The pygmies—Ancient and modern writers thereon—Conflicts
with the cranes—Counterfeits—Modern travel, confirming
the statements of the ancient geographers—Pygmy races now
existing—The “Monstrorum Historia” of Aldrovandus—Crane-headed
men—Men with tails—The Gorilloi—The dog-headed people—The
canine king—The many-eyed men—The giants of Dondum—The
snake-eaters—The Ipotayne—Mermaids—Syren myth—Storm-raisers—The
mermaids of artists and poets—Shakespeare thereupon—As
heraldic device—The mermaids of voyagers—The seal and walrus
theory—Mermaids in captivity—Mermaids as food—Counterfeit
mermaids—Mermaid in Chancery—The “Pseudodoxia Epidemica” of
Browne—Oannes or Dagon—Mermaids and Matrimony—Lycanthropy—The
“Metamorphoses” of Ovid—The fate of Lykaon—Nine years of
wolfdom—Wehr-wolves—Mewing nuns—Olaus Magnus—The doctrine of
metempsychosis—Influence of enchantment—The dragon maiden—The
power of a kiss—Witchcraft—Scot and Glanvil, for and against
it—The good old times.
Shakespeare, whose writings form a mine of wisdom from which one can dig
an appropriate wisdom-chip for every occasion, avers truly enough in the
“Merchant of Venice,” that “Nature hath fram’d strange fellows in her
time,” while the credulity of mankind has added to this goodly company
many others too impossible even for the wildest freaks of nature to be
held responsible for.
Of some of these abnormal forms we propose now to treat, and commence
our chapter with some short reference to the pygmies. References to
these are to be found in the works of many of the ancient writers, such
as Homer, Pliny, Herodotus, Philostratus, Oppian, Juvenal and Aristotle.
Strabo mentions them in his geography, but regards the belief in them
as a mere fable, while some of the older authors suggest that very
possibly exceptionally large monkeys[13] might have been mistaken for
exceptionally small men. While most writers affirmed that such a race was
to be met with in Africa—Aristotle, for instance, locating them at the
head of the Nile—some authors placed them in the extreme north, where the
rigour of the climate was held a sufficient explanation of their stunted
growth. Philostratus assigned them a home on the banks of the Ganges,
and Pliny gave them local habitation in Scythia. Shakespeare, not only
the fount of countless stores of quotation, but also the storehouse of
ancient and mediæval lore, mentions the pygmies, though he gives us no
hint as to their home. “Will your Grace command me any service to the
world’s end? I will go on the slightest errand now to the Antipodes that
you can devise to send me on: I will fetch you a toothpicker now from
the furthest inch of Asia; bring you the length of Prester John’s foot;
fetch you a hair off the great Cham’s beard; do you any embassage to the
Pygmies!”
Homer, in the third book of the Iliad, refers to the conflicts between
the pygmies and the cranes:—
“When inclement winters vex the plain
With piercing frosts, or thick-descending rain,
To warmer seas the cranes embodied fly,
With noise and order,[14] through the midway sky:
To pygmy nations wounds and death they bring.”
Our readers may possibly wonder, as we have done, why the cranes should
bear the pygmies such ill-will, but Pliny in his seventh book supplies
the justification for the feud, as it appears that in the spring-time the
pygmies sally forth in great troops, riding upon goats, searching for and
devouring the eggs of the cranes, a state of things that no creature of
proper parental instincts could be expected to submit quietly to.
Sir Thomas Browne, in his excellent book on vulgar errors, says that
“Homer, using often similes as well to delight the ear as to illustrate
his matter, compareth the Trojanes unto Cranes when they descend against
the Pigmies;[15] which was more largely set out by Oppian, Juvenall and
many Poets since; and being only a pleasant figment in the fountain,
became a solemn story in the stream and current still among us.” He
declines to give credence to the pygmies and the tales that appertain
to them and says that “Julius Scaliger, a diligent enquirer, accounts
thereof but as a poeticall fiction. Ulysses Aldrovandus, a most careful
zoographer, in an expresse discourse thereon, concludes the story
fabulous. Albertus Magnus, a man ofttimes too credulous, was herein
more than dubious,” and though he quotes the statement of Pigafeta
that pygmies were found in the Moluccas, and that of Olaus Magnus as
to their being encountered in Greenland, he declares that “yet wanting
confirmation in a matter so confirmable, their affirmation carrieth but
slow perswation.”
Maundevile, of course, is as fully prepared to believe in the existence
of pygmies as of most other things, provided they be sufficiently outside
ordinary experience. In his book he takes us “throghe the Lond of
Pigmaus, wher that the folk ben of lytylle Stature, that ben but three
span long; and thei ben right faire and gentylle. Thei maryen hem whan
thei ben half Yere of Age, and thei lyven not but six yeer or seven at
the moste, and he that lyvethe eight yeer men holden him there righte
passynge olde. Thei han often times Werre with the Briddes of the Contree
that thei taken and eten. This litylle folk nouther labouren in Londes
ne in Vynes, but thei han grete men amonges hem, of one Stature, that
tylen the Lond and labouren amonges the Vynes for hem. And of the men of
our Stature han thei as grete skorne and wondre as we wolde have among
us of Geauntes if thei weren among us. And alle be it that the Pygmeyes
ben lytylle yet thei ben full resonable aftre here Age: connen bothen
Wytt and gode and malice.” Another people of somewhat similar character
that Maundevile professed to have met with in his travels were still more
remarkable, for they “ne tyle not, ne labouren not the Erthe for thei
eten no manere thing, and thei ben of gode colour and of faire schap
aftre hire gretnesse, but the be smale as Dwerghes, but not so lytylle as
ben the Pigmeyes. These men lyven be the smelle of wylde Apples, and whan
thei gon ony far weve thei beren the Apples with hem. For if thei hadde
lost the savour of the Apples thei scholde dyen anon.” Unfortunately
he can only say of these interesting people that “thei ne ben not full
resonable, but thei ben symple and bestyalle.”
Bishop Jordanus, in his “Mirabilia descripta,” tells of pygmies in “an
exceeding great island what is called Jaua,” which our readers who are
at all used to the substitution of the letter u for v, will at once
recognize as Java, “where are many world’s wonders. Among which, beside
the finest aromatic spices, this is one, to wit, that there be found
pygmy men of the size of a boy of three or four years old, all shaggy
like a goat.” He adds that they dwell in the woods, and we may not
unreasonably conclude that these hirsute arboreals were a species of ape.
[Illustration: FIG. 3.]
In the conflict of testimony, some affirming and some denying the
existence of such a people, Marco Polo, writing it will be remembered
in the thirteenth century, warns us that we must beware of counterfeits
that are palmed off on the unwary as the real thing. “It should be
known,” says he, “that what is reported respecting the dried bodies of
diminutive human creatures or pigmies, brought from India, is an idle
tale, such pretended men being manufactured in the following manner. The
country produces a species of monkey of a tolerable size, and having a
countenance resembling that of a man. Those persons who make it their
business to catch them shave off the hair, leaving it only about the
chin and those other parts where it naturally grows on the human body.
They then dry and preserve them with camphor and other drugs, and having
prepared them in such a mode that they have exactly the appearance of
little men, they put them into wooden boxes and sell them to trading
people, who carry them to all parts of the world. But this is an
imposition, and neither in India nor in any other country, however wild
or little known, have pigmies been found of a form so diminutive as these
exhibited.” It will be noted that the very fact of a counterfeit implies
a something to be counterfeited, and Marco Polo is clearly quite prepared
to give in his adhesion to the affirmative side.
The belief in a pygmy race, first declared centuries before the Christian
era, was held most fully in mediæval days; and modern travel and research
has amply proved that—various elements of the marvelous stripped away—the
belief was a sound one. Du Chaillu in Western Equatorial Africa met
with a diminutive race of which the average height of the individuals
who would submit to measurement was four feet five inches; and readers
of Stanley’s books will recall his experiences with a similar people.
On the authority of Dr. Parke, the Mikaba average four feet one inch,
the Batwas four feet three inches, and the Akkas four feet six inches.
Related to them in shortness of stature are the Bushmen of Southern
Africa, averaging about four feet seven inches in height; and elsewhere,
the Lapps, the Fuegians, the Ainos of Japan, and the Veddahs—all people
of notoriously short stature.
