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ZOOLOGICAL MYTHOLOGY
OR
THE LEGENDS OF ANIMALS
BY
ANGELO DE GUBERNATIS
PROFESSOR OF SANSKRIT AND COMPARATIVE LITERATURE IN THE ISTITUTO DI
STUDII SUPERIORI E DI PERFEZIONAMENTO, AT FLORENCE
FOREIGN MEMBER OF THE ROYAL INSTITUTE OF PHILOLOGY AND ETHNOGRAPHY
OF THE DUTCH INDIES
_IN TWO VOLUMES_
VOL. II.
LONDON
TRÜBNER & CO., 60 PATERNOSTER ROW
1872
[_All rights reserved_]
CONTENTS.
PAGE
Part First.
THE ANIMALS OF THE EARTH.
(_Continued._)
CHAPTER V.
THE HOG, THE WILD BOAR, AND THE HEDGEHOG, 1
CHAPTER VI.
THE DOG, 17
CHAPTER VII.
THE CAT, THE WEASEL, THE MOUSE, THE MOLE, THE SNAIL,
THE ICHNEUMON, THE SCORPION, THE ANT, THE LOCUST, AND
THE GRASSHOPPER, 41
CHAPTER VIII.
THE HARE, THE RABBIT, THE ERMINE, AND THE BEAVER, 76
CHAPTER IX.
THE ANTELOPE, THE STAG, THE DEER, AND THE GAZELLE, 83
CHAPTER X.
THE ELEPHANT, 91
CHAPTER XI.
THE MONKEY AND THE BEAR, 96
CHAPTER XII.
THE FOX, THE JACKAL, AND THE WOLF, 121
CHAPTER XIII.
THE LION, THE TIGER, THE LEOPARD, THE PANTHER, AND THE
CHAMELEON, 153
CHAPTER XIV.
THE SPIDER, 162
Part Second.
THE ANIMALS OF THE AIR.
CHAPTER I.
BIRDS, 167
CHAPTER II.
THE HAWK, THE EAGLE, THE VULTURE, THE PHOENIX, THE
HARPY, THE STRIX, THE BAT, THE GRIFFON, AND THE SIREN, 180
CHAPTER III.
THE WREN, THE BEETLE, AND THE FIREFLY, 207
CHAPTER IV.
THE BEE, THE WASP, THE FLY, THE GNAT, THE MOSQUITO, THE
HORSEFLY, AND THE CICADA, 215
CHAPTER V.
THE CUCKOO, THE HERON, THE HEATHCOCK, THE PARTRIDGE,
THE NIGHTINGALE, THE SWALLOW, THE SPARROW, AND THE HOOPOE, 225
CHAPTER VI.
THE OWL, THE CROW, THE MAGPIE, AND THE STORK, 243
CHAPTER VII.
THE WOODPECKER AND THE MARTIN, 264
CHAPTER VIII.
THE LARK AND THE QUAIL, 273
CHAPTER IX.
THE COCK AND THE HEN, 279
CHAPTER X.
THE DOVE, THE DUCK, THE GOOSE, AND THE SWAN, 294
CHAPTER XI.
THE PARROT, 320
CHAPTER XII.
THE PEACOCK, 323
Part Third.
THE ANIMALS OF THE WATER.
CHAPTER I.
FISHES, AND PARTICULARLY THE PIKE, THE SACRED FISH OR
FISH OF ST PETER, THE CARP, THE MELWEL, THE HERRING,
THE EEL, THE LITTLE GOLDFISH, THE SEA-URCHIN, THE
LITTLE PERCH, THE BREAM, THE DOLPHIN, AND THE WHALE, 329
CHAPTER II.
THE CRAB, 354
CHAPTER III.
THE TORTOISE, 360
CHAPTER IV.
THE FROG, THE LACERTA VIRIDIS, AND THE TOAD, 371
CHAPTER V.
THE SERPENT AND THE AQUATIC MONSTER, 388
CONCLUSION, 421
ZOOLOGICAL MYTHOLOGY;
OR
THE LEGENDS OF ANIMALS.
First Part.
THE ANIMALS OF THE EARTH.
CHAPTER V.
THE HOG, THE WILD BOAR, AND THE HEDGEHOG.
SUMMARY.
The hog as a hero disguise.--The disguises of the hero and of the
heroine.--Ghoshâ, the leprous maiden.--The moon in the well.--Apâlâ
cured by Indras.--Apâlâ has the dress of a hog.--Godhâ, the
persecuted maiden in a hog's dress.--The hogs eat the apples in the
maiden's stead.--The meretricious Circe and the hogs.--Porcus and
upodaras.--The wild boar god in India and in Persia.--Tydoeus, the
wild boar.--The wild boar of Erymanthos.--The wild boar of
Meleagros.--The Vedic monster wild boar.--The dog and the
pig.--Puloman, the wild boar, burned.--The hog in the fire.--The hog
cheats the wolf.--The astute hedgehog.--The hedgehog, the wild boar,
and the hog are presages of water.--The porcupine and its quills;
the comb and the dense forest.--The ears and the heart of the wild
boar.--The wild boar and the hog at Christmas.--The devil a wild
boar.--The heroes killed by the wild boar.--The tusk of the wild
boar now life-giving, now deadly; the dead man's tooth.--The hero
asleep; the hero becomes a eunuch; the lettuce-eunuch eaten by
Adonis, prior to his being killed by the wild boar.
The hog, as well as the wild boar, is another disguise of the solar
hero in the night--another of the forms very often assumed by the sun,
as a mythical hero, in the darkness or clouds. He adopts this form in
order sometimes to hide himself from his persecutors, sometimes to
exterminate them, and sometimes on account of a divine or demoniacal
malediction. This form is sometimes a dark and demoniacal guise
assumed by the hero; on which account the poem of _Hyndla_, in the
_Edda_ calls the hog a hero's animal. Often, however, it represents
the demon himself. When the solar hero enters the domain of evening,
the form he had of a handsome youth or splendid prince disappears; but
he himself, as a general rule, does not die along with it; he only
passes into another, an uglier, and a monstrous form. The black bull,
the black horse, the grey horse, the hump-backed horse, the ass, and
the goat, are all forms of the same disguise with which we are already
acquainted. The thousand-bellied Indras, who has lost his testicles;
Argunas, who disguises himself as a eunuch; Indras, Vishnus, Zeus,
Achilleüs, Odin, Thor, Helgi, and many other mythical heroes, who
disguise themselves as women; and the numerous beautiful heroines who,
in mythology and tradition, disguise themselves as bearded men, are
all ancient forms under which was represented the passage of either
the sun or the aurora of evening into the darkness, cloud, ocean,
forest, grotto, or hell of night. The hero lamed, blinded, bound,
drowned, or buried in a wood, can be understood when referred
respectively to the sun which is thrown down the mountain-side, which
is lost in the darkness, which is held fast by the fetters of the
darkness, which plunges into the ocean of night, or which hides itself
from our sight in the nocturnal forest. The illumined and illuminating
sun, when it ceases to shine in the dark night, becomes devoid of
sight, devoid of intelligence, and stupid. The handsome solar hero
becomes ugly when, with the night, his splendour ceases; the strong,
red, healthy, solar hero, who pales and grows dark in the night,
becomes ill. We still say in Italy that the sun is ill when we see it
lose its brightness, and, as it were, grow pale.
In the 117th hymn of the first book of the _Rigvedas_, the Açvinâu cure
the leprous daughter of Kakshîvant, Ghoshâ, who is growing old without a
husband in her father's house, and find her a husband; the Açvinâu
deliver the aurora from the darkness of night, and marry her.[1]
In the eightieth hymn of the eighth book of the _Rigvedas_, the same
myth occurs again with relation to Indras, and in a more complete
form. We have already remarked, in the first book of the _Rigvedas_,
the maiden Apâlâ who descends from the mountain to draw water, and
draws up the somas (ambrosia, or else the moon, whence, as it seems to
me, the origin of the double Italian proverb, "Pescare, or mostrare la
luna nel pozzo," to fish up, or show the moon in the well, which was
afterwards corrupted to indicate one who says, or narrates, what is
untrue or impossible), and takes it to Indras, the well-known drinker
of ambrosia (here identified with the moon, or somas). Indras,
contented with the maiden, consents, as she is ugly and deformed, to
pass over the three heavenly stations, that is, to pass over his
father's head, her vast breast and her bosom.[2] In the last strophe
of the hymn quoted above, Indras makes a luminous robe, a skin of the
sun, for Apâlâ, who has been thrice purified, by the wheel, by the
chariot itself, and by the rudder of Indras's chariot.[3] And the same
myth occurs once more in a clearer and more complete form in a legend
of the _Brihaddevatâ_. Apâlâ beseeches Indras, loved by her, to make
for her a beautiful and perfect (faultless, unimpeachable) skin.
