also handed down to us another proverb in which the man who
expects to reap where he has not sown is laughed at as one who looks
for the wool of the ass ("Onou pokas zêteis"), or who shears the ass
("Ton onon keireis"). We have seen, in the myth of Midas, the king,
whose ears, when combed, betray his asinine nature. The Piedmontese
story of the maiden on whose forehead a horn or an ass's tail grows,
because she has badly combed the good fairy's head, is connected with
this story of the combing of the long-eared Midas. The combed ass and
the sheared ass correspond with one another; the combed ass has golden
ears, in the same way as gold and gems fall from the head of the good
fairy combed by the good girl in the fairy tale. To this mythical
belief, I think, may be traced the origin of the mediæval custom in
the Roman Church, which lasted till the time of Gregory VII., in which
public ovations were offered to the Pope, and an ass bearing money
upon its head was brought before him.[740]
The shadow of the ass[741] betrays him, no less than his ears, his
nose, and his braying. The shadow of the ass and his nose are found in
connection with each other in the legend of the Golden Ass of
Apuleius, which, after narrating how the ass, by putting his head out
of the window, had betrayed his master the greengrocer or gardener
(the friend of perfumes, "Gandharvas, asinus, in unguento, onos en
müro"), concludes thus: "The miserable gardener having been found
again, and taken before the magistrates to pay the fine, they lead him
to a public prison, and with great laughter cease not, says the ass
Lucius, to "make merry with my face;" whence also was derived the
popular proverb concerning the face and shadow of the ass ('De
prospectu et umbra asini')." The ass who betrays his master the
greengrocer or gardener by his face is a variety of the ass who,
dressed in the forest in the lion's skin[742] (like Hêraklês who goes
into hell dressed in a lion's skin), betrays himself by his braying,
and of the ass who discovers by his braying Priapos, who delights in
gardens (the vulva), Priapos the gardener, like the ogre[743] of the
_Pentamerone_, who finds before him in his garden a beautiful maiden.
The ass can restrain neither his voice nor his flatus; we have already
seen something similar in the story of Midas, where the comber of the
ass feels he will burst if he is not permitted to relieve himself of
the secret of the ass. Diogenês of Laertes narrates that the fields of
Agrigentum being devastated by malignant winds which destroyed the
crops, the philosopher Empedocles instructed them to take asses'
skins, and having made sacks of them, carry them to the summits of the
hills and mountains, to chase the winds away. Ælianos, confounding one
noise with another, suggests, to prevent the ass from braying, the
advantage of appending a stone to its tail. This ancient Greek fable
is to this day very popular in Italy, and the narrator is accustomed
to furbish it up with a character of actuality, as if it had happened
yesterday, and among his acquaintances.
In the Italian stories,[744] when the ass brays upon the mountain, a
tail grows on the forehead of the step-mother's ugly daughter; the third
crowing of the cock is the signal for the monster's death; the third
braying or flatus of the ass announces the death of the fool. With the
end of the night the ass disappears, and the fool also disappears or
dies. The braying of the ass cannot mount up into heaven; after the ass
has brayed, after the cloud has thundered, the ass comes down upon the
earth, is dissolved into rain, is dispersed and dies; the dark ass
cannot remain in the luminous sky, it can only inhabit the cloudy,
watery, or gloomy sky of hell. The way in which the fool of the story
tries to elude death resembles that which was used, according to
Ælianos, to prevent the ass from braying. In a story of Armagnac,[745]
Joan lou Péc runs after a man whom he believes to be a sage, and asks
him when he will die; the man answers, "Joan lou Péc, mouriras au
troisièmo pet de toun ase." The ass does so twice; the fool endeavours
to prevent the third: "Cop sec s'en-angonc cerca un pau (a stake) bien
pounchut et l'enfouncéc das un martet dens lou cu de l'ase. Mes l'ase
s'enflec tant, e hasconc tant gran effort, que lou pau sourtisconc coumo
no balo e tuèc lou praube Joan lou Péc."
In _Herodotus_, the Scythians are defeated when the asses bray, and
the dogs bark among Darius's tents. The braying of the ass, the
thunder of the cloud, is an oracle; the ass that brays is a judge and
a prophet. In hell everything is known; the devil knows every art,
every species of malice, every secret; the ass in hell participates in
this knowledge. The ass Nicon, in _Plutarch_, in the Life of Antony,
predicts to Augustus his victory at the battle of Actium; on the
contrary, in the Life of Alexander, by the same author, an ass who
kills with a kick a great lion belonging to the Macedonian, appears to
the great conqueror in the light of an evil omen. The dying sun of
evening, the old lion, is killed in the evening by the ass of night;
in the morning, on the contrary, the ass of night announces his
fortune to the solar hero, who again becomes luminous and wise. The
ass can predict all things, because it knows all things; it knows
everything, because it hears everything, and it hears everything by
means of its exceedingly long ears; the ass of Apuleius says of
itself: "Recreabar quod auribus præditus cuncta longule etiam dissita
sentiebam." And this ass which listens from a distance reminds us
again of the third brother, now a fool, and now only supposed to be a
fool; to the Andalusian Oidin-Oidon, hijo del buen oidor (a relation
of the already cited Vedic Indras âçrutkarnas), of the second cuento
of Caballero,[746] who hears everything that is done in the deepest
parts of hell, where Lucifer sits, horned and large-eared. The hero
who combats with Lucifer only thinks of cutting off his ear; the ass
without ears is no longer an ass; the ears of the mythical ass are its
vital and characteristic organs. Instead of ears, give horns to the
mythical ass, and we have the mythical goat; take the horns away and
we have now the mythical abject sheep, now the hog; this is what we
shall see in the two next chapters.
FOOTNOTES:
[686] _Ueber den Zusammenhang indischer Fabeln mit griechischen_, eine
kritische Abhandlung von A. Weber, Berlin, 1855.
[687] Here is the hymn as given by Du Cange in his _Gloss. M. et I.
L._:--
"Orentis partibus
Adventavit Asinus,
Pulcher et fortissimus,
Sarcinis aptissimus.
Hez, Sire Asnes, car chantez,
Belle bouche rechignez,
Vous aurez du fom assez
Et de l'avoine à plantez.
"Lentus erat pedibus
Nisi foret baculus
Et eum in clunibus
Pungeret aculeus.
Hez, Sire Asnes, &c.
"Hic in collibus Sichem,
Jam nutritus sub Ruben,
Transiit per Jordanem,
Saliit in Bethleem.
Hez, Sire Asnes, &c.
"Ecce magnis auribus
Subjugalis filius
Asinus egregius
Asinorum dominus.
Hez, Sire Asnes, &c.
"Saltu vincit hinnulos,
Damas et capreolos,
Super dromedarios
Velox Madianeos.
Hez, Sire Asnes, &c.
"Auram de Arabia,
Thus et myrrhum de Saba
Tulit in ecclesia
Virtus Asinaria.
Hez, Sire Asnes, &c.
"Dum trahit vehicula
Multa cum sarcinula,
Illius mandibula,
Dura terit pabula,
Hez, Sire Asnes, &c.
"Cum aristis hordeum
Comedit et carduum;
Triticum a palea
Segregat in area.
Hez, Sire Asnes, &c.
"Amen, dicas, Asine,
(_Hic genuflectabatur._)
Jam satur de gramine:
Amen, amen itera
Aspernare vetera.
Hez va! hez va! hez va! hez!
Bialz! Sire Asne, car allez;
Belle bouche car chantez."
[688] Cfr. Reinsberg von Düringsfeld, _Das festliche Jahr_.
[689] Sometimes the place of the ass is taken by the mule. At Turin, for
instance, it is narrated that the church dedicated to the _Corpus
Domini_ was erected several centuries ago on account of the miracle of a
mule which carried some sacred goods stolen by an impious thief. Having
arrived in the little square where the Church of the _Corpus Domini_ now
stands, the mule refused to go any farther; and out of a cup, which was
among the sacred objects stolen, a wafer containing the body of our
Saviour rose into the air. Nor would it come down again until the bishop
came forth, and, holding the cup high in the air, besought the wafer to
come back into it; which having been miraculously accomplished, the
Church of the _Corpus Domini_ was erected on the spot, from which starts
and to which returns the solemn procession which takes place annually at
Turin on the festival of _Corpus Domini_, and in which, about twenty
years ago, the princes and great dignitaries of the state, with the
professors of the university, used to take part in all the pomp of
mediæval ceremony and costume.--In Persia the festival of asses is
celebrated at the approach of spring; the ass personifying here the end
of the winter season.
[690] The same analogy presents itself in the Sanskrit word
_arbhakas_, which means little and foolish.
[691] Cfr. the root _gad_, from which we might perhaps deduce an
imaginary intermediate form, gadarbhas, besides the known gardabhas
and gandharbas or gandharvas.
[692] Cfr. _arvan_ with the roots _arv, arb, arp, riph, riph, riv,
rinv_.
[693] x. 10, 5.
[694] Gandharva itthâ padam asya rakshati.; _Rigv._ ix. 83, 4.
[695] Strîkâmâh vâi gandharvâh; i. 27.
[696] Professor Kuhn (_Die Herabkunft_, d. f. &c.) has already compared
to this the Zend Gandhrawa, who, in the Lake Vôuru-Kasha, keeps guard
over the tree _hom_ (the Vedic Somas). Kuhn and Weber, moreover, have
identified the Vedic gandharvas, Kriçânus, who wounds the ravisher of
the Somas, with the Zend Kereçâni, who endeavours to destroy riches;
here the gandharvas would appear to be a monstrous and demoniacal being.
[697] ... ut omittam eos, quos libidinis ac foedæ voluptatis causa,
coluisse nomen illud atque imposuisse suis, a scriptoribus notatur,
qualis olim Onos ille Commodi; qualis exsecrandus Marci Verotrasinus,
qualis et alterius Onobelos, quales, quos matronis in deliciis fuisse
scimus. Unde illud atque alium bipedem sibi quærit asellum, ejus nempe
membri causa, quod, in asino, clava, a Nicandro dicitur; _Laus Asini_,
Lugd. Batavorum, ex officina Elzeviriana, p. 194.
[698] To this flight into Egypt upon the ass can be referred the
Piedmontese custom among children in the middle of Lent--that is, near
the festival of St Joseph--of attaching to their companions now a saw,
now a devil's head, now an ass's head, pronouncing the words, "L'asu
cariá che gnün lu sa" (the ass burdened, and no one knows it).
Moreover, it seems to me that to the Christian tradition of Joseph,
and of the child Jesus carried upon the ass, can be referred the
well-known European fable of the old man, the boy, and the ass, of
which numerous varieties may be read in the article upon the _asinus
vulgi_ in the _Orient und Occident_ of Benfey.
[699] Professor Benfey, in his learned Einleitung to the
_Pancatantram_, p. 268, says that the disguise by means of the skin of
an ass is found in a Latin poem of the fifteenth century.