Probably the Bushmen, or Bosjesmen, are the modern representatives of
the Pygmaioi, for in their cave-dwelling, reptile-eating, and other
peculiarities they agree entirely with the descriptions given by
Herodotus, Pliny, and other ancient writers. The Bosjesmen are found,
with all the peculiarities of their dwarfish race intact, as far north
as Guinea. Winwood Reade, in his “Savage Africa,” gives many interesting
details concerning them, and holds the view that they were the aboriginal
race in Africa. Dr. Stuhlmann, Emin Pacha’s companion in many of his
wanderings, succeeded for the first time in bringing pygmies alive
to Europe, some members of the Akka tribe being brought to Berlin,
where they were regarded with immense interest by the professors of
anthropology.
The truthfulness of the ancient geographers being thus confirmed, it is
quite possible that the tales of the conflicts of the pygmies with great
birds may have a more solid foundation of fact than we are quite prepared
to admit. The Maori traditions tell of the contests with the moa and
other gigantic birds which formerly inhabited the islands of New Zealand;
while the Jesuit missionaries give accounts of enormous birds once found
in Abyssinia and Madagascar. All these are now extinct, but it may well
be that to a dwarf race, armed only with bows and arrows, such birds
would be foes by no means to be despised. One finds the trustworthiness
of the old writers often so curiously confirmed that one hesitates in the
case of many of them to assume too readily either gross credulity or a
willful misstatement.
Amidst the millions of births in the animal creation there is scarcely
any conceivable malformation, excess, or defect of parts, that has
not at some time or other occurred; anyone turning to the medical and
surgical journals will find many strange illustrations of this, or our
readers may find much interesting information on this subject, and given
in a less technical form, in the “Histoire Générale des Anomalies” of
Geoffroi de St. Hilaire. But such malformations occur singly and at
comparatively remote intervals; the anomalous departure from the type,
the eccentricity of structure, is not hereditarily produced, does not
become the starting-point of a new species. No natural malformation,
allowance being made for the very restricted influence of hybridism, ever
passes outside the species in which it is found or combines with it the
character of any other creature, while even the limited possibilities of
hybridism have a tendency to die out, owing to the sterility that is so
marked a characteristic. Such monsters as Aldrovandus figures are utterly
impossible, such as the body of a man conjoined to the head of an ass,
and having one foot that of an eagle, and the other that of an elephant.
Abundant illustrations of the most un-natural history may be found
in the works of Aldrovandus; his voluminous works on animals are very
curious and interesting, and are richly illustrated with engravings at
least as quaint in character as the text. His “Monstrorum Historia,”
published in folio at Bologna in 1642, is a perfect treasure-house
of rank impossibilities. Another book of very similar character is
Boiastuau’s “Histoires Prodigeuses,” published in Paris in the year 1561,
a strange assemblage of curious and monstrous figures.
The wondrous creatures of Aldrovandus, and it must be borne in mind
that these are given in the most perfect good faith as contributions
towards a better knowledge of natural history, are divisible into three
classes:—creatures that are absolute impossibilities, such as fig. 3, a
man having the head and neck of a crane; secondly, various species of
malformation and abnormal growth, which do undoubtedly occur from time
to time; and thirdly, other forms suggested by this second class, but
carried to altogether impossible excess.
It is of course easy, having realized that a lizard with a forked tail is
somewhat of a curiosity, to make a much greater wonder by representing,
as he does, a ten-tailed lizard; and while a boy born without arms is a
painful possibility, the wonder is undoubtedly greatly increased by also
cutting off his legs, as Aldrovandus does, and replacing them with the
tail of a fish.
The creature he calls hippopos, having the head, arms, and body of a
man, but terminating below in the legs and hoofs of a horse, was (though
here only two-legged,) probably suggested by the centaur myth. Amongst
the other impossibilities which we must nevertheless again remind our
readers the old writer brings forward in the most perfect sincerity as
valuable aids to a better knowledge of the wonders of creation, is a man
of normal growth, except that he has the head of a wolf, the lady, fig.
4, who is distinctly of harpy type, a ram-headed individual, and a boy
with the head of an elephant.
[Illustration: FIG. 4.]
This notion of the substitution of heads has a great charm for
Aldrovandus. He gives us, elsewhere, a bird-headed boy, and horses,
goats, pigs, and lions, all with human heads; while the “monstrum triceps
capite vulpis, draconis et aquilæ” is, we venture to think, a creature
that neither Aldrovandus, nor anyone else, ever did see or ever will
see. According to the picture it had a human body and legs, differing
however from those of ordinary humanity in being clothed with large
scales. One arm was like that of a man, the other was the wing of an
eagle, and a horse’s tail in rear was another distinctly abnormal growth,
while surmounting all were three heads, those of a wolf, a dragon, and
an eagle. There are many other such atrocities; while they are curious
as showing the depth of credulity our forefathers could reach, it will
readily be seen that they are the dullest things possible. Anyone with a
slight knowledge of zoology could create them by the score, placing, for
instance, on the neck of a giraffe the head of an elephant, giving it the
body of an alligator, and finishing off all neatly with the tail of a
peacock.
The multiplication, or suppression, or distortion of various parts is
a very strong point with Aldrovandus. He illustrates for our benefit
four-legged ducks and pigeons, and two-headed pigs, sheep, cows, and
fishes; calves, dogs, hares, each walking erect on their hind legs and
having no front ones, and pigs, cats, dogs, chickens, double-bodied but
single-headed. He also tells us of headless men, and gives us a drawing
of one, neckless, having the ears rising from the shoulders, mouthless,
the nose a proboscis a foot or so in length; this and the eyes are
on the back of the figure. Fig. 5 we may fairly include as an example
of distortion, while fig. 6 is a monstrosity produced by suppression.
In another place he gives a drawing of a man having two eyes in their
natural position, and beyond each of these another, so that we have four
in a row.
[Illustration: FIG. 5.]
[Illustration: FIG. 6.]
One quaint picture shows us two men wearing large ruffs and habited in
quite the costume of “the upper ten” of the seventeenth century, but
their faces are covered with thickly matted hair, their eyes peeping out
like those of a skye-terrier. This idea was too grotesque not to utilize
to the uttermost, so the next picture in the book is that of a young lady
in the same plight.
The notion of hairy men, tailed men, and the like has no doubt arisen
from the first introduction of the early writers and voyagers to
various species of monkeys. Duris, one of the ancients, professed to
know of the existence of an Indian tribe of shaggy, tailed men, while
Ctesias, not to fall short in this pursuit of the marvellous, tells us
of a certain Indian valley, or more probably a very uncertain one and
exceedingly difficult to locate, where the inhabitants lived two hundred
years, having in their youth white hair, which, with the ravages of
time, gradually became quite black. In the “Periplus” of Hanno, about
five hundred years before the Christian era, we have an unquestionable
reference to the apes. “For three days,” says the Carthaginian admiral,
“we passed along a burning coast, and at length reached a bay called
the Southern Horn. In the bottom of this bay we found an island which
was inhabited by wild men. The greater number of those we saw were
females; they were covered with hair, and our interpreters called them
Gorilloi.[16] We were unable to secure any of the men, as they fled to
the mountains, and defended themselves with stones. As to the women we
caught three of them, but they so bit and scratched us that we found it
impossible to bring them along: we therefore killed and flayed them,
and carried their hides to Carthage.” Rather a cool proceeding this,
granting either that they were really human or that the Carthaginians
regarded them as such. We should at all events so regard it nowadays if,
for instance, the crew of a whaler flayed some Eskimo ladies and brought
their hides to Dundee.
Burton and other early English writers thoroughly believe in the
existence of tailed men, and it has long been an article of belief that
divers men even in this realm of England were born with tails. The
Devonshire men stoutly contended that their Cornish neighbors were thus
distinguished. According to Polydore Vergil, some at least of the men of
Kent shared this peculiarity, and he very definitely asserts that it was
a Divine judgment upon them for insulting one of His servants, Thomas
à Becket. He tells us that when that prelate fell into disgrace with
his sovereign, many people treated him with but little respect, and in
Rochester he met with such contempt that amongst other marks of contumely
the tail of the horse on which he was riding was cut off. By this profane
inhospitality they reaped deserved reproach, for all the offspring of
the men who did or connived at this thing were born with tails like
horses. This mark of infamy we are told only disappeared with the gradual
extinction of those whose forefathers had incurred this notorious and
shameful penalty. In the “Loyal Scot” of Andrew Marvel we find the line,
“For Becket’s sake, Kent always shall have tails.” As a line or two
before this he has written “Deliver us from a Bishop’s wrath,” it is
sufficiently evident that the passage alludes to the legend referred to.