Indras, hearing her voice, passes over her with wheel, chariot, and
rudder; by three efforts, he takes off her ugly skin. Apâlâ then
appears in a beautiful one. In the skin thus stript off there was a
bristle (çalyakah); above, it had a hirsute appearance; below, it
resembled the skin of a lizard.[4] The bristle or thorn upon the skin
of Apâlâ is naturally suggestive of the hedgehog, the porcupine, the
wild boar, and the bristly hog. The aurora, as the Vedic hymn sings,
shines only at the sight of her husband; thus Apâlâ, of the ugly or
the hog's skin, and Ghoshâ, the leprous maiden, become splendid and
healthy by the grace of their husband. Thus Cinderella, or she who has
a dress of the colour of ashes, or of a grey or dark colour, like the
sky of night (in Russian stories Cinderella is called Cernushka, which
means little black one, as well as little dirty one), appears
exceedingly beautiful only when she finds herself in the prince's
ball-room, or in church, in candlelight, and near the prince: the
aurora is beautiful only when the sun is near.
In the twenty-eighth story of the sixth book of _Afanassieff_, the
maiden persecuted by her father and would-be seducer, who wishes to
marry her, because he thinks her as beautiful as her mother (the
evening aurora is as beautiful as the morning aurora), covers herself
with a hog's skin, which she takes off only when she marries a young
prince.[5] In another story of White Russia,[6] we have, instead, the
son of a king persecuted by his father, who is constrained to quit his
father's house with a cloak made of a pig's skin. In an unpublished
story of the Monferrato, the contents of which Dr Ferraro has
communicated to me, the girl persecuted by her step-mother is
condemned to eat in one night an interminable number of apples; by
means of two hog's bristles, she calls up a whole legion of pigs, who
eat the apples in her stead.
As to the rudder of Indras's chariot in the lower bosom of Apâlâ, it
would seem to me to have a phallic signification. Indras may have
cured Apâlâ by marrying her, as the Açvinâu, by means of a husband,
cured the leprous Ghoshâ, who was growing old in her father's house.
In the tenth story of the _Pentamerone_, the king of Roccaforte
marries an old woman, believing he is espousing a young one. He throws
her out of the window, but she is arrested in her fall by a tree, to
which she clings; the fairies pass by, and make her young again, as
well as beautiful and rich, and tie up her hair with a golden ribbon.
The aged sister of the old woman who has grown young again (the night)
goes to the barber, thinking that the same result may be attained
simply by having her skin removed, and is flayed alive. For the myth
of the two sisters, night and aurora, the black maiden and she who
disguises herself in black, in grey, or the colour of ashes, consult
also the _Pentamerone_, ii. 2. According to the Italian belief, the
hog is dedicated to St Anthony, and a St Anthony is also celebrated as
the protector of weddings, like the Scandinavian Thor, to whom the hog
is sacred. The hog symbolises fat; and therefore, in the sixteenth
Esthonian story, the hog is eaten at weddings.
The companions of Odysseus, transformed by the meretricious
enchantress Circe, with the help of poisonous herbs, into filthy hogs,
care only to gratify their bodily appetites, whence Horace, in the
second of the first book of the _Epistolæ_--
"Sirenum voces, et Circes pocula nosti,
Quæ si cum sociis stultus cupidusque bibisset
Sub domina meretrice fuisset turpis et excors
Vixisset canis immundus, vel amica luto Sus."
The hog, as one of the most libidinous of animals, is sacred to Venus;
for this reason, according to the Pythagorian doctrines, lustful men are
transformed into hogs, and the expression "pig" is applied to a man
given over to every species of lust. In Varro[7] we read:--"Nuptiarum
initio, antiqui reges ac sublimes viri in Hetruria in conjuctione
nuptiali nova nupta et novus maritus primum porcum immolant; prisci
quoque Latini et etiam Græci in Italia idem fecisse videntur, nam et
nostræ mulieres, maximæ nutrices naturam, qua foeminæ sunt, in
virginibus appellant porcum, et græce choiron, significantes esse dignum
insigni nuptiarum." The rudder of Indras, which passes over the upodaras
(or lower bosom) of Apâlâ, is illustrated by this passage in Varro.
As to the wild boar, its character is generally demoniacal; but the
reason why the Hindoo gods were invested with this form was in a great
degree due to equivocation in language. The word _vishnus_ means he
who penetrates; on account of its sharp tusks, in a Vedic hymn,[8] the
wild boar is called vishnus, or the penetrator. Hence, probably, by
the same analogy, in another hymn, Rudras, the father of the Marutas,
the winds, is invoked as a red, hirsute, horrid, celestial wild
boar,[9] and the Marutas are invoked when the thunderbolts are seen in
the form of wild boars running out from the iron teeth and golden
wheels;[10] that is, carried by the chariot of the Marutas, the winds,
who also are said to have tongues of fire, and eyes like the sun.[11]
Vishnus himself, in the _Rigvedas_, at the instigation of Indras,
brings a hundred oxen, the milky gruel, and the destroying wild
boar.[12] Therefore Indras himself loves the shape of a wild boar,
which, in the _Avesta_, is his _alter ego_. Verethraghnas assumes the
same form. We know that the sun (sometimes the moon), in the form of a
ram or he-goat, thrusts and pushes against the cloud, or the darkness,
until he pierces it with his golden horns; and so Vishnus, the
penetrator, with his sharp golden tusks (thunderbolts, lunar horns,
and solar rays), puts forth such great strength in the darkness and
the cloud that he bursts through both, and comes forth luminous and
victorious. According to the Pâuranic traditions, Vishnus, in his
third incarnation, when killing the demon Hiranyâkshas (or him of the
golden eye), drew forth or delivered the earth from the waters (or
from the ocean of the damp and gloomy night of the winter).[13]
According to the _Râmâyanam_,[14] Indras took the form of a wild boar
immediately after his birth.
The Arcadian wild boar of Mount Erymanthüs is familiar to the reader.
Hêraklês killed it in his third labour, in the same way as Vishnus in
the third of his incarnations became a wild boar; Ovid describes him
very elegantly in the eighth book of the _Metamorphoses_--
"Sanguine et igne micant oculi, riget horrida cervix;
Et setæ densis similes hastilibus horrent.
Stantque velut vallum; velut alta hastilia setæ,
Fervida cum rauco latos stridore per armos
Spuma fluit, dentes æquantur dentibus Indis,
Fulmen ab ore venit frondes afflatibus ardent."
The wild boar of Meleagros is a variety of this very monster; it is,
therefore, not without reason that when Hêraklês goes to the infernal
regions, all the shades flee before him, except those of Meleagros and
Medusa. Meleagros and Hêraklês resemble each other, are identified
with each other; as to Medusa, we must not forget that the head of the
Gorgon was represented upon the ægis of Zeus, that Gorgon is one of
the names given to Pallas, and that the Gorgons, and especially
Medusa, are connected with the garden of the Hesperîdes, where the
golden apples grow which Hêraklês loves.
In the sixty-first hymn of the first book of the _Rigvedas_, the god,
after having eaten and drunk well, kills, with the weapon stolen from
the celestial blacksmith Tvashtar, the monster wild boar, who steals
that which is destined for the gods.[15] In the ninety-ninth hymn of
the tenth book of the _Rigvedas_, Tritas (the third brother), by the
strength which he has received from Indras, kills the monster wild
boar.[16] In the _Tâittiriya Brâhmanam_, we find another very
interesting passage. The wild boar keeps guard over the treasure of
the demons, which is enclosed within seven mountains. Indras, with the
sacred herb, succeeds in opening the seven mountains, kills the wild
boar, and, in consequence, discovers the treasure.[17] In the
fifty-fifth hymn of the seventh book of the _Rigvedas_, the hog and
the dog lacerate and tear each other to pieces in turns;[18] the dog
and the pig are found in strife again in the Æsopian fable.
