CHAPTER V.

Forms reptilian and piscine—The basilisk—Shakespeare and

Spenser thereupon—King of serpents—The dragon—Aldrovandus

thereon—The dragon-stone—The griffin—The scorpion—The

“Newe Jewell of Healthe”—Toads—Antipathy between toad

and spider—The toad-stone—How to procure it—The weeping

crocodile—Cockeram’s Dictionary—The treacherous seal—The

salamander—Its potent venom—Its home in fire—Prester John

and his kingdom—Pyragones—The chamæleon—Its changing

colour—Serpents from air—The gift of invisibility—The

serpent-stone—Theriaca—Viper-broth—Antidotal herbs—The soil of

Malta—The deaf adder—The two-headed Amphisbæna—Aldrovandus on

serpents—Hairy serpents—The deadly asp—Monstrous snails—Snail

and spider remedies—Bees—Virgil on their production—Glowworm

ink—Marine forms the counterparts of those on land—The

sea-monk—The sea-bishop—The sus marinus—The brewers of

the storm—The hog-fish—The sea-elephant—The sea-horse—The

sea-unicorn—The remora—The dolphin, its special fondness for

man—Its love of music—Its changeful colouring—The acipenser—The

loving ray—The sargon—The friendship between the oyster and the

prawn—The voracious swam-fish—Leviathan—Cause of the crooked

mouth of the flounder—The healing tench—Fish medicaments—The

vain cuttle-fish—The fish that came to be eaten—Conclusion.

We turn in conclusion to forms reptilian and piscine, and to “such small

deer” as may call for a parting word or two in drawing our labours to a

close; and here we find no great amount of material to deal with, for

though our section includes such fabulous monsters as the basilisk and

the dragon, the general knowledge of reptiles and fish was naturally

by no means so extensive as that of the more readily visible beasts and

birds.

The basilisk, a wingless dragon, according to some authorities—a serpent,

if we may credit others—was a peculiarly objectionable creation, not of

nature, but of man. Like all such creatures, it is extremely difficult

to get a very definite idea of it, since imagination has run rampant

in dealing with it. It was but twelve fingers’ breadth long, according

to some writers; this we may take to mean some eight or nine inches

long,[102] but, unfortunately, its powers of mischief were out of all

proportion to its size. It wore a diadem upon its head, as a sign of

its kingship over all other serpents, and its poison was death without

remedy. Pliny, however, shall be allowed to describe the venomous little

monster in his own way, as he does so with a vivid force that it is

impossible to surpass:—“With his hies he driveth away other serpents; he

moveth his body forward not by multiplied windings like other serpents,

but he goeth with half his body upright and aloft from the ground; he

killeth all shrubs not only that he toucheth, but that he breatheth upon;

he burns up herbs and breaketh the stones, so great is his power for

mischief. It is received of a truth that one of them being killed with

a lance by a man on horseback, the poison was so strong that it passed

along the staff and destroyed both horse and man.” Its touch caused the

flesh to fall from the bones of the animal with which it came in contact,

and even the glance of its eye was death upon whomsoever it fell. It will

be remembered that Shakespeare refers to this belief in the utterance of

the Lady Ann in response to Richard’s observation on her eyes—

“Would that they were basilisk’s to strike thee dead.”

In 2 Henry VI. (act iii. sc. 6) the king exclaims,

“Come, basilisk, and kill the innocent gazer with thy sight,”

—while in Henry V. (act iii. sc. 2) Queen Isabel says—

“Your eyes, which hitherto have borne in them

Against the French, that met them in their bent

The fatal balls of murthering basilisks.”

Suffolk in cursing his enemies invokes against them the deadly basilisk,

while Gloster boasts that he will “slay more gazers than the basilisk.”

Spenser in like manner mentions one who—

“Secretly his enemies did slay

Like as the Basilisk, of serpent’s seede

From powerful eyes close venim did convey

Into the looker’s hart, and killed farre away.”

The writer of the “Speculum Mundi” hath it that “the Basilisk is the King

of Serpents, not for his magnitude nor greatnesse, but for his stately

pace and magnanimous minde.” Of this magnanimity, however, he gives no

illustration or proof, but simply goes on to give the creature as black a

character as all other writers do. “His eyes are red in a kinde of cloudy

thicknesse, as if fire were mixt with smoke. His poyson is a very hot

and venimous poyson, drying up and scorching the grasse as if it were

burned, infecting the aire round about him, so as no other creature can

live near him. His hissing, likewise, is said to be as bad, in regard

that it blasteth trees, killeth birds, &c., by poysoning of the aire, and

if anything be slaine by it the same also proueth venimous to such as

touch it,”—an altogether unloving and unlovely brute. It must be borne

in mind that whilst we in this nineteenth century simply regard such a

creature as a weird fancy, countless generations of mankind have accepted

the basilisk as a very grim reality indeed, that might in all its fearful

power some day cross their paths.

Even Sir Thomas Browne, who demolished in his book so many common

beliefs, is prepared to accept the Basilisk, for while he declares

that “many opinions are passant concerning the basilisk, or little

King of Serpents, some affirming, others denying, most doubting the

relations made thereof,” he, himself, adds “that such an animal there

is, if we evade not the testimony of Scripture and humane writers, we

cannot safely deny.” For his Scriptural proofs he quotes Psalm xci.:

“Super aspidem et Basilicum ambulabis,” and Jeremiah viii., ver. 17:

“For behold I will send serpents, cockatrices among you, which will not

be charmed, and they shall bite you.” Many of the old writers we may

mention in passing, consider the basilisk and the cockatrice the same

creature. That by death-dealing glance a basilisk may empoison is not

to Browne a thing impossible, “for eies receive offensive impressions

from their objects, and may have influences destructive to each other.

For the visible species of things strike not our senses immaterially,

but streaming in corporall raies doe carry with them the qualities of

the object from whence they flow. Thus it is not impossible what is

affirmed of this animall; the visible raies of their eies carrying forth

the subtilest portion of their poison, which, received by the eie of

man or beast, infecteth first the brain, and is thence communicated

to the heart.” Again he says, “that deleterious it may be at some

distance, and destructive without corporall contaction, there is no

high improbability,” and he proceeds, not by any means without thought

or shrewdness, to give reasons for his belief in the possibility of

such a thing. “For,” says he, “if plagues or pestilentiall Atomes have

been conveyed in the air from different Regions, if men at a distance

have infected each other, if the shaddowes of some trees be noxious,

if Torpedoes deliver their opinion at a distance and stupifie beyond

themselves, we cannot reasonably deny that (besides our grosse and

restrained poisons requiring contiguity unto their actions) there may

proceed from subtiller seeds more agile emanations, which contemn those

laws, and invade at distance unexpected.”

The belief in the dragon was one of the articles of faith of our

ancestors. In another of our books, “Symbolism in Christian Art,”

we have dwelt at considerable length upon the various legends in

which the dragon figures, and the symbolic use made of the monster as

representative of the evil principle that all are called upon to combat,

but our forefathers had a very real belief in the veritable existence of

the dragon, not by any means regarding it as a symbol merely, a figure of

speech or apt allegory, but as one of the quite definite perils that the

adventurous traveller in distant lands might be called upon to face,[103]

while preparations of the dragon were a recognized feature in the

pharmacopœia. “Scale of dragon, tooth of wolf,” and many other horrible

ingredients are found in the witches’ cauldron in Macbeth.

In a mediæval work we are told that “the turning joint in the chine of

a dragon doth promise an easy and favourable access into the presence

of great lords.” One can only wonder why this should be, all clue and

thread of connection between the two things being now so hopelessly lost.

We must not, however, forget that, smile now as we may at this, there

was a time when our ancestors accepted the statement with the fullest

faith, and many a man who would fain have pleaded his cause before king

or noble, bewailed with hearty regret his want of draconic chine, the

“turning-point” of the dragon and of his own fortunes. Another valuable

recipe runs as follows: “Take the taile and head of a dragon, the haire

growing upon the forehead of a lion, with a little of his marrow also,

the froth, moreover, that a horse fomethe at the mouth who hath woon the

victorie in running a race, and the nailes besides of a dog’s feete;

bind all these together with a piece of leather made of red deer’s skin,

with the sinewes partly, of a stag, partly of a fallowe deere, one with

another; carry this about with you, and it will work wonders.”[104] It

seems almost a pity that the actual benefits to be derived from the

possession of this compound are not more clearly defined, as there is no

doubt that a considerable amount of trouble would be involved in getting

the various materials together, and the zeal and ardour of the seeker

after this wonder-working composition would be somewhat damped by doubt

as to its actual utility. Mediæval medicine-men surely must have been

somewhat chary of adopting the now familiar legend of “prescriptions

accurately dispensed” when the onus of making up such a mixture could be

laid upon them.

In spite of the familiarity with the appearance of the creature that the

obtaining of its head and tail would suggest, the various authorities

differ very widely in describing it. Some writers say that dragons are

of “a yellow fierie colour, having sharp backs like saws,” and some tell

us that “their scales shine like silver.” Some dragons are said to have

wings and no feet, some again have both feet and wings, others have

neither one nor the other, and are only distinguished from the common

sort of serpents by the combs growing upon their heads. Father Pigafetta

in his book declares that “Mont Atlas hath plentie of dragons, grosse

of body, slow of motion, and in by ting or touching incurably venomous.

In Congo is a kind of dragons like in bygnesse unto rammes with wings,

having long tayles and divers jawes of teeth of blue and greene, painted

like scales, with two feete, and feede on rawe fleshe.” John Leo, in his

“History of Africa,” says that the dragon is the progeny of the eagle and

wolf. Others affirm that it is generated by the great heat of India, or

springs from the volcanoes of Ethiopia.

After reading about almost every possible variation of structure that

is open to a dragon, winged, serpentine, two-legged, four-legged, and

the like, it is rather quaint to find that Pliny feels that there is a

point after all where one must draw the line. He says that “in Ethiopia

there are produced as great dragons as in India, being twenty cubits

long. But I chiefly wonder at one thing: why Juba should think they were

crested.” This suggestion of the crass ignorance of Juba was certainly

a little hard on him, as when so very much was believed a crest was a

very little extra item to credit, besides as a matter of fact dragons as

such, Ethiopian or otherwise, were often described by ancient authorities

as having this feature. It really seems like accepting the sheeted

spectre of the country churchyard, and then growing sceptical because its

hollowed turnip head was still crowned with a little of the foliage that

rustic haste or indifference to the verities had failed to cut away.

Aldrovandus, in his “History of Serpents and Dragons,” published in 1640,

goes very thoroughly indeed into the subject.[105] The work is in folio

size, and the portion devoted to the dragon extends from pages 312 to

360. It must be duly noted that Aldrovandus entirely accepts the dragon

as a reality; that this is so is obvious from his dealing with it in

this volume instead of placing it in his “Historia Monstrorum.” The book

is written in Latin, and amongst the various sections concerning the

dragon we find Differentiæ, Forma et Descriptio, Mores, Locus, Antipathia

(unlike most other creatures treated by the old author, his vindictive

savagely forbids the usual chapter on Sympathia), and Usus in Medicina.

Fig. 19 is one of the draconic forms illustrated in the book; the

varieties given are very numerous, and of widely differing nature.

[Illustration: FIG. 19.]

Our ancestors used always to prescribe divers kinds of herb-teas to be

drunk in the Spring-time, and it is a curious example of instinct in

a reptile that the dragon likewise, whom he feels at this season of

the year a certain loathing of meat, physics himself into rude health

again with the juice of the wild lettuce. Many animals have, or at all

events had, if we may credit the wisdom of our forefathers, considerable

faith in the medicinal value of herbs. Thus pigeons and blackbirds when

suffering from loss of appetite eat bay leaves as a tonic. The bay leaf,

too, was a most valuable thing for internal application against the

poison of the chameleon, though the elephant when he had inadvertently

swallowed one of these creatures, a mistake that seems to have not

unfrequently happened, probably from the resemblance in colour of the

reptile to the foliage amongst which he was ensconced, pinned his faith

in the wild olive leaf.

As the toad, ugly and venomous, bore yet in popular belief a precious

jewel in its head, so we find in the writings of various authorities a

belief that the still uglier and more venomous dragon bore in like manner

the lustrous carbuncle. Jordanus tells us, for example, that in India the

dragons that there abound are thus gifted, a fact that the natives turn

to their advantage. “These dragons,” he declares, “grow exceeding big,

and cast forth from the mouth a most infectious breath, like the thickest

smoke rising from fire. These animals come together at the destined time,

develop wings, and begin to raise themselves in the air, and then, by the

judgment of God, being too heavy, they drop into a certain river which

issues from Paradise, and perish there. But all the regions round about

watch for the time of the dragons, and when they see that one has fallen

they wait for seventy days, and then go down and find the bare bones of

the dragon, and take the carbuncle which is rooted in the top of his

head.”