John Bale, the writer of the “Actes of English Votaries,” is righteously
indignant on the point. He writes as follows in his book, “John Capgrave
and Alexander of Esseby sayth that for castynge of fyshe tayles at thys
Augustyne, Dorsettshyre men had tayles ever after, but Polydorus applieth
it unto Kentish men at Strood by Rochester, for cuttynge of Thomas
Becket’s horse’s tail. Thus hath England in all other land a perpetual
infamy of tayles by these wrytten legendes of lyes. An Englyshman cannot
now travayle in another land by way of marchandyse or any other honest
occupynge, but it is most contumeliously thrown in his teethe that all
Englyshmen have tayles. That uncomely note and report hath the nation
gotten, without recover, by these laisy and idle lubbers, the monkes and
the priestes, which could find no matters to advance their gaines by, or
their saintes, as they call them, but manifest lies and knaveries.” John
Bale was a post-Reformation Bishop, holding the see of Ossory during the
reign of Edward VI, and was especially notable for his zeal in spreading
the principles of the Reformed Church.
John Struys, a Dutchman, who visited Formosa in the year 1677, gives a
description of a tailed man that is strongly suggestive of the monkey
theory, except that he endows him with intelligible speech. He tells us
that before he visited this island he had often heard of men therein who
had long tails, but that he had never been able to credit it. Seeing,
however, is proverbially believing. “I should now have difficulty in
accepting it,” he writes, “if my own senses had not removed from me every
pretence for doubting the fact, by the following strange adventure.
The inhabitants of Formosa, being used to see us, were in the habit of
receiving us on terms which left nothing to apprehend on either side;
so that, although mere foreigners, we always believed ourselves to be
in safety, and had grown familiar enough to ramble at large without
an escort, when grave experience taught us that in so doing we were
hazarding too much. As some of our party were one day taking a stroll,
one of them had occasion to withdraw about a stone’s-throw from the rest,
who being at the moment engaged in an eager conversation, proceeded
without heeding the disappearance of their companion. After awhile,
however, his absence was observed, and the party paused, thinking he
would rejoin them. They waited some time, but at last, tired of the
delay, they returned in the direction of the spot where they remembered
to have seen him last. Arriving there, they were horrified to find his
mangled body lying on the ground. While some remained to watch the dead
body, others went off in search of the murderer, and these had not gone
far when they came upon a man of peculiar appearance, who, finding
himself enclosed by the exploring party, so as to make escape from them
impossible, began to foam with rage, and by cries and wild gesticulations
to intimate that he would make anyone repent the attempt who should
venture to meddle with him. The fierceness of his desperation, for a
time, kept our people at bay; but as his fury gradually subsided they
gathered more closely around him, and at length seized him. As the crime
was so atrocious, and if allowed to pass with impunity might entail even
more serious consequences, it was determined to burn the man. He was
tied up to a stake, where he was kept for some hours before the time of
execution arrived. It was then that I beheld what I had never thought to
see. He had a tail more than a foot long, covered with red hair, and very
much like that of a cow. When he saw the surprise that this discovery
created amongst the European spectators, he informed us that his tail was
the effect of climate, for that all the inhabitants of the southern side
of the island, where they then were, were provided with like appendages.”
The measure of burning the man to avoid any future unpleasantness, seems
a somewhat strong one, and attended with a very considerable element
of risk to themselves, besides the grave personal inconvenience to
the victim. The account is a very circumstantial one; how is it to be
explained? One cannot accept the tail—or the tale; and yet it is painful
to feel that the alternative is to brand John Struys as deliberately
errant from the truth; and brave men who take their lives in their hands
are above the meanness of vapouring or lying. In such a case one agrees
entirely with Dr. Johnson: “Of a standing fact, sir, there ought to be no
controversy. If there are men with tails, catch a homo caudatus.”
Africa and India, the two great wonder-lands of our forefathers, were
the home of many strange specimens of humanity. Far away towards the
sources of the Nile were the Nigriæ, ruled by a king who had but one
eye, and that in the midst of his forehead. There, too, were found the
Agriophagi, a people who lived on the flesh of lions and panthers: the
Anthropophagi that fed on the flesh of men, and the Pomphagi that, like
the modern schoolboy, eat all things. In that mysterious land too dwelt
the Cynamolgi, whose heads were those of dogs. One old writer tells
us that there was a tribe of one hundred and twenty thousand of these
dog-headed men: they wore the skins of wild animals as their clothing,
and carried on conversation in true canine style by yelps and barks. Sir
John Maundevile, of course, knew all about these folk, since he found a
great and fair island somewhere, called Nacumera, that was more than a
thousand miles in circuit, and which had no other population. He tells us
that they were a very reasonable people and of good understanding, the
only fault that he finds with them being that they worship an ox as their
god. Jordanus, Burton and others locate these peculiar people in India.
Jordanus says that there are many different islands in which the men have
the heads of dogs, but the women are purely human, and, moreover, very
beautiful, whereat he very justly observes, “I cease not to marvel.” Ibn
Bakuta, describing the people of Barah-nakar, says “their men are of the
same form as ourselves, except that their mouths are like those of dogs,
but the women have mouths like other folks.” Aldrovandus naturally does
not miss such a chance as the dog-headed people afford him. Vicentius
places them in Tartary, and Marco Polo heard of them in the island of
Angaman. In Ethiopia we hear of a tribe of men that elected a dog as
their king, and judged as best they might by his actions and barking the
royal commands.
Ethiopia was a land of marvels, the focus and centre of all the wonders
of Africa. It was held that the strange and monstrous forms there
produced arose from “the agility of the fiery heat to frame bodies and
to carve them into strange shapes.” It was reported by some that far
within the interior of the country were to be found whole nations of
noseless men, and that others were without the upper lip, while others
again were without speech, and only made communication by signs. It is
easy to see how the notion of a noseless people originated, since the
negro physiognomy often has the nose a very flattened feature, while
the people who could only make signs to the strangers that came amongst
them evidently did so from a full realization of the hopelessness of
speech. The negro lip is ordinarily a very conspicuous feature, so that
the lipless people were a legitimate object of wonder. In one district
all the four-footed beasts were without ears, even the elephants, the
old author is careful to add, being in the same plight. Our readers will
doubtless remember that the ears of the African elephant, outside this
district, are of enormous size, and form one marked difference between
him and his Asiatic brother. Elsewhere in this wondrous land we hear of
men having three and four eyes, but the old traveller carefully explains
that this tale merely arose—“not because they are thus furnished, but
because they are excellent archers.” The “because” is not very evident,
as the keenness and excellence of sight that would be of such value to
an archer is scarcely to be obtained by the multiplication of eyes: it
is quality rather than quantity that is needed here, and the old writer
is careful to add, “thus much must I advertise my readers, that I will
not pawn my credit for many things that I shall deliver.” What he saw for
himself he could vouch for, and these things were themselves so strange
that he could scarcely refuse to credit some of the wonders that were by
hearsay, but he very justly declines responsibility.
Another old writer, Burton, in the same way cautiously evades fathering
all the wonderful tales he tells of the men who live by scent alone,[17]
of those who by eating the heart and liver of a dragon attain to the
understanding of the language of beasts, of those who have the power
of making themselves “invisible, and so forth,” “but of these I doubt
not but that the understanding reader knoweth how to judge and what to
believe.”
On the isle called Dondum, an island that Maundevile seems to have
discovered, or developed from his inner consciousness, are “folk of gret
stature, as Geauntes: and thei ben hidouse for to loke upon: and thei
han but on eye, and that is in the myddylle of the Front, and thei eten
no thing but raw Flessche and raw Fyssche. And in another yle towards
the Southe duellen folk of foule Stature and of cursed kynde that han no
Hedes: and here Eyen ben in here Scholdres.” These are both mentioned
by Pliny, but this passage of Maundevile must not be considered as
confirmatory of Pliny’s wonders, as it is considerably less probable
that the mediæval writer had seen these monsters than that he had seen
the olden book, and transferred its wonders to his own pages. He, in
fact, distinctly tells us that his nerves would not stand an interview
with these giants, “sume of forty-five Fote or fifty Fote long. I saghe
none of tho, for I had no lust to go”! He tells us, however, of the
“Geauntes Scheep als gret as Oxen here, and thei beren gret Wolle and
roughe. Of these Scheep I have seyn many tymes.” These we may reasonably
conclude to have been Yak. As he tells us that men have often seen “the
Geauntes taken men in the Sea out of hire Schippes and broughte hem to
lond, two in one hond and two in another, etynge hem goynge alle rawe
and alle quyk,” we can readily understand his reluctance to visit them.