In the _Mahâbhâratam_,[19] Puloman assumes the form of a wild boar to
carry off the wife of Bhrigus; she prematurely gives birth to Cyavanas,
who, to avenge his mother, burns the wild boar to ashes. The thunderbolt
tears through the cloud, the sun's ray (or the lunar horn) breaks
through the darkness. In the popular Tuscan story, the stupid Pimpi
kills the hog, by teasing and tormenting it with the tongs, which he has
made red-hot in the fire. In the ninth of the Sicilian stories collected
by Laura Gonzenbach, the girl Zafarana, throwing three hog's bristles
upon the burning embers, causes the old prince, her husband, to become
young and handsome again; it is ever the same lucid myth (a variety of
Apâlâ). Thus, in the first Esthonian story, the prince, by eating pork
(or in the night forest), acquires the faculty of understanding the
language of birds; the hero acquires malice, if he has it not already;
he becomes cunning, if he was previously stupid; we therefore also find
in a story of _Afanassieff_,[20] the wolf cheated, first by the dog,
then by the goat, and finally by the hog, who nearly drowns him. The
wolf wishes to eat the hog's little ones; the hog requests him to wait
under a bridge, where there is no water, whilst he goes, as he promises,
in the meantime to wash the young porkers; the wolf waits, and the hog
goes to let off the water, which, as it passes under the bridge, puts
the wolf's life in danger. Hence the belief noticed by Aristotle, that
the hog is a match for the wolf, and the corresponding Greek fables.
This prudence is found carried to the highest degree in the hedgehog.
The Arabs are accustomed to say that the champion of truth must have the
courage of the cock, the scrutiny of the hen, the heart of the lion, the
rush of the wild boar, the cunning of the fox, the prudence of the
hedgehog, the swiftness of the wolf, the resignation of the dog, and the
complexion of the naguir.[21] A verse attributed to Archilokos says:--
"Poll' oid' alôpêx, all' echinos en mega,"
which passed into the proverb: "One knavery of the hedgehog is worth
more than many of the fox." In the _Âitarey. Br._,[22] the hedgehog is
said to be born of the talon of the rapacious hawk. In the Æsopian
fables, the wolf comes upon a hedgehog, and congratulates himself upon
his good luck; but the hedgehog defends itself. The wolf flatters it
and beseeches it to lay down its arms, but it answers that it is
imprudent to do so while the danger of fighting remains. Hence the
common belief that the wolf is afraid of the hedgehog; hence the
proverb, "It is very easy to find the hedgehog, but very difficult to
hold it." In a fable of Abstemius, the hedgehog appears as an enemy,
not only of the wolf, but also of the serpent; it pricks the viper
which has taken refuge in its den. Then the viper begs it to go out,
but it answers, "Let him go out who cannot stay." The hedgehog has the
appearance of a little wild boar; and as an enemy of the wolf and of
the serpent, it appears to me to combine in one the dwarf Vishnus and
the wild boar Vishnus, the exterminator of monsters, who, as we know,
almost always assume, in Hindoo mythology, the form of a wolf or a
serpent. And inasmuch as Vishnus, like Indras, is a thundering and
rain-giving god, in his character of sun in the cloud, or nightly and
autumnal moon, the hedgehog, too, is believed to presage wind and
rain. The wild boar, when dreamed of, is, according to Artemidoros,
quoted by Aldrovandi,[23] an omen of tempest and rain deluge. To this,
refers also the fable spoken of by Ælianos and Pliny concerning the
hogs carried off by the pirates, which make the ship sink. The
cloud-hogs are evidently represented by this myth.
The porcupine seems to be an intermediate form between the hedgehog
and the wild boar. According to the popular belief, the ashes of a
dead porcupine are, when scattered on the head, an excellent remedy
against baldness, and a hair-restorative. And inasmuch as it is
difficult to make the porcupine's quills fall, I read in
Aldrovandi,[24] that women "Ad discriminandos capillos, ut illos
conservent illæsos, aculeis potius hystricum, quam acubus utuntur."
This information derived from Aldrovandi is interesting, as enabling
us to understand a not uncommon circumstance in Russian stories. The
hero and heroine who flee from the monster that pursues them have
received from a good magician or a good fairy the gift of a comb, of
such a nature that when thrown on the ground it makes a dense thicket
or impenetrable forest arise, which arrests the pursuer's
progress.[25] This is a reminiscence of the porcupine with the
thick-set quills, of the bristly wild boar, of the gloomy night or
cloud itself, of the horned moon, which hides the fugitive solar hero
and heroine from the sight of the pursuer.
Notwithstanding this, the hog and the wild boar generally play in
Indo-European tradition a part resembling that of the scape-goat and of
the ass _souffre-douleur_. In the _Pancatantram_, the ears and the heart
of the credulous ass, torn by the lion, are eaten. In Babrios, the
_rôle_ of the ass is sustained by the stag (which is often in myths a
variation of the foolish hero). In the _Gesta Romanorum_,[26] the wild
boar loses, by his silliness, first one ear, then the other, then his
tail; at last he is killed, and his heart eaten by the cook. In Germany,
it is the custom, as it formerly was in England, to serve up at dinner
on Christmas Day an ornamented boar's head, no doubt as a symbol of the
gloomy monster of lunar winter killed at the winter solstice, after
which the days grow always longer and brighter. For the same reason, the
common people in Germany often go to sleep on Christmas Day in the
pig-sty, hoping to dream there; this dream is a presage of good luck.
The new sun is born in the sty of the winter hog; even the Christian
Redeemer was born in a stable, but instead of the hog it was the ass,
its mythical equivalent, that occupied it. For this reason, too, the
devil often assumes in German superstition the form of a monstrous boar,
which the hero kills.[27] The wild boar is also described as an
_aversier_ (or demon) in the romance of _Gavin le Loherain_[28]--
"Voiés quel aversier,
Grant a le dent fors de la gueule un piet
Mult fu hardis qui a cop l'atendié."
The author of _Loci Communes_ says that Ferquhar II., king of Scotland,
was killed by a wild boar; other writers tell us, on the contrary, that
his death was caused by a wolf; but we already know how, in the myth,
wolf and wild boar are sometimes equivalent the one to the other.
In the same way as Vishnus changed himself into a wild boar, and the
hog was sacred to the Scandinavian Mars, so was the wild boar sacred
to the Roman and Hellenic Mars; and even Mars himself assumed the
shape of a monstrous lunar wild boar in order to kill the young
Adonis, beloved of Venus. There is no god or saint so perfect but has
once in his life committed a fault, as there is not a demon so wicked
as not to have done good at least once. The adversaries exchange
parts. In Servius, it is with a wild boar's tusk that the bark is cut
off the tree in which Myrrha, pregnant with Adonis after her incest
with her father, shuts herself up (we have above seen, on the
contrary, Indras who opens with an herb the hiding-place of the wild
boar, in order to kill it). We here have again the incestuous father,
the girl in the wooden dress, the forest, the penetrating tusk of the
wild boar which bursts through the forest of night, and enables the
young hero to come forth, whom he kills in the evening out of
jealousy. In the ancient popular belief of Sweden, too, the wild boar
kills the sun whilst he is asleep in a cavern and his horses grazing.
Notice, moreover, the double character of the tusk of the nocturnal
lunar wild boar; in the morning it is a life-giving tusk, which
enables the solar hero to be born; in the evening it is a
death-dealing one; the wild boar is alive during the night, and the
darkness is split open by the white tooth of the living wild boar. The
lunar wild boar or hog is sacrificed,--it is killed at morn, in the
nuptials of the solar hero. The tooth of this dead wild boar, in the
evening, causes the death of the young hero or heroine, or else
transforms them into wild beasts. In popular fairy tales the witch,
feigning a wish to comb the head of the hero or the heroine, thrusts
into his or her head now a large pin, now a dead man's tooth, and thus
deprives them of life or human form. This is a reminiscence of the
tusk of the cloudy, nocturnal, or wintry wild boar who kills the sun,
or metamorphoses him, or puts him to sleep.