[700] "Addo ex Conrado Lycosthene in libro de ostentis et prodigiis
hanc iconem quam hippokentauri esse credebam, ipse vero (nescio ex
quo) Apothami vocat, Apothami (inquit) in aqua morantes, qui una parte
hominem, alia vero caballum sive equum referunt. Sic etiam memoriæ
tradiderunt mulieres esse capite plano sine crinibus, promissas autem
barbas habentes. Atqui ea descriptio plane ad Onocentauros pertinere
videtur, quos Aelianus et Philes sic fere delineant. Quæ vero de
Onocentauro fama accepi, hæc sunt: Eum homini ore et promissa barba
similem esse, simul et collum et pectus, humanam speciem gerere;
mammas distantes tamquam mulieris ex pectore pendere; humeros,
brachia, digitos, humanam figuram habere; dorsum, ventrem, latera,
posteriores pedes, asino persimiles et quemadmodum asinum sic cinereo
colore esse; imum ventrem leviter exalbescere: duplicem usum ei manus
præstare; nam celeritate ubi sit opus eæ manus præcurrunt ante
posteriores pedes; ex quo fit, ut non cæterorum quadrupedum cursu
superetur. Ac ubi rursus habet necesse vel cibum capere vel aliud
quidpiam tollere, qui ante pedes erant manus efficiuntur, tumque non
graditur, sed in sessione quiescit: Animal est gravi animi acerbitate;
nam si capiatur, non ferens servitutem, libertatis desiderio ab omni
cibo abhorret, et fame sibi mortem consciscit, licet pullus adhuc
fuerit. Hæc de Onocentauro Pythagoram narrare testatur Crates, ex
Mysio Pergamo profectus;" Aldrovandi, _De Quadrupedibus_, i.--In the
Indian satyrs described by Pliny, in the seventh book of his _Natural
History_, we find represented an analogous animal: "Sunt et satyri
subsolanis Indorum montibus (Cartadulonum dicitur regio) pernicissimum
animal, turn quadrupes, turn recte currens, humana effigie, propter
velocitatem nisi senes aut ægri, aut capiuntur." Evidently this refers
to some kind of monkey (probably the orang-outang); but as the myth of
the monkey does not differ much from that of the ass, as we shall see,
even the Hindoo gandharvas is represented as a monkey.--"In _A. V._
iv. 37, 11, the gandharvas, a class of gods, who are described as
hairy, like dogs and monkeys, but as assuming a handsome appearance to
seduce the affections of earthly females, are implored to desist from
this unbecoming practice, and not to interfere with mortals, as they
had wives of their own, the Apsarases;" Muir's _Sanskrit Texts_, v.
309.--We have the monkey-gandharvas and the warrior-gandharvas in the
Vedic hymns, the warrior-monkey in the _Râmâyanam_, and the
warrior-kentauros and warrior-ass in Hellenic myths.
[701] We also read of the ass that dances, which reminds us of the
gandharvas in their capacity of heavenly musicians and dancers, who
teach the gods how to dance. Nor is it perhaps without reason that the
author of precepts for dancers and mimics is named _Kriçâçvas_:
kriçâçvas means, as we already know, he who possesses a lean horse, or
simply the lean horse. Between the lean horse, the mule, and the ass,
the distance is short; nor can we overlook the fact that in the
gandharvas Kriçânus is recognised as he who causes to become lean,
which calls us back to the monster who makes horses grow lean, to the
monster of horses, the ugly horse, the horse-monster, who destroys the
golden ears of the fields, making them dry up, like the monster
Çushnas, or the destroyer of riches, like the Zend Kereçâni.--In the
before-quoted book, _Laus Asini_, the author says in jest, "Fortassis
Pegasum fuisse asinum;" and in this jest a great truth is contained.
[702] Kadâ yogo vâgino râsabhasya yena yagnam nâsatyopayâthah; _Rigv._
i. 34, 9.
[703] Vilupatmabhir âçuhemabhir vâ devânâm vâ gûtibhih çâçadânâ tad
râsabho nâsatyâ sahasram âgâ yamasya pradhane gigâya.
[704] Yatrâ rathasya brihato nidhânam vimocanam vâgino râsabhasya;
_Rigv._ iii. 53, 5.
[705] Nâvâginam vâginâ hâsayanti na gardabham puro açvân nayanti;
_Rigv._ iii. 53, 23.
[706] Gardabharathenâçvinâ udagayatâmaçvinâvâçnuvâtâm yadaçvinâ
udagayatâmaçvinâvâçnuvâtâm tasmâtsasritagavo dugdhadohah
sarveshâmetarhi vâhanânâmanâçishto retasastvasya vîryam nâharatâm
tasmâtsa dviretâ vâgî; _Âit. Br._ iv. 2, 9.
[707] _Ueber den Zusammenhang indischer Fabeln mit griechischen_,
Berlin, 1855.
[708] St Jerome, in the Life of Saint Hilarion: "Ego, inquit, Aselle,
faciam ut non calcitres necte hordeo alam, sed paleis; fame te
conficiam et sitis gravi onerabo pondere; per æstus indagabo et
frigore, ut cibum potius quam lasciviam cogites."--St Paulinus wrote,
"Sit fortis anima mortificans asinum suum."--In Italian, too, there is
a low term by which we say, _il mio asino_, instead of _il mio corpo_.
[709] A. c. i. m. t.,--poena seu mulcta, quæ reis irrogari solebat, ut
colligitur ex decreto Nepesini populi ann. 1134.--Iis et maxime
maritis, qui a suis vapulabant mulieribus; quod eo usque insaniæ
deventum erat, ut si maritus aufugisset, proximior vicinus eam ipse
poenam luere teneretur; quem morem non omnino periisse audivi. Du
Cange, whose words these are, gives several examples of a similar
chastisement.--In the _Tuti-Name_, ii. 20, a certain man complains to
a sage that he has lost his ass, and begs the wise man to find it
again for him; the latter points out a man who grew old without having
known love; he who does not love is a fool.--It is a remarkable fact
that the ass, generally considered a very lustful animal, is sometimes
despised as unadapted to make fruitful, and the reason of this is
given by Aldrovandi (_De Quadrupedibus_, i.)--Quamvis modo libidine
maxime pruriat, ob verendi tamen enormitatem, qua supra modum præditus
est, ad generandum admodum segnem esse compertum est, sicuti et
homines qui simili genitalis productione conspicui sunt, quod in
emissione per eam longitudinem semen transmeans hebetetur et frigidius
fiat. Testaturque Ælianus inter causas cur Ægyptii asinos odere, et
hanc quoque accedere putari, quod eum populi prædicti omnes foecundos
animantes colant, asinus minime foecundans nullus in honore sit.
[710] Sam, indra, gardabham mrina nuvantam pâpayâmuyâ; _Rigv._ i. 29, 5.
[711] Quoted by Weber, _Ueber den Zusammenhang indischer Fabeln mit
griechischen_, where the braying ass would also appear to be born of the
omniform monster: "Entsteht, nach Ç. xii. 7, 1, 5, nebst Ross und
Maulthier, aus dem Ruhm (yaças, which, however, may perhaps here also
simply mean splendour), welcher dem Ohr des getödteten Viçvarûpa
Tvâshtra entfloss, worin der Bezug auf sein lautes Geschrei wohl nicht
zu verkennen ist."--We have already seen, in the Russian stories quoted
in the preceding chapter, how the two horsemen who protect the hero come
out of the ears of the grey horse, and how the hero himself, entering by
one ear, and coming out of the other, finds a heroic horse. Here we can,
perhaps, detect an allusion to the long-eared ass, in the same way as in
the appellation of âçrutkarnas, or the ear which listens, given to
Indras (_Rigv._ i. 10, 9), the long-eared Indras may possibly be a form
representing the long-eared Midas, or the ass with long ears.
[712] Gatim khara ivâçvasya suparnasyeva pakshinah anâgantum na çakto
'smi râgyam tava mahîpate.
[713] _Râmây._ ii. 71.
[714] _Râmây._ iii. 38, 48.
[715] _Ib._ v. 12.
[716] vi. 74.
[717] Kravyâdah piçâcâh, in the _Atharvavedas_, viii. 2, 12.
[718] Cfr. also the _Tuti-Name_ of Rosen, ii. 218, for the musical
ass; and the same, ii. 149, for the ass in a lion's skin.
[719] xli. 28.--Cfr. the _Khorda Avesta_, Spiegel's _Einleitung_, p.
54: "Dort ist der dreibeinige Esel der in der Mitte des Sees steht und
mit seinem Geschrei die bösen Wesen vertreibt und alles Wasser, das
mit unreinen Wesen und Dingen in Berührung kommt, sogleich reinigt."
[720] Readers of Dante are acquainted with the trumpet of the devil
Malacoda, which is used in the same way as the fool uses his in the
Mongol story.
[721] In Menander, quoted by Aulus Gellius, a husband complains of the
injuries done him by his wife, using the proverb, "The ass amongst the
monkeys." Monkeys are well known for their impudent lasciviousness;
the ass, who represents the phallos, among this lascivious fraternity
finds himself often in the condition of an impotent and weak husband.
[722]
Lampsacus huic soli solita est mactare Priapo.
Apta asini flammis indicis exta damus.
Quem tu diva memor de pane monilibus ornas;
Cessat opus; vacuæ conticuere molæ.
--Ovidius, _Fasti_, vi.
[723] From the myth of the ass, as a musician and judge of music, is
derived the Tuscan game of the ass, which is thus described by Signor
Fanfani in his _Vocabolario dell' Uso Tuscano_, Firenze, 1863:--"Each
member of the party chooses an animal whose voice or song he must
imitate. The head player represents the ass, and is the king of the
other animals. When the head player, sitting in the middle, calls one
of the animals who encircle him, the dog, for instance, this animal
must bark; when he calls the cock, it must cry chicchiricù; when he
calls the ox, he who represents it must bellow, and so on. When the
ass brays, then all the animals emit their respective cries. Whoever
laughs, or omits to give forth the voice or song of the animal which
he represents, pays a forfeit."
[724] Ovidius, _Metam._ xi. 180.
[725] According to the _Annals of Padova_, cited by Berrardino
Scardeone, in Aldrovandi. _De Quadrupedibus_, i.
[726] The German proverb, "Wald hat Ohren, Feld hat Gesicht," is well
known. Cfr. the varieties of this proverb upon the ears of the forest,
in the third vol. pp. 120 and 173, of Uhland's _Schriften zur
Geschichte der Dichtung und Sage_, Stüttgart, 1866.
[727] The reader is acquainted with the myth of the nymph Syrinx,
beloved of Pan, who was changed into a cane or reed, from which Pan made
a flute. We find the leaf of the cane in connection with the ass in
Hungarian tradition. A singular indentation can be observed upon the
leaves of the cane, which has a great resemblance to the mark of three
teeth. To explain this strange mark the Hungarian people narrate, that
the ass of the Redeemer once bit the leaf of a cane, but as Christ was
in a hurry, the ass was unable to eat the leaf, and so it happened that
its three teeth only left the mark of the bite upon the cane. From that
time forward every leaf of a cane bears record to this. The two lines
which stretch down the two flanks of the ass are said in Hungary to be
caused by the blood of our Redeemer. The popular belief in Ireland is
that these lines remain as a memorial of Christ having once struck the
ass.--Cfr. the chapter on the Peacock and that on the Eel, where we
shall find the hero and the heroine again transformed into canes.