Elsewhere he professes to have found “wylde men hidouse to loken on for
thei ben horned, and thei speken nought, but thei gronten as Pygges.”
In yet “another Yle ben folk,”—so at least Maundevile tells us, though
it may be but a traveller’s tale,—that are “of such fasceon and Schapp,
that han the Lippe above the Mouthe so gret that whan thei slepen in
the Sonne thei kovoren alle the face with that Lippe.” This story again
is probably less a personal experience than a proof of scholarship, as
Strabo describes such a people in his writings.
These great-lipped people have as neighbours “lytylle folk that han no
Mouthe, but in stede therof thei han a lytylle round hole: and whan thei
schalle eten or drynken thei taken throughe a Pipe or a Penne or suche a
thing and sowken it in. Thei han no Tonge and therefor thei speke not but
thei maken a manner of hyssynge, as a Neddre dothe.”
Pliny, Isidore, Strabo and other ancient authorities on the subject, tell
of a tribe that have ears so long and pendulous that they reach to their
knees, and therefore Maundevile knew of them too, and as Pliny knew of
the Hippopodes so the mediæval writer tells us of “folk that han Hors
Feet.” These, thanks we may assume to this peculiarity, are a nation
of very swift runners, easily beating the record of any of our modern
athletes, hence they are able to capture “wylde Bestes with rennyng” and
add them to their bill of fare.
Amongst other strange specimens of humanity that we encounter in the
pages of Maundevile, if not in the flesh, are the peculiarly strange
“folk that gon upon hire Hondes and hire Feet as Bestes,[18] and thei ben
all skynned and fedred, and thei lepen als lightly in to Trees and fro
Tree to Tree as it were Squyrelles.” In one district the people subsist
chiefly on adders, partly because there is “gret plentee” of them, but
more especially from appreciation. “Thei eten them at gret sollempnytees,
and he that makethe there a Feste, be it nevere so costifous, and he han
no Neddres, he hathe no thanke for his travaylle.” It would in fact be a
parallel atrocity to a gathering of the City Fathers at the Mansion House
and no turtle soup provided.
The long-headed people that formed part of the strange African fraternity
we may reasonably conclude to have owed their peculiarity to the
habit of employing pressure to mould the head into the compressed and
elongated form, in just the same way that in recent times the heads
of some of the tribes of North American Indians were manipulated. We
may not unreasonably conclude, too, that some at least of the various
curious people referred to by the ancient and mediæval writers were but
accidental monstrosities, malformations of rare or casual occurrence.
Such an one appearing amongst strangers would be regarded with great
curiosity, and it would be but a short step farther to the lover of the
marvellous to assume that somewhere or other in the region from whence he
sprang, was a whole tribe or nation of such. The accidental resemblances,
too, that we sometimes see in the human physiognomy to animals would be
suggestive material to those in search of the wonderful. Porta’s book,
“De Humana Physiognomonica,” gives many illustrations of heads, animal
and human, showing resemblance of the men’s heads to those of the owl,
lion, ox, and other creatures. Some of these are very clever, while
others are absurdly forced and exaggerated.
Munster, under the section De mirabilibus et monstrosis creaturis quæ
in interioribus Africæ inueniuntur, gives a picture in his book, where
our old friend the man with the single immense foot, the one-eyed man,
a two-headed fellow, the headless man with his eyes and other features
in his chest,[19] whose acquaintance we have made in fig. 1, and a
wolf-headed man, are all grouped together as a matter of course, leaving
the observer to conclude that anyone strolling through Central Africa
would any day expect to come across such a gathering.
The classic myth of the centaur crops up again in the mediæval Ipotayne.
These “dwellen somtymes in the Watre and somtyme on the Lond, and thei
ben half Man and half Hors, and thei eten men[20] whan thei may take
hem.” Pliny writes of the Ægipanæ, half beasts, “shaped as you see
them commonly painted,” a terse description that may have been amply
sufficient for his original readers, but which leaves later generations
considerably in the dark.
The belief in the mermaid was to our ancestors as real as the belief in
the mackerel; and though we have in these later days surrounded all with
an air of romance, the mermaid was to them no myth or poetic fancy, but
as genuine an article of credence as any other creature of earth, or air,
or sea. Phisiologus simply calls it “a beast of the sea,” which is a very
unpoetic definition indeed; while Boswell in like manner calls it “a sea
beast wonderfully shapen.” Nowadays one’s notion of a mermaid is of a
fair creature, half woman half fish, basking amongst the rocks or rocking
on the waves, and engaged in nothing more arduous than alternately
combing her flowing golden tresses in the sunlight, and gazing in her
constant travelling companion, her mirror, to study the effect of her
work. The mediæval mermaid was of sterner temper; one old writer says
that “they please shipmen greatly with their song that they draw them to
peril and shipwreck;” while another affirms that “this beast is glad and
merry in tempest, and heavy and sad in faire weather.” Bœwulf, the Saxon
poet, styles the mermaid—
“The sea-wolf of the abyss,
The mighty sea-woman.”
The syren myth of the ancients is clearly the origin of this belief in
the malevolence of the mermaid. These syrens, to quote Spencer’s “Fairie
Queen,”
“Were faire ladies, till they fondly strived
With th’ Heliconian Maides for mastery:
Of whom they overcomen were depriv’d
Of their proud beautie, and th’ one moyity
Transform’d to fish, for their bold surquedry:
But th’ upper half their hew retayned still,
And their sweet skill in wonted melody
Which ever after they abused to ill,[21]
T’ allure weake travellers whom gotten they did kill.”
The writer of the “Speculum Mundi” believed in mermaids as firmly as his
contemporaries did, but he departs somewhat from the traditional lines of
belief, and instead of making his mermaids brewers of the storms, sees
in them merely rather exceptionally weather-wise and gifted prophets of
the coming tempest. He says of them: “The mermaids and men-fish seem to
me the most strange fish in the waters. Some have supposed them to be
devils or spirits, in regard of their whooping noise that they make.
For (as if they had power to raise extraordinary storms and tempests)
the windes blow, seas rage, and clouds drop presently after they seem
to call.” This was the popular belief, but he explains matters as
follows:—“Questionlesse that Nature’s instinct makes in them a quicker
insight and more sudden feeling and foresight of those things than is
in man, which we see even in other creatures upon earth, as fowles, who
feeling the alteration of the aire in their feathers and quills, do
plainly prognosticate a change of weather before it appeareth to us.”
So that really the bellowing of these maidens is brought down to the
level of cock-crowing, the braying of the ass,[22] or the scream of the
peacock, as indications of weather-changes.
The classic writers limited the number of their syrens to three
ordinarily, though they were not quite unanimous as to the exact number,
while the mediæval mermaids were simply as unnumbered and as un-named
denizens of the deep as the cod-fish. In mediæval times the mermaidens
were not ordinarily credited with any particular musical gifts, though
we remember seeing a Gothic carving of one playing on a violin. It will
be remembered that with their antique prototypes the musical part of the
entertainment was a very conspicuous feature:—
“Withe pleasaunte tunes the syrenes did allure,
Vlisses wise, to listen to theire songe:
But nothinge could his manlie harte procure,
He sailde awaie, and scaped their charming stronge,
The face he likde; the nether parte did loathe,
For woman’s shape, and fishes, had they bothe.
Which showes to us, when Bewtie seeks to snare
The carelesse man, who dothe no daunger dreede,
That he should flie, and should in time beware,
And not on lookes his fickle fancie feede:
Such Mairemaides liue, that promise onelie ioyes,
But he that yeldes at lengthe him selffe distroies.“[23]
We will consider first the mermaid of the artist and the poet, and then
see how the poetic and artistic type tallies with, or differs from, the
mermaid as the ancient voyager vouches for her from ocular demonstration.
Naturally the poets were unwilling to surrender the sweet song of the
mermaid, and the bellowing and whooping of the matter-of-fact naturalists
becomes with the poets a “dulcet and harmonious breath.” All our readers
must be familiar with the beautiful passage in the “Midsummer Night’s
Dream”:—
“I sat upon a promontory,
And heard a mermaid on a dolphin’s back
Uttering such dulcet and harmonious breath,
That the rude sea grew civil at her song;
And certain stars shot madly from their spheres
To hear the sea-maid’s music.”[24]
Several other allusions to the mermaid will be found in the writings of
Shakespeare and many others of our poets, though it would be somewhat
foreign to our purpose to quote them at any length, fascinating as the
subject would be. Our present prosaic intent is but to introduce the
poets as witnesses to the widespread belief in such a creature as the
mermaid and to show their sympathy with it.