Even the dragon, however, may not be quite so black as he is painted,

for we read in one old author of a child in Arcadia that had a dragon

for its playmate. There was much affection between them, but presently a

considerable dread of the dragon’s powers gained possession of the boy,

and he compassed the brilliant idea of beguiling his companion well out

into the desert and then slipping away. In the very consummation of this

plan a new danger arose, as the stripling found himself in an ambush of

robbers, whereupon he was only too thankful to call out to his discarded

playmate, who immediately came to the rescue and very effectually

scattered his despoilers. At this point the history unfortunately stops,

but we may perhaps conclude that it follows on the lines of most stories

of the affections, and that “they lived happy ever after.” However this

may be, it is a charming narrative, and opens out quite a new trait of

dragon disposition.

Amongst the many strange creatures that were held to inhabit Ethiopia,

the griffins were perhaps the most conspicuous amidst the weird fauna of

that marvellous land. “Some men seyn,” and Maundevile in his quaint book

of travels fully endorses the idea, “that Griffounes han the Body upward

as an Egle and benethe as a Lyoun and treuly thei ben of that schapp.

But a Griffoun hathe the body more gret and is more strong thanne eight

Lyouns and more gret and stronger than an hundred Egles such as we han

amonge us. For a Griffoun ther wil bere, fleynge to his Nest, a gret Hors

or two Oxen yoked togidere as thei gon at the Plowghe.”

Chaucer, in the “Canterbury Tales,” says of one of his characters:—

“Blake was his berd, and manly was his face,

The cercles of his eyen in his hed

They gloweden betwixten yelwe and red,

And like a griffon loked he about.”

Ctesias describes the griffin in all sober earnestness as a bird with

four feet of the size of a wolf, and having the legs and claws of a lion,

their feathers being red upon the breast and black on the rest of the

body. Glanvil says of it: “the claws of a griffin are so large and ample

that he can seize an armed man as easily by the body as a hawk a little

bird.” The griffin is often met with in heraldry past and present, either

as a crest, charge, or supporter of the arms. A very familiar example of

its employment in the latter service may be seen in the arms of the City

of London, or exalted on lofty pedestal, where, in lieu of Temple Bar, it

marks the westward civic boundary. Shakespeare, Milton, and others of our

poets and writers, refer to the griffin.

Anyone reading the herbals of Gerard, Parkinson, and others, or the

various medical books of the Middle Ages, will scarcely have failed to

notice how frequently reference is made to the scorpion. In these later

days a man might well journey from John o’ Groats to the Land’s End, and

run no peril of an encounter, but in the earlier times we have referred

to, the sting of the scorpion was a very present dread, and numerous

remedies for it were devised. The beautiful blue forget-me-not of our

streams is in all herbals and floras till the beginning of this century

called the scorpion-grass,[106] from its supposed virtue as a cure, a

remedy that was supposed to be sufficiently indicated from its head of

flowers and buds being rolled round into some more or less satisfactory

resemblance to a scorpion’s tail. Cogan, in his “Haven of Health,” tells

how “a certaine Italian, by often smelling the Basill, had a scorpion

bred in his braine, and after vehement and long paines he died therof.”

In the “Newe Iewell of Health, gathered out of the best and most

approved Authors by that excellent Doctor Gesnerus,”[107] we find some

extraordinary preparations. Most of these are of a botanical nature,

but we also have “Oyle holy[108] prepared out of dead men’s bones, Oyle

or distilled lycour gotten out of the Gray, Oyle marveylous gotten out

of the Beuer, Oyle of frogges ryght profitable to such as are payned of

ye gout, Oyle of antes egges,” and many other strange remedies for the

ills that the flesh is heir to. Among them, a forerunner of the ideas

of Hahnemann, and the notion of like curing like, we find “Oyle of

Scorpion’s distilled against Poysons.” Apropos of the oil from dead men’s

bones, we may point out the special charm that our ancestors seemed to

find in anything associated with the charnel house—thus one favourite

remedy was the moss that grew on a dead man’s skull, another was a pill

compounded from the brains of a man that had been hanged; powder of mummy

in like manner was in high repute, and to those who found pill or powder

too nauseous a draught of spring water from the skull of a murdered man

was at once refreshing and health-giving. The following recipe[109] for

the cure of a wound seems to show that our forefathers had no great fear

of blood poisoning: “Take of the moss of the skull of a strangled man

two ounces, of the mumia of man’s blood one ounce and a halfe, of earth

wormes washed in water or wine and dryed, one ounce and a halfe, of the

fatte of a Boare two drams, of oyle of Turpintine two drams: pound them

and keepe them in a longe narrow pott, and dippe into the oyntment the

yron or wood, or some sallowe sticke made wet with blood in opening the

wound.” The medicine and surgery of the Middle Ages must have been a

powerful influence in checking redundance of population.

Toads were in great repute in sickness. “In time of common contagion,”

writes Sir Kenelm Digby in 1660, “men use to carry about with them the

powder of a toad, and sometimes a living toad or spider[110] shut up in

a box, which draws the contagious air, which otherwise would infect the

party,” and many other illustrations of their employment as preventives

or remedies might be given. The spider and the toad seem to have been

each regarded as most venomous creatures, and in many of the old remedies

one or other of them at will are recommended, either alternative being

regarded as equally efficacious; thus for whooping cough, if one cannot

find a toad to thrust up the chimney, two spiders in a walnut shell will

serve equally well.

There was held to be mortal antipathy between the toad and the spider,

and the result of a meeting between them was a conflict fatal to one or

both of the antagonists. The _Aster Tripolium_, a well-known English wild

plant, was originally called the toad-wort. “When a spider stings a toad,

and the toad is becoming vanquished, and the spider stings it thickly and

frequently, and the toad cannot avenge itself, it bursts assunder,” at

least, the author of the “Ortus Sanitatis” says it does, but whether this

arises from venom or from vexation he does not explain. “If such a burst

toad be near the toad-wort, it chews it and becomes sound again; but if

it happens that the wounded toad cannot get to the plant, another toad

fetches it and gives it to the wounded one.” Topsell, in his “Natural

History,” vouches for this having been actually witnessed.

That the skin of the toad gives forth an acrid secretion which serves

the creature as a defence is established beyond doubt, but its hurtful

properties have been greatly exaggerated. Dryden refers to the lady “who

squeezed a toad into her husband’s wine,” the inference being she was in

heart murderous. Spenser makes Envy ride upon a wolf and chew “between

his cankred teeth a venomous tode,” while Diodorus declares that toads

were generated by the heat of the sun from the dead bodies of ducks

putrefying in mud.[111]

Lily, in his “Euphues,” declares that “the foule toade hath a faire stone

in his head,” an idea that Shakespeare has immortalized in the beautiful

lines that remind us how:—

“Sweet are the uses of adversity,

Which, like the toad, ugly and venomous,

Yet wears a precious jewel in its head.”

The crapaudine, or toad-stone, is of a dull brown colour. It was believed

to possess sovereign virtue against poison from its changing colour

when in the presence of any noxious thing: hence it was often worn as a

protection in finger rings. Figs. 20 and 21 are good examples of this

use. They are both from rings in the Londesborough collection. The belief

in the virtues of the toad-stone was not only popular in England, but

was one of the fallacies accepted throughout Europe. Though the stone is

well-known to geologists as a variety of trap-rock, the accepted belief

was that it was found only in the head of the toad. Fenton, writing in

1569, affirms that “there is found in the heads of old and great toads

a stone which they call borax or stelon,” and Lupton, some fifty years

afterwards, writes: “the crepaudia or toad-stone is very valuable,

touching any part envenomed by the bite of a rat, wasp, spider, or other

poisonous beast it ceases the pain and swelling thereof.” Ben Jonson

also refers to it in his play of “The Fox.” Albertus Magnus, writing

about 1275, adds the great wonder that this stone when taken out of the

creature’s head has the figure of a toad upon it, while others declare

that the stone itself is of the form of a toad. It is a treasure not

easily to be procured, for the toad “envieth much that man should haue

that stone,” declares Lupton, the author of “A Thousand Notable Things,”

hence it was very necessary to beware of useless counterfeits, and this

old writer gives us a ready means of detecting them. “To know,” says he,

“whether the toad-stone called crepaudia be the righte and perfect stone

or not, holde the stone before a toad so that he may see it, and if it

be a right and true stone the toad will leap towards it, and make as

though he would snatch it from you,” a proceeding that must have required

a considerable amount of nerve on the part of anyone duly impressed with

the fear of the deadly venom of the creature.

[Illustration: FIG. 20.]

[Illustration: FIG. 21.]

The same ancient authority on the subject very obligingly gives “a rare

good way to get the stone out of the toad.” It suffices to “put a great

or overgrown toad, first bruised in divers places, into an earthen pot:

put the same into an ant’s hillocke, and cover the same with earth, which

toad at length the ants will eat, so that the bones of the toad and

stone will be left in the pot.” This certainly seems simplicity itself,

but, unfortunately, most authorities agree in saying that the stone,

to have any real virtue, should be obtained while the creature is yet

alive. Porta has his doubts on the whole matter, nevertheless he gives

some hints that might be of value to those of greater faith. “There is a

stone,” he says, “called Chelonites—the French name it Crapodina, which

they report to be found in the head of a great old Toad; and if it can be

gotten from him while he is alive, it is soveraign against poyson. They

say it is taken from living toads in a red cloth, in which colour they

are much delighted; for while they sport themselves upon the scarlet the

stone droppeth out of their head and falleth through a hole made in the

middle into a box set under for the purpose, else they will suck it up

again. But I never met with a faithfull person who said that he had found

it: nor could I ever find one, though I have cut up many. Nevertheless,

I will affirm this for truth that those stones which are pretended to

be taken out of Toads are minerals. But the value is certain: if any

swallow it down with poyson it will preserve him from the malignity of

it, for it runneth about with the poyson and asswageth the power of it

that it becometh vain and of no force.” Boethius tells us how he watched

throughout a whole night an old toad that he had placed on a piece

of scarlet cloth, but is obliged to confess that nothing occurred to

“gratify the great pangs of his whole night’s restlessness,” as the toad

entirely declined to be lured into any frivolities that might cause him

the loss of his precious jewel.

Browne, in his exposure of the various popular errors current in his

time, presently arrives at this belief, but finds himself unable to

express any very definite opinion, and takes refuge in compromise.

“As for the stone,” quoth he, “commonly called a Toad-stone, which is

presumed to be found in the head of that animall, we first conceive it

not a thing impossible, nor is there any substantiall reason why in a

Toad there may not be found such hard and lapideous concretions; for

the like we daily observe in the heads of Fishes, as Codds, Carps, and

Pearches. Though it be not impossible, yet it is surely very rare, as

we are induced to believe from inquiry of our own; from the triall of

many who have been deceived and the frustrated search of Porta, who,

upon the explorement of many, could scarce finde one.[112] Nor is it

only of rarity, but may be doubted whether it be of existency, or really

any such stone in the head of a Toad at all. For though Lapidaries and

questonary enquires affirm it, yet the writers of Mineralls and natural

speculators are of another belief, conceiving the stones which bear this

name to be a Minerall concretion, not to be found in animalls but in

fields. What therefore best reconcileth these divided determinations may

be a middle opinion; that of these stones some are minerall and to be

found in the earth; some animall, to be met with in Toads, at least by

the induration of their cranies. The first are many and manifold, to be

found in Germany[113] and other parts, the last are fewer in number, and

in substance not unlike the stones in Carps’ heads. This is agreeable

unto the determination of Aldrovandus, and is also the judgment of the

learned Spigelius in his Epistle unto Pignorius.” If only a toad with an

indurated cranium could be discovered, everything would fall into its

right place!

Through the Middle Ages men believed that the toad exercised the power

of fascination not only upon its insect prey, but upon all other

creatures, including man himself, and even so far back as the days of

the classical writers it was a fully accepted belief that whosoever had

the misfortune to be looked squarely in the eyes by a toad would find

that, basilisk-like, the gaze to him meant death.

The belief that the crocodile shed tears over his prey is a very ancient

one; various motives have been assigned for this grief, but the generally

accepted belief is that the whole proceeding is a fraud, perpetrated

with the idea of attracting sympathetic passers-by within reach of his

formidable jaws; hence he has been accepted as a symbol of dissimulation.