[728] The loss of heart or courage is expressed in Italian by the low
term "Quí mi casca l'asino" (here my ass falls). This expression,
however, may perhaps be of Hellenic origin; the equivoque between the
two equisonant expressions, "ap' onou" and "apo nou" is well-known;
whence to fall off the ass and to fall from one's mind became
synonymous.
[729] There is an unpublished story which I heard narrated at Antignano,
near Leghorn, of a mother who has a silly son named Pipetta. The latter
asks his mother for a quattrino (a small coin) to buy a vetch, and
afterwards a bean, because it grows higher; he sows it, and it attains a
marvellous height. Climbing up the bean-stalk he comes to the gates of
paradise, which are opened to him, but St Peter sends him back; he then
finds the entrance to hell, which he wishes to visit. The devil shows
him all the sights; the two then play at cards, and Pipetta wins a
sackful of souls. The devil fears that Pipetta will empty hell, so he
allows him to depart with the sack, and an ass which throws gold from
its tail; he mounts up to heaven, and consigns the sack of souls to St
Peter. The story ends with the usual exchange of asses at the inn where
Pipetta sleeps upon his descent from the beanstalk.
[730] _Biblion Istorikon_, i. 116.--It is added, that when Titus
remonstrated with his father on his avarice, Vespasian made him smell
the gold for which the horse's dung had been sold, asking him whether
it smelt bad.--In the Mongol story we saw the fool who goes out with
his ass and hides it in a cavern afterwards despoiling a merchant's
caravan.--_Tzetzas_, i. 128, records the existence in Phrygia of a
village called "Ass's-ears" (ê klêsis onou ôta), inhabited by robbers,
and belonging to Midas; he thinks, moreover, that Midas was surnamed
the large-eared on account of this village of his.
[731] vi. 105.
[732] Kleitas onôn hekatombas, xi. 51.
[733] In _Anton. Liberalis_ we find a long narrative from which we
gather that Apollo would only suffer the ass to be sacrificed to him
among the Hyperboreans.
[734] I read on this subject in the curious volume _Laus Asini_,
printed at Leyden by Elzevir, the following notice: "Si quis graviter
a scorpione ictus, id in aurem insusurret asino, ex tempore curetur."
[735]
"Te senior turpi sequitur Silenus asello
Turgida pampineis redimitus tempora sertis
Condita lascivi deducunt orgya mystæ."
--Seneca, _Oedipus_.
[736] Tam ûhathur nâubhir âtmanvatîbhir antarikshaprudbhir
apodakâbhih; strophe 3.--Cfr. strophe 4th and 5th of the same hymn.
[737] Another reason is also assigned for the honour given to the ass
in heaven: the ass and Priapos contend together as to who is superior;
Priapos defeats the ass, and Dionysos takes pity upon the vanquished,
and places it in heaven among the stars.
[738] _Laus Asini_, Ludg. Batavorum, ex officina Elzeviriana.
[739] "Conferre aliquid et candori in mulierum cute existimatur.
Poppaea certe Domitii Neronis conjux quingentas secum per omnia
trahens fætas balnearum etiam solio totum corpus illo lacte macerabat,
extendi quoque cutem credens;" _Aldrov._ To which custom Juvenal
alludes in his 6th satire:
"Atque illo lacte fovetur
Propter quod secum comites educit asellas
Exul hyperboreum si dimittetur ad axim."
[740] "Finitis laudibus, surgit quidam archipresbyter, retro se
ascendit asinum preparatum a curia; quidam cubicularius tenet in
capite asini bacilem cum xx. solidis denariorum," &c.; in Du Cange,
the work quoted before, _s. v. cornomannia_.--We also find in Du Cange
that a soldier was called in the middle ages "caput asini, pro
magnitudine capitis et congerie capillorum."
[741] In the _Pentamerone_, iii. 8, the night is called "l'aseno de
l'ombre."
[742] In the _Pentamerone_, ii. I, we have a variation of the other
Æsopian fable of the lion who is afraid of the ass. The old witch, in
order to deliver herself from the lion which Petrosinella has caused to
rise, flays an ass and dresses herself in its skin; the lion, believing
it to be really an ass, runs off.--In the thirteenth of the Sicilian
stories collected by Signora Laura Gonzenbach, and published at Leipzig
by Brockhaus, the ass and the lion dispute the spoil; the young hero
divides it, giving to the ass the hay that the lion has in its mouth,
and to the lion the bones in the ass's mouth. But probably the lion here
represents the dog, according to the Greek proverb, "Küni didôs achüra,
onôi ta ostea," to express a thing done the wrong way.
[743] In the _Pentamerone_ again, in the island of the ogres, an old
ogress feeds a number of asses, who afterwards jump on to the bank of
a river and kick the swans; here the ass is demoniacal, as it is in
the _Râmâyanam_; the swans, as we shall see, are a form of the
luminous Açvinâu.--In obscene literature, the _mentula_ as a gardener,
and the _vulva_ as a garden, are two frequent images; cfr., among
others, the Italian poem, _La Menta_.
[744] Cfr. the first of the _Novelline di Santo Stefano di Calcinaia_,
in which we also find the third brother, believed to be stupid, who
makes his ass throw gold from its tail; the foolish Pimpi, who kills his
ass whilst cutting wood; the son of the poor man, who amuses himself by
sending the ass before him tied to a string, and then making it return;
the peasant who drags up the ass which had fallen into the marsh, and
who then marries the daughter of the king of Russia (the wintry, the
gloomy, the nocturnal one), who never laughed and whom he causes to
laugh; and the ass who dies after eating a poisoned loaf.
[745] _Contes et Proverbes Populaires recueillis en Armagnac_, par J.
F. Bladé, Paris, Franck.
[746] _Cuentos y Poesias Populares Andaluces_, collecionados por
Fernan Caballero, Leipzig, Brockhaus, 1866.
CHAPTER IV.
THE SHEEP, THE RAM, AND THE GOAT.
SUMMARY.
The sun-shepherd, and the sun-lamb, ram, or goat.--The dark-coloured
he-goat.--The goat-moon.--Agas; explanation given by Professor
Bréal; the Finnic aija.--Meshas; she-goat, ram, skin, sack.--The ram
Indras.--The goats Açvinâu.--The he-goat Veretraghna.--The lamb and
the goat in the forest opposed to the wolf.--The apple-tree and the
she-goat; the cloud and the apple-tree.--The goat, the nut-tree and
the hazel-nuts.--The wolf assumes the goat's voice; the wolf in the
fire.--The witch takes the voice of the little hero's mother; the
child born of a tree.--The hero among the sheep, or in the spoils of
the sheep, escapes from the witch.--Pûshan agâçvas and his
sister.--The brother who becomes a kid while drinking; the sister in
the sea.--The husband-goat; the goat's skin burned; the monster
appears once more a handsome youth; the funereal mantle of the young
hero; when it is burned, the hero lives again handsome and
splendid.--The children changed into kids.--The cunning Schmier-bock
in the sack.--Agamukhî--Ilvalas and Wâtâpis.--Indras meshândas,
sahasradhâras and sahasradâras.--The rams of the wolf eaten.--The
goat of expiation, the goat and the stupidity of the hero disappear
at the same time.--The devil-ram; the putrid sheep that throws gold
behind it.--The goat which deprives men of sight.--The young prince,
riding on the goat, solves the riddle.--The spy of heaven; the eye
of God.--The constellation of the she-goat and two kids.--The lame
goat.--The heroine and the goat her guide and nurse.--The milky way
and the she-goat.--The goat's blood, manus Dei; the stone
bezoar.--The cunning goat.--The goat deceives the wolf; the goat
eats the leaf.--The she-goat possessed of a devil.--The
ram-vessel.--Ram and he-goat foecundators.--The he-goat and the
horned husband.--Zeus he-goat and the satyr Pan; Hêraklês the rival
of a goat; the old powerless man called a he-goat.--Hellenic forms
of the myth of the goat.--Phrixos and Helle; Jupiter Ammon; the
altar of Apollo; the fleece of the Iberians; the golden ram of
Atreus; Aigüsthos; Diana and the white sheep; Neptune a ram; satyrs
and fauns; Hermês krioforos; the sheep of Epimenis; lambs, rams, and
he-goats sacrificed; aixourania and the cornucopia.--The mythical
goat; its threefold form; black, white, and light-coloured
lambs.--Pecus and pecunia.
When the girl aurora leads out of the stable in the morning her
radiant flock, among them there are found to be white lambs, white
kids, and luminous sheep; in the evening the same aurora leads the
lambs, the kids, and the sheep back to the fold. In the early dawn all
this flock is white, by and by their fleeces are golden fleeces; the
white, and afterwards the golden heavens of the east (or the west)
constituting this white and golden flock, and the sun's rays their
fleeces. Then the sun himself, who steps forth from this flock, is now
its young shepherd-king, and now the lamb, the ram, or he-goat. When
the sun enters into the region of night, the he-goat or lamb goes back
to the fold and becomes dark-coloured; the sun veiled by the night or
the cloud is a dark-coloured ram, he-goat, or she-goat. In the night,
says the proverb, all cows are black; and the same might be said of
goats, except in the case of the goat, luminous and all-seeing, coming
out of the nocturnal darkness in the form of the moon. We must,
therefore, consider the sheep or goat under a triple aspect; the
principal and most interesting aspect being that of the sun veiled by
the gloom, or by the cloud, which wears often a demoniacal form, such
as that of the ass or of the hero in hell; the second being that of
the grey-white, and afterwards golden sky of morning, or of the golden
and thereafter grey-white sky of evening which, as a luminous, is
therefore generally a divine form of the goat; and the third aspect
being that of the moon.
The richest myths refer to the sun enclosed in the cloud or the shades
of night, or to the cloud or darkness of night closing round the sun.
The shifting shadow and the moving cloud on the one side, the damp
night and the rainy cloud on the other, easily came to be represented
as a goat and as a ram. In the Indian tongue, or even the Vedic,
_agas_ is a word which means, properly speaking, pushing, drawing,
moving (agens), and afterwards he-goat; the he-goat butts with its
horns; the sun in the cloud butts with its rays until it opens the
stable and its horns come out.[747] The ram is called _meshas_, or
_mehas_, that is, the pourer or spreader, mingens (like the ass
ciramehin), which corresponds with the _meghas_, or cloud mingens.
Moreover, as in Greek from _aix_,[748] a goat, we have _aigis_, a skin
(Ægis), so in Sanskrit from _agas_, a goat, we have _aginas_, a skin;
and from _meshas_, a ram, _meshas_, a fleece, a skin, and that which
is formed from it; whence the Petropolitan Dictionary compares with it
the Russian _mieh_ (Lithuanian, _maiszas_) skin and sack.