In mediæval heraldry the mermaid frequently appears as a charge upon
the shield, as a supporter of the arms, and as the surmounting crest.
Any book upon heraldry will supply illustrations of this. We need only
now refer to the allusive use of the charge in the arms of the ancient
family of De La Mere, and to its occurrence as one of the badges adopted
by the Black Prince. By his will in 1376 the Prince left to his son some
hangings “de worstede embroidery avec mermyns de mier.” The mermaid is
found, too, sometimes on paving tiles, bells, and in Gothic stone and
wood-carving. It may be seen, for example, in a boss at Exeter Cathedral.
In Winchester Cathedral the mermaid holds the accustomed comb, while her
companion merman grasps a captured fish. In Lyons Cathedral a mermaid, or
we may perhaps more justly say a mer-matron, nurses a mer-baby. A mermaid
will be found carved on one of the misereres of Henry VII.’s chapel.
Another may be seen at Exeter Cathedral, and a very good one again on a
bench end at Sherringham church.[25] It is also well known as a tavern
sign, and the first literary club ever founded in England, including
amongst its members Shakespeare, Ben Jonson, Beaumont, Fletcher, Selden
and Carew, was established in 1603 at the Mermaid in Bread Street,
Cheapside.
Scoresby in his account of the arctic regions says that the head of the
young walrus is very human in appearance; the creature has a way too of
rearing itself well out of water to gaze at ships and other objects in
a way that proves very suggestive of the mermaid idea. “I have myself,”
he remarks, “seen one in such a position and under such circumstances,
that it required very little stretch of imagination to mistake it
for a human being. So like, indeed, was it, that the surgeon of the
ship actually reported to me his having seen a man with his head just
appearing above the water.” It is probable that the various species of
seals, too, are responsible for many of the mermaid and triton stories,
as at a little distance, and amidst the spray dashing over the rocks,
they are very human-looking—at all events, perhaps sufficiently so to
satisfy the credulity of those whose superstition made them susceptible
to such ideas. On the other hand, a whaler or other old salt who has seen
thousands of seals should scarcely be imposed upon in this way under any
possible circumstances. Let us turn, however, to some of the experiences
of those who profess to have seen the real thing in the way of mermaids,
and see what they can tell us.
Hudson, the great navigator, whose narrative is strikingly free from any
touch of imagination, and may in fact almost without fear of libel be
called dry and tedious, tells us, in the following words, of a curious
incident that happened to them while forcing a passage through the ice
near Nova Zembla: “This morning one of our company, looking overboard,
saw a mermaid, and calling up some of the company to see her, one more
came up, and by that time she was come close to the ship’s side, looking
earnestly on the men. A little while after a sea came and overturned her.
From the navel upward her back and breast were like a woman’s, as they
say that saw her; her body as big as one of ours; her skin very white,
and long hair hanging down behind, of colour black. In her going down
they saw her tail, which was like the tail of a porpoise, and speckled
like a mackerel. Their names that saw her were Thomas Hilles and Robert
Rayney.” “Whatever explanation,” says Gosse, in commenting on this story
of the old voyager in his “Romance of Natural History,” “may be attempted
of this apparition, the ordinary resource of seal and walrus will not
avail here. Seals and walruses must have been as familiar to these polar
mariners as cows to a milkmaid. Unless the whole story was a concocted
lie between the two men, reasonless and objectless, and the worthy old
navigator doubtless knew the character of his men, they must have seen
some form of being as yet unrecognized.”
In the “Speculum Regale,” an Icelandic work of the twelfth century, we
read of a creature that was to be found off the shores of Greenland—“like
a woman as far down as her waist, long hands, and soft hair, the neck
and head in all respects like those of a human being. The hands seem to
be long, and the fingers not to be pointed, but united into a web like
that on the feet of water birds. From the waist downwards this monster
resembles a fish, with scales, tail, and fins. This shows itself,
especially before heavy storms. The habit of this creature is to dive
frequently and rise again to the surface with fishes in its hands. When
sailors see it playing with the fish, or throwing them towards the ship,
they fear that they are doomed to lose several of the crew; but when it
casts the fish from the vessel, then the sailors take it as a good omen
that they will not suffer loss in the impending storm. This monster has a
very horrible face, with broad brow and piercing eyes, a wide mouth and
double chin.” This is clearly a creature to be dreaded: we may, in fact,
lay down the broad principle that the attractive and fascinating mermaid
is the creation of the landsman and poet, while the sterner type is that
of the mariner.
Pontoppidan, in his “Natural History of Norway,” has his mermaid story,
but it is too long to quote, and it is, moreover, needless to do so, as
all these narratives follow much the same general lines. Captain John
Smith, too, in his account of his expedition to America in 1614, has a
similar experience to relate, and many narratives of like tenour might
be found in various old writers, but we will now turn to one or two that
not merely describe a mermaid and merman seen, but the creature actually
captured.
The following news item, from the _Scots Magazine_ for the year 1739,
refers to a creature less piscine than the typical form, but coming
sufficiently near it for inclusion. “They write from Vigo, in Spain, that
some fishermen lately took on that coast a sort of monster, or merman,
five feet and a half long from its foot to its head, which is like that
of a goat. It has a long beard and moustachios, and black skin somewhat
hairy, a very long neck, short arms, and hands longer than they ought
to be in proportion to the rest of the body: long fingers like those of
a man, with nails like claws; very long toes, joined like the feet of a
duck, and the heels furnished with fins resembling the winged feet with
which painters represent Mercury.” We get considerably nearer the ideal
in the seven mermaids that were said to be entrapped by some fishermen in
their nets off Ceylon in the year 1560. Of these, several Jesuits, and
the physician to the Viceroy of Goa, professed to be eye-witnesses, and
the latter having dissected them with great care asserts that both the
internal and external structure resembled that of human beings. Of the
piscine moiety he appears to make no mention.
In the “Speculum Mundi” we have a very circumstantial account indeed of
a mermaid who drifted inland through a broken dyke on the Dutch coast
during a heavy storm, “and floating up and down and not finding a passage
out againe (by reason that the breach was stopped after the flood), was
espied by certain women and their servants as they went to milke their
kine in the neighbouring pastures, who at the first were afraide of
her, but seeing her often, they resolved to take her, which they did,
and bringing her home, she suffered herself to be clothed and fed with
bread and milk and other meats, and would often strive to steal again
into the sea, but being carefully watched, she could not: moreover, she
learned to spinne and perform other pettie offices of women, but at the
first they cleansed her of her sea-mosse, which did sticke about her.
She never spake, but lived dumbe, and continued alive fifteene yeares;
then she died. They tooke her in the yeare of our Lord, 1403.” One can
scarcely wonder at the poor sea-maid endeavouring to escape; the scraping
down to get off the seaweed and barnacles prior to the introduction to
the rough dress of a Dutch peasant and the homely lessons in spinning,
bread-making, and other domestic cares, were a sad contrast to the life
of wild freedom of yore amidst the rolling billows of the wild North Sea.
We read, too, that she was taught to kneel before a crucifix—a task in
itself, we should imagine, of considerable difficulty to a mermaid. When
we read in another old author that “in the island Mauritius they eat
of the mermaid, its taste is not unlike veal,” the last vestige of the
poetry of the belief vanishes, while the added detail that “when they are
first taken they cry and grieve with great sensibility” seems to bring
the indulgence in such diet almost to cannibalism.
From veal to the “maiden clothed alone in loveliness,” of whom the poet
sings, is a contrast indeed, and even the scraped mermaid turned Dutch
vrouw is a very different creature to her whose—
“Golden hair fell o’er her shoulders white
And curled in amorous ringlets round her breasts;
Her eyes were melting into love, her lips
Had made the very roses envious;
Withal a voice so full and yet so clear,
So tender, made for loving dialoges.
And then she sang—sang of undying love
That waited them within her coral groves
Beneath the deep blue sea, and all the bliss
That mortals made immortal could enjoy,
Who lived with her in sweet community.”