To represent the evening sun asleep, a curious particular is offered
us in the myth of Adonis. It is well-known that doctors attribute to
the lettuce a soporific virtue, not dissimilar to that of the poppy.
Now, it is interesting to read in _Nikandros Kolophonios_, quoted by
Aldrovandi, that Adonis was struck by the wild boar after having eaten
a lettuce. Ibykos, a Pythagorean poet, calls the lettuce by the name
of eunuch, as it is that which puts to sleep, which renders stupid and
impotent; Adonis who has eaten the lettuce is therefore taken from
Venus by the lunar wild boar, being eunuch and incapable. The solar
hero falls asleep in the night, and becomes a eunuch, like the Hindoo
Argunas, when he is hidden; and otherwise, the sun becomes the moon.
FOOTNOTES:
[1] Cfr. the chapter on the Duck, the Goose, the Swan, and the Dove.
[2] Imâni trîni vishtapâ tânîndra vi rohaya çiras tatasyorvarâm âd
idam ma upodare.
[3] Khe rathasya khe 'nasah khe yugasya çatakrato apâlâm indra trish
pûtvy akrinoh sûryatvacam.
[4]
Sulomâm anavadyâñgîm kuru mâm çakra sutvacâm
Tasyâs tad vacanam çrutvâ prîtas tena purandarah
Rathachidrena tâm indrah çakatasya yugasya ca
Prakshipya niçcakarsha tris tatah sâ sutvacâ 'bhavat
Tasyâm tvaci vyapetâyâm sarvasyâm çalyako 'bhavat
Uttarâ tv abhavad godhâ krikalâças tvag uttamâ.
_Godhâ_ seems to signify he who has the form of a hair (_go_, among
its other meanings, has that of hair). As an animal, the dictionaries
also recognise in the godhâ a lizard. But perhaps we may also
translate it by toad or frog; we could thus also understand the fable
of the frog which aspires to equal the ox. I observe, moreover, to
exemplify the ease with which we can pass from the ox to the frog, and
from the frog to the lizard, how in the Russian story of
_Afanassieff_, ii. 23, a beautiful princess is hidden in a frog; in
Tuscan and Piedmontese stories and in Sicilian superstitions, in a
toad. In the stories of the _Pentamerone_, the good fairy is a
_lacerta cornuta_ (a horned lizard). Ghoshâ, too, has for its
equivalent in Sanskrit, karkataçriñgî, which means a horned shrimp. In
other varieties the young prince is a he-goat or a dragon.
[5] For the persecuted maiden in connection with the hog or hogs, cfr.
also the _Pentamerone_, iii. 10.
[6] _Afanassieff_, v. 38.
[7] _De Re Rustica_, ii. 4.
[8] _Rigv._ i. 61, 7.
[9] Divo varâham arusham kapardinam tvesham rûpam namasâ ni hvayâmahe;
_Rigv._ i. 114, 5.
[10] Paçyan hiranyacakrân ayodanshtrân vidhâvato varâhân; _Rigv._ i.
88, 5.
[11] Agnigihvâ manavah sûracakshasah; _Rigv._ i. 89, 7.--In the
_Edda_, the chariot of Frey is drawn by a hog. The head of the
mythical hog is luminous. In the twenty-eighth story of the second
book of _Afanassieff_, Ivan Durák obtains from the two young heroes,
who miraculously appear to him, three marvellous gifts, _i.e._, the
hog with golden bristles, the buck with golden horns and tail, and the
horse with mane and tail also of gold.
[12] Viçvet tâ vishnur âbharad urukramas tveshitah çatam mahishân
kshîrapâkam odanam varâham indra emusham; _Rigv._ viii. 66, 10.--In
the Thebaid of Statius (v. 487), Tydoeus, too, is dressed in the
spoils of a wild boar--
"Terribiles contra setis, ac dente recurvo,
Tydea per latos humeros ambire laborant
Exuviæ, Calydonis honos."
[13] According to other fables, the three persons of the Trinity at one
time disputed as to who had the pre-eminence. Brahmân, who, from the
summit of the lotus where he was seated, saw nothing in the universe,
believed himself the first of creatures. He descended into the stem of
the lotus, and finding at last Nârâyanas (Vishnus) asleep, he asked him
who he was. "I am the first-born," replied Vishnus; Brahmân disputed
this title and dared even to attack him. But during the struggle,
Mahâdeva (Çiva) threw himself between them, crying, "It is I who am the
first-born. Nevertheless I will recognise as my superior him who is able
to see the summit of my head or the sole of my feet." Vishnus (as hidden
or infernal moon), transforming himself into a wild boar, pierced
through the ground and penetrated to the infernal regions, where he saw
the feet of Mahâdeva. The latter, on his return, saluted him as the
first-born of the gods; Bournouf, _L'Inde Française_.
[14] ii. 119.
[15] Asyed u mâtuh savaneshu sadyo mahah pitum papivân carv annâ
mushâyad vishnuh pacatam sahîyâm vidhyad varâham tiro adrim astâ; str.
7.
[16] Asya trito nv ogasâ vridhâno vipâ varâham ayoagrayâ han; str. 6.
[17] Varahoyam vamamoshah saptanâm girînâm parastâd vittam vedyam
asurânâm vibharti, sa darbhapingûlam (pingalam?) uddhritya, sapta
girîn bhittvâ tam ahanniti, already quoted by Wilson, _Rigv. San._ i.
164.--Cfr. the chapter on the Woodpecker.
[18] Tvam sûkarasya dardrihi tava dardartu sûkarah; str. 4.--The dog in
relation with the hog occurs again in the two Latin proverbs: "Canis
peccatum sus dependit," and "Aliter catuli longe olent, aliter sues."
[19] i. 893.
[20] iv. 13.
[21] Daumas, _La Vie Arabe_, xv.
[22] iii. 3, 26.
[23] Cfr. Aldrovandi, _De Quadrup. Digit. Viv._ ii.
[24] _Ibid._
[25] Cfr. _Afanassieff_, v. 28.
[26] lxxxiii., quoted by Benfey in his Einleitung to the
_Pancatantram_.--The fable is taken from the thirtieth of Avianus,
where the wild boar loses his two ears and is then eaten, but the cook
(who represents in tradition the cunning hero) has taken its heart to
eat it:--
"Sed cum consumpti dominus cor quæreret Apri
Impatiens, fertur (cor) rapuisse coquus."
[27] In Du Cange, too, "_aper_ significat diabolum; Papias M. S.
Bitur. Ex illo Scripturæ: 'Singularis aper egressus est de
silva.'"--Cfr. also Uhland's _Schriften zur Geschichte der Dichtung
und Sage_, iii. 141, _et seq._
[28] ii. 220, _et seq._, quoted by Uhland.
CHAPTER VI.
THE DOG.
SUMMARY.
Why the myth of the dog is difficult of interpretation.--_Entre
chien et loup._--The dog and the moon.--The bitch Saramâ; her double
aspect in the Vedâs and in the _Râmâyanam_; messenger, consoler, and
infernal being.--The dog and the purple; the dog and the meat; the
dog and its shadow; the fearless hero and his shadow; the black
monster; the fear of Indras.--The two Vedic dogs; Sârameyas and
Hermês.--The favourite dog of Saramâ; the dog that steals during the
sacrifice; the form of a dog to expiate crimes committed in former
states of existence; relative Hindoo, Pythagorean and Christian
beliefs.--The dog Yamas.--The dog demon that barks, with the long
bitter tongue.--The red bitch towards morning a beautiful maiden
during the night.--The intestines of the dog eaten.--The hawk that
carries honey and the sterile woman.--Dog and woodpecker.--The dog
carries the bones of the witch's daughter.--The dog-messenger brings
news of the hero.--The nurse-bitch.--The dog and his collar; the dog
tied up; the hero becomes a dog.--The dog helps the hero.--The
branch of the apple-tree opens the door.--The dog tears the devil in
pieces.--The two sons of Ivan think themselves dog's sons.--The
intestines of the fish given to be eaten by the bitch.--Ivan the son
of the bitch, the very strong hero, goes to the infernal
regions.--Dioscuri, Kerberos, funereal purifying dogs of the
Persians; the penitent dog; the two dogs equivalent to the two
Açvinâu.--The luminous children transformed into puppies; relative
legends; the maiden whose hands have been cut off obtains golden
hands; branches of trees, hands, sons born of a tree; the myth
compared and explained in the Vedic hymns, with the example of
Hiranyahastas; the word _vadhrimatî_.--The demoniacal dog.--The
strength of the mythical dog.--Monstrous dogs.--The dog Sirius.--To
swear by the dog or by the wolf.--A dog is always born among
wolves.--The dog dreamed of.--Double appearance of the dog; the
stories of the king of the assassins and of the magician with seven
heads.--St Vitus invoked in Sicily whilst a dog is being tied
up.--The dog of the shepherd behaves like a wolf among the
sheep.--The dog as an instrument of chastisement; the expressions to
lead the dog and the ignominious punishment of carrying the
dog.--The dogs that tear in pieces; the death caused by the dog
prognosticated; the dogs Sirius and Kerberos igneous and
pestilential; the incendiary dog of St Dominic, the inventor of
pyres for burning heretics, and the dog of the infected San Rocco.