Let us now first of all see how these simple images developed
themselves in the Hindoo myth.
Indras, the pluvial and thundering god, is represented in the first
strophe of a Vedic hymn as a very celebrated heroic ram;[749] in the
second strophe, as the one who pours out ambrosial honey (madacyutam);
in the third strophe, as opening the stable or precinct of the cows to
the Añgirasas;[750] in the fourth strophe, as killing the serpent that
covers or keeps back; in the fifth strophe, as expelling the
enchanters with enchantments, and breaking the strong cities of the
monster Piprus;[751] and in the sixth strophe, as crushing under his
foot the giant-like monster Arbudas[752] or monster serpent. Thus far
we have two aspects of the myth, the ram which pours out ambrosial
honey, and the ram which opens the gate and crushes with its foot. In
another hymn the Açvinâu are compared to two he-goats (ageva), to two
horns (çriñgeva), and to two swift dogs.[753] A third hymn informs us
that Indras by means of a ram killed a leonine monster.[754]
Here we evidently have a heroic he-goat or ram.
Let us compare it with other traditions. In the _Khorda Avesta_[755]
we find Veretraghna (the Zend form of Indras, as Vritrahan) "with the
body of a warrior he-goat, handsome, and with sharpened horns."
In the Russian tale given by _Afanassieff_,[756] the lamb, companion of
the bull in the wood, kills the wolf by butting against its sides, while
the bull also wounds the ferocious beast with its horns. In another
variation of the same story,[757] the cat is confederate with the lamb
against the wolf; the lamb butts hard at the wolf, while the cat
scratches it till blood flows. In yet another version, besides the lamb,
the he-goat also appears; the cat twists some of the bark of the
birch-tree round the horns of the he-goat, and bids the lamb rub against
it to produce fire; sparks come from it, the cat fetches hay, and the
three companions warm themselves. The wolves come up, and the cat makes
them run, presenting them the goat as a scarecrow, and frightening them
further by ominous hints as to the strength contained in its beard.
Finally, we have in the Russian stories two singular variations of the
fable of the goat, the kids, and the wolf.[758] The goat is about to
give birth to her young ones under an apple-tree. (We have seen in
Chapter I. the apple-tree, the fruit of which, when eaten, causes horns
to sprout. It is well-known that in Greek, _mêlon_ means a goat and an
apple-tree, as the Hindoo masculine noun _petvas_, which means a ram, is
in the neuter _petvam_ = ambrosia. The mythical apple-tree is ambrosial,
like the cornucopia of the goat of mythology; and it seems to me that
here, too, I can find an analogy in the Slavonic field itself between
the Russian words _óblaka_, clouds, in the plural _ablaká_, the clouds,
and _iablony_, apple-tree, plural _jáblogna_, the apple-trees, _jablok_,
the apple.) The apple-tree advises the goat to betake itself to some
other place, as the apples might fall upon its new-born kids and kill
them. The goat then goes to give birth to her young ones under an
equally shady walnut-tree; the walnut-tree also advises her to go away,
as the nuts might fall and do serious harm to her little ones;[759] upon
which the goat goes to a deserted tent in the forest, another form of
the cloud of night. When the kids are brought forth, the goat issues
forth out of the tent to procure food, and cautions her children not to
open to any one (the fable is well known in the West, but the Slavonic
variations are particularly interesting). The wolf comes and pronounces
the same password as the goat to induce the kids to open, but they
perceive by the rough voice of the wolf that it is not their mother, and
refuse to admit him. The wolf then goes to the blacksmith, and has a
voice made for him resembling that of the goat; the deceived kids open,
and the wolf devours them all except the smallest, who hides under the
stove (the favourite place where the little Slavonic hero, the third
brother, the ill-favoured fool, who afterwards becomes handsome and
wise, is accustomed to squat). The goat returns, and learns from the kid
which has escaped the massacre of its brothers. She thinks how to avenge
herself, and invites her friend and gossip the fox with the wolf to
dinner; the unsuspecting wolf arrives along with the fox. After dinner,
the goat, to divert her guests, invites them to amuse themselves by
leaping over an opening made in the floor; the goat leaps first, then
the fox leaps, and then the wolf, but falls down on the burning ashes
and is burnt to death, like the witch in some other stories, as the
night is burned by the morning aurora; and the goat chaunts a marvellous
_Te Deum_ (cudesnoi pamin) in the wolf's honour. The other Russian
version adds some new and curious details. The goat goes to find food,
and leaves the kids alone; they shut the door after her. She returns
and says, "Open, my sons, my little fathers; your mother is come; she
has brought some milk, half a side full of milk, half a horn full of
fresh cheese, half a little horn full of clear water (the
cornucopia)."[760] The kids open immediately. The second day the goat
goes out again; the wolf, who had heard the song, tries to sing it to
the kids; but the latter perceive that it is not their mother's voice,
and do not open. Next day the wolf again imitates the mother's voice;
the kids open the door, and are all devoured except one which hides
itself in the stove, and afterwards narrates to the mother-goat all that
has happened. The goat avenges herself as follows: She goes into the
forest with the wolf, and comes to a ditch where some workmen had cooked
some gruel, and left the fire still burning. The goat challenges the
wolf to leap the ditch; the wolf tries and falls into it, where the fire
makes his belly split open, from which the kids, still alive, skip out
and run to their mother.
Another story, however,[761] affords us still more aid in the
interpretation of the myth; that is, in leading us to see in the goat
and her kids the sun horned or furnished with rays, as it issues radiant
out of the cloud, or darkness, or ocean of night, and in the wolf, or in
the wolf's skin, split open or burned, out of which the kids come, the
dark, cloudy, watery nocturnal sky. Instead of the wolf we have a witch,
instead of the goat a woman, and instead of the kids the young Vaniushka
(Little John); the witch has a voice made by the blacksmith like that of
Vaniushka's or Tereshicko's mother, and thus attracts him to her.
Tereshicha says that he was originally the stump of a tree, which his
father and mother, being childless, had picked up in the forest, and
wrapped up and rocked in a cradle till he was born.
The monster wolf, or the witch, having the faculty of simulating the
voice of the goat,[762] and an especial predilection for both sheep
and goats,--so much so that the witch Liho (properly Evil) keeps some
in her house, and those which come out (of the dark sky) in the
morning, and which re-enter (the dark sky) in the evening, are
considered her peculiar property,[763]--often transforms the hero (the
evening sun) into a kid (into the darkness or cloud of night). Of
course, as the dark and cloudy monster is often represented as a wolf,
it is easy to understand his wish that everything should be
transformed into a lamb in order to eat it. But the mythical lamb or
kid, the young solar hero, generally escapes out of the jaws of the
wolf, out of the hands of the witch, or out of the darkness, the
waters, or the cloud of night.
A Vedic hymn celebrates the strong Pûshan, who has a he-goat for his
horse (or who is a goat-horse), and is called the lover of his sister.
Perhaps these words contain the germ of the Russian story of Little
John, brother of Little Helen, who is changed by witchcraft into a
kid. I have already observed in Chapter I. how Helen, who at the
commencement of the story shows affection for her brother John, ends
by betraying him. The Vedic hymn would appear to contain the notion of
the brother Pûshan transformed into a he-goat (the sun which enters
into the cloud or darkness of night), because he has loved his sister.
In another Vedic hymn we have the sister Yamî, who seduces her brother
Yamas. In European fairy tales, the sister loves her brother, who is
metamorphosed by the art of a witch, now into a young hog, and now
into a kid. In the forty-fifth story of the fourth book of
_Afanassieff_, Ivanushka (Little John) becomes a kid after drinking
out of a goat's hoof. In the twenty-ninth story of the second book of
_Afanassieff_, Ivanushka and Little Helen, the children of a Tzar,
wander alone about the world. Ivanushka wishes to drink where cows,
horses, sheep, and hogs feed and drink; his sister Little Helen
advises him not to do so, lest he should turn into a calf, a colt, a
lamb, or a young pig; but at last John is overcome by thirst, and,
against the advice of his sister, he drinks where goats drink, and
becomes a kid. A young Tzar marries the sister, and gives every honour
to the kid, but a witch throws the young queen into the sea (Phrixos
and Helle; in other European stories, into a cistern), and usurps her
place, inducing the people to believe that she is Helen, and
commanding the kid to be put to death. The kid runs to the shore and
invokes his sister, who answers from the bottom of the sea that she
can do nothing. The young Tzar, to whom the affair is referred,
hastens to deliver Helen out of the sea; the kid can again skip about
in safety, and everything is green again, and flourishes as much as it
withered before; the witch is burnt alive.[764]
According to the fiftieth story of the sixth book of _Afanassieff_, a
merchant has three daughters. He builds a new house, and sends his
three daughters by turns to pass the night there, in order to see what
they dream about. (The belief that the man dreamed of by a maiden
during the night of St John's Day, Christmas Day, or the Epiphany, is
her predestined husband, still exists in the popular superstitions of
Europe.) The eldest daughter dreams that she marries a merchant's son,
the second a noble, and the third a he-goat. The father commands his
youngest daughter never to go out of the house; she disobeys; a
he-goat appears and carries her off upon his horns towards a rocky
place. Saliva and mucous matter fall from the goat's mouth and
nostrils; the good maiden is not disgusted, but patiently wipes the
goat's mouth. This pleases the animal, who tells her that if she had
shown horror towards him, she would have had the same fate as his
former wives, whose heads were impaled on a stake. The geese bring to
the girl news of her father and sisters; they announce that the eldest
sister is about to be married; she wishes to be present at the
wedding, and is permitted by the goat to go, who orders for her use
three horses as black as a crow, who arrive at their destination in
three leaps (the three steps of Vishnus), whilst he himself sits upon
a flying carpet, and is transported to the wedding in the form of a
handsome and young stranger. The same happens on the occasion of the
second sister's marriage, when the third sister guesses that this
handsome youth is her own husband. She departs before the rest, comes
home, finds the skin of the goat and burns it; then her husband always
preserves the form of a handsome youth, inasmuch as the enchantment of
the witch has come to an end.[765]
The lamb, the he-goat, and the sheep are favourite forms of the
witch. In the European story, when the beautiful princess, in the
absence of the prince, her husband, gives birth to two beautiful sons,
the witch induces the absent prince to believe that, instead of real
sons, his young wife has given birth to pups. In the seventh story of
the third book of _Afanassieff_, the young queen gives birth, during
the king's absence, to two sons, of whom one has the moon on his
forehead, and the other a star on the nape of his neck (the Açvinâu).