In an advertisement in the London _Daily Post_, of January 23rd, 1738,
we read that there is “To be Seen, next door to the Crown Tavern in
Threadneedle Street, behind the Royal Exchange, at One Shilling each,
the Surprising Fish or Maremaid, taken by eight Fishermen on Friday the
9th of September last, at Topsham Bar, near Exeter, and has been shewn
to several Gentlemen, and those of the Faculty, in the Cities of Exeter,
Bath, and Bristol, who declare never to have seen the like, so remarkable
is this Curiosity amongst the Wonders of Creation. This uncommon Species
of Nature represents from the Collarbone down the Body what the Antients
called a Maremaid, has a Wing to each Shoulder like those of a Cherubim
mentioned in History, with regular Ribs, Breasts, Thighs, and Feet, the
Joints thereto having their proper Motions, and to each Thigh a Fin; the
Tail resembles a Dolphin’s, which turns up to the Shoulders, the forepart
of the Body very smooth, but the skin of the Back rough; the back part
of the Head like a Lyon, has a large Mouth, sharp Teeth, two Eyes, Spout
holes, Nostrils, and a thick Neck.” This we may not uncharitably assume
was less a mermaid than a swindle. While the advertisement tells us that
the creature in question has been seen by several of the faculty, it
does not tell us what the faculty said when they saw it! This is a very
serious omission. This “Maremaid” does not altogether conform to the
accepted type, feet, spout-holes, and cherubic wings being all abnormal
developments.
There are, of course, at all times plenty of skilful knaves and
unprincipled adventurers ready in divers ways to take advantage of the
credulity of the public, and a belief in many absurdities has been
maintained by the apparent evidence which the conniving of such persons
has from time to time furnished. To say nothing of the impostures
constantly practised at fairs and by travelling show-people, it was
announced in the earlier days of the century that a party had arrived
from abroad with a mermaid, and that it was to be exhibited in one of
the leading streets in the West End of London. A good round fee was
demanded for admission, and the dupes were shown a strange-looking object
in a glass case, which was unblushingly declared to be a mermaid. But
the imposture was too gross to last long; it was ascertained to be the
dried skin of the head and shoulders of a monkey attached to the skin
of a fish of the salmon kind, with the head cut off, the whole being
stuffed and highly varnished. This grotesque object was taken by a Dutch
vessel from on board a native Malacca boat, and from the reverence shown
it by the sailors it was probably an idol or fetish, the incarnation of
some river-god of their mythology. Repulsive as the creature was, we
have an illustration of it before us in a newspaper of the year 1836.
It achieved a great popularity, and the profits that accrued from the
exhibition were, for some time, considerable, but the owners presently
quarrelled amongst themselves, and the unpoetic ending of this monkey
mermaiden was that she became the subject of a suit in Chancery. When
one remembers the success that Barnum achieved amongst the credulous in
very much more recent times with a stuffed mermaid, we can only feel
that Carlyle was right in his liberal percentage of fools, and though
in this case it was the cute Yankee and not the unsuspecting Britisher
that succumbed, the truth of Southey’s assertion that “man is a dupeable
animal” holds equally good, and is of far-reaching application.
The “Pseudodoxia Epidemica, or Enquiries into very many received Tenents
and commonly Presumed Truths, by Thomas Browne, Doctor of Physick,” is
a book far in advance of its time, and very interesting in showing what
extraordinary beliefs were held at the time it was written. The copy open
before us is the second edition, and is dated 1650. Some of the ideas
combatted are “that Crystall is nothing else but Ice strongly congealed;
the legend of the Wandering Jew; that a diamond is made soft by the blood
of a goat; that an elephant hath no joynts; that a salamander lives in
the fire; that storks will only live in republics.” To these fancies many
others might be added, and some few of them that deal with the animal
kingdom we shall have occasion to touch upon in the course of our book.
We naturally turn to Browne’s remarks upon mermaids, but we scarcely
gather from them any definite idea as to his belief in the matter. Before
quoting his remarks we must premise that his style of composition is
somewhat stilted and pedantic. “Few eyes,” saith he, “have escaped the
Picture of Mermaids; that is, according to Horace, his monster, with
woman’s head above and fishing extremity below; and this is conceived
to answer the shape of the ancient Syrens that attempted upon Ulysses.
Which notwithstanding were of another description, containing no fishy
composure, but made up of Man and Bird; the human mediety being variously
placed not only above but also below. These pieces so common among us
doe rather derive their originall, and are indeed the very description
of Dagon; which was made with humane figure above and fishy shape below,
of the shape of Atergates or Derceto with the Phœnicians, in whose fishy
and feminine mixture as some conceive, were implied the Moon and the Sun,
or the Deity of the waters, from whence were probably occasioned the
pictures of Nereides and Tritons among the Grecians.”[26]
Browne had the wisdom at a period when immense faith was attached to
tradition to investigate matters for himself whenever it was possible,
and the courage to declare the result whether it fell in with the
statements of previous authorities or not. Thus he tells us that “the
Antipathy between a Toad and a Spider—and that they poisonously destroy
each other—is very famous, and Solemne Stories have been written of their
combats, wherin most commonly the Victory is given unto the Spider.” This
definite statement of antipathy would appear to be an assertion very
capable of proof or disproof, but it never seems to have occurred to
the philosophers to bring the matter to test, it being so much simpler
to copy throughout the centuries from each other.[27] “But what we have
observed herein,” quoth Browne, “we cannot in reason conceale; who having
in a glasse included a Toad with severall Spiders, we beheld the Spiders
without resistance to sit upon his head and passe over all his body,
which at last upon advantage he swallowed down, and that in a few houres
unto the number of seven.” Thus in ten minutes of practical observation
collapsed a legend that had held its ground for over a thousand years.
Such results gave him full right to speak out, and he analyses the works
of the ancients very freely, yet withal very justly and temperately.
Thus he terms Dioscorides “an Author of good Antiquity, preferred by
Galen before all that attempted the like before him: yet all he delivered
therin is not to be conceived oraculous.” Concerning Ælianus he tells us
that he was “an elegant Author, he hath left two books which are in the
hands of every one—his ‘History of Animals’ and his ‘Varia Historia,’
wherein are contained many things suspicious, not a few false, some
impossible.” Of Pliny himself, the great holdfast and sheet-anchor of all
previous writers on natural history, he writes: “A man of great elegance
and industry indefatigable, as may appear by his writings, which are
never like to perish, not even with learning itself. Now what is very
strange, there is scarce a popular error passant in our daies which is
not either directly expressed or diductively contained in his ‘Natural
History,’ which being in the hands of most men, hath proved a powerful
occasion of their propagation.” The labours of Browne should ever be held
in great esteem, as he had the true scientific spirit, and, regardless of
all minor considerations, sought eagerly for the truth.
[Illustration: FIG. 7.]
In fig. 7 we have a representation of the Oannes of the Chaldeans, the
Philistine Dagon,[28] the fish On, as shown on one of the slabs from
the Palace of Khorsabad. While one may readily admit that the mediæval
mermaid is a direct descendant from the tritons and sea-nymphs of classic
mythology and fancy, and that these in turn may have descended from the
yet older civilizations and creeds of Egypt and Assyria, we can hardly
ascribe any close association between the Chaldean Oannes and the
popular notion as to mermaids. The former is divine, and is necessarily
but one, while the latter claim no divinity and no individuality, but
are both numerous and nameless. The work of Oannes was moreover wholly
beneficent; he taught men the arts of life—to construct cities, to found
temples, to compile laws. He was a solar deity equivalent to Osiris and
Apollo, bringing light and life to all. He was fabled to visit earth each
morning, and at evening to plunge into the sea; a poetic description
of the rising and setting of the sun. Hence his semi-piscine form was
an expression of the belief that half his time was spent on earth and
half below the waves. Hence, too, the moon-goddess, Derceto, that Browne
refers to as at times manifesting herself to the eyes of men, at times
plunged beneath the waves, was represented as half-woman, half-fish, and
may be thus still seen on the coins of Ascalon. The kindly influence
of solar and lunar deities—in other words, the beneficent influence of
Nature and of the times and seasons—on the works of men is an altogether
nobler idea than belief in classic syren or mediæval Lorelei, who charm
but to destroy.
Fig. 8 is a curious variant from the accepted notion of a mermaid. We
have extracted it from one of the maps in Munster’s Cosmography. It is
placed where in more modern charts Australia would be found, south of the
islands of “Iaua” and “Porne,” names which the discrimination of our
readers, who are at all accustomed to the transposition and substitution
of letters in these old records, will no doubt readily resolve into Java
and Borneo. One can easily imagine that the double tail, like the twin
screws of an ironclad or ocean liner, might be of great assistance in
steering, though some few millions of the lowlier inhabitants of the deep
have nevertheless for ages got along very fairly without this special
development.[29]
[Illustration: FIG. 8.]