We get an excellent illustration of this in Shakespeare’s King Henry

VIII., where Henry is said by Queen Margaret to be—

“Too full of foolish pity; and Gloster’s show

Beguiles him, as the mournful crocodile

With sorrow snares relenting passengers.”[114]

Spenser, in the Faerie Queene,[115] deals equally clearly and explicitly

with the same fancy in the lines—

“As when a wearie traveiler, that strayes

By muddy shore of broad seven-mouthed Nile,

Unweeting of the perillous wandring wayes,

Doth meete a cruell craftie Crocodile,

Which in false grefe hyding his harmefull guile,

Doth weepe full sore, and sheddeth tender teares;

The foolish man, that pities all this while

His mournful plight, is swallowed up unawares,

Forgetfull of his owne that mindes an other’s cares.”

“Thereupon,” ungallantly adds an old writer, “came this proverb that

is applied unto women when they weep. Lachrymæ Crocodili, the meaning

whereof is, that as the Crocodile when he crieth goeth about most to

deceive, so doth a woman most commonly when she weepeth.” Thus Othello

misanthropically exclaims—

“If that the earth could teem with woman’s tears,

Each drop she falls would prove a crocodile.”

In the same spirit Barnfield, in his “Cassandra,” written in the year

1595, has the following passage:—

“He, noble lord, fearlesse of hidden treason,

Sweetely salutes this weeping Crocodile;

Excusing every cause with instant reason

They kept him from her sight so long a while;

She faintly pardons him; smiling by art,

For life was in her lookes, death in her hart.”

The author of the “Speculum Mundi,” who is ever seeking a moral[116] or

an opportunity of improving the occasion, declares that “the crocodile

when he hath devoured a man and eaten all up but the head, will sit and

weep over it[117] as if he expressed a great portion of sorrow for his

cruel feast, but it is nothing so, for when he weeps it is because his

hungrie paunch wants such another prey. And from hence the proverb took

beginning, viz. Crocodiles’ tears; which is then verified when one weeps

cunningly without sorrow, dissembling heaviness out of craftinesse; like

unto many rich men’s heirs who mourn in their gowns when they laugh in

their sleeves; or like to other dissemblers of the like nature who have

sorrow in their eyes, but joy and craftiness in their hearts.” However

this may be, the supposititious tears of the crocodile have been turned

to abundant literary and moral account. The tears of the crocodile were

supposed, according to some who were great authorities in their day and

generation, to crystallize into gems, but as supposititious tears could

only produce supposititious gems the actual value would be but small.

In an early Bestiary it states that “if a crocodile comes across a man

it kills him, but it remains inconsolable the rest of its life;” but

why it suffers this life-long remorse we are not told. This old writer

also tells us of the hydra, “a very wise animal who understands well

how to injure the crocodile.” The _modus operandi_ is very simple, and

the injury inflicted seems beyond question:—“When the hydra sees the

crocodile go to sleep it covers itself over with slimy mud, and wriggles

itself into the crocodile’s mouth, penetrates into its stomach, and then

tears it assunder.” The dolphin appears to be another foe to be by no

means despised. Pliny tells us that when these desire to pass up the Nile

the crocodiles, who regard the river as their peculiar preserve, greatly

resent their presence, and endeavour to drive them back. As the dolphins

fully realize that they are no match for their foes in fair fight, they

take refuge in their superior activity and craft, and having a dorsal fin

as sharp edged as a knife, they swim swiftly beneath the crocodiles, and

as the under portion of these creatures is unprotected by the armour that

is so conspicuous on the upper parts of their bodies, with one sharp gash

they rip the crocodile completely open.

It was a Greek superstition that beneath the visible exterior of the seal

was concealed a woman, and that when a swimmer ventured too far he ran

great risk of being seized by a seal and strangled. The creature then

carried the lifeless body to some desert shore and wept over it, from

which arose the popular saying that when a woman shed false tears she

cried like a seal. As the desert shore implies absence of spectators, it

seems difficult to tell what authority there is for the statement as to

what went on there, and even when this initial difficulty is overcome

it seems equally impossible to suggest any satisfactory reason for the

gruesome proceedings of this weird woman-seal or seal-woman, either in

the preliminary murderous attack or the subsequent lamentation. Whatever

strange idea may have originally started the story, it is a curious

parallel to that of the weeping crocodile.

The salamander received its full mythical development in mediæval

days, though the older writers refer to it occasionally, and we note

in the writings of such men as Pliny the first steps taken towards the

erection of that fabric of fancy and superstition that later on became so

conspicuous. The ancients asserted that the salamander was never seen in

bright weather, but only made its appearance during heavy rain, and that

it was of so frigid a nature that if it did but touch fire it quenched it

as completely as if ice were piled thereon. It was, moreover, declared

to be so venomous that the mere climbing of a tree by the animal is

amply sufficient to poison all the fruit, so that those who afterwards

eat thereof perished without remedy, and that if it entered a river the

stream was so effectually poisoned that all who drank thereof must die.

Glanvil, an English writer in the thirteenth century, roundly declares as

historic fact that four thousand men and two thousand horses of the army

of Alexander the Great were killed by drinking from a stream that had

been thus infected.

It was in the Middle Ages an article of faith that the salamander was

bred and nourished in fire,[118] hence when the creature is represented

it is always placed in the midst of flames. Our illustration, fig.

22, from Porta, is a fair typical example. How the creature should be

nourished in the flames, while its mere contact with them suffices to

extinguish them, seems a practical difficulty, but the contradiction

of ideas does not seem to have troubled our forefathers, and the two

mutually destructive statements rest side by side equally unquestioned

in the writings of all the authorities. Pliny, having his doubts, thrust

a salamander into the fire, and the unfortunate victim of science was

quickly shrivelled up and consumed.[119] One would have thought that this

crucial test of actual experiment would have settled the whole matter,

and reduced the fire-extinguishing theory to oblivion, but it takes much

more than that to kill an old and well-established belief, as we may see

even in our own day where many superstitions still flourish in spite of

common sense, education, and experience arrayed against them.

[Illustration: FIG. 22.]

De Thaun in his “Bestiary” declares that “the Salamander is of such a

nature that if it come by chance where there shall be burning fire it

shall at once extinguish it. The beast is so cold and of such a quality

that fire will not be able to burn where it shall enter, nor will

trouble happen where it shall be.” This latter statement is entirely

at variance with the general belief in its deadliness, but all these

statements are dwelt on, exaggerated, or suppressed, as occasion and the

moral to be deduced requires. As in this particular case the pious writer

desired to see in the creature an emblem of Azarias, Ananias and Misael

praising God without hurt in the fiery furnace, any reference to its

noxious properties was clearly out of place, and on the strength of this

association it even receives a somewhat negative form of commendation on

its virtues as a peace-producer. This we are bound to say is the only

good word we have ever seen ascribed by any of the writers of the past to

this unfortunate creature, and it beyond doubt only receives even this

solitary commendation because the exigencies of what the old writers

thought the greater truth appeared to call for it.

Asbestos was, from its incombustible property, long held to be the

wool of the salamander. In the Middle Ages popular imagination was

greatly exercised over a mysterious Ruler in the East known as Prester

John. He was held to be a Christian, and to bear sway in Asia over a

widely-extended empire, but the stories of returning travellers showed

that the idea had no foundation in fact, and the scene of the monarchy

was then shifted to Abyssinia. The first reference to this sovereign

would appear to be in the Chronicle of one Otto of Freisingin, who wrote

about the middle of the twelfth century, and afterwards allusions to

this mysterious monarch frequently recur. In the Chronicle of Albericus,

about a hundred years later than that of Otto, we read that “Presbyter

Joannes sent his wonderful letter to various Christian princes, and

especially to Manuel of Constantinople, and Frederic, the Roman Emperor.”

In this letter, a very lengthy one, he claims to be Lord of Lords, and

to receive the tribute and homage of seventy-two kings. “In the three

Indies,” saith he, “our Magnificence rules, and our land extends beyond

India: it reaches toward the sunrise over the wastes, and it trends

towards deserted Babylon, near the Tower of Babel.” Whatever of credence,

much or little, we may give to this letter, it is at least interesting

to us as showing the set of opinion on, amongst other matters, things

zoological, and therefore comes within the scope of our book. He gives

many details as to the plants, the gold, and precious stones, and

so forth, and also states that “our land is the home of elephants,

dromedaries, camels, crocodiles, metacollinarum, cammetennus, tensevetes,

white and red lions, white bears, crickets, griffins, lamias, wild

horses, wild men, men with horns, one-eyed, men with eyes before and

behind, centaurs, fauns, satyrs, and pygmies; it is the home, too, of

the phœnix, and of nearly all living animals. In one of our lands, hight

Zone, are worms called in our tongue salamanders. These worms can only

live in fire, and they build cocoons like silkworms, which are unwound by

the ladies of our palace and spun into cloth and dresses, which are worn

by our Exaltedness. These dresses, when we would wash them and clean,

are cast into flames.” Browne, in his exposure of vulgar errors, gravely

denies the existence of wool on a salamander at all, truly pointing out

that “it is a kinde of Lizard, a quadruped corticated and depilous, that

is, without woolle, furre, or haire,” an altogether hopeless animal to

shear.

Porta mentions that some peculiar creatures called “Pyragones be

generated in the fire: certain little flying beasts so called because

they live and are nourished in the fire, and yet they fly up and down in

the air. This is strange; but that is more strange, that as soon as ever

they come out of the fire into any cold air presently they die.” Porta

of course uses the word presently in the older sense of at this present

moment, so that it really is, as he says, a wonder that these creatures

are able to fly about in the air, when its effect upon them is immediate

death. We have ourselves been gravely told that if the fires at the great

iron-works in the Midland Counties were not occasionally extinguished

an uncertain but fearful something would be generated in them, and it

seems only natural that after the imagination has peopled earth and sea

with strange monsters, and placed in the upper regions of the air the

paradise-birds and other creatures that derived all needful sustenance

from that element alone, that the remaining element, fire, should also

have its peculiar inhabitants and monsters.

The chamæleon was for centuries supposed to live only on air, while its

property of changing colour under the influence of its surroundings was

greatly exaggerated.

Shakespeare, the great storehouse of mediæval folk-lore, makes Speed, in

the Two Gentlemen of Verona, exclaim:—

“Tho’ the chamæleon Love can live on the air,

I’m one that am nourish’d by my victuals,”

while Gloster, in King Henry VI., boasts that he could “add colours to

the chamæleon.”

Gower, in like manner, asserts that vainglory is

“Lich unto the Camelion

Whiche upon every sondry hewe

That he beholt he mote newe

His colour.”

Hence, again, other moralists declare that men and women inconstant and

fickle are like unto chamæleons.

It has been asserted by Avicenna that a decoction of chamæleon put into a

bath will make him green-coloured that stayeth long therein, but that by

degrees this verdant hue will pass away, and the man recover his natural

colour, while Porta declares that “with the Gall of a Chamæleon cut into

water Wheezles will be called together.” Why anyone should want to call a

wheezle together he does not explain, so that the receipt, simple as it

is, seems to be of no great practical value.

It has been rather a disgusting belief that if a man will lick a lizard

all over he will not only be safe from the personal inconvenience of

having a lizard go down his throat some day when he might be sleeping in

the fields, but that he will have the power henceforward of healing any

sore to which he applies his tongue.

Our ancestors held many strange beliefs respecting serpents and

snakes—one of these was they were created from hair, “women’s hairs

especially”—as one old writer is careful to emphasize—“because they are

naturally longer than men’s.” One old authority, our oft-quoted Porta,

hesitates not to say that “we have experienced also that the hairs of a

horse’s mane laid in the waters become serpents, and our friends have

tried the same,” and he goes on to mention as a truism to be almost

apologized for from its self-evident character, that “no man denies

but that serpents are easily gendred of man’s flesh, specially of his

marrow.” Ælianus in like manner declares that a dead man’s marrow, being

putrified, becomes a serpent. Florentinus affirms that basil chewed and

laid in the sun will engender serpents.[120]

Another strange idea was that serpents conferred the power of

invisibility. Thus John Aubrey, an antiquary and author, and one of the

earliest Fellows of the Royal Society, gives in full faith the following

recipe: “Take on Midsummer night at xii, when all the planets are above

the earth, a serpent, and kill him, and skinne him, and dry him in the

shade, and bring it to a powder. Hold it in your hand, and you will be

invisible.” His book entitled “Remaines of Gentilisme and Judaisme” is a

perfect storehouse of old-world superstitions, an inexhaustible mine of

quaint imaginings.

The “pretious stone” theory that we have already encountered in one or

two other cases, the toad being the most notable, is in full force again

amongst the various strange notions concerning serpents. The recipe

for its possession, given by Jacobus Hollerius, is simplicity itself,

as it is merely necessary that the “snake be tyed by the tayle with a

corde, and hanged up, and a vessell full of water set below; after a

certayne time he will avoyde out of his mouth a stone.” The stone is

of great medicinal value; for instance, “it fullye and wholelye helpes

the partye that hath the dropsye,” by merely being attached to the body

of the sufferer, and in divers other ways that we need not stay to

particularize, proves itself a stone of price. Jordanus, amongst his

other Indian experiences, came across serpents with horns, evidently the

cerastes or horned viper, and others with precious stones. Tennant tells

us that the Cingalese believe that the stomach of the cobra contains a

stone of inestimable value, and this belief, absurd as we deem it, is

really hardly more far-fetched than such a story as pearls being found in

oyster-shells would appear to a man who heard it for the first time.