The wicked sister of the young queen buries the children. Where they
were buried a golden sprout and a silver one spring up. A sheep feeds
upon these plants, and gives birth to two lambs, having, the one the
moon on its head, the other a star on its neck. The wicked sister, who
has meanwhile been married to the king, orders them to be torn in
pieces, and their intestines to be thrown out into the road. The good
lawful queen has them cooked, eats them, and again gives birth to her
two sons, who grow up hardy and strong, and who, when interrogated by
the king, narrate to him the story of their origin; their mother is
recognised, and becomes once more the king's wife; the wicked sister
is put to death.[766]
The witch is sometimes herself (as a wolf-cloud or wolf-darkness) a
devourer of young luminous kids or lambs, such as the Schmierbock in
the Norwegian story. The witch carries Schmierbock three times away in
a sack; the first and second time Schmierbock escapes by making a hole
in the sack; but the third time the witch succeeds in carrying him to
her house, where she prepares to eat him. The cunning Schmierbock,
however, smuggles the witch's own daughter into his place, and,
climbing up, conceals himself in the chimney (a variation of the
stove, the place where the young Russian hero usually hides himself,
in the same way as in the Tuscan story the foolish Pimpi conceals
himself in the oven). From this post of security he laughs at the
witch, who endeavours to recapture him; he throws a stone down the
chimney and kills her, upon which he descends, rifles her
treasure-stores, and carries off all her gold. Here the young hero is
called a he-goat; in the chapter on the wolf, we shall find the witch
of the Norwegian story actually bears the name of wolf. These two data
complete the myth; the wolf which wishes to devour the little hero,
and the witch who endeavours to eat the little lamb, are completed by
the fable which represents the wolf as, at the rivulet, eating the
lamb, which, in the mythical heavens, means the cloudy and gloomy
monster which devours the sun.
We have seen above the witch who imitates the voice of the mother of
the little hero, in order to be able to eat him, and the wolf who
mimics the voice of the goat and eats the kids; but the wolf does more
than assume the goat's voice; he sometimes even takes her form.
In the _Râmâyanam_,[767] Agamukhî, or goat's face, is called a witch,
who wishes Sîtâ to be torn to pieces. In the legend of Ilvalas and
Vâtâpis,[768] the two wizard brothers who conspire to harm the
Brâhmanâs, Vâtâpis transforms himself into a wether, and lets himself
be sacrificed in the funeral rites by the Brâhmanâs. The unsuspecting
Brâhmanâs eat its flesh; then Ilvalas cries out to his brother, "Come
forth, O Vâtâpis!" and his brother, Vâtâpis, comes out of the bodies
of the Brâhmanâs, lacerating them, until the rishis Agastyas eats of
himself the whole of Vâtâpis, and burns Ilvalas to ashes. The
_Râmâyanam_ itself explains to us why, in these sacrifices, a wether,
and not a ram, is spoken of,[769] when it narrates the legend of
Ahalyâ. It is said in this passage that the god Indras was one day
condemned to lose his testicles by the malediction of the rishis
Gâutamas, with whose wife, Ahalyâ, he had committed adultery. The
gods, moved to pity, took the testicles of a ram and gave them to
Indras, who was therefore called Meshândas; on this account, says the
_Râmâyanam_, the Pitaras feed on wethers, and not on rams, in funeral
oblations. This legend is evidently of brâhmanic origin. The
Brâhmanâs, being interested in discrediting the god of the warriors,
Indras, and finding him called in the Vedâs by the name of Meshas or
ram, invented the story of the ram's testicles, in the same way as,
finding Indras in the Vedâs called by the name of Sahasrâkshas
(_i.e._, he of the thousand eyes), they malignantly connected this
appellation with the same scandalous story of the seduction of Ahalyâ,
and degraded the honourable epithet into an infamous one, he of the
thousand wombs, probably by the confusion arising out of the equivoque
between the words _sahasradhâras_, the sun (as carrying, now a
thousand stars, now a thousand rays), or _sahasrânçus_, and
_sahasradâras_, which has a very different meaning.
In the important 116th hymn of the first book of the _Rigvedas_,
Rigrâçvas (_i.e._, the red horse, or the hero of the red horse) eats a
hundred rams belonging to the she-wolf (in the following hymn, a
hundred and one); his father blinds him on this account; the two
marvellous physicians, the Açvinâu, give him back his two eyes.[770]
Evidently the father of the solar hero is here the gloomy monster of
night himself; the sun, at evening, becomes the devourer of the rams
who come out of the she-wolf, or who belong to the she-wolf; it is for
this reason that the monster wolf blinds him when evening comes. The
red horse Rigrâçvas, or the hero of the red horse, who eats the rams
of the she-wolf, affords a further key to enable us to understand the
expiatory goat, which in the _Rigvedas_ itself is sacrificed instead
of the horse. We are told in a hymn, that in the sacrifice of the
horse the omniform he-goat (ago viçvarûpah) has preceded the
horse;[771] and the _Âitareya Br._, commenting on this exchange of
animals, also speaks of the he-goat as the last animal destined for
the sacrifice. In the Russian stories, too, the goat has to pay the
price of the follies or rogueries done by the man, and is
sacrificed.[772] This sacrificed he-goat appears to be the same as the
ass which undergoes punishment for all the animals in the celebrated
fable of Lafontaine (which becomes a bull in the hands of the Russian
fabulist Kriloff, who could not introduce the ass, an animal almost
unknown in Russia); and we already know that the ass represents the
sun in the cloud or the sun in the darkness; and we have also said
that the ass and the fool die together in the legend. The she-goat
dies in the Russian story to deliver the fool, who, after her death,
is a fool no longer, his folly having died with her.[773] The popular
story offers us another proof of the identity of the mythical ass and
the mythical goat. We have also seen above, in the Norwegian story,
how the witch possesses a treasure which is carried off by the
Schmierbock, who kills her; the magician, or the devil, is always
rich. The ass which the devil gives to Little Johnny throws gold from
its tail; the ass personifies the devil. But the devil, as we have
observed, also has a predilection to embody himself in a ram, a lamb,
or a he-goat. I remember the puppets who every day improvised popular
representations in the little wooden theatre on the Piazza Castello,
at Turin, when I was a boy; the final doom of the personage who
represented the tyrant was generally to die under the bastinadoes of
Arlecchino, or to be carried to hell by the devil in the form of a
bleating lamb, which came upon the scene expressly to carry him away
with him, this disappearance being accompanied by much throbbing of
the spectators' hearts, to whom the manager preached a salutary
sermon.[774] In the twenty-first of the Tuscan stories published by
me, it is not the devil, but the little old man, Gesù, who gives to
the third brother, instead of the usual ass, a putrid sheep, which,
however, has the virtue of throwing louis-d'or behind it. This putrid,
or wet, or damp sheep represents still better the damp night.
Rigrâçvas, as we have said, eats the ram and becomes blind, his father
having blinded him to avenge the she-wolf to whom the rams belonged; but
the mother of the rams being the sheep, it is probable that the she-wolf
who possessed the rams had assumed the form of a putrid sheep, in the
same way as we have seen her above transformed into a she-goat; the
father of Rigrâçvas, who avenges the she-wolf on account of the hundred
rams, may perhaps himself have been a horned wolf transformed into a
he-goat, and have blinded Rigrâçvas with his horns. In the popular
story, the she-goat, when she is in the forest, takes a special pleasure
in wounding people's eyes with her horns; hence is probably derived the
name of the reptile agakâvas, conjured with in the _Rigvedas_,[775] as
durdriçikas, or making to see badly, damaging the eyesight, and the name
of agakâ, given to an illness in the eyes by the Hindoo physician
Suçrutas. However, we must not forget the connection between the idea of
skin and that of goat, by which the agakâ might mean simply the thin
membrane that sometimes harms the pupil of the eye, and produces
blindness. This thin membrane, stretched over the eye of the solar hero,
blinds him. We shall see in the chapter on the frog and the toad, which
very often represent, in the myths, the cloud and the damp night, that
the toad[776] causes blindness only by means of the venom which it is
fabled to exude, like the reptile agakâvas.
But, as the hero in hell learns and sees everything, the goat, which
deprives others of sight, has itself the property of seeing
everything; this is the case, because the goat, being the sun enclosed
in the cloud or gloomy night, sees the secrets of hell, and also
because, being the horned moon or starry sky, it is the spy of the
heavens. We have already observed in the first chapter how the
marvellous girl of seven years of age, to answer the acted riddle
proposed by the Tzar, arrives upon a hare, which, in mythology,
represents the moon. In a variation of the same story given by
_Afanassieff_,[777] instead of riding upon a hare, the royal boy comes
upon a goat, and is recognised by his father; the goat, in its
capacity of steed of the lost hero, seems here to represent the moon,
as the hare does.
We have already spoken of Indras sahasrâkshas, _i.e._, of the thousand
eyes; Hindoo painters represent him with these thousand eyes, that is,
as an azure sky bespangled with stars. Indras as the nocturnal sun hides
himself, transformed, in the starry heavens; the stars are his eyes. The
hundred-eyed or all-seeing (panoptês) Argos placed as a spy over the
actions of the cow beloved of Zeus, is the Hellenic equivalent of this
form of Indras. In Chapter I. we also saw the witch's daughter of the
Russian fairy tale who has three eyes, and with her third eye plays the
spy over the cow, which protects the good maiden. In the second story of
the sixth book of _Afanassieff_, when the peasant ascends into heaven
upon the pea-plant, and enters into a room where geese, hogs, and pastry
are being cooked, he sees a goat on guard; he only discovers six eyes,
as the goat has its seventh eye in its back; the peasant puts the six
eyes to sleep, but the goat, by means of its seventh eye, sees that the
peasant eats and drinks as much as he likes, and informs the lord of the
sky of the fact. In another variation of the story, given by
_Afanassieff_,[778] the old man finds in heaven a little house guarded
in turns by twelve goats, of which one has one eye, another two, a third
three, and so on up to twelve. The old man says to one after the other,
"One eye, two eyes, three eyes, &c., sleep." On the twelfth day, instead
of saying "twelve eyes," he makes a mistake and says "eleven;" the goat
with twelve eyes then sees and secures him. The eye of God which sees
everything, in the popular faith, is a variation of Argos Panoptês, the
Vedic Viçvavedas, and the Slavonic Vsievedas, the eye of the goat which
sees what is being done in heaven. When the moon shines in the sky, the
stars grow pale, the eyes of the witch of heaven fall asleep, but some
few eyes still stay open, some few stars continue to shine to observe
the movements of the cow-moon, the fairy-moon, the Madonna-moon, who
protects the young hero and the beautiful solar maiden lost in the
darkness of night.
This spying goat's eye is perhaps connected with the constellation of
the goat and two kids. Columella writes that the kids appear in the
sky towards the end of September, when the west, and sometimes the
south, wind blows and brings rain. According to Servius, the goat
united with the two kids in the constellation of Aquarius is the same
goat which was the nurse of Zeus; he says that it appears in October,
with the sign of Scorpio. Ovid, in _De Arte Amandi_, and in the first
book _Tristium_, and Virgil in the ninth book of the _Æneid_,[779]
also celebrate the goat and the kids of heaven as bringers of rain.