The myth of the dog is one of those of which the interpretation is
more delicate. As the common dog stays upon the doorstep of the house,
so is the mythical dog generally found at the gate of the sky, morning
and evening, in connection with the two Açvinâu. It was a fugitive
phenomenon of but an instant's duration which determined the formation
of the principal myth of the dog. When this moment is past, the myth
changes its nature. I have already referred to the French expression,
"entre chien et loup," as used to denote the twilight;[29] the dog
precedes by one instant the evening twilight, and follows by one
instant that of morning: it is, in a word, the twilight at its most
luminous moment. Inasmuch as it watches at the gates of night, it is
usually a funereal, infernal, and formidable animal; inasmuch as it
guards the gates of day, it is generally represented as a propitious
one; and as we have seen that, of the two Açvinâu, one is in especial
relation with the moon, and the other with the sun, so, of the two
dogs of mythology, one is especially lunar, and the other especially
solar. Between these two dogs we find the bitch their mother, who, if
I am not mistaken, represents now the wandering moon of heaven, the
guiding moon that illumines the path of the hero and heroine, now the
thunderbolt that tears the cloud, and opens up the hiding-place of the
cows or waters. We have, therefore, thus far three mythical dogs. One;
menacing, is found by the solar hero in the evening at the western
gates of heaven; the second, the more active, helps him in the forest
of night, where he is hunting, guides him in danger, and shows him the
lurking-places of his enemies whilst he is in the cloud or darkness;
the third, in the morning, is quiet, and found by the hero when he
comes out of the gloomy region, towards the eastern sky.
Let us now examine briefly these three forms in Hindoo mythology. I
have said that the mythical bitch appears to me sometimes to represent
the moon, and sometimes the thunderbolt. In India, this bitch is named
Saramâ, properly she who walks, who runs or flows. We are accustomed
to say of the dog that it barks at the moon, which the popular proverb
connects with robbers. The dog that barks at the moon,[30] is perhaps
the same dog that barks to show that robbers are near. In the 108th
hymn of the tenth book of the _Rigvedas_, we have a dramatic scene
between the misers or thieves (the Panayas) and the bitch Saramâ, the
messenger of Indras, who wishes for their treasures.[31] In order to
come to them, she traverses the waters of the Rasâ (a river of hell);
the treasure that is hidden in the mountain consists of cows, horses,
and various riches; the Panayas wish Saramâ to stay with them as their
sister, and to enjoy the cows along with them; Saramâ answers that she
does not recognise their brotherhood, inasmuch as she is already the
sister of Indras, and the terrible Añgirasas.[32] In the sixty-second
hymn of the first book, the bitch Saramâ discovers the cows hidden in
the rock, and receives in recompense from Indras and the Añgirasas
nourishment for her offspring; then men cry out, and the cows
bellow.[33] Going towards the sun, in the path of the sun, Saramâ
finds the cows.[34] When Indras splits the mountain open, Saramâ shows
him first the waters.[35] Having previously seen the fissure in the
mountain, she showed the way. The first she guided rapidly, the band
of the noisy ones having previously heard the noise.[36] This noise
may refer either to the waters, the sounding rivers (nadâs, nadîs), or
the lowing cows (gavas). Now, this bitch that discovers the
hiding-places, inasmuch as she breaks through the darkness of night,
seems to be the moon; inasmuch as she breaks through the cloud, she
seems to be the thunderbolt. The secret of this equivoque lies in the
root _sar_. In the _Rigvedas_, we have seen Saramâ disdaining to pass
for the sister of the thieves or the monsters; in the _Râmâyanam_,[37]
the wife of one of the monsters, of the very brother of Râvanas the
robber, is called Saramâ, and takes, instead of the monster's part,
that of Râmas and Sîtâ the ravished wife. We have already several
times seen the moon as a beneficent cow, as a good fairy, or as the
Madonna. Saramâ (of which Suramâ, another benignant rakshasî, is
probably only an incorrect form[38]), the consoler of Sîtâ, who
announces prophetically her approaching deliverance by her husband
Râmas, appears to me in the light of another impersonation of the
moon. It is on this account that Sîtâ[39] praises Saramâ as a
twin-sister of hers (sahodarâ), affectionate, and capable of
traversing the heavens, and penetrating into the watery infernal
regions (rasâtalam).[40] The benignant sister of Sîtâ can only be
another luminous being; she is the good sister whom the maiden of the
Russian story, persecuted by her incestuous father, in _Afanassieff_,
finds in the subterranean world, where she is consoled and assisted in
escaping from the power of the witch; she is the moon. The moon is the
luminous form of the gloomy sky of night, or of the funereal and
infernal region; whilst its two luminous barriers in that sky, in the
east and in the west, are morning and evening aurora; the luminous
forms of the cloudy sky are lightning and thunderbolts. And it is from
one of these luminous mythical forms that the Greeks, according to
Pollux, quoted by Aldrovandi, made of the dog the inventor of purple,
which the dog of Hêraklês was the first to bite. The dog of the
Æsopian fable,[41] with meat in its mouth, is a variation of this
myth. The red sky of evening appears purple in the morning, and in the
evening as the meat that the dog lets fall into the waters of the
ocean of night. In the _Pancatantram_, we have instead the lion of
evening (the evening sun), who, seeing in the fountain (or in the
ocean of night) another lion (now the moon, now his own shadow, the
night, or the cloud), throws himself into the water to tear him to
pieces, and perishes in it. The hare (the moon) is the animal which
allures the famished lion of evening to perish in the waters.
The two sons of the bitch Saramâ preserve several of their mother's
characteristics. Now they are spoken of together as Sârameyâu; now they
are mentioned together, but distinct from one another; now one alone of
them, the most legitimate, by the name of Sârameyas, whose identity with
the Greek Hermês or Hermeias has already been proved by Professor Kuhn.
Saramâ in connection with the Panayas, merchants or thieves, and Saramâ
as the divine messenger, gives us the key to the legend of Mercury, god
of thieves and merchants, and messenger of the gods.
In a Vedic hymn we find described with great clearness the two dogs that
guard the gates of hell, the monsters' dwelling, or the kingdom of the
dead. It prays for one departed, "that he may be able to pass safely
beyond the two dogs, sons of Saramâ, having four eyes, spotted, who
occupy the right path, and to come to the benignant Manes" (for there
are also the malignant ones, or Durvidatrâh); these dogs are called "the
very fierce guardians, who watch the road, observing men, have vast
nostrils, are long-winded, and very strong, the messengers of Yamas;"
they are invoked "that they may cause to enjoy the sight of the sun, and
give a happy life."[42] But the _Rigvedas_ itself already shows us the
two sons of the bitch Saramâ, as the two who look in turns (one after
the other), whom Indras must put to sleep.[43] One, however, of the two
sons of Saramâ is especially invoked and feared, the Sârameyas _par
excellence_. The Vedic hymn speaks of him as he who returns
(punahsaras), and represents him as "luminous, with reddish teeth, that
shine like spears, in the well-rooted gums," and implores him to sleep,
or "to bark only at the robber, or at the thief, not at the singers of
hymns in honour of Indras."[44] The bitch Saramâ is passionately fond of
her son; in recompense for her discovery of the cows of Indras, she
demands nourishment for her son, which nourishment the commentator
explains to be the milk of the liberated cows; the first rays of the
morning sun and the last rays of the evening sun drink the milk of the
dawn or silvery twilight. In the _Mahâbhâratam_,[45] the bitch Saramâ
curses King Ganamegayas, because his three brothers, when attending the
sacrifice, maltreated and flogged the dog Sârameyas, who had also gone
there, although he had neither touched with his tongue nor desired with
his eyes the oblations destined to the gods (as, on the contrary, the
white dog did, who, in the sacrifice of Dion, near Athens, stole part of
the victim, whence the name of Künosargês was given to that place). The
same legend occurs again, slightly modified, in the seventh book of the
_Râmâyanam_.[46] Râmas sends Lakshmanas, his brother, to see whether
there are any disputes to be settled in the kingdom; Lakshmanas returns,
saying that the whole kingdom is at peace. Râmas sends him again; he
sees a dog erect on the doorstep of the palace, barking. The name of
this dog is Sârameyas. Râmas enables him to enter the palace. The dog
complains that he has been beaten without just cause by a Brâhman. The
Brâhman is called, appears, confesses his fault, and awaits his
punishment. The dog Sârameyas proposes as his punishment that the
Brâhman should take a wife (the usual proverbial satire against wives),
and become head of a family in the very place where he himself had
supported the same dignity prior to assuming the shape of a dog. After
this the dog Sârameyas, who remembers his previous states of existence,
returns to do penitence at Benares, whence he had come.