Snakes and serpents, like most other repulsive things, have found

their way into the pharmacopœia and the menu. Galen tells us that the

Egyptians used to eat vipers as other people did eels, and it is a

very old-world superstition that viper’s flesh is an antidote to the

viper’s poison. In classic and mediæval days a famous remedy, originally

known as mithridate or theriaca, and later on as Venice treacle, was

held to owe much of its virtue as a vermifuge and antidote to all kinds

of poison to the vipers that formed one of its ingredients. It was

retained in the London Pharmacopœia until about a hundred years ago. Its

constituent parts changed somewhat from time to time; at one period we

see it contained seventy-three ingredients. The vipers were added to the

horrible mess by Andromachus, the physician to the Emperor Nero,[121]

and became a leading element in the prescription. The name treacle was

at one time applied to any confection or syrup, and it is only in these

latter days that the name has become associated exclusively with the

syrup of molasses: it is derived from the Greek Therion, a name given

to the viper, so that the schoolboys’ lunch of bread and treacle is the

direct etymological outcome of the abominable adder’s broth of the Roman

emperor.[122]

One often sees in these ancient remedies a foreshadowing of the

homœopathic notion of like to like; thus Porta prescribes “a present

remedy” for the poison of the viper, declaring that “the viper itself,

if you slay her, and strip off her skin, cut off her head and tail, cast

away all her entrails, boil her like an Eele, and give her to one that

she hath bitten, it will cure him,” but in another place he says “for

serpent’s bites I have found nothing more excellent than the earth which

is brought from the isle of Malta, for the least dust of it put into

their mouths kills them presently.” There is evidently here some sort of

connection endeavoured to be established between the escape of St. Paul

while in Malta from the evil effects of the poison of a viper and this

present prescription, and it no doubt arose from the old legend that,

like St. Patrick in Ireland, St. Paul, after his experience of them,

banished all snakes from the island. Once granted that a serpent cannot

live on the soil of Malta, it follows almost as a matter of course that a

little of this same soil administered to it anywhere the wide world over

will prove fatal to it. The recipe is, nevertheless, a little vague, as

it deals exclusively with the destruction of the serpent, which is not at

all the same thing as the restoration to health of the sufferer from its

poison fangs.

Prevention being better than cure, the hint that Cogan gives in his

“Haven of Health” should prove of value. “The setting of Lauender within

the house in floure pots must needes be very wholesome, for it driueth

away venemous wormes, both by strawing and by the sauour of it,” and

he adds that “being drunke in wine it is a remedie against poyson.”

Tusser, in his book on Husbandry, gives a long list of “strowing herbes,”

their fragrance and remedial value being held in high esteem by our

forefathers:—

“No daintie flowre or herbe that growes on grownd,

No arborett with painted blossoms drest,

And smelling sweete, but there it might be fownd

To bud out faire, and throwe her sweet smels al around.”[123]

The bunches of flowers that are still presented to the Judges on the

opening of the Law Courts are the graceful and now happily needless

developments of the bunches of herbs that were once placed on their desks

to avert the dangers of the gaol fever, that with its noxious breath

slew not the hapless prisoners alone, but the judges on the bench, and

administered wild justice on all alike for the contempt of sanitary

laws, and for the brutality that was rampant and supreme.[124]

Fennel was, according to our forefathers, held in esteem by the serpents

themselves, and one scarcely wonders that this should be so, if it be

true that “so soone as they taste of it they become young again, and

with the juice thereof repair their sight.” How this juice is applied

externally by the serpent is not explained, but it very naturally

suggested the idea to the medical men of the Middle Ages that what was

so good for serpents might prove equally valuable to suffering humanity,

hence “to repair a man’s sight that is dim” nothing better than fennel

could be found, though they hesitated to promise also to the human

subject rejuvenescence.

The Syrians, according to one venerable authority, had a most singular

defence for their country, the land being full of snakes that would do

no harm to the natives even if they trod upon them, but which eagerly

assailed the people of any other nation and destroyed them. Naturally

therefore the Syrians cherished such a valuable protection, though such

a state of things would hardly accord with modern notions of free trade

and the intercourse of nations. The discovery of one wonder frequently

leads to knowledge of others, and Aristotle has a companion story in his

“History of Animals,” of scorpions that in Caria sting to death the

natives of the country, but do no harm to strangers. In like manner,

according to Maundevile, in the island called Silha, wherever that may

be, “the men of that yle seen comonely that the Serpentes and the wilde

Bestes of that Countree nee will not don non harm, ne touchen with

evylle, no strange man that entreth into that Contree, but only to men

that ben born of the same Countree.” This differential treatment seems

distinctly hard on the aborigines.[125]

“It is observable,” quoth the author of the “Miracles of Art and Nature,”

that “in Crete there is bred no Serpents or Venomous Beasts or Worms,

Ravenous or hurtful Creatures, so their Sheep graze very securely without

any Shepheard; yet if a Woman happen to bite a Man anything hard he will

hardly be cured of it,” a statement which brings forth the very natural

conclusion that “if this be true, then the last part of the Priviledge

foregoing (of breeding no hurtful Creature) must needs be false.”

Amongst various familiar country beliefs lasting even to the present day

is the one summed up in the well-known expression, “deaf as an adder.”

It has for centuries been an accepted belief that the adder lays one ear

upon the ground, and closes the other with its tail, and it doubtless has

its origin in that passage in the psalms of David where it states that

“the deaf adder stoppeth her ears, and will not heed the voice of the

charmer, charm he never so wisely,” and we meet with this idea over and

over again in our own literature. Thus Shakespeare writes in King Henry

VI.—

“What! art thou, like the adder, waxen deaf?

Be poisonous too.”

And, again, in his Troilus and Cressida we find the passage—

“Pleasure and revenge have ears more deaf than adders.”

In Orlando Furioso, too, we find an interesting reference to the old

fancy:—

“He flies me now, nor more attends my pain

Than the deaf adder heeds the charmer’s strain.”

Many varieties of serpents were known to the ancients, and some of them,

as the Cerastes, are quite recognizable from the descriptions given, but

of others we have no means of identification. The two-headed Amphisbæna,

for example, that was credited with such venomous malignity that nothing

but twice the normal power of offence sufficed for its deadly attack.

The Amphisbæna was an article of faith with Nicander, who was the first

to introduce it to the scientific world of his name, and it is referred

to by Galen, Pliny, Ælian, and many other ancient writers, who gravely

describe this especially objectionable reptile, “a small kind of serpent

which moveth backward and forward, and hath two heads, one at either

extreme.” The creature is now entirely lost to science.

[Illustration: FIG. 23.]

Aldrovandus, in his history of serpents, gives an illustration of the

basilisk, a serpentine form, but having eight legs, and on its head

a crown. Another of his figures shows us a serpentine form again,

this time with two legs, the moderation in this direction being fully

compensated by the gift of seven heads of human form, while another has

the serpent-like body, but to this are added two legs and feet like those

of a cock, and the creature has six cocks’ heads. All these creatures

are put forth and described in all seriousness, so it is evident that

the author must either himself have been excessively credulous, or that

he must have expected to find his readers so. It is manifest that such

inventions are of the lamest possible type. Nothing could be easier or

more fatuous than to fill a folio volume with serpents having three cats’

heads, five lions’ heads, seven bisons’ heads, or twenty rats’ heads, and

distribute legs in the same liberal and senseless manner. His drawing,

fig. 23, of a two-headed lizard is the nearest approach we can give our

readers to the Amphisbæna.

Burton tells us that in Samogitia, a small province in Poland, the

people nourish amongst them “a kind of four-footed serpents, above three

handfuls in length, which they worship as their household gods, and if

mischance do happen to any of their family, it is imputed presently

to some want of due observations of these ugly creatures.” Some old

writers tell us of hairy serpents, and depict a thing something like the

well-known larva of the tiger-moth, the caterpillar popularly known as

the “woolly bear,” and familiar enough to all dwellers in the country,

the only difference, though that a very serious one, being that the

woolly bear is barely three inches long, while the hairy serpents are

stretched to any number of feet that the credulity of the narrator will

permit.

[Illustration: FIG. 24.]

Fig. 24 is a facsimile from one of the illustrations in Munster’s “de

Africæ regionibus,” and represents the sort of thing that he would have

us believe was to be found in his days in Africa, that great home of the

weird and mysterious. The perspective effect of the coils of the upper

creature, as they recede in the distance towards the horizon, suggests

a terrific length, something far exceeding any of the possibilities of

the present day, but this may be only a slip of draughtmanship, or a

polite desire on the part of the two-headed reptile not to crowd up its

three-headed companion.

The asp, from being freely found in Egypt and other parts of North

Africa, was well known to the naturalists of Greece and Rome, and its

deadly nature fully understood, though the facts are perhaps rather

against them when they assert that they are such affectionate creatures

that they are always found in pairs and cannot live without their mates.

We are told that should one of the pair be killed, this sweet connubial

bliss is exchanged for deadly ferocity and instant revenge. The unhappy

man is closely pursued and relentlessly tracked, and finds no safety

amongst his fellows, as the avenger knows him from all others, and

will not be turned aside. Distance is no object, and difficulties no

hindrance, and all that the luckless individual can do is to take to his

heels with all celerity, and at the earliest opportunity embark in a boat

or swim a river, and thus shake off his relentless pursuer.

Democritus tells us that if we mingle the blood of certain birds together

a serpent will be engendered. Whoso eateth of this serpent shall know the

language of birds, and be able to join in the conversation of any or all

of the great feathered host, singing with the lark, cawing with the rook,

hooting with the owl, and being thoroughly conversant with all that

passes between them.

Maundevile tells us, in his wonderful “Voiage and Travaile,” of an island

where one finds “a kynde of Snayles that ben so grete that many persones

may loggen hem in hur Schelles, as men woulde done in a litylle Hous”—a

sufficiently striking feature in the landscape of that now unknown land.

Snails entered largely into the rustic Materia Medica, and not only

indeed into rural practice but into the most courtly and exclusive

circles, for we find Sir John Floyer, the physician to Charles II.,

prescribing thus for dulness of hearing: “Take a grey snaile, pricke

him, and putt ye water which comes from him into ye eare and stop it

with black woole, and it will cure.” He left behind him a folio volume

of such-like valuable recipes, and the manuscript may yet be seen in the

Cathedral Library at Lichfield. He was a native of that city.

Spiders were also deemed of great remedial value. When a child has

whooping cough, one of the parents should catch a spider and hold it over

the head of the patient, repeating three times, “Spider, as you waste

away, whooping cough no longer stay.” The spider must then be hung up in

a bag over the mantel-piece, and when it has dried up the cough will have

disappeared.[126]

Burton, the author of the “Anatomy of Melancholy,” writes: “Being in

the country in the vacation time, not many years ago, at Lindley in

Leicestershire, my father’s house, I first observed this amulet of a

spider in a nutshell wrapped in silk, so applied for an ague by my

mother. This methought was most absurd and ridiculous. I could see no

warrant for it, till at length, rambling amongst authors, as I often

do, I found this very medicine in Dioscorides, approved by Matthiolus,

and I began to have a better opinion of it, and to give more credit to

amulets when I saw it in some parties answer to experience.” Gerarde,

in his “Historie of Plants,” found that such a remedy, however good

in theory, however supported by ancient authority, would not bear the

strain of actual use. He shall however speak for himself in his own

refreshingly quaint way. “It is needlesse,” he writes, “here to alledge

those things that are added touching the little wormes or magots, found

in the heades of the Teasell,[127] which are to be hanged about the

necke, for they are nothing else but most vaine and trifling toies, as

my selfe haue proved a little before, hauing a most grieuous ague, and

of long continuance: notwithstanding physicke charmes, these wormes

hanged about my necke, spiders put into a nutshell and divers such

foolish toies that I was constrained to take by phantasticke people’s

procurement: notwithstanding, I say, my helpe came from God himselfe, for

these medicines, and all other such things, did me no good at all.” It is

passing strange that such so-called remedies, so easily proved valueless,

should have held their ground for centuries, and are doubtless even now

in the byways of our land as firmly believed in as they were nigh two

thousand years ago. When one of our own family was ailing, a woman in the

little Wiltshire village where we were then staying strongly advised us

to drop some peas down the well as an infallible means of restoration to

health!