Horace, in the seventh ode, elegantly calls the goat's stars insane:--
"Ille nothis actus ad Oricum
Post insana capræ sidera, frigidas
Noctes non sine multis
Insomnis lachrymis agit."
We have already seen Indras as a ram or pluvial cloud; and the goat
with only one foot (ekapâd agah), or he who has but one goat's foot,
who supports the heavens, who lightens and thunders,[780] is a form of
the same pluvial Indras who supports the heavens in the rainy season.
We have seen the Açvinâu compared to two goats, two horns, two hoofs;
each, therefore, would seem to have but one horn, but one goat's foot
(which might perhaps explain the ekapâd agah); hence on one side the
cornucopia, and on the other the lame goat.[781] The nymph Galathea
(the milky one), who loves a faun (or one who has goat's feet), seems
to be a Hellenic form of the loves of Esmeralda and the goat with
Quasimodo. The goat loves him who has goat's feet; the solar hero (or
heroine) in the night has goat's feet; he is a satyr, a faun, a
he-goat, an ass; he is deformed and foolish, but he interests the good
fairy, who, in the form of a she-goat (as the moon and as the milky
way), guides him in the night, and, as the dawn (white aurora) in the
morning, saves him and makes him happy. In the German legend, the poor
princess who, with her son, is persecuted in the forest, is assisted
now by a she-goat, now by a doe, which gives milk to the child; by
means of this animal, which serves as his guide, the prince finds his
lost bride. This guiding she-goat, or doe, the nurse of the
child-hero, which Servius recognised in the constellation of the goat
(with respect to Zeus, who is essentially pluvial, as the Vedic Indras
has the clouds himself for his nurses), must have generally
represented the moon. But even the milky way of the sky (the bridge of
souls) is the milk spilt by the she-goat of heaven; the white morning
sky is also the milk of this same she-goat. The horned moon,[782] the
milky way, and the white dawn are represented in the form of a
beneficent she-goat which assists the hero and the heroine in the
forest, in the darkness; whilst, on the contrary, the sun enclosed in
the cloud, the darkness, or the starry sky of night (with the insana
capræ sidera), is now a good and wise he-goat or ram, full of good
advice, like the ram who advises the king of India in the
_Tuti-Name_,[783] and now a malignant monster, a demoniacal being.
Inasmuch as the goat gives light and milk, it is divine; inasmuch as
it conceals the beauty of the young hero or heroine and opposes them,
it may be considered demoniacal.
The connection between the she-goat and the milky way can also be
proved from the name St James's Way, given by the common people to the
galaxy, or galathea, or way of milk;[784] and it is interesting to
learn from Baron Reinsberg,[785] how, in several parts of Bohemia, it
is the custom on St James's Day to throw a he-goat out of the window,
and to preserve its blood, which is said to be of potent avail against
several diseases, such, for instance, as the spitting of blood. In the
_Lezioni di Materia Medica_ of Professor Targioni-Tozzetti,[786] we
also read that the he-goat's blood was known by no less a name than
_manus Dei_, and believed to be especially useful against contusions
of the back, pleurisy, and the stone. But the disease of the stone was
supposed to be cured by the stone called _capra_ (goat), which was
said to be found in the bodies of some Indian goats. Targioni-Tozzetti
himself seriously describes the goat-stones as follows:--"These stones
are usually clear on their surface, and dark-coloured; they have an
odour of musk when rubbed and heated by the hands. In them (the stone
Bezoar[787]) analeptic and alexipharmic virtues were supposed to
exist, which were able to resist the evil effects of poison and
contagious diseases, the plague not excepted, and to save the patient
by causing an abundant and healthy perspiration to break out on his
skin. For this reason these stones were sold very dear. The same
virtues are attributed to those found in the West, but in a much less
degree." When the heavenly goat dissolves in rain or in dew, when
moisture comes from the goat-cloud, the mountain-cloud, or the
stone-cloud, these humours are salutary. When St James, who is joined
with the goat and the rain, pours out his bottle, as the Piedmontese
people say, the vapour which falls from the sky on these days is
considered by the peasants, as in fact it is for the country, and
especially for the vines, a real blessing. In the fable of _Babrios_,
the vine, whose leaves are eaten by the he-goat, threatens it, saying
that it will nevertheless produce wine, and that when the wine is made
(_i.e._, at the Dionysian mysteries), the goat will be sacrificed to
the gods. In the spring, on the other hand, or on the Easter of the
resurrection, it was the custom to sacrifice in effigy the _Agnus
Dei_, in the belief that it would serve to defend the fields and
vineyards against demoniacal wiles, thunderbolts and thunder,
facilitate parturition, and deliver from shipwreck, fire, and sudden
death.[788] In the Witches' Sabbath in Germany, it was said that the
witches burned a he-goat, and divided its ashes among themselves.[789]
The cunning she-goat is an intermediate form between the good wise
fairy and the witch who is an expert in every kind of malice. In the
same way as the hero, at first foolish, learns malice from the devil,
to use it afterwards against the devil himself, it may be presumed
that the hero, in his form of a goat, has learned from the monsters
all that cunning by which he afterwards distinguishes himself. The
Vedic ram, Indras, also uses magic against the monster magicians.
In the second of the Esthonian stories, we read that the king of the
serpents has a golden cup containing the milk of a heavenly goat; if
bread is dipped into this milk, and put into the mouth, one can
discover every secret thing that has happened in the night, without
any one perceiving how.
In the French mediæval poem of _Ysengrin_,[790] the she-goat deceives
the wolf in a way similar to that in which, in the first number of
_Afanassieff's_ stories, the peasant cheats the bear, and in the
Italian stories the same peasant defrauds the devil. The she-goat
shows a fox-like cunning, keeping for itself the leaf of the corn, and
leaving the root for the wolf. Hence, in my eyes, the origin of the
Piedmontese proverbial expression, "La crava a l'à mangià la föja"
(the goat ate the leaf), and even the simple one of "Mangé la föja"
(to eat the leaf), meaning to understand cunning.[791] I heard from a
certain Uliva Selvi, at Antignano (near Leghorn), the narrative of a
witch who sent a boy every day to take the she-goat to the pasturage,
ordering him to pay attention that it should eat well, but leave the
corn alone. When the goat returned, the witch asked it--
"Capra, mia capra Mergolla,
Come se' ben satolla?"
(Goat, my goat Mergolla,
Are you quite satiated?)
To which the goat answered--
"Son satolla e cavalcata,
Tutto il giorno digiunata."
(I am satiated, and have been ridden;
I have fasted all day.)
Then the boy was put to death by the witch. It happened thus to twelve
boys, until the thirteenth, more cunning, caressed the goat and gave
it the corn to eat; then the goat answered to the witch's question--
"Son ben satolla e governata,
Tutto il giorno m' ha pasturata."
(I am quite satiated, and have been well kept;
He has given me to eat all day.)
And the boy, too, was well treated.
The devil's pupil always outwits his master; the she-goat beguiles the
wolf to its destruction. We have seen this in the Russian story, and
it is confirmed in the legend of _Ysengrin_. The peasants of Piedmont
and of Sicily have, for this reason, so much respect for the goat,
that they consider it brings a blessing to the house near which it is
maintained; and if, by chance, they show a perverse nature, this
perversity is attributed to the devil himself, who, they believe, has
maliciously taken possession of them. A few years ago, a goatherd of
the Val di Formazza, in the Ossola in Piedmont, had two goats which he
believed to be possessed by some evil spirit, for which reason they
always wandered about, in order, as he thought, that the demon might
at last be able to throw them down some abyss. One day the two goats
were lost; the goatherd searched for them for a short time, but
finding his search bootless, he resolved to go and make a vow to the
Madonna of Einsiedlen. Chance so arranged it, that at the very moment
in which he was returning from his pious pilgrimage, his two goats
also approached the door of his house; therefore, of course, this was
declared to be a miracle in Formazza, and as such it is still believed
in that district.[792]
In the preceding chapter we saw the ass represented in two aspects, as
regards its generative capabilities; that is, it is now represented as
an ardent, insatiable, and competent foecundator, and now as a
ridiculous imbecile, and powerless to generate. We also saw the ass
closely connected with the satyrs with goat's or he-goat's feet. The
he-goats and rams, too, have a double and self-contradictory reputation.
We know, for instance, that the god Thor, the god of the Scandinavians,
who thunders in the cloud, is drawn by he-goats (the vessel of Thor and
Hymir, the cloud, is called in the _Edda_ a navigating ram or he-goat,
in the same way as the Vedic Indras is represented as a god-ram); he
is, moreover, the protector of marriages. Scandinavian mythology,
therefore, appears to regard the goat as essentially the one that makes
fruitful, as a pluvial cloud. In the Hindoo mythology of the brâhmanic
period, the god Indras loses, on the contrary, his divine power, becomes
stupid and obscure, and is lost in his form of a ram. In one of his
_Passeggiate nel Canavese_, Signor A. Bertolotti recently observed, at
Muraglio, a curious custom which is observed by the young men of the
country when a projected wedding falls through; they run up to the
bride's house and obstreperously demand her to give her sheep up to
them, upon which they go to the bridegroom's house and cry out, "Vente a
sarrar quist motogn" (come and shut up these rams). Here the ram
represents the husband, and the sheep the wife. In Du Cange the name of
goat (caper) is given to the "in pueris insuavis odor cum ad virilitatem
accedunt."[793] In _Apuleius_, unmeasured lasciviousness is called
"cohircinatio." According to Ælianos, the he-goat, at the age of seven
days (of seven months according to Columella), already yearns for
coition.
But in the same way as the ass is the stupid patient animal, the ram
is the stupid quiet one. The he-goat is said to be an indifferent
husband, who allows his she-goats to be covered by other goats without
showing a sign of jealousy; hence our expressions, "horned goat," and
simply "horned," to indicate the husband of an unfaithful woman, that
is, of a woman who makes him wear horns, like the goat, and the
Italian proverb, "E meglio esser geloso che becco" (it is better to be
jealous than a he-goat). This reputation, however, as assigned to the
he-goat, is contrary to all that has been said and written, and that
is known concerning the lust of the he-goat. On the contrary,
Aristotle says explicitly that two he-goats, which have always lived
together in concord at the pasturage, fall out and fight with violence
in the time of coition. Moreover, the verse of Pindaros is well known,
in which he makes he-goats unite even with women. It is also said that
Hermês, or Zeus, assuming the form of a he-goat, united himself with
Penelope, whence was born the great goat-footed satyr, Pan; that
Hêraklês (as an ass, in his lion's skin) competed with a he-goat in
phallical powers (in Athenaios he joins himself with fifty virgins in
the space of seven nights); that, in Ælianos, a jealous he-goat
punished with death the goatherd Crathis, who had incestuously joined
himself with one of his she-goats. Nevertheless, the Greeks already
called by the name of _aix_, as we Italians by that of _capra_, a
woman of an immoral life, or an adulteress. Columella gives us the key
of the enigma, observing that the he-goat, by abuse of the Venus,
which he uses too soon (like the ass), becomes powerless before the
age of six years, so that it is not out of indifference that he is
simply a spectator of his she-goat's infidelity, but only because he
cannot do otherwise. Hence the application of _hircosus_, which
Plautus gives to an old man.