We are told in mediæval story that a young man wandering along the rocky
beach suddenly encountered a mermaid and seized her before she was
able to reach the water. Her personal charms so worked upon his ardent
temperament that he then and there proposed matrimony, and his suit was
successful. Would that we could conclude in true story-book style, and
declare that they lived happy ever after! After years of wedded bliss,
a great longing came over her to see her own people once more, and, on
the distinct understanding that the parting was to be a very short one,
she embraced her husband and children and plunged into the sea and never
reappeared, it being charitably assumed by those responsible for the
story that the waters, like those of Lethe, washed away all remembrance
of the past, and buried in oblivion the years she had spent so happily on
earth.
The power that this story and the next one we propose to tell
presupposes—the power of being able to change one’s nature—is responsible
for some of the most terrible beliefs, notably those where men and women
were changed into animals, such as dragons or the wehr-wolf. In the
following story, though the outcome was lamentable, the weird horror
of so many of these tales is absent. Like the previous story, it deals
with the tender passion, and the ardent lover and the charming damsel
reappear on our page. The lady, before acceding to the wishes of her
suitor, stipulated that she should have, without question, the whole of
every Saturday to herself, and the request was acceded to and honourably
observed for some years. At last one day, stung by the remarks of some
mischief-makers, he intruded upon his wife’s privacy, and found her
in mermaid form disporting herself in her bath. She gave one piercing
shriek, and then vanished for ever. In fig. 9 we see in the foreground
the astonished husband, and to the left of the picture the meddlesome
neighbour riding off, while, with the quaint _naïveté_ of Gothic art,
all that intervenes between us and the chamber of mystery is removed,
and there is unmistakable evidence that the fatal and final Saturday,
after years of wedded bliss, has dawned. The tempting peep-hole that
facilitated the tragedy will be seen by the side of the man’s head, and
it speaks well for the honourable feeling of the promise-giver that so
easy a means of clearing up the weekly mystery was for years unused. It
is difficult now to realize that such a story could ever be seriously
believed, and that the possibility of some such incident might befall
oneself, or occur, quite as a matter of course, in the circle of one’s
friends.
[Illustration: FIG. 9.]
The terrible belief in lycanthropy, the transmutation of men into wolves,
was one of the most widely spread of the weird fancies of the Middle
Ages. The idea of the changing of men into various animals is a very
ancient one. Herodotus tells us that the Scythians affirm that the whole
nation of the Neuri change themselves once a year into wolves, and our
readers will readily recall the transformation of the companions of
Ulysses into swine, of Actæon into a stag, and divers other gruesome
stories of like nature. Ovid, for example, in the “Metamorphoses” tells
how Zeus visited Lykaon, the King of Arcadia, and how the king placed a
dish of roasted human flesh before his guest to test his omniscience. The
daring experiment was promptly detected, and the monarch as a punishment
was changed into a wolf by the offended deity in order that henceforth
he should himself feed on the flesh he had so impiously offered.
“In vain he attempted to speak; from that very instant
His jaws were bespluttered with foam, and only he thirsted
For blood, as he ranged amongst flocks and panted for slaughter.
His vesture was changed into hair, his limbs became crooked,
A wolf—he retains yet large trace of his ancient expression,
Hoary he is as afore, his countenance rabid,
His eyes glitter savagely still, the picture of fury.”[30]
Euanthes, an early Greek writer, tells a very circumstantial story indeed
of a certain tribe where one of its members must each year be chosen by
lot to become a wolf. Why this should be at all necessary he does not
stop to explain. The conditions are very precise. The day and the man
having been selected he is taken to the border of a large lake, and his
clothes removed, and hung upon an oak tree. He then swims across the lake
and disappears into the gloomy woods that come down on the further side
to the water’s edge, and then and there changes into a wolf. Should he
forbear for nine years to eat the flesh of man he may return to the lake
and recross it, changing back, as he lands, into his manhood again, and
only differing from his former self in the fact that he will look nine
years older. Should he, on the general principle of doing at Rome as the
Romans do, share with his vulpine companions in any feast of human flesh,
a wolf he must remain to the end of his days. As very probably, however,
he would find amongst his comrades some few who, like himself, were human
beings undergoing this temporary metamorphosis, he would be encouraged
to persevere in this restriction of his diet by their example and
encouragement, and also escape the painful singularity that his genuinely
wolf associates would very possibly resent.
One Fabius, having an inquiring mind and fired with curiosity as to why
the man should carefully suspend his clothes in an oak tree, is able
to add as the result of his inquiries, that those are the clothes that
the man resumes when he emerges from the lake. Whether they had been
miraculously preserved or whether they had undergone such deterioration
as would otherwise arise from their suspension in a tree exposed to all
weathers for nine years he does not inform us. The point is a distinctly
interesting one, and especially to the man reclaiming his wardrobe.
One great feature of terror in the belief in lycanthropy and such like
metamorphosis is that the man still retains his human reason, memory, and
knowledge of himself and his surroundings, and is, in addition, imbued
with the fierce animal instincts of the ravenous brute into which he has
been transformed.
The wolf is the prominent animal in the history of this belief in
Europe, since in this part of the world it was the creature that caused
the greatest devastation, but in India the transformation is to the tiger
or the serpent, in South America to the jaguar, in Africa to the lion,
the leopard, or the hyæna. In some cases this change would appear to
be a terrible punishment for wrong done, in others a transformation at
pleasure by wicked men seeking in the new guise to inflict terror, loss,
and death. Amongst some peoples it was believed that brave and noble
men became lions and eagles, while mean and treacherous ones changed to
snakes, jackals, or hyænas. The belief in one form or another reappears
in endless fables in circulation amongst the natives of almost every
country the wide world over.
Insanity, monomania, bodily disease, hydrophobia, are doubtless
responsible for much in this matter. In many cases, we can scarcely
doubt, the people charged with being wehr-wolves were entirely innocent
of offence, the charge, like that of witchcraft, being brought against
them by those who either in blind terror and superstition or some motive
of craft or greed were desirous to get them removed out of the way. In
some cases fierce lunatics, not as now confined in asylums, but roaming
the country at large, in homicidal mania destroyed human life and became
invested in the eyes of men with strange and terrible powers. Often, too,
the reputed wehr-wolves under pressure of torture would in their agony
confess to anything their tormentors suggested, simply as a means of
obtaining some temporary respite for their sufferings, or in the ravings
of delirium utter things that superstition could readily distort into
admission and confession. We must remember, too, that many of the most
horrible stories are narrated by writers whose veracity is by no means
on a par with their credulity, and while their statements, outrageous as
they are, were no doubt in most cases honestly intended, the reader must
by no means suspend the right of private judgment.
It is historic fact that in the year 1600 multitudes of men were seized
with the hallucination that they were changed into wolves, and retreating
into caves and dark recesses of the forests, issued thence howling and
foaming in mad lust of blood.[31] Many helpless men, women, and children
were destroyed by them during this frightful epidemic, and many hundreds
of those possessed were executed on their own confession or on the
testimony of the panic-stricken.
“In those that are possess’d with’t there o’erflows
Such melancholy humour they imagine
Themselves to be transform’d into woolves;
Steale forth to churchyards in the dead of night,
And dig dead bodies up; as, two nights since
One met the Duke ’bout midnight, in a lane
Behind St. Markes Church, with the leg of a man
Upon his shoulder; and he howl’d fearfully;
Said he was a woolfe; only the difference
Was, a woolfes skinne is hairy on the outside,
His on the inside, bade them take their swords,
Rip up his flesh and try. Straight I was sent for;
And, having ministered unto him, found his Grace
Very well recover’d.”
Some commentators have held that Nebuchadnezzar, when driven from the
presence of man, was suffering from a like form of madness, and fancying
himself to be a beast.
It was a common belief in ancient times that the wehr-wolf simply
effected the change from man to beast by turning his skin inside
out, hence he was sometimes called Versipellis, a term equivalent to
skin-turner. In mediæval days it was thought that the wolf’s skin was
beneath the human, and any unfortunate individual who was suspected of
lycanthropy was very likely to find himself being hacked at by seekers
after truth in search of this inner hairy covering.
Olaus Magnus,[32] in the early part of the sixteenth century, tells us
a story of a nobleman and his retinue who lost their way in journeying
through a wild forest and presently found themselves hopelessly foodless
and shelterless. In the urgency of their need, one of his servants
disclosed to him in confidence that he had the power of turning himself
at will into a wolf, and doubted not but that, if his master would kindly
excuse him awhile, he would be able to find the party some provision.