Bees were held to be bred out of putrefying carcases, an idea that

doubtless arose in very early times, as we find it referred to by Virgil

and other ancient authors, and the Biblical story of the swarm of bees

found by Sampson in the carcase of the lion that he slew would be held as

confirmation, though anyone reading the story[128] carefully would see

that no such inference could be drawn from it. Many weeks had elapsed

between the slaying of the lion and the discovery of the honey, ample

time for the birds and beasts of prey to have cleared away the flesh, and

for the heat of the sun to have dried up all putrefaction and rendered

the skeleton a sufficiently cleanly and suitable place for the wild bees

to form their combs within. Herodotus tells us that when the Amathusians

revenged themselves on Onesilus, by whom they had been besieged, by

cutting off his head and hanging it over one of their city gates, the

skull presently alone remained, and in this hollow chamber a swarm of

bees settled and filled it with honeycomb.

The fourth Georgic of Virgil, which is devoted to the subject of bees,

gives account of a simple method whereby the race of bees, if diminished

or lost, might be replenished. He speaks of it as an art practised in

Egypt, and it is easy to see that it originated in accounts of bees

swarming in the dead bodies of animals. The process was to kill a young

bullock by stopping up his nostrils, so that the skin should be unbroken

by any wound, and then leaving it for nine days in a position where it

would be undisturbed, when:—

“Behold a prodigy, for from within

The broken bowels and the bloated skin,

A buzzing sound of bees the ear alarms:

Straight issuing through the sides assembling swarms.

Dark as a cloud they make a wheeling flight,

Then on a neighbouring tree descending, light.

Like a large cluster of black grapes they show,

And make a large dependence from the bough.”[129]

In this account we see clearly enough that the belief in the generation

of the bees from the putrefying body is frankly accepted. The author of

the “Speculum Mundi,” hundreds of years after the Georgics were written,

declares that a dead horse breeds wasps, that from the body of an ass

proceed humble bees, while a mule produces hornets. Those who would

have bees must seek them in a dead calf, though he adds the curious

limitation, “if the west winde blow.” He goes on to say “whether the bees

in Samson’s dead lion were bred anywhere else no man knoweth.” As an

Englishman, more familiar with the possibilities of a dead calf than with

those of a dead lion, he declines to commit himself to an opinion as to

what is or is not possible in far distant lands over sea.[130]

The strange association of ideas that we have seen in many other

instances may be well seen again in the notion that if one pounds up

those luminous creatures of the night, glowworms, the result will be an

ink that will render any writing performed by its aid visible in the

dark. Winstanley, in his “Pathway to Knowledge,” gives a simple receipt

for the manufacture of this useful ink, and other writers are content

to copy him, or each other, in the laudable desire to spread abroad the

knowledge of this luminous fluid. One can easily realize that such a

preparation might at times be really very useful.

Turning, in conclusion, our attention to the creatures of sea and stream,

we at once encounter the favourite mediæval theory that all creatures

of the land had their marine counterparts. “There is nothing,” says the

comparatively modern writer, Camden, “bred in any part of Nature, but

the same is in the sea;” while Olaus Magnus affirms that “there be fishes

like to dogs, cows, calves, horses, eagles, dragons, and what not.”

These mysterious denizens of the deep were an unfailing resource in the

romances and poems of the Middle Ages, and an article of faith with the

writers on natural history. On the Assyrian slabs we see the monster

“upward man and downward fish,” while the mermaid we all recognize as a

most familiar instance of the presence of creatures at least semi-human

in the broad and mysterious expanse of ocean. Bœwulf, the Saxon poet,

writes of “the sea-wolf of the abyss, the mighty sea-woman.” The

quotation is not altogether complimentary in its sentiment: no lady of

one’s acquaintance would feel flattered on being addressed as a sea-wolf.

But while a certain halo of romance has in these later days gathered

round the idea of the mermaid, those who really believed in her gave her

credit for deeds considerably more heinous than combing her flowing hair

in the sunlight, since her beauty was a snare and destruction to all who

came within its fatal influence.

Sir Thomas Browne, in his merciless dissection of the vulgar beliefs of

his day, writes, with his accustomed quaintness and equally accustomed

sound common sense, “that all Animals of the Land are in their kinde in

the Sea, although received as a Principle, is a tenet very questionable

and that will admit of restraint. For some in the Sea are not to be

matcht by any enquiry at Land and hold those shapes which terrestrious

formes approach not, as may be observed in the Moonfish and the severall

sorts of Raias, Torpedos, Oysters, and many more, and some there are

in the Land which were never mentioned to be in Sea, as Panthers,

Hyænas, Cammells, Molls, and others, which carry no name in Ichthology,

nor are to be found in the exact descriptions of Rondoletius, Gesner,

and Aldrovandus. Again, though many there be which make out their

nominations, as the Sea-serpents and others, yet there are also very

many that bear the names of Animalls at Land, which hold no resemblance

in corporall configuration, wherein while some are called the Fox, the

Dog, or Frog-fish, and are known by common names with those at Land,

as their describers attest, they receive not these appellations from a

totall similitude in figure, but any concurrence in common accidents,

in colour, condition, or single conformation. As for Sea-Horses, which

much confirm this assertion in their common descriptions, they are but

Grotesco delineations which fill up empty spaces in Maps, and meer

pictoriall inventions, not any Physicall shapes. That which the Ancients

named Hippocampus is a little animall about six inches long, and not

preferred beyond the classis of Insects. That they termed Hippopotamus,

an amphibious animall about the River Nile, so little resembleth an horse

that, except the feet, it better makes out a swine. Although it be not

denied that some in the water doe carry a justifiable resemblance to

some at Land, yet are the major part which bear their names unlike, nor

doe they otherwise resemble the creatures on earth than they on earth

the constellations which passe under Animall names in heaven: nor the

Dogfish at Sea much more make out the Dog of the Land than that his

cognominall or namesake in the heavens.” He then goes on to show that

this belief restrains Omnipotence and abridges the variety of creation,

making the creatures of one element but a counterpart of the other.

[Illustration: FIG. 25.]

This belief in sea-monsters of all kinds was naturally not a chance

that a man like Aldrovandus could miss. He gives his imagination full

scope, or perhaps we should rather say his credulity, as he introduces

these creatures to us as things as real as a rabbit; his sea-monk, for

instance, with tonsured human head, arms replaced by fins, and legs by

fishy tail, being as matter of fact as one’s vicar. Fig. 25 is given by

him in all good faith as the true presentment of a sea-bishop, though

not at all our notion of a bishop in his see. The right hand, it will

be seen, is giving the benediction. The dragon of the deep, shown in

fig. 26, aims at being terrible, but merely succeeds in being feeble.

We cannot but feel that the draughtsman here failed to reach our ideal;

for one has certainly seen, many representations of land-dragons far

more fear-inspiring than this bloated monster with ears like a King

Charles spaniel, and tail like a rat. This illustration is from another

source, the work of Ambrosinus on the same subject, published “permissu

superiorum” in the year 1642. While the book is as quaint and grotesque

as any of its rivals, the skill of the artist has in divers cases not

paralleled the gifts of description of the author.

[Illustration: FIG. 26.]

The “monstrosus sus marinus,” or terrible sow of the sea, or more

especially perhaps of Aldrovandus (fig. 27), will surely fully come up

to everyone’s expectation of what a marine pig should be like. Catching

a weasel asleep should be a comparatively easy task to circumventing sus

marinus; it seems such a peculiarly wide-awake animal. Possibly in the

struggle for existence in the watery depths its toothsome flesh may place

it in jeopardy, and Nature may have bestowed upon it these numerous eyes

to enable it to evade dragons and other foes having a penchant for pork;

a rather unexpected addition to the various better-known examples of that

comfortable doctrine for the well-to-do, the survival of the fittest.

Purchas tells us of a fish called the Angulo or Hog-fish. “It hath,” he

says, “as it were two hands, and a tail like a target, which eateth like

pork, and whereof they make lard, and it hath not the savour or taste of

fish. It feedeth on the grasse that groweth on the banks of the river and

never goeth out; it hath a mouthe like the mozell of an ox, and there be

of them that weigh five hundred pound a piece.” This is found, he tells

us, in the River Congo.

Another of the strange creatures of ocean is shown in fig. 28. It is

somewhat startling to reflect that our ancestors had at least the

expectation that such a monster might at any moment rise alongside their

vessel and address them in the peremptory tones that the figure suggests:

and it must be borne in mind that these illustrations are not a tithe of

the strange imaginings that even this one old book sets forth, though

it is needless to multiply examples from it. We have carefully drawn our

figures in facsimile from the originals, and have naught extenuated, nor

set down aught in malice. They are fairly typical examples of the sort of

thing that is encountered on page after page.[131]

[Illustration: FIG. 27.]

In the excellent book of Rondeletius (doctoris medici et medicinæ in

schola monspeliensi professoris regii), published in the year 1554, on

the subject of marine fishes, the illustrations are full of spirit and

life. Amongst these fish of the ocean we find the sea-bishop, sea-monk,

&c., all over again, and such creatures as the sea-lion, fig. 29; this

latter, except for his scaly hide, has nothing very suggestively aquatic

about him. The book, in addition to such impossibilities, contains

very good and life-like representations of the sun-fish, sturgeon,

hammer-headed shark, ray, and many others.

The author of the “Speculum Mundi” confirms all these wonders, and adds

his quota to the general store. He affirms that, “In the year 1526

there was taken in Norway, neare to a seaport called Elpoch, a certain

fish resembling a mitred bishop, who was kept alive six days after

his taking, and there was, as the author of Du Bartas his summarie

reporteth, one Ferdinand Alvares, Secretarie to the storehouse of the

Indians, who faithfully witnesseth that he had seene not farre off from

the Promontorie of the Moon, a young Sea-man coming out of the Waters,

who stole fishes from the fishermen and ate them raw. Neither is Olaus

Magnus silent on these things, for he also saith there be monsters in the

sea, as it were imitating the shape of a man, having a dolefull kinde of

sounde or singing. There be also sea-men of an absolute proportion in

their whole body; these are sometimes seene to climbe up the ships in

the night times, and suddenly to depresse that part upon which they sit;

and if they abide long the whole ship sinketh. Yea (saithe he), this I

adde from the faithfull assertions of the Norway fishers, that when such

are taken, if they be not presently let go again, there ariseth such

a fierce tempest, with an horrid noise of those kinde of creatures and

other sea-monsters there assembled, that a man would think the verie

heaven were falling, and the vaulted roofe of the world running to ruine,

insomuch that the fishermen have much ado to escape with their lives;

whereupon they confirmed it as a law amongst them that if any chanced

to hang such a fish upon his hook he should suddenly cut the line and

let him go on. But these sudden tempests are very strange, and how they

arise with such violent speed exceeds the bounds of ordinary admiration.

Whereupon it is again supposed that these monsters are verie devils,

and by their power such strange storms are raised. Howbeit for my part

I think otherwise, and do much rather affirm that these storms, in my

judgment, are thus raised, namely, by the thickening and breaking of

the aire; which the snortling, rushing, and howling of these beasts,

assembled in an innumerable companie, causeth. For it is certain that

sounds will break and alter the aire (as I have heard it of a citie freed

from the plague by the thundering noise of cannons), and also I suppose

that the violent rushing of these beasts causeth much water to flie up

and thicken the aire, and by their howling and snortling under the waters

they do blow up, and as it were attenuate the waves, and make them arise

in a thinner substance than at other times; so that Nature, having all

these helps, in an instant worketh to the amazement of the mariners,

and often to the danger of their lives. Besides, shall we think that

spirits use to feed, and will be so foolish as to go and hang themselves

on an hook for a bait? They may have occult properties (as the loadstone

hath) to work strange feats, and yet be neither spirits nor devils; for

experience likewise teacheth that they die sooner or later after their

taking, neither can a spirit have flesh and bones as they have.”

[Illustration: FIG. 28.]

The monsters of the deep are best seen at the times of the equinox, “for

then,” says Pliny, “by the whirlwinds, rains and tempests which rush with

violence from the rugged mountains, the seas are turned up from the very

bottom, and thus the billows roll and raise these beasts out of the deep

parts of the ocean.” It certainly seems a much more reasonable theory

that the storms produce the beasts than that the beasts produce the

storms.

[Illustration: FIG. 29.]

On an antique seal we remember to have seen a sea-elephant, a creature

having the forelegs, tusks, trunk, and great flapping ears of the African

elephant, yet terminating in the body of a fish, and duly furnished with

piscine tail and fins. This outrageous combination would seem to indicate

the limit possible to absurdity in this direction. When the ancient

writers would desire to people the vast unknown of air and sea, their

thoughts naturally turned to those creatures of the land with which

they were more familiar. Hence, the denizens of the air or ocean are not

really creations at all, but adaptations, wings or fins being added to

horses, lions and the like, according to the new element in which they

were to figure. Of these the sea-horses that drew the chariot of Neptune

through the waves, or the winged steed Pegasus, are examples that at once

occur to one’s mind.