It is the Hellenic tradition which, more than any other, developed to
a greater extent the myth of the goat and the sheep, under all their
aspects--demoniacal, divine, and hybrid.
The golden fleece, or the fleece of the sheep or ram which had been
transported into Colchis by Phrixos, the son of Nephêlê (the cloud)
and of Helle;[794] Jupiter Ammon (in the fifth book of Ovid's
_Metamorphoses_), who, afraid of the giants (as, in the last book of
the _Râmâyanam_, the gods, terrified by the monsters, transform
themselves into different animals), hides himself in Lybia in the
shape of a horned ram; the altar of Apollo in the isle of Delos,
constructed with innumerable horns; the woolly skins in which,
according to Strabo,[795] the Iberians gathered up gold, whence the
Greek geographer believed the fable of the golden fleece to have
arisen; the golden lamb kept by Atreus, which was to bring Thyestes to
the throne, and the name of Aigüsthos, born of the incestuous loves of
Thyestes with his own daughter; Pan (with goat's feet, the son of the
he-goat Zeus or Hermes), who, in the fifth book of the _Saturnalians_
of Macrobius, loves the moon and obtains its favours by means of sheep
with white but rough and coarse wool; Endymion, who, according to the
commentator Servius, induces the moon to love him by means of
exceedingly white sheep; Neptune, who, in the form of a ram, in the
sixth book of the _Metamorphoses_ of Ovid, seduces the beautiful
virgin Bisaltis; the satyrs, the fauns with goat's feet, into which
the gods transform themselves in order to seduce nymphs or maidens of
the earth, as, for instance, Jove again, in the same book of Ovid--
"Satyri celatus imagine pulchram
Jupiter implevit gemino Nycteida foetu;"
Hermês, called Krioforos, or carrier of a ram (that is, of a ram which
delivers the land from the plague, a form of St James); the two
predestined sheep which Epimenides sacrifices to make the Athenian
plague cease, in the twenty-seventh Olympiad, in Diogenes Laertês; the
bleating goats that King Priam (in the fragments of Ennius) sacrifices
to dissipate the evil threatened by sinister dreams; the black sheep
sacrificed to Pluto, Proserpine, the Furies, and all the infernal
deities; the lamb, the ram, and the he-goat sacrificed to the genital
Fates in the Sybilline verses translated by Angelo Poliziano--
"Cum nox atra premit terram, tectusque latet Sol;"
the white lamb sacrificed to Hercules, to Mars, to Jove, to Neptune,
to Bacchus, to Pan (the goat being sacrificed to Diana), to Apollo
(_i.e._, when the sun shines), to Ceres (the goddess of the
light-coloured ears of corn), to Venus, to the gods and goddesses; to
his divine forms (similia similibus); and several other mythical
notions (not to speak of the very popular legend relating to the goat
Amalthea, who nourished Zeus with her milk, and was by Zeus translated
for this service to the stars, under the name of Aixourania, or
heavenly goat, after he had taken off one of its horns, to give, in
gratitude to the two nymphs who had protected him, the faculty of
pouring out everything that was wished for);[796] all these account,
in an eloquent manner, for the wide-spread worship that the goat and
the sheep received, even in Græco-Latin antiquity, enriching with many
episodes the mythical and legendary traditions of these nations, now
as the type of a god, now of a demon, and now of an intermediate
being, such as the satyr, for instance.
In the same way as the mythical horse has, from evening to morning,
three conspicuous moments of action--black, grey, and white or
red--and as the mythical ass throws gold from behind and has golden
ears, so the mythical goat and sheep, which are dark-coloured in the
night or in the cloud, throw gold from behind and have golden horns
which pour out ambrosia, or else have even the cornucopia itself. It
is always the same myth of the cloudy and aqueous, of the nocturnal
and tenebrous sky, with its two glowing twilights or auroras, or else
of the luminous heavenly hero who traverses the night or the cloud (or
the wintry season), disguised in the shapes of various animals, now by
his own will, now by a divine malediction or by diabolical witchcraft.
In the third book of Aristotle's _History of Animals_, we read of the
river Psikros in Thrace, that white sheep, when they drink of its
waters, bring forth black lambs; that in Antandria there are two
rivers, of which one makes the sheep black, and the other white, and
that the river Xanthos or Skamandros makes the sheep fair (or golden).
This belief involves in itself the three transformations of the
celestial hero into the three he-goats or rams of different natures,
of which we have spoken. The last transformation calls our attention
to the sheep with golden wool, the golden lamb, and the _Agnus Dei_,
the symbol of happiness, power and riches. Wealth in sheep, even more
than wealth in cows, became the symbol of universal riches. The horn
poured out every kind of treasure upon the earth, and upon the earth
itself the _pecus_ became _pecunia_.
FOOTNOTES:
[747] The Petropolitan Dictionary sees in the he-goat agas, the movable
one (agilis). To illustrate the same analogies in the case of the Greek
myth, it will be useful to repeat the words of Professor Bréal: "Le
verbe grec _aïssô_, qui signifie s'élancer, a fait d'une part le
substantif _aix_, chèvre (à cause de la nature bondissante de l'animal),
et de l'autre les mots _kataïx, kataigis, tempête_ (as it seems to me,
that which shakes, which causes to move or tremble, inasmuch as I
maintain that _agas_ does not mean the movable, or him that rushes, so
much as him that pushes, that butts, or causes to move). De là une
nouvelle série d'images et de fables où la chèvre joue le rôle
principal. L'égide, avant d'être un bouclier fait en peau de chèvre,
était le ciel au moment de l'orage; Jupiter aigiochos était le dieu qui
envoie la tempête; plus tard, on traduisit le dieu qui porte l'égide.
Homère semble se souvenir de la première signification, quand il nous
montre, au seul mouvement du bouclier le tonnerre qui éclate, l'Ida qui
se couvre de nuages et les hommes frappés de terreur." Mr Ralston
compares very well the Russian _ablakagragonniki_ (cloud-compellers) to
the Zeus _nephelêgeretes_. In the _Rigv._ i. 10, 8, it is said similarly
to Indras: geshah svarvatîr apah sam gâ asmabhyam dhûnuhi.
[748] Let Finnish philologists observe whether it is not possible to
refer to this their Aija, an equivalent of Ukko, their Indras, called
hattarojen hallitsia, the master of the cloud-lambs.--Cfr. Castren's
_Kleinere Schriften_, St Petersburg, 1862, p. 230.
[749] Mesham puruhûtam; _Rigv._ i. 51, 1.--Tad indro artham cetati
yûthena vrishnir egati; _Rigv._ i. 10, 2.
[750] Tvam gotram añigirobhyo 'vrinor; _Rigv._ i. 51, 3.
[751] Tvam mâyâbhir apa mâyino 'dhamah--tvam pipror nrimanah prârugah
purah; _Rigv._ i. 51, 5.
[752] Mahantam cid arbudam ni kramîh padâ; _Rigv._ i. 51, 6.--Arbudas
is also in Sanskrit the proper name of a mountain and of a hell; the
cloud-mountain and the hell in the cloudy and nocturnal sky have
already been noticed in this volume.
[753] Çaphâv iva garbhurânâ tarobhih; _Rigv._ ii. 39, 3.
[754] Sinhyam cit petvenâ gaghâna; _Rigv._ vii. 18, 17.--In Firdusi we
find, in the adventures of Isfendiar, two horned wolves that catch
lions; these seem to be demoniacal forms of the ram of Indras which
kills the lion.
[755] xxx. 9.--Here the horns are the sun's rays or the thunderbolts,
which come again in the Italian superstition on the _iettatura_; the
horns of the goat, it is said, and the red coral horns excel the devil
and his magic.
[756] iv. 21.
[757] iii. 18.--In the story, i. 20, we are told that the lamb fled
away into the forest with the he-goat, because its master took the
skin off one of its sides (that is, the wool). The lambs appear in the
morning and in the evening with luminous wool; they are sheared during
the night.
[758] _Afanassieff_, ii. 4; iv. 17.
[759] The walnut-tree is also found in relation with the goat in a fable
of _Afanassieff_, ii. 1, that of the accused who exculpate themselves by
inculpating others. The cock and the hen gather nuts together; the cock
throws one which strikes the hen on the ear; the hen weeps; a boiard
asks the reason; the hen accuses the cock, the cock accuses the
walnut-tree, the walnut-tree accuses the goat, the goat accuses the
shepherd, the shepherd accuses the housewife, the housewife accuses the
hog, the hog accuses the wolf, the wolf accuses God, but beyond God it
is impossible to go.--In another jest in verse, intended to exercise the
memory and loosen the tongue, and given by _Afanassieff_, iv. 16, we
find the goat in connection with hazel-nuts. The he-goat begins to
complain that the she-goat does not come back with the hazel-nuts (níet
kaszi s ariehami); the song goes on to say, that the he-goat will send
the wolf to find the she-goat, the bear after the wolf, the men after
the bear, the oak-tree after the men, the axe after the oak-tree, the
grindstone after the axe, the fire after the grindstone, the water after
the fire, and the hurricane after the water; then the hurricane sends
the water, the water the fire, the fire burns the grindstone, the stone
grinds the axe, the axe cuts down the oak-tree, the oak-tree made into a
stick (as we have already seen in Chapters I. and II.) beats the men,
the men shoot against the bear, the bear fights with the wolves, the
wolves hunt the she-goat, and here the she-goat comes back with the
hazel-nuts (vot kasza s ariehami).
[760]
Ah vi, dietuski,
Moi batiuski
Ataprìtessia
Atamknítessia;
Vasha mat prishlá
Malaká prinieslá
Polni baká malaká,
Polni ragá tvaragá
Polni kopitzi vaditzi.
[761] _Afanassieff_, vi. 17.
[762] In the story, ii. 32 of _Afanassieff_, a similar voice has the
same effect as that of the ass; it terrifies all the other animals.
However, here, a goat that has been shorn is alone spoken of,--that
is, the goat which has lost its hair or luminous wool, the thundering
goat-cloud.--In the twenty-fifth story of the first book of the
_Narodnija iusznoruskija Skazki_ (_Popular Stories of South Russia_),
edited by Rudcenko, Kiev, 1869, the goat terrifies by its voice the
first fox and then the wolf, until she herself is terrified by the
voice of the cock. (The morning sun, personified in the cock, destroys
the she-goat of night.)
[763] _Afanassieff_, iii. 15.--She sends them to the pasturage; a young
blacksmith, who is in her power, adopts the follow mode of deliverance:
He puts his pelisse on outside-in, feigns himself a sheep, and passes
out with the other sheep, escaping thus from the witch: the young sun
comes out at morn like a shepherd-hero among the sheep. Thus Odysseus
delivers himself from the grotto of Polyphemos with his companions, by
hiding himself among the flock which comes out of it.