Therefore the dog and the Kerberos are also a form into which the
hero of the myth passes. The Hindoo and Pythagorean religious beliefs
both teach that metempsychosis is a means of expiation; the curse of
the offended deity is now a vengeance now a chastisement for an error
that the hero or some one of his relations has committed, and which
has provoked the deity's indignation.[47]
Sometimes the deity himself assumes the form of a dog in order to put
the hero's virtue to the proof, as in the last book of the
_Mahâbhâratam_, where the god Yamas becomes a dog, and follows
Yudhishthiras (the son of Yamas), who regards him with such affection,
that when invited to mount into the chariot of the gods, he refuses to
do so, unless his faithful dog is allowed to accompany him.
Sometimes, however, the shape of a dog or bitch (as it is easy to pass
from Yamas, the god of hell in the form of a dog, to the dog-fiend) is
a real and specific form of a demon. The _Rigvedas_ speaks of the
dog-demons bent upon tormenting Indras, who is requested to kill the
monster in the form of an owl, a bat, a dog, a wolf, a great bird, a
vulture;[48] it invokes the Açvinâu to destroy on every side the
barking dogs;[49] it solicits the friends to destroy the long-tongued
and avaricious dog (in the old Italian chronicle of Giov. Morelli,
misers are called Cani del danaro, dogs of money), as the Bhrigavas
have killed the monster Makhas.[50] And the skin of the red bitch is
another monstrous form in which is dressed every morning (as the
aurora in the morning sky), in the twenty-third Mongol story, the
beautiful maiden who is in the power of the prince of the dragons; she
(as moon) is a beautiful maiden only at night; towards day she becomes
a red bitch (the moon gives up her place to the aurora); the youth who
has married her wishes to burn this bitch's skin, but the maiden
disappears; the sun overtakes the aurora, and he disappears with the
moon. We have already seen this myth.
In the eighteenth hymn of the fourth book of the _Rigvedas_, the
thirteenth strophe seems to me to contain an interesting particular. A
devotee complains as follows:--"In my misery I had the intestines of the
dog cooked; I found among the gods no consoler; I saw my wife sterile;
the hawk brought honey to me."[51] Here we find the dog in connection
with a bird.[52] In the twenty-fifth story of the fourth book of
_Afanassieff_, we find the woodpecker that brings food and drink to its
friend the dog, and avenges him after his death. In the forty-first
story of the fourth book, the dog is killed by the old witch, because he
carries in a sack the bones of her wicked daughter, who has been
devoured by the head of a mare. In the twentieth story of the fifth
book, we have the dog in the capacity of a messenger employed by the
beautiful girl whom the serpent has married; he carries to her father a
letter that she has written, and brings his answer back to her. In the
legend of St Peter, the dog serves as a messenger between Peter and
Simon the magician; in the legend of San Rocco, the dog of our Lord
takes bread to the saint, alone and ill under a tree. The name of
Cyrus's nurse, according to Textor, was Küna, whence Cyrus might have
been nourished, like Asklêpios, with the milk of a dog. I have already
said that the story of the dog is connected with the myth of the
Açvinâu, or, what is the same thing, with that of the horse; horse and
dog are considered in the light of coursers: the horse bears the hero,
and the dog usually takes news of the hero to his friends, as the bitch
Saramâ, the messenger of the gods, does in the _Rigvedas_.[53] The hero
who assumes the shape of a horse cautions his father, when he sells him
to the devil, not to give up the bridle to the buyer. In the
twenty-second story of the fifth book of _Afanassieff_, the young man
transforms himself into a dog, and lets his father sell him to a great
lord, who is the devil in disguise, but tells him not to give up the
collar.[54] The gentleman buys the dog for two hundred roubles, but
insists upon having the collar too, calling the old man a thief upon the
latter refusing to consign it into his hands. The old man, in his
distraction, gives it up; the dog is thus in the power of the lord, that
is, of the devil. But on the road, a hare (the moon) passes by; the
gentleman lets the dog pursue it, and loses sight of it; the dog again
assumes the shape of a hero, and rejoins his father. In the same story,
the young man adopts, the second time, the form of a bird (we shall see
the Açvinâu as swans and doves in the chapter on the swan, the goose,
and the dove), and the third time that of a horse. In the twenty-eighth
story of the fifth book, a horse, a dog, and an apple-tree are born of
the dead bull who protects Ivan and Mary fleeing in the forest from the
bear. Riding on the horse, and accompanied by the dog, Ivan goes to the
chase. The first day he captures a wolf's whelp alive, and carries it
home; the second day he takes a young bear; the third day he returns to
the chase, and forgets the dog; then the six-headed serpent, in the
shape of a handsome youth, carries off his sister, and shuts the dog up
under lock and key, throwing the key into the lake. Ivan returns, and,
by the advice of a fairy, he breaks a twig off the apple-tree, and
strikes with it the bolt of the door which encloses the dog; the dog is
thus set at liberty, and Ivan lets dog, wolf, and bear loose upon the
serpent, who is torn in pieces by them, and recovers his sister. In the
fiftieth story of the fifth book, the dog of a warrior-hero tears the
devil, who presents himself first in the form of a bull, and then in
that of a bear, to prevent the wedding of the hero taking place. In the
fifty-second story of the sixth book, the dogs which Ivan Tzarevic has
received from two fairies, together with a wolf's whelp, a bear's, and a
lion's cub, tear the monster serpent to pieces. The two dogs carry us
back to the myth of the Açvinâu. In the fifty-third story of the sixth
book, the monster cuts Ivan's head off. Ivan has two sons, who believe
themselves to be of canine descent; they ask their mother to be
permitted to go and resuscitate their father. An old man gives them a
root, which, when rubbed on Ivan's body, will bring him to life again;
they take it, and use it as directed. Ivan is resuscitated, and the
monster dies. Finally, in the fifty-fourth story of the fifth book of
_Afanassieff_, we learn how the sons of the dog are born, and their mode
of birth is analogous to that mentioned in the Vedic hymn. A king who
has no sons has a fish with golden fins; he orders it to be cooked, and
to be given to the queen to eat. The intestines of the fish (the
phallos) are thrown to the bitch, the bones are gnawed by the cook, and
the meat is eaten by the queen. To the bitch, the cook, and the queen a
son is born at the same time. The three sons are all called Ivan, and
are regarded as three brothers; but the strongest (he who accomplishes
the most difficult enterprises) is Ivan the son of the bitch, who goes
under ground into the kingdom of the monsters (as of the two Dioscuri,
one descends into hell, like the two funereal dogs, light-coloured and
white, of the Avesta, which are in perfect accordance with the Vedic
_Sârameyâu_[55]). In the same story, besides the three brother-heroes,
three heroic horses are brought forth by the three mares that have drunk
the water in which the fish was washed before being cooked; in other
European variations, and in the Russian stories themselves, therefore,
we sometimes have, instead of the bitch's son, the son of the mare (or
the cow). The two Açvinâu are now two horses, now two dogs, now a dog
and a horse (now a bull and a lion).[56] Ivan Tzarevic, whom the horse
and the dog save from danger, is the same as the Vedic hero, the sun,
whom the Açvinâu save from many dangers.