The sea-horse according to some authorities is found floating on the ice

between Britain and Norway, and is taken by the whalers for the oil he

contains. He is described as having a head like a horse, and as sometimes

neighing, but his hoofs are said to be cloven like those of a cow, while

his hinder parts are those of a fish. This creature would appear to be

now quite lost to science. The sea-horse naturally suggests the idea of

the sea-unicorn, depicted as of equine form, but having the hinder parts

piscine in character. The horn of the sea-unicorn occasionally brought

home by merchants and mariners was probably the “sword” of the swordfish

or the tusk of the narwhal, as it is often mentioned that it was able

to penetrate the ribs of ships, and later experience has proved that

an encounter between swordfish or narwhal and ships has occasionally

taken place. The tusk of the narwhal is a spiral tapering rod of ivory,

sometimes attaining to the length of eight or ten feet. Purchas mentions

a horn of a sea-unicorn that was presented by Frobisher to his sovereign,

and preserved at Windsor, and the name of this great arctic voyager

naturally suggests that this horn was the tusk of a narwhal, a creature

of the northern seas. One old writer speaks of the horn as a “wreathy

spire,” a description which admirably accords with the narwhal tusk.

The fact once established that there were creatures in the sea with

horns like unicorns, it was at once assumed that they had the horse-like

form assigned to the land-unicorn, and in some of the old authors the

sea-unicorn is represented as of purely equine form, plus the horn.[132]

In a book published in 1639, entitled “A Helpe to Memorie and Discourse,”

we find this question asked, “Whether doth a dead body in a shippe

cause the shippe to sail slower, and if it doe, what is thought to be

the reason thereof?” The answer to the query is that “the shippe is as

insensible of the living as the dead, and as the living make it goe the

faster, so the dead make it not goe the slower; for the dead are no

Rhemoras to alter the course of her passage, though some there be that

thinke so, and that by a kind of mournful sympathy.”[133] The potent

influence of the remora or sucking-fish to arrest the progress of a ship

by merely adhering to its keel is a curious fancy that has been handed on

for centuries. Pliny and many other ancient writers had full belief in

this foe to the mariner, and references to it in much more recent authors

are by no means uncommon. Thus Ben Jonson alludes to it in the lines—

“I say a remora,

For it will stay a ship that’s under sail.”

While Spenser in his “Visions of the World’s Vanity,” writes—

“Looking far forth into the ocean wide,

A goodly ship, with banners bravely dight,

And flag in her top-gallant I espied,

Through the main sea making her merry flight:

Fair blew the wind into her bosom right,

And th’ Heavens looked lovely all the while

That she did seem to dance, as in delight,

And at her own felicity did smile:

All suddenly there clove unto her keel

A little fish that we call remora,

Which stopt her course, and held her by the heel,

That wind nor tide could move her thence away.”

We may indeed be thankful that this mysterious power, worse even than the

more prosaic barnacles and other sea impedimenta that plague the modern

shipowner by fouling the bottom of his good ship, and so retarding her

course, seems to be no longer exercised. The merchantman speeding home

with perishable cargo, the yachtsman burning to carry off the challenge

cup, the great record-breaking Atlantic liner, carrying under heavy

penalty for delay Her Majesty’s mails, would all be terribly hampered

in their several ambitions in presence of so potent yet so apparently

insignificant a foe. Well might Spenser add—

“Strange thing meseemeth that so small a thing

Should able be so great an one to wring.”

One old writer feeling the impossibility of giving a satisfactory

explanation of the marvel is content to say “of which there can be no

more reason given than of the loadstone drawing iron; neither is it

possible to shew the cause of all secrets in Nature,” a statement as true

to-day as the day it was written, though this particular secret of Nature

has in the interval been disestablished.

That the dolphin was the swiftest of all living creatures, more rapid

than a bird, swifter than an arrow shot from a bow, will probably be

an entirely new idea to most of our readers, yet such was the ancient

belief. The dolphin occurs very freely in blazonry, on ancient coinage,

and in classic and renaissance decoration, and it is almost always

represented either as “embowed,” that is to say, bent round like a

bow, such being the significance of the heraldic term, or else it is

introduced with its lithe body coiled gracefully round an anchor or

trident. In either case the representation suggests an easy-going and

leisurely state of affairs that is very different to the picture conjured

up by the arrowy rush of the creature through the waves, as Pliny paints

it for us.[134]

It is a very old belief that the dolphin has an especial fondness for

man. “Of a man he is nothing afraid, neither avoideth from him as a

stranger: but of himselfe meeteth their ships, plaieth and disporteth

himselfe, and fetcheth a thousand friskes, and gambols before them. He

will swimme along by the mariners, as it were for a wager, who should

make way most speedily, and alwaies outgoeth them, saile they with

never so good a forewind.” The representation of the dolphin with the

anchor is not simply a type of maritime supremacy, but is a distinct

illustration of this belief in the dolphin’s kindly regard for man. Thus

Camerarius asserts that “when tempests arise, and sea-men cast their

anchor, the dolphin, from its love to man, twines itself round it, and

directs it, so that it may more safely lay hold of the ground.”

The works of the ancient writers abound with illustrations of the

friendly regard of the dolphin for mankind. Thus in one wonderful story

we have a schoolboy, the son of a poor man, who had to travel each day

from Baianum to Puteoli, who used at the water’s edge to call a dolphin

to his aid. The dolphin would at once respond to the call, and the boy

used to mount upon his back and be taken across the sea, and be brought

back again at night. This went on for some years, and at last, when the

boy fell sick and died, his constitution probably not being able to stand

the constant wetting and exposure, the dolphin was inconsolable, and

promptly died of a broken heart. In another story, equally veracious,

the rider was so unfortunate as to pierce himself with one of the sharp

spines of the dorsal fin, and an artery being severed, he bled to death.

The dolphin, seeing the water stained with blood, and finding that his

rider did not sit on his back in the light and active way that had

been his wont, concluded that some catastrophe had happened, and when

he realized the full truth, resolved not to outlive him whom he had

affectionately loved, and therefore ran himself with all his might upon

the shore, and so perished. Pliny, Mecænas, Fabianus, Flavius Alfius,

Ælian, Aulus Gellius, Apion, Egesidemus, Theophrastus, and many other old

writers, all give equally surprising illustrations of this wonderful love

of the dolphin for mankind.

The dolphin is also a great lover of music, and equally wonderful stories

are told in illustration of this taste also. Another well-known belief in

connection with it is the imaginary brilliancy of its changeful colours

when dying. The idea has been a favourite one with poets in all ages:

an example from Byron’s “Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage” will suffice as an

illustration:—

“Parting day

Dies like the dolphin, whom each pang imbues

With a new colour as it gasps away;

The last still loveliest, till ’tis gone, and all is gray.”

Another strange fish believed in by our forefathers was the Acipenser,

“a fish of an unnatural making and quality,” as an old writer terms him;

and indeed he may very well do so, as we are told that “his scales are

all turned towards his head.” We are not therefore much surprised to

learn that “he ever swimmeth against the stream,” though we might well be

more astonished if we ever found him swimming at all.

The amiable dolphin stands not alone in its friendship with man. The ray

too, if we may believe a mediæval authority, is “a loving fish to man:

for swimming in the waters, and being greedily pursued by the devouring

Sea-dogs, the Ray defends him, and will not leave him untill he be out

of danger.” Sometimes the friendship is with some other creature; thus

Porta gives an unfailing recipe for catching a sargon, whatever that

may be, by taking advantage of this kindly trait in its character. “The

Sargi,” he declares, “love Goats unmeasurably: and they are so mad after

them that when so much as the shadow of a Goat that feeds neer the shore

shall appear neer unto them they presently leap for joy and swim to it

in haste, and they imitate the goats, though they are not fit to leap,

and thus they delight to come unto them. They are, therefore, catcht by

those things that they so much desire. Whereupon the Fisher, putting on

a Goat’s skin with the horns, lies in wait for them, having the Sunne

behind his back and paste made wet with the decoction of Goat’s flesh:

this he casts into the Sea where the Sargi are to come: and they, as

if they were charmed, run to it, and are much delighted with the sight

of the Goat’s skin and feed on the paste. Thus the Fishermen catcheth

abundance of them.” Porta gives no suggestion that this affection is

reciprocal.

Another mediæval writer has a still more extraordinary story of the

kind, and in this case it is pleasant to know that the loving feeling

is mutual. “Amongst the severall sort of shell fishes,” saith he, “the

glistering Pearl-fish deserves remembrance, not only in respect of

herself but also in regard of the Prawn, another fish and her companion:

for between these two there is a most firm league of friendship, much

kindnesse, and such familiaritie as cannot but breed admiration in the

reader. They have a subtill kinde of hunting, which being ended, they

divide their prey in loving manner: for seeing they one help the other

in the getting of it, they likewise joyn in the equall sharing. And, in

few words, thus it is—when the Pearl-fish gapeth wide, she hath a curious

glistering within her shell, by which she allureth her small fry to come

swimming unto her: which when her companion the Prawn perceiveth, he

gives her a secret touch with one of his prickles, wherupon she shuts her

gaping shell, and so incloseth her wished prey: then (as I said) they

equally share them out and feed themselves. And thus, day by day, they

get their livings, like a combined knot of cheaters, who have no other

trade than the cunning deceit of quaint consenage: hooking in the simpler

sort with such subtill tricks, that be their purses stuft with either

more or less, they know a way to sound the bottome and send them lighter

home: lighter in purse, though heavier in heart.” The moral seems

perhaps needlessly severe, and we trust that henceforth our readers,

after reading this romance of the deep, will have a kindlier feeling for

these faithful friends, the artful oyster and the watchful prawn. The

only drawback to the sentiment of the thing seems to be that this loving

alliance has a somewhat low motive as its basis. One at least of the

partners is capable of a more tender passion, as we have the authority of

Sheridan for saying that an oyster may be crossed in love.

Olaus Magnus gives an awful example of voracity in the swam-fish, one

of the most greedy cravens of the denizens of the sea, and cites many

stories of it that amply justify the bad character bestowed on it.

Another old writer affirms that when danger threatens “he will so winde

up himselfe and cover his head with the skinne and substance of his own

body that he is then bent like unto a piece of dead fish, and nothing

like himself.” The plan however appears to have its drawbacks, as the

venerable and veracious author goes on to say that this feat “he seldome

doth without hurt or damage, for still fearing that there be those about

him who will prey upon him and devoure him, he is compelled for lack of

meat to feed upon the substance of his own body, choosing rather to be

devoured in part than to be consumed by other more strong and powerful

fishes”—at best a most painful alternative.

In the account of the Creation the forming of the whale is specially

dwelt upon: “And God created great whales and every living creature that

moveth, which the waters brought forth abundantly after their kind.”

Luther, commenting on this, says that the creation of whales is specified

by name, lest affrighted with their greatness we should believe them to

be only visions or fancies. Though later commentators have decided that

the leviathan of the Bible is the crocodile, it was long held to be the

whale. Milton, in the first book of the “Paradise Lost,” writes of that

sea beast—

“Leviathan, which God of all his works

Created hugest that swim the ocean stream,”

and the Jews had a legend that the first whales were so immense in bulk,

so formidable in attack, so voracious, that there was considerable risk

of their overtoppling the rest of creation; so while as yet there were

but two of them in existence, one was destroyed in order that the race

might not be continued and the general balance of Nature upset.

Our ancestors found apt moral against the scornful in the reason assigned

for the mouth of the flounder being on one side. It appears that at one

time the flounder’s mouth was as fair to see as any other, but that it

lost all its beauty through contemptuous flouting of the herring, and it

has borne this evil mark of its jealousy ever since, and will probably

so bear it to the end of time. At the vague date known as once upon a

time we are told that all the fishes of the sea assembled to choose a

king, and that the herring was elected to this dignified position. The

flounder, on account of his red spots and other features that were

evidently more appreciated by himself than by the main body of electors,

had strong hope that he should himself be chosen, and the unlovely

grimace with which he saluted his sovereign was, as a judgment upon him,

made a fixture for all time as a punishment to himself and a warning to

others.

The tench was commonly called the physician, for it was believed by our

forefathers that when the other fish were in any way hurt and required

the aid of surgeon or physician, they healed themselves by rubbing

against the tench, finding the slime of his body to be a “soveraigne

salve” for their needs. For the sufferings of humanity the beasts,

birds, and plants appear to have supplied a sufficient materia medica,

and the less accessible creatures of the waters were but rarely pressed

into the mediæval pharmacopœia. The blood of the eel was rubbed upon

unwelcome warts, and a cruel remedy for bad eyes, the cruelty being, as

we have seen over and over again in those old remedies, by no means an

exceptional feature, was to capture a crab alive, cut out its eyes and

then let it go.[135] The eyes were then bound upon the neck of the man,

woman, or child, and a satisfactory result was speedily anticipated,

though very possibly not so speedily forthcoming.