[764] Cfr. the eleventh of the _Novelline di Santo Stefano di
Calcinaia_, where we have the lamb instead of the kid.
[765] A very interesting variation of this is contained in another
unpublished story which I heard from a certain Marianna Nesti of
Fucecchio in Tuscany.
There was once a queen that had a son, who, at the age of seven years,
was enchanted, so that he lay constantly in bed like one deprived of
life. Only at midnight he went out of the house, returning at one
o'clock, covered with blood, and throwing himself as if dead into the
bed. A woman had to remain regularly on the watch for the purpose of
opening the door for him at midnight and at one o'clock; but no girl
had, from very fright, been able to continue in the service more than
one night. Near the city lived an old woman with three daughters; the
two eldest tried to discharge the prescribed duty, but were overcome
with fear; the youngest, more courageous, remained. The first night,
at twelve o'clock, the dead man lifts up one arm; she runs to him and
lifts the other; he tries to raise himself; she helps him to get out
of bed. At one o'clock he returns covered with blood, and the girl
asks him who has reduced him to this condition, but he answers
nothing, and throws himself on the bed as if a corpse. The second
night she follows him, and sees him enter a subterranean cavern; he
comes to the foot of a flight of stairs, puts down his mantle and
remains as naked as when he was born, a handsome youth of eighteen
years of age. At the summit of the stairs two great witches cry, "Here
he is! come, pretty one!" He ascends and is beaten by the witches for
an hour till blood flows, he crying out the while for mercy. At one
o'clock he is allowed to go, comes back to the foot of the stairs,
takes his mantle and returns home dead. The third night his attendant
again follows him, and when he puts down his mantle at the foot of the
stairs and goes up, she takes the mantle and presses it tightly; the
witches scream. The young man comes to the summit; but when they try
to beat him they cannot lift the stick. Perceiving this, the girl
presses and bites the mantle; when she does so, the witches feel
themselves bitten; then the girl runs to the palace, orders a great
fire to be lighted, and throws the mantle into it; upon its being
burnt, the two witches expire, their enchantment is destroyed, and the
prince marries his deliverer.
[766] In the eighth story of the first book of the _Pentamerone_, the
ungrateful young woman, Renzolla, is condemned by her own protecting
fairy to have the face of a horned goat until she shows her repentance.
[767] v. 25.
[768] iii. 16.
[769] i. 50; vii. 38.
[770] Çatam meshân vrikye cakshadânam rigrâçvam tam pitândham cakâra
tasma akshî nâsatyâ vicaksha âdhattam dasrâ bhishagâv anarvan; _Rigv._
i. 116, 16.--Cfr. 117, 18.
[771] Esha châgah puro açvena vâginâ; _Rigv._ i. 162, 3.
[772] Cfr. _Afanassieff_, v. 7, where the rogue passes the she-goat
off as his sister, and lets her be killed, in order to oblige the
murderer, by threats of exposure, to give him a large sum of money in
compensation; and v. 52, where the head of a goat is cut off to
conceal the murder of a sacristan, committed by the foolish third
brother.--Cfr. _Erlenwein_, 17.
[773] The she-goat is also sacrificed, in the eighth of the Sicilian
stories collected by Laura Gonzenbach, to test the virtue of a
truthful peasant. The wife of a minister who is jealous of the peasant
Verità (Truth), who has the custody of a goat, a lamb, a ram, and a
wether belonging to the king, persuades him to believe that her life
is forfeit, and can be ransomed only by the sacrifice of the wether.
The peasant, overcome partly by love and partly by compassion, gives
way and consents to the sacrifice. The minister hopes that the peasant
will conceal his fault, but is disappointed in his expectation,
inasmuch as, on the contrary, he ingenuously confesses everything; and
he becomes, in consequence, yet dearer to the king.
[774] The devil also presents himself to do his evil deeds in the
_Bélier de Rochefort_, in Bonnafoux, _Légendes et Croyances
Superstitieuses Conservées dans le Départment de la Creuse_, Gueret,
1867, p. 17.--In a legend of Baden, too, recorded by Simrock (work
quoted before, p. 260; cfr., in the same work, p. 501), the devil
appears with the feet of a he-goat.
[775] vii. 50, 1.--In the _Classical Dictionary of Natural History of
Audouin, Bourdon_, &c., first Italian translation, Venice, Tasso, 1831,
we read: "Goat, species of ophidian reptiles, indigenous in Congo, and
also in Bengal; as yet unclassified by zoologists, and which, it is
said, throw from afar a kind of saliva causing blindness."
[776] Cfr. the lacerta cornuta of the _Pentamerone_.
[777] vi. 42.
[778] iv. 7.
[779]
Differ opus, tunc tristis hiems, tunc pleiades instant
Tunc et in æquorea mergitur hædus aqua.
Sæpe ego nimbosis dubius jactabar ab hædis.
Nascitur Oleneæ signum pluviale capellæ.
--_Ovid._
Quantus ab occasu veniens pluvialibus hædis
Verberat imber humum.
--_Virgil._
[780] Pâvîravî tanyatur ekapâd ago divo dhartâ; _Rigv._ x. 65, 13.--Cfr.
the aga ekapâd invoked after Ahirbudhnya and before Tritas, in the
_Rigv._ ii. 31, 6, and the agâikapâd, a name given to Vishnus, in the
_Hariv_; the reader remembers also the _goat-footed races_ of Herodotus.
[781] We also find the lame goat, or he-goat, in the legend of Thor.
The god kills his he-goats, takes off their skins, and keeps their
bones, to be able to resuscitate them at pleasure. His son, Thialfi,
steals the thigh-bone of one of the goats, in order to go and sell it;
then one of the he-goats of Thor, being resuscitated, is lame.--Cfr.
for the analogous traditions the notices given by Simrock, work quoted
before, p. 260.
[782] In a Russian song we read: "Moon! moon! golden horns!"
[783] ii. 240.
[784] Cfr. Du Cange, _s. v._ galaxia.
[785] _Das festliche Jahr_, zweite Ausg., p. 216.
[786] Florence, Piatti, 1821.
[787] Concerning this stone, cfr. a whole chapter in Aldrovandi, _De
Quadrupedibus Bisulcis_, i.
[788] Cfr. Du Cange, _s. v. Agnus Dei_, where we even find the verses
with which Urban V. accompanied the gift of an _Agnus Dei_ to John
Paleologus.--In the month of October, the Thuringians celebrate the
festival of the race after the ram, which, when overtaken, is led to a
large rock and there killed. For the race after the ram, cfr. also
Villemarqué, _Chants Populaires de la Bretagne_.--In a popular song,
in which _England_ is transformed into _Engelland_ (or country of the
angels), Mary, the nurse of God, appears with the white lamb:--
"Die Himmelsthür wird aufgehen;
Maria Gottes Amme
Kommt mit dem weissen Lamme."
[789] Menzel, the work quoted before.
[790] Professor Emilio Teza has published a mediæval Italian version
of this poem with notes.
[791] Cfr. the before-quoted fable of _Babrios_, in which the vine
complains of the he-goat which eats its leaves.--In the Italian
proverb, "Salvar la capra e i cavoli," the she-goat is again indicated
as an eater of leaves.--The leaves of the sorb-apple, according to the
Norwegian belief, cure sick goats, by which the god Thor is
drawn.--Cfr. Kuhn, _Die H. d. F. u. d. G._
[792] From a narrative made to me by my friend Valentino Carrera, an
intrepid Alp-climber and popular dramatist.
[793] Referred to by Martial's epigram:--
"Tam male Thais olet, quam non fullonis avari
Tecta vetus media, sed modo fracta via.
Non ab amore recens hircus," &c.
[794] With this myth of the brother Phrixos and of the sister Helle,
who pass the sea or fly through the air with the sheep, is connected
the Russian story recorded above of Ivan and Helena; Ivan is changed
into a little kid or lamb. In the Italian variety of the same story,
the sister is thrown into the sea by the witch. Whilst the brother and
sister pass the Hellespont upon the golden ram, Helle falls into the
sea. We learn from Apôllonios, in the second book of the _Argon._,
that the fleece of the sheep became gold only when, on its arrival in
Colchis, it was sacrificed and suspended upon an oak-tree. The
cloud-ram becomes golden only in the morning and evening sky.--The
luminous fleece can perhaps be recognised in the bride of the
_Rigvedas_, who, leaning towards the relations of Kakshîvant, says:
"Every day I shall be (properly speaking, I am) like the little woolly
sheep of the gandhâri (sarvâham asmi romaçâ gandhârînâm ivâvikâ);"
_Rigv._ i. 126. As there is an etymological analogy, so there may be a
mythical analogy between the gandhâri and the gandharvâs.
[795] Book x.
[796] Ovid calls the goat "hædorum mater formosa duorum," and sings
that the goat herself broke one of her horns against a tree, which
horn the nymph Amalthea wrapped--
"decentibus herbis
Et plenum pomis ad Jovis ora tulit;"
and Jupiter, when lord of heaven, in reward--
"Sidera nutricem, nutricis fertile cornu
Fecit, quod dominæ nunc quoque nomen habet."
END OF VOL. I.
PRINTED BY BALLANTYNE AND COMPANY
EDINBURGH AND LONDON
Transcriber's Notes:
Page 1 - Added a missing -- separator (... for cows.--Cavern where
...)
Page 24 - Removed the second "the" (... it is the third sun ...)
Page 178 - Added missing period. (... him from danger. These were
...)
Page 196 - There is an unmatched round bracket starting on this
page (... carried off. (This is the ...)
Page 211 - There is an unmatched round bracket starting on this
page (... perfidious persecutor. (The evening ...)
Page 313 - There is an unmatched round bracket starting on this
page (... called Urvâksha (a word ...)
Page 335 - Removed an extra "the" (... seizes the branch of ...)
Corrected misspellings throughout the text
There are multiple spellings of many names throughout, all of which
appear valid, left per the text.
There are many words that are both hyphenated and unhyphenated in
the text (i.e. cowmaid and cow-maid). Words were left to match the
text.
Replaced non-standard characters with the closest standard
character. (i.e. "[h.]" replaced with "h")
Footnotes 59 and 433 have no anchor in the text
Added closing quotes to the end of Footnotes 395 and 436
Footnote 167 - Superscript changed for plain text (... erster Theil;
2^te Aufl. S. ...)
Footnote 518 - There is an unmatched round bracket in this footnote
(... _attonito_ (or, properly ...)
Footnote 558 - There is an unmatched quote in this footnote (...
cavalli stregari;" _Prologo._ 10 ...)
Footnote 579 - Replaced the final comma with a period.
Footnote 612 - Replaced comma with period after "i" (_Tuti-Name_, i.
151.)
Footnote 659 - Changed "lightned" to "lightninged" (... day it
lightninged and thundered.)
Footnote 715 - Added second period after "v" (... _Ib._ v. 12. ...)