In the Russian stories, as well as in the Italian ones, the witch
substitutes for one, two, or three sons of the prince, who have stars on
their forehead, and were born of the princess in her husband's absence,
one, two, or three puppies. In these same stories, the hand of the
persecuted princess is cut off. In the thirteenth story of the third
book of _Afanassieff_,[57] the witch sister-in-law accuses her husband's
sister of imaginary crimes in his presence. The brother cuts her hands
off; she wanders into the forest; she comes out again only after the
lapse of several years; a young merchant becomes enamoured of her, and
marries her. During her husband's absence, she gives birth to a child
whose body is all of gold, effigies of stars, moon, and sun covering it.
His parents write to their son, telling him the news; but the witch
sister-in-law abstracts the letter (as in the myth of Bellerophôn), and
forges another, which announces, on the contrary, that a monster, half
dog and half bear, is born. The husband writes back, bidding them wait
until he returns to see with his own eyes his new-born son. The witch
intercepts this letter also, and changes it for another, in which he
orders his young wife to be sent away. The young woman, without hands,
wanders about with her boy. The boy falls into a fountain; she weeps; an
old man tells her to throw the stumps of her arms into the fountain; she
obeys, her hands return, and she recovers her boy again. She finds her
husband; and no sooner does she uncover the child in his sight, than all
the room shines with light (asviatilo).
In a Servian story,[58] the father of the maiden whose hands had been
cut off by the witch, her mother-in-law, causes, by means of the ashes
of three burned hairs from the tail of the black stallion and that of
the white mare, golden hands to grow on the maiden's arms. The
apple-tree, with golden branches, which we have already mentioned, is
the same as this girl who comes out of the forest (or wooden chest) with
golden hands. From the branches it is easy to pass to the hands of gold,
to the fair-haired son who comes out of the trunk.[59] The idea of a
youth as the branch of a tree has been rendered poetical by Shakspeare,
who makes the Duchess of Gloster say of the seven sons of Edward--
"Edward's seven sons, whereof thyself art one,
Were as seven phials of his sacred blood,
Or seven fair branches springing from one root."[60]
In Hindoo myths, the hand of Savitar having been cut off, one of gold is
given to him, whence the epithet he enjoys of Hiranyahastas, or he who
has a golden hand. But in the 116th and 117th hymns of the first book we
find a more interesting datum. The branch is the hand of the tree; the
branch is the son who detaches himself from the maternal trunk of the
tree; the golden son is the same as the golden branch, the golden hand
of the tree. The mother who obtains a golden hand is the same as the
mother who has Hiranyahastas--_i.e._, Golden-hand--for her son. The
Vedic hymn says that the Açvinâu gave Golden-hand as a son to the
Vadhrimatî.[61] The word _vadhrimatî_ is equivocal. The Petropolitan
Dictionary interprets it only as she who has a eunuch, or one who is
castrated, for her husband, but the proper sense of the word is she who
has something cut off, she who has, that is, the maimed arm, as in the
fairy tale, for which reason she is given a golden hand. As the wife of
a eunuch, the Vedic woman, therefore, receives from the Açvinâu a son
with a golden hand; as having an imperfect arm, she receives only a
golden hand, as in the 116th hymn of the first book, the same Açvinâu
give to Viçpalâ, who had lost his own in battle, an iron leg.[62] The
_Rigvedas_, therefore, already contains in its germ the very popular
subject of the man or woman without hands, in same way as we have
already found in it, in embryo, the legends of the lame man, the blind
man or woman, the ugly and the disguised woman.
But to return to the dog. Besides his agility[63] in running, his
strength holds a prominent place in the myth. The Kerberos shows an
extraordinary strength in rending his enemies. In the Russian stories
the dog is the hero's strength, and is associated with the wolf, the
bear, and the lion. In popular stories, now terrible lions and now
dreadful dogs are found guarding the gate of the monster's dwelling.
The monk of San Gallo, in Du Cange, says that the "canes germanici"
are so agile and ferocious, that they suffice alone to hunt tigers and
lions; the same fable is repeated in Du Cange of the dogs of Albania,
which are so great and fierce, "ut tauros premant et leones perimant."
The enormous chained dog, painted on the left side of the entrance of
Roman houses, near the porter's room; the motto _cave canem_; the
expiations made in Greece and at Rome (whence the names "Canaria
Hospitia" and "Porta Catularia," where a dog was immolated to appease
the fury of the Canicula, and whence the verse of Ovid--
"Pro cane sidereo canis hic imponitur aræ,")
at the time of the Canicula or of the Canis Sirius, to conjure away
the evils which he brings along with the summer heat, in connection
with the _sol leo_, and the corresponding festival of the killing of
the dog (künophontis), besides the barking dogs that appear in the
groin of Scylla,[64] are all records of the mythical dog of hell. The
dog, as a domestic animal, has been confounded with the savage brute
which generally represents the monster. The dog is scarcely
distinguishable from the wolf in the twilight. In Du Cange we read
that in the Middle Ages it was the custom to swear now by the dog now
by the wolf.[65] In the country round Arezzo, in Tuscany, it is
believed that when a she-wolf brings forth her young ones, a dog is
always found among them, which, if it were allowed to live, would
exterminate all the wolves. But the she-wolf, knowing this, no sooner
perceives the dog-wolf than she drowns it when she takes the wolves to
drink.[66] In the district of Florence, it is believed that the wolf,
as well as the dog, when it happens to be the subject of a dream, is
(as in Terence) a prognostic of sickness or death, especially if the
dog is dreamt of as running after or trying to bite one. In Horace
(_Ad Galatheam_) it is an evil omen to meet with a pregnant bitch--
"Impios parræ præcinentis omen
Ducat et proegnans canis."
In Sicily, St Vitus is prayed to that he may keep the dogs chained--
"Santu Vitu, Santu Vitu,
Io tri voti vi lu dicu:
Va', chiamativi a lu cani
Ca mi voli muzzicari."
And when tying the dog up, they say--
"Santu Vitu,
Beddu e pulitu,
Anghi di cira
E di ferru filatu;
Pi lu nuomu di Maria
Ligu stu cani
Ch' aju avanti a mia."
When the dog is tied up, they add--
"Fermati, cani
Ca t' aju ligatu."[67]
In Italy and Russia, when the dog howls like a wolf, that is, plays
the wolf, it forebodes misfortune and death. It is also narrated,[68]
that after the alliance between Cæsar, Lepidus, and Antony, dogs
howled like wolves.
When one is bitten by a dog[69] in Sicily, a tuft of hair is cut off
the dog and plunged into wine with a burning cinder; this wine is
given to be drunk by the man who has been bitten. In _Aldrovandi_,[70]
I read, on the other hand, that to cure the bite of a mad dog, it is
useful to cover the wound with wolf's skin.