The Cuttle fish is scarcely one’s ideal of beauty, yet it is by its

vanity and belief in its personal attractions that it is most readily

captured. Porta tells us that pieces of looking glass are let down by

the fishermen into the waters, and that the Cuttle seeing his image

reflected, clasps the glass around, and while he is still enamoured

with the reflection of his charms is drawn to the surface by the wily

fishermen. In the “Pathway to Knowledge,” published in the year 1685,

we are told that if we take the juice of Nettles and Houseleek, and

anoint our hands therewith, the fish will gather round and “you may take

them out at your pleasure.” This seems almost as simple a method as the

catching of birds by placing a pinch of salt on their tails.

If we may credit Maundevile, and the “if” is a most important point, in

one favoured land instead of the people going for the fish, the fish come

to the people. In a certain isle, or we may perhaps more truthfully say

an uncertain isle, called Calonak, many wonderful things were to be seen,

but one of these he especially, and very justly, calls “a gret Marvayle,”

and when he goes on to add that “it is more to speke of than in ony

partie of the World,” one is loath to gainsay his opinion. He tells us

that “alle manere of Fissches that ther ben in the See abouten hem, comen

ones in the Yeer, eche manere of dyverse Fissches, one maner of kynde

aftre another; and thei casten hem selfe to the See Banke of that Yle in

so gret plentee and multitude that no man may see but Fissche, and ther

thei abyden thre dayes, and euerie man of the Countree takethe of hem als

many as him lykethe, and that maner of Fissche aftre the thridde day

departeth and gothe in to the See. And aftre hem comen another multitude

of Fissches of anothre kynde and don in the same maner as the firste

diden othre three dayes. And aftre hem another, tille alle the dyverse

maner of Fissches have ben there, and that men have taken of hem that hem

lykethe. And no man knowethe the cause wherfore it may ben. But thei of

the Contree seyn that it is for to do reverence to here Kyng, that is the

most worthi Kyng that is in the World, as thei seyn.” The reason assigned

for the king’s special worthiness is a somewhat peculiar one, and though

it is duly set forth at full length by the old author, other times have

brought other manners and ideas, and one can scarcely insert in a book of

the present day many things, and this amongst them, that were set forth

in the greatest simplicity and directness of language in books of earlier

date.

At all events this “most worthie Kyng” was so far under the special

care of Providence that “God sendethe him so the Fissches of dyverse

kyndes, of all that ben in the See, to be taken at his wille, for him

and alle his peple. And therfore all the Fissches of the See comen to

make him homage as the most noble and excellent Kyng of the World, and

that is best beloved of God as thei seyn.” Well may Maundevile say, as he

realized the idea of the various finny tribes of Ocean thus sacrificing

themselves in so orderly a sequence, that “this me semethe is the most

merveylle that evere I saughe. For this mervaylle is agenst kynde, that

the Fissches that have fredom to environe all the Costes of the See at

here owne list comen of hire owne wille to profren hem to the dethe with

outen constreynynge of man.” It must have been an immense convenience to

have known thus readily what was in season, and even if in this Hobson’s

choice of diet one did not happen to be very partial to plaice or conger,

there was always the happy knowledge that next Tuesday or possibly

Thursday week, soles or turbot would be “in.” We may conclude that a

fresh series of herrings, mackerel, or whatever they might be, would

come ashore on each one of the three days that they were due, or by the

termination of that period they would certainly all be smelt.

After this great marvel the cruel pontarf that beguiled children away

to sport with them and finally to eat them, the silurus that at the

rising of the dog-star is struck insensible, the dead crabs that turn

to scorpions, the eels that rub themselves against stones, and, in so

doing, scrape off fragments that come to life, and are the only cause

and means of their increase, the fish that swim in the boiling water

of some tropical stream that is now unknown, all sink as wonders into

insignificance.

The whole world has now been so ransacked that there is little room in

these times for the imagination to play; but in mediæval days travellers

brought back such wonderful stories, some of them true, and others,

perhaps, a little wanting in that respect, of the things that they had

seen, that almost anything seemed a possibility. Of this our present

pages may be considered some little indication, though it will be

abundantly evident that we have not used up one hundredth part of the

great store of folk-lore and ancient and mediæval science that is open to

investigation.

[Illustration]

FOOTNOTES

[1] The title pages of these old books should by no means be overlooked,

as they are often full of interest and meaning. In the one before us

we have at the top the Hebrew name for Jehovah within an equilateral

triangle, and this again within a circle of rays. On one side is the sun

shining in full splendour, on the other the moon and stars. From the

triangle issues a narrow track that broadens as it goes, and finally

returns to the triangle, its point of emergence being marked Alpha and

the point of re-entry Omega. In the centre of this track is the world

being rolled along by the foot of Time. On one side is a sitting figure,

Theologia, book on knee, and having the tables of the law in one hand,

and in the other a lantern, and on the other we find “Philosophia” with

globe and compasses.

[2] The titles of many of these old books are sufficiently quaint and

striking. Sometimes a spade is called a spade with the most startling

directness; while at others the title is a mystical conceit that needs

interpretation. The following are some few that we have come across:—“The

flaming sword of Justice unsheathed,” “Matches lighted at the Divine

Fire,” “The shop of the Spiritual Apothecary,” “The Scraper of Vanity,

a Spiritual Pillow necessary to exterpate Vice and to plant Virtue.”

There would appear to be here some little confusion of metaphor: anyone

desiring to plant anything would scarcely find a pillow a serviceable

tool for the purpose.

[3] Culver is derived from the Anglo-Saxon culfre, a pigeon. The Culver

cliffs in the Isle of Wight are so called from the great numbers of wild

pigeons that nest there, while the Columbine, Lat. Columba, a pigeon, so

named from the resemblance of its flowers to a ring of birds, is also

known as the Culverwort.

[4] Thus we find a Strasburg copy dated 1484; Bologna, 1488; Venice,

1491; Florence, 1492; Antwerp, 1494; Venice again, 1496; Milan, 1497;

another Bologna edition, 1497; and so on.

[5] The Emperor Titus Vespasian, to whom the book was dedicated.

[6] “I conceive it,” he says, “to be courteous, and to indicate an

ingenious modesty, to acknowledge the source whence we have derived

assistance, and not act as most of those have done whom I have

examined. For I must inform you that in consulting various authors I

have discovered that some of the most grave and of the latest writers,

have transcribed word for word, from former works without making any

acknowledgment.”

[7] He only used one pen throughout, a circumstance which he deemed

sufficiently remarkable to be celebrated in these lines which are

prefixed to his book:—

“With one sole pen I wrote this book,

Made of a grey goose quill.

A pen it was when I it took,

A pen I leave it still.”

[8] “I would rather be a poor man in a garret with plenty of books than

a king who did not love reading.”—_Macaulay._ Sir John Herschell in like

manner tells us—“Were I to pay for a taste that should stand me in stead

under every variety of circumstances, and be a source of happiness and

cheerfulness to me during life, and a shield against its ills, however

things might go amiss and the world frown upon me, it would be a taste

for reading. Give a man this taste and the means of gratifying it, and

you can hardly fail of making him a happy man; unless, indeed, you put

into his hands a most perverse selection of books. You place him in

contact with the best society in every period of history—with the wisest,

the wittiest, the tenderest, the bravest, and the purest characters

who have adorned humanity. You make him a denizen of all nations, a

contemporary of all ages. The world has been created for him.” But we

must bear in mind, while we subscribe to the dictum of Carlyle, “Of

all things which men do or make here below, by far the most momentous,

wonderful, and worthy are the things we call books,” the wise line of

Shakespeare: “Learning is but an adjunct to oneself,” lest haply we be

classed with “the bookful blockhead” of Pope—ignorantly read, “with loads

of learned lumber in his head.”

[9] There are separate maps for the leading countries, giving towns,

rivers, forests, mountains, and other features. The towns are not only

named, but have actual buildings represented. We notice that in the map

of Germany “Holand” and “Flandria” are at the bottom right-hand corner,

but this arises from the reversal of the whole thing, the north being at

the bottom of the page instead of the top. It is as Germany would look

if we imagine the point of view in Southern Denmark. Italy in the same

way shows Venice at the bottom of the map and Sicily at the top. In the

description of Spain the so-called pillars of Hercules are treated as two

actual pillars and in the illustration look very like two pawns from a

set of chessmen.

[10] His accounts were at the time considered so incredible, that the

Venetians gave him the _sobriquet_ of “Millioni,” from the frequent

recurrence of millions in his statements; and amongst other traducers

Herbert says that “Geographers have filled their maps and globes with

the names of Tenduc, Tangutt, Tamfur, Cando, Camul, and other hobgobling

words obtruded upon the World by those three arrant Monks, Haython,

Marc Parc the Venetian, and Vartoman, who fearing no imputations make

strange discoveries as well as descriptions of places.” This from the

sea-monsterist of the Azores!

[11] Ferdinand Mendez Pinto was a celebrated Portuguese navigator, who

published a description of his travels of so marvellous a nature that

his name became a synonym for extravagant fiction. We meet with him,

for instance, in Congreve’s play of “Love for Love,” where the passage

occurs: “Ferdinand Mendez Pinto was but a type of thee, thou liar of the

first magnitude.”

[12] “Beefe is a good meate for an Englysshe man, so be it the beest be

yonge, and that it be not kowe-flesshe: for olde beefe and kowe-flesshe

doth ingender melancholye and leperouse humoures. Yf it be moderatly

powderyd, that the groose blode by salte may be exhaustyd it doth make an

Englysshe man stronge.”—_Andrew Boorde’s “Dyetary.”_

[13] There can be little question but that the ancient fictions of

satyrs, cynocephali and other supposed monstrous forms of humanity arose

in vague accounts of different species of apes.

[14]

“Marking the tracts of air, the clamorous cranes

Wheel their due flight in varied ranks descried;

And each with outstretched neck his rank maintains

In marshalled order through the ethereal void.”

[15] The word is spelt sometimes as pigmy, and at others as pygmy; the

latter is the more correct, as the word is from the Greek name for them,

the pygmaioi.

[16] These great anthropoid apes are found in the forests that extend

southward for a thousand miles or so from the gulf of Guinea. The gorilla

is not found beyond this limit.

[17] Burton probably got this notion from Megasthenes, an old writer who,

not to be outdone in the introduction of the marvellous, tells us of a

nation in the extreme East of India that are wholly mouthless, and that

live only by the smells that they draw in at their nostrils, partaking

of no food whatever, but flourishing on the pleasant odours given off by

various roots, blossoms, and fruits that they are careful to carry about

with them when travelling. Unfortunately, if the scent be too strong

it deprives them of life and they die as effectually of a surfeit of

good things as the famous British sovereign who overdid his devotion to

lamprey stew.

[18] These doubtless would be some of the larger apes, that, sufficiently

human in general form to suggest the notion of a man, drop upon their

fore-paws and travel across the open spaces of the forest as quadrupeds.

[19]

“Who would believe that there were mountaineers,

Dewlapped like bulls, whose throats had hanging at them

Wallets of flesh? Or that there were such men

Whose heads stood in their breasts?”

GONZALE _in the “Tempest.”_

[20] Robertson, in his “History of America,” Vol. II., p. 525, says of

the Spaniards, “that they and their horses were objects of the greatest

astonishment to all the people of New Spain. At first they imagined

the horse and his rider, like the centaurs of the ancients, to be some

monstrous animal of a terrible form. Even after they had discovered the

mistake they believed the horses devoured men in battle, and when they

neighed, thought that they were demanding their prey.”

[21] In the “Eastern Travels of John of Hesse,” amongst perils of voyage,

we read:—“We came to a stony mountain, where we heard syrens singing,

meermaids who draw ships into danger by their songs. We saw there many

horrible monsters and were in great fear.”

[22] As the old adage hath it:—

“When that the ass begins to bray,

Be sure we shall have rain that day.”

[23]

“A maiden strangely fair, but strangely formed,

Rises from out the pool, and by her songs

And heavenly beauty lures to shameful death

The luckless wight who hears her melodies.”—_Kirke._

[24] Allusive to Mary Queen of Scots and to the Duke of Norfolk, and the

Earls of Westmoreland and Northumberland, who fell from their allegiance

to Elizabeth by the witchery of Mary. She was celebrated for the melody

of her singing. The reference to the dolphin alludes to her marriage with

the Dauphin of France.

[25] See some good figures, too, in the “Book of Emblems” of Alciatus,

1551.