Permission being given, the man disappeared into the forest under
semblance of a wolf, and very quickly returned with a lamb in his mouth,
and then, having fulfilled his mission, resumed his human shape. The
forest would provide unlimited fuel, while their knives would supply the
cutlery. Some member of the party, it is to be hoped, had a tinder-box,
or the repast after all would have to consist of cold raw lamb. As hunger
is proverbially said to be the best sauce, the absence of mint would be
of little moment at this vulpine banquet.
The belief in man’s power thus to change his form and nature is obviously
derived from the widely-spread doctrine of metempsychosis, the passing
of the soul after the human life is ended into an animal, or a series
of animals. This change is ordinarily in harmony with the character
of the deceased, the timid nervous folk reappearing on earth as hares
and such-like creatures, the gluttonous as swine or vultures and other
foul-feeders. Thus the soul, the eternal principle, in the words of the
poet:
“Fills with fresh energy another form,
And towers an elephant or glides a worm
Swims as an eagle in the eye of noon
Or wails a screech-owl to the deaf cold moon,
Or haunts the brakes where serpents hiss and glare,
Or hums, a glittering insect, in the air.”
John of Nuremberg relates, in his book “De Miraculis,” how a man, lost at
night in a strange country, directed his steps towards a fire that he saw
before him. On reaching it he found a wolf sitting enjoying its warmth,
and was informed by him that he was really as human as himself, but that
he was compelled for a certain number of years, like all his countrymen,
to assume the shape of a wolf. A strange country, indeed, where wolves
when the evenings grow chilly light a fire, and in the comfort of its
ruddy glow are found quite ready to entertain the passing traveller with
their conversation.
In the year 1573 one Garnier, a native of Lyons, who had led a very
secluded life, excited the suspicions of his neighbours, and was dragged
before the tribunals on the charge of being a _loup-garou_, the French
equivalent term for wehr-wolf. It was affirmed that he prowled about at
night and in vulpine form devoured infants. He was arrested, and put
to the torture, confessed everything that was charged against him, and
was burnt at the stake. It was no joke in mediæval days to be a little
retiring in disposition: the worst construction was put upon it, and
one’s neighbours, at short notice, were able to report having seen a
black cat about the place, or some equally convincing proof of evil
possession, and from thence it was a short passage to the river or the
fire.
Within a few years afterwards a man named Roulet was tried at Angers
on the charge of having slain and partially devoured a boy. Evidence
was given that he was seen in wolf form tearing the body, and on
being pursued, he took refuge in a thicket. Here he was surrounded
and captured, but when caught he had resumed the human form. He was
condemned to death, but the sentence was afterwards changed to life-long
confinement.
In Auvergne in 1588, a nobleman, in returning from the chase, was stopped
by a stranger, who told him that he had been furiously attacked by a
savage wolf, but had been fortunate enough to save himself by slashing
off one of its fore-paws. This he produced as a trophy, when, to the
astonishment of both, it was found to have become the delicate hand of
a lady. The noble felt so sure that he recognized a ring upon it, that
he hurried to the castle, and there found his wife sitting with her arm
tied up, and on removing the wrappers the hand was missing. She had to
stand her trial as a _loup-garou_, and being convicted, perished at the
stake. Stories of the type of those given might readily be multiplied
indefinitely.
A belief in enchantment introduced a new complication. Things we are
taught are not always what they seem, and certainly in the writings
of the Middle Ages we find many illustrations of the truth of this
adage, since the pages of those authors abound with examples of the
transformation of men and women into various uncanny creatures by mystic
spells. The story of Beauty and the Beast is a survival of these. Sir
John Maundevile, to give but one illustration, tells us, in his very
wonderful travels, of a dragon that was to be seen in the island of Cos,
a creature which the people of the island called the Lady of the Land,
being in fact “the Doughtre of Ypocras in forme and lykenesse of a gret
Dragoun, that is an hundred Fadme of lengthe. Sche lyethe in an old
Castelle, in a Cave, and schewethe twyse or thryes in the yeer. Sche was
thus chaunged and transformed from a fayre Damysele in to lykenesse of
a Dragoun be a Goddesse that was clept Deane.” This Deane our readers
may perhaps scarcely recognize as Diana. How it was that Damysele and
Deane had between them brought about such a state of things the history
does not tell us. Centuries after Deane was an exploded myth we find
this evidence of a by-gone feud still in existence, testifying to the
virulence of the goddess’s temper and the power of enchantment. “Men seyn
that sche schalle so endure in that forme of a Dragoun unto the tyme that
a Knyghte come that is so hardy that dare come to hir and kisse hir on
the mouthe, and then schalle sche turne agen to hire owne Kynde and ben
a Woman agen. It is not long sith then that a Knyghte of Rodes that was
hardy and doughtie in Armes seyde that he wolde kyssen hire, and whan he
entred into the Cave the Dragoun lifte up hire Had agenst him, and whan
the Knyghte saw hire in that Forme so hidous and so horrible he fleyghe
awey.” The dragon-maiden naturally resented this slight upon her charms,
and pursued and killed him. Presently, a young man who knew nothing of
all this, for “he wente out of a Schippe” and was a stranger in those
parts, came to the cave, and there found a charming “Damysele that Kembed
hire Hede and lokede in a Myrour.” She asked him if he were a knight,
and when he answered her that he was but a poor mariner, she told him to
go and get knighted, and come again on the morrow, “and kysse hir on the
Mouthe and have no Drede, for I schalle do the no maner harm, alle beit
that thou see me in Lykenesse of a Dragoun.” She went on to assure him
that she was the victim of enchantment, and that if he would free her
from this he should be her lord, and have in addition much treasure. How
his “Felowes in the Schippe” were able to dub him knight does not appear;
but he, at all events, presented himself on the morrow “for to kysse this
Damysele.” But his nerve failed him at the critical moment, for “whan he
saughe hir comen out of the Cave so hidouse and so horrible, he hadde
so gret dred that he flyhte agen to the Schippe.” For anything we learn
to the contrary, the charm was never broken, for all that Maundevile
can tell us more is that “whan a Knyghte comethe that is so hardy as to
kysse hir he schalle not dye, but he schalle turne the Damysele in to
hir righte Forme and Kyndely Schapp, and he schal be Lord of alle the
Contreye and Isles.” In our illustration, fig. 10, we see the newly-made
knight making his way back again to his vessel with all convenient speed,
his courage having entirely failed him at the critical moment.
[Illustration: FIG. 10.]
A belief in witches, fairies, and divers other uncanny folk was a strong
article of faith with our ancestors, but to go at any just length into
these points would lead us further afield than our title would perhaps
justify. As we have already referred to the suspicion that attached
itself to anyone who led a life somewhat outside the ordinary groove, we
append an excellent illustrative passage from Spenser’s “Faerie Queene,”
as it admirably conveys the popular idea. There in a gloomy hollow glen
she found:—
“A little cottage built of sticks and reedes
In homely wise, and walled with sod around,
In which a Witch did dwell, in loathly weedes
And wilful want, all careless of her needes;
So choosing solitarie to abide
Far from all neighbours, that her devilish deedes
And hellish arts from people she might hide,
And hurt far off unknowne whom ever she envide.”
Those who care to look the subject up may turn to Reginald Scot’s
“Discoverie of Witchcraft,” “wherein the lewde dealing of Witches and
Witchmongers is notablie detected, the knauerie of coniurors, the
Curiositie of figure-casters, and many other things are opened which have
long lien hidden;”[33] or perhaps, better still, to the book entitled
“Saducismus Triumphatus, or full and plain Evidence concerning Witches
and Apparitions, proving partly by Holy Scripture, partly by a choice
Collection of modern Relations, the Real Existence of Apparitions,
Spirits and Witches, by Jos. Glanvil, late Chaplain to His Majesty, and
Fellow of the Royal Society.” The copy before us is dated 1658, and is
full of tales of familiar spirits in the forms of toads, rabbits, hares,
dogs, &c., diver incantations to provoke evil or to shield from it,
and the like, all gravely narrated. The author, in fact, holds it rank
atheism to doubt such tales, since witches are moved by evil spirits,
and if people do not believe in one they do not in the other, and
therefore not in spirits at all, and therefore not in God!
In the days of our forefathers the ideas held were of a very primitive
and unscientific character, and what knowledge there was was largely
mixed up with mysticism, gross superstition, rank credulity, sheer
guesswork. The common people saw in everything outside their common
experience some grave portent, some prophecy of coming evil, and filled
the forest glades, the wild moorland, the dark recesses of the mine,
the air, the waters, with strange forms of life, sometimes in sympathy
with mankind, but more frequently hostile. We may, on the whole, be very
thankful that our lot was not cast in the “good old times.”