[26] A writer in the _Gentleman’s Magazine_, in the year 1771, says of

Browne’s book on “Vulgar Errors,” “Of all the books recommended to our

youth after their academical studies, I do not know a better than this

of Sir Thomas’s to excite their curiosity, to put them upon thinking

and inquiring, and to guard them against taking anything upon trust

from opinion and authority. His language has, indeed, a little air of

affectation which is apt to disgust young persons, and it would be doing

a very great service to that class if some gentlemen of learning would

take the pains to smooth and adapt it a little more to modern ears,”—a

comment which we do not at all endorse, as the individual style of the

old writer has a quaint charm of its own.

[27] “There is scarce any tradition or popular error but stands also

delivered by some good authors, who though excellent and usefull,

yet being merely transcriptive, or following common relations, their

accounts are not to be swallowed at large, or entertained without

a prudent circumspection. In whome the _ipse dixit_, though it be

no powerfull argument in any, is yet lesse authentick than in many

others, because they deliver not their own experiences, but others’

affirmations.”—_Browne._

[28] “Dagon his name, sea-monster, upward man, and downward,

fish.”—_Milton._

[29] A very similar figure may be seen amongst the designs of the mosaic

pavements at the Roman villa discovered at Brading.

[30] Agriopas tells a gruesome story of a man who, at the sacrifice of

a human being to the gods, surreptitiously tasted a piece of the flesh

and was turned into a wolf. Whether as a punishment for his cannibalism,

or because by abstracting a portion of the victim he was sacrilegiously

robbing the altar, we are not informed.

[31] Such hallucinations are often very contagious. A nun in a large

convent got the idea into her head that she was a cat, and began to

mew. Shortly afterwards other nuns also mewed, until at last the great

majority of them were mewing for hours at a time. The matter got to the

ears of the town authorities, and on the removal of the monomaniac and

the promise of a good whipping to anyone who mewed again, the concert at

once died out.

[32] “There is a book, De Mirabilibus narrationibus, written by

Antigonus, another also of the same title by Trallianus, which make good

the promise of their titles, and may be read with caution, which if any

man shall likewise observe in the Lecture of Philostratus, or not only

in ancient Writers but shall carry a wary eye on Paulus Venetus, Olaus

Magnus, and many another, I think his circumspection laudable, and he may

hereby decline occasion of Error.”—_Browne._

[33] The first edition of Scot’s book was published in the year 1584.

[34] “The Lion is not so fierce as painted.”—_Thos. Fuller._

“The Lion is not so fierce as they paint him.”—_Herbert._

[35] “A lion being sick of a quartane Ague eats and devours Apes,

and so is healed; hence we know that Apes’ blood is good against an

ague.”—_Porta._

[36] A much later writer, Porta, includes some strange animals in his

treatise: thus the leopard is the offspring, according to him, of the

panther and lioness: the crocuta of the hyæna and lioness; the thoes of

the panther and the wolf; the jumar of the bull and ass; the musinus

of the goat and ram; the cinirus of the he-goat and ewe. The figures

of-these are sufficiently curious.

[37] “However erroneous it may now be considered, the theory of creation

held during the Middle Ages, was both beautiful and noble, and in a

fairly accurate manner may be summarized as follows: On the fall of the

tenth legion of the citizens of heaven, God resolved to create man to

take the place of the fallen angels. He evolved this world for the home

of the new creation, and all things that He then made. The celestial

bodies, the vegetable and animal kingdoms were formed solely and entirely

for man alone, as the centre round which the whole of creation revolved.

There was no idea then that the world in which man was placed formed

only one of many such inhabited homes, and that our sphere was simply an

insignificant fragment of a vast universe. The celestial bodies, it was

held, were created not only to give light and heat to generate metals and

precious stones, but to govern the affairs of men, and enable them to

foretell events. The vegetable kingdom was to furnish food and medicine

not only for man’s body but likewise for his mind. Lastly, the animal

creation provided him with servants, with food for his bodily wants, and

with moral lessons and examples for those of his soul. This I venture to

advance as a tolerably accurate summary of the theory of creation held

during the Middle Ages and until nearly the close of the seventeenth

century, and, if correct, it will appear from it that each part of

creation was viewed not only in an outward and material manner, but also

in an interior and spiritual one.”—_André._

[38] “De leonibus, quaram copia est in Africa.” The illustration is a

facsimile of the one given in this section of Munster’s book.

[39] Bussy D’Amboise, 1607, writes—

“An angry unicorne in his full career

Charged with too swift a foot a jeweller

That watch’d him for the treasure of his brow,

And ere he could get shelter of a tree

Nail’d him with his rich antler to the earth.”

[40] Ctesias says that its flesh is so bitter that it cannot be eaten.

[41] “Topsell nameth two kingdomes in India (the one called Niem, the

other Lamber), which he likewise stored with them.”—_Speculum Mundi._

[42] As for example: Bacci’s book “Discorso dell’ Alicorno,” published

at Florence in 1573, and the “De Unicornu Observationes novæ” of Thomas

Bartholinus, bearing date 1645. Caspar Bartholinus had already, in

1628, written “De Unicornu ejusque affinibus.” Then we have Bereus’ “De

Monoceroti,” 11667; Catelan’s “Histoire de la Licorne,” 1624; Frenzel,

“De Unicornu,” 1675; Stolbergk’s “Exercitatio de Unicornu,” 1652; Sachs’

“Monocerologia,” 1676; and the “Notice en refutation de la non-existence

de la Licorne” of Laterrade, bearing the very recent date of 1826.

[43] Mutianus tells us that when the moon is on the wane the monkeys are

sad, but that they adore the new moon with liveliest manifestations of

delight.

[44] “When trauaylers are out of their way the Oliphaunt will do all

that hee can by familiar tokens to bring them in again. He is of much

vertue and verie seruiceable with loue towardes man.”—_Legh._ “Even

the wilde ones living in deserts will direct and defend strangers and

travellers. For if an Elephant shall finde a man wandering in his way,

first of all that he may not be affrighted, the Elephant goeth a little

wide out of the path and standeth still, then by little and little going

before him, he shews him the way; and if a Dragon chance to meet this

man thus travelling, the Elephant then opposeth himself to the Dragon

and powerfully defendeth the helplesse man who is not able to defend

himself.”—_Speculum Mundi._

[45] “And to the end they might provoke the elephants to fight they

shewed them the blood of grapes and mulberries.”—1 _Maccabees_ vi. 34.

“And upon the beasts there were strong towers of wood, which covered

every one of them, and were girt fast unto them with devices; there were

also upon every one two and thirty strong men that fought upon them,

besides the Indian that ruled him.”—1 _Macc._ vi. 37.

[46] Miss Cobbe, in discussing the moral difference between the

creatures of Fancy and those of Nature, remarks very truly that “the

instincts which man has lent to the offspring of his imagination are

infinitely worse and lower than those which are to be found in real

eagles and tigers, which slay and eat their natural prey to satisfy

their hunger, and there make an end. But the perfidious and cruel

Sphinxes, and Harpies, and Gorgons, and Gnomes, and Dragons, do mischief

for mischief’s sake, and are altogether merciless. The brutes of Fancy

are merely brutal, with a spice of human malignity superadded. Man has

created filthy Harpies, and relentless Hydras, and subtle and vindictive

Sphinxes, but he has never, even in thought, created such an animal as

the sagacious and friendly elephant, the kindly-natured horse, or the

affectionate dog.”

[47] The panther was one of the beasts that was brought in great

numbers to Rome. Pompey, for instance, exhibited to the citizens over

four hundred of them on one occasion. The beast is figured in mosaic

pavements, in the fresco paintings of Pompeii, &c., and was evidently so

well under observation that it is remarkable how such erroneous ideas

concerning it could have become current or stood their ground as articles

of belief even for a day.

[48] At a state banquet given by Gaston the Fifth we read that “there was

brought in (for an enter-course) the shape of a beast called a Tiger,

which by cunning art disgorged fire from his mouth and nostrils.”

[49] It is dated 1658. The author was a Neapolitan.

[50] The “Natural Magick” is divided into what is called twenty Books,

equivalent really to chapters, and they receive various headings

according to their contents, but the twentieth Porta calls “Chaos,” and

he explains it by saying: “I determined from the beginning of my Book

to unite Experiments that are contained in all Natural Sciences, but by

my business that called me off, my mind was hindered, so that I could

not accomplish what I attended. Since, therefore, I could not do what

I would, I must be willing to do what I can. Therefore, I shut up in

this Book those Experiments that could be included in no Classes, which

were so diverse and various that they could not make up a Science or a

Book; and, therefore, I have here them altogether confusedly as what I

had over-passed, and, if God please, I will another time give you a more

perfect Book. Now you must rest content with these.”

[51] We see this notion so lately as in a book entitled “An English

Expositour,” issued in 1680 by John Hayes, Printer to the University of

Cambridge.

[52] The northern peoples believed also in an enormous wolf, called

Fernris, who was the offspring of Loki, the evil principle. This creature

until the end of the world would be the cause of unnumbered ills to

humanity, but at the crack of doom would, after a fearful struggle, be

vanquished by the Gods, and a reign of universal peace would succeed his

overthrow.

[53] “Wherefore, studious Readers, accept my long Labours, that cost me

much Study, Travel, Expense, and much Inconvenience, with the same Mind

that I publish them; and remove all Blindness and Malice, which are wont

to dazle the sight of the Minde, and hinder the Truth; weigh these Things

with a right Judgement when you try what I have Written, for finding both

Truth and Profit, you will (it may be) think better of my Pains.”—_End of

the Preface to Porta’s “Natural Magick.”_

[54] In Dryden’s poem, “The Hind and Panther,” we find the reference:—

“The bloody bear, an independent beast,

Unlick’d to form, in groans her hate expressed.”

[55] The scientific name of the hare is _Lepus timidus_. Dryden, in the

“Hind and Panther,” places “amongst the timerous kind the quaking hare.”

[56] Magliabechi, the learned librarian, pinned his faith upon treacle to

make his memory retentive. Grataroli, a famous physician of the sixteenth

century, wrote a Latin treatise, “The Castle of Memory,” wherein, amongst

an enormous number of recipes, we find the internal application of bear’s

grease, a hazelnutful of mole’s fat, and calcined human hair, strongly

recommended by the learned author.

[57] It was held by our ancestors that freckles came in the early part

of the year when the birds were laying their eggs, and that the same

mysterious influence of Nature that spotted the eggs of the chaffinch,

wren, robin, thrush, and other birds, freckled the human skin.

[58] In another popular remedy for “fitts” one has to “take the furr of a

living Bear’s belly, boil it in Aqua Vitæ, take it out, squeeze it, and

wrap it upon ye soales of ye Feete.”

[59] A mole skinned, dried in the oven, and then powdered, was held in

the fen districts to be a specific for ague. It may still be in vogue—it

certainly was in use twenty years ago. The mole must be a male. As much

of the powder as would lie on a shilling was to be taken every day, for

nine days, in gin. Nine days were then to be omitted, and then the remedy

was to be resumed for nine days, by which time a cure was supposed to be

effected.

[60] The “Lusiad”; Camoens.

[61] Published therefore in the reign of Charles II., “Our most undoubted

and lawful King.” We have most of us formed an opinion on the character

of this wearer of the spotless ermine; and the fulsome verse of

Winstanley, written, not when the reign was commencing and the national

hopes were high, but as it neared its end, is somewhat startling:—

“Long may he live who now doth wear the Crown

To tread all Heresies and Schismes down.

Great God, let not his prayers e’er return empty,

But Crown his Head with Years and Years with plenty.”

[62] Gay’s Fables.

[63] “In the Rabbinical book it saith the dogs howl when with icy

breath Great Sammael, the Angel of Death, takes through the town his

flight.”—LONGFELLOW, _Golden Legend_.

[64] The butter made from the milk of a cow fed in a churchyard was held

to be a potent remedy for consumption.

[65] As this led to vigorous protests from the cat, and very possibly a

good scratching, a gold ring or coin was often substituted, and found to

be equally beneficial.

[66] “It is also watchful, dextrous, swift, pliable, and has such good

nerves that if it falls from never so high it still lights upon its feet,

and therefore may denote those that have so much foresight that whatever

befalls them they are still upon their guard.”—_Coats_, A.D. 1747.

[67] The skin of the cat is the only portion of the animal that can be

turned to any use. According to mediæval belief, Satan once thought he

could make a man, but only succeeded in turning out a skinless cat. St.

Peter, filled with compassion for the miserable object, bestowed on it a

fur coat, its only valuable possession, and a queer-tempered beast it has

turned out.

[68] He does not specify what dogs—

“Mastiff, greyhound, mongrel, grim,

Hound, or spaniel, black, or lym,

Or bob-tail tike, or trundle tail,”