The dog is a medium of chastisement. Our Italian expressions, "Menare il
cane per l'aia" (to lead the dog about the barn-floor), and "Dare il
cane a menare" (to give the dog to be led about), are probably a
reminiscence of the ignominious mediæval punishment of Germany of
carrying the dog, inflicted upon a noble criminal, and which sometimes
preceded his final execution.[71] The punishment of laceration by dogs,
which has actually been carried out more than once by the order of
earthly tyrants, has its prototype in the well-known myth of Kerberos
and the avenging dogs of hell. Thus Pirithoos, who attempts to carry off
Persephônê from the infernal king of the Molossians, is torn to pieces
by the dog Trikerberos. Euripides, according to the popular tradition,
was lacerated in the forest by the avenging dogs of Archelaos. It is
told of Domitian, that when an astrologer on one occasion predicted his
approaching death, he asked him whether he knew in what way he himself
would die; the astrologer answered that he would be devoured by dogs
(death by dogs is also predicted in a story of the _Pentamerone_);
Domitian, to make the oracle false, ordered him to be killed and burned;
but the wind put the flames out, and the dogs approached and devoured
the corpse. Boleslaus II., king of Poland, in the legend of St
Stanislaus, is torn by his own dogs while wandering in the forest, for
having ordered the saint's death. The Vedic monster Çushnas, the
pestilential dog Sirius of the summer skies, and the dog Kerberos of the
nocturnal hell, vomit flames; they chastise the world, too, with
pestilential flames; and the pagan world tries all arts, praying and
conjuring, to rid itself of their baleful influences. But this dog is
immortal, or rather it generates children, and returns to fill men with
terror in a new, a more direct, and a more earthly form in the Christian
world. It is narrated, in fact, that before the birth of St Dominic, the
famous inventor of the tortures of the Holy Inquisition (a truly satanic
Lucifer), his mother, being pregnant of him, dreamed that she saw a dog
carrying a lighted brand about, setting the world on fire. St Dominic
truly realised his mother's dream; he was really this incendiary dog;
and, therefore, in the pictures that represent him, the dog is always
close to him with its lighted brand. Christ is the Prometheus enlarged,
purified, and idealised; and St Dominic, the monstrous Vulcan,
deteriorated, diminished, and fanaticised, of the Christian Olympus. The
dog, sacred in pagan antiquity to the infernal deities, was consecrated
to St Dominic the incendiary, and to Rocco, the saint who protects the
sick of the plague. The Roman feasts in honour of Vulcan (Volcanalia)
fell in the month of August; and the Roman Catholic Church fêtes in the
month of August the two saints of the dogs of the fire and the plague,
St Dominic and St Rocco.
FOOTNOTES:
[29] Leukophôs; a verse of Vilkelmus Brito defines it in a Latin
strophe given in Du Cange--
"Tempore quo neque nox neque lux sed utrumque videtur;"
and further on--
"Interque _canem distare lupumque_."
According to Pliny and Solinus, the shadow of the hyena makes the dog
dumb, _i.e._, the night disperses the twilight; the moon vanishes.
[30] The dog was sacred to the huntress Diana, whom we know to be the
moon, hence the Latin proverb, "Delia nota canibus."
[31] Indrasya dûtir ishitâ carâmi maha ichantî panayo nidhîn vah; str.
2.
[32] Rasâyâ ataram payânsi; str. 2.--Ayam nidhih sarame adribudhno
gobhir açvebhir vasubhir nyrishtah; str. 7.--Svasâram tvâ krinavâi mâ
punar gâ apa te gavâm subhage bhagâma; str. 9.--Nâham veda bhrâtritvam
no svasritvam indro vidur añgirasaç caghorâh; str. 10.
[33] Indrasyâñgirasâm ceshtâu vidat saramâ tanayâya dhâsim brihaspatir
bhinad adrim vidad gâh sam usriyâbhir vâvaçanta narah; str. 3.
[34] Ritam yatî saramâ gâ avindat.--Ritasya pathâ saramâ vidad gâh;
_Rigv._ v. 45, 7, 8.
[35] Apo yad adrim puruhûta dardar âvir bhuvat saramâ pûrvyam te;
_Rigv._ iv. 16, 8.
[36] Vidad yadî saramâ rugnam adrer mahi pâthah pûrvyam sadhryak kah
agram nayat supady aksharânâm achâ ravam prathamâ gânatî gât; _Rigv._
iii. 31, 6.
[37] vi. 9.
[38] v. 62.
[39] vi. 10.
[40] Cfr. the Vedic text above quoted.
[41] In the _Tuti-Name_, instead of the dog with the bone or piece of
meat, we have the fox. The dog who sees his shadow in the water; the
fearless hero who, in Tuscan stories, dies when he sees his own
shadow; the black monster (the shadow) who, in numerous stories,
presents himself instead of the real hero to espouse the beautiful
princess, carry our thoughts back to Indras, who, in the _Rigvedas_,
after having defeated the monster, flees away over the rivers, upon
seeing something which is probably the shadow of Vritras, killed by
him, or his own shadow. In the _Âitar. Brâhm._ iii. 2, 15, 16, 20,
this flight of Indras is also recorded, and it is added, that Indras
hides himself, and that the Pitaras (_i.e._, the souls of the
departed) find him again. Indras thinks that he has killed Vritras,
but really has not killed him; then the gods abandon him; the Marutas
alone (as dogs friendly to the bitch Saramâ) remain faithful to him.
The monster killed by Indras in the morning rises again at eve.
According to other Vedic accounts, Indras is obliged to flee, stung by
remorse, having committed a brâhmanicide.
[42] Ati drava sârameyâu çvânâu catarakshâu çabalâu sâdhunâ pathâ athâ
pitrînt suvidatrân upehi--Yâu te çvânâu yama rakshitârâu caturakshâu
pathirakshî nricakshasâu--Urûnasâv asutripâ udumbalâu yamasya dûtâu
carato ganân anu--Tâv asmabhyam driçaye sûryâya punar dâtâm asum
adyeha bhadram; _Rigv._ x. 14, 10-12.
[43] Ni shvâpaya mithûdriçâu; _Rigv._ i. 29, 3.--The Petropolitan
Dictionary explains the word _mith._ by "abwechselend sichtbar."
[44] Yad arguna sarameya datah piçañga yachase vîva bhrâganta rishtaya
upa srakveshu bapsato ni shu svapa; stenam râya sârameya taskaram vâ
punahsara stotrîn indrasya râyasi kim asmân duchunâyase ni shu svapa;
_Rigv._ vii. 55, 2, 3.
[45] i. 657, 666.
[46] Canto 62.
[47] Thus Hecuba, the wife of Priam, after having suffered cruel
tribulation as a woman, in Ovid--
"Perdidit infelix hominis post omnia formam
Externasque novo latratu terruit auras."
In the _Breviarium Romanum_, too, in the offices of the dead, God is
besought not to consign to the beasts (ne tradas bestiis, &c.) the
souls of His servants.
[48] Eta u tye patayanti çvayâtava indram dipsanti dipsavo
'dâbhyam--Ulukayâtum çuçulûkayâtum gahi çvayâtum uta kokayâtum
suparnayâtum gridhrayâtum drishadeva pra mrina raksha indra; _Rigv._
vii. 104, 20, 22.
[49] Gambhayatam abhito râyatah; _Rigv._ i. 182, 4.
[50] Apa çvânam çnathishtana sakhâyo dîrghagihvyam--Apa çvânam
arâdhasam hatâ makham na bhrigavah; _Rigv._ ix. 101, 1, 13.
[51] Avartyâ çuna ântrâni pece na deveshu vivide marditâram apaçyam
gâyâm amahîyamânâm adhâ me çyeno madhv â gabhâra; _Rigv._ iv. 18, 13.
The bird who brings honey has evidently here a phallical meaning, as
also the intestine, the part that is inside of now the dog, now the
fish, and now the ass (all of which are phallical symbols), desired as
a delicacy by the women of fairy tales, must be equivalent to the
_madhu_ brought by the bird.
[52] In the fifth story of the fourth book of the _Pentamerone_, the
bird does the same that a dog does in the third story of the third
book; the bird brings a knife, the dog brings a bone, and the
imprisoned princess, by means of this knife and bone, is enabled to
make a hole in the prison, and to free herself.
[53] In the _Pentamerone_, i. 7, the enchanted bitch brings to the
princess news of the young hero.
[54] In the seventh Esthonian story, the man with the black horse
binds three dogs tightly; if they get loose, no one will be able to
keep them back.--In the _Edda_, Thrymer, the prince of the giants,
keeps the grey dogs bound with golden chains.
[55] Einen gelblichen Hund mit vier Augen oder einen weissen mit gelben
Ohren; _Vendidad_, viii. 41, _et seq._, Spiegel's version. And Anquetil,
describing the _Baraschnon no schabé_, represents the purifying dog as
follows:--"Le Mobed prend le bâton à neuf noeuds, entre dans les Keischs
et attache la cuillère de fer au neuvième noeud. L'impur entre aussi
dans les Keischs. On y amène un chien; et si c'est une femme que l'on
purifie, comme elle doit être nue, c'est aussi une femme qui tient le
chien. L'impur ayant la main droite sur sa tête et la gauche sur le
chien, passe successivement sur les six premières pierres et s'y lave
avec l'urine que lui donne le Mobed."--In the _Kâtyây. Sû._ the question
is seriously discussed whether a dog, who was seen to fast on the
fourteenth day of the month, did so on account of religious
penitence.--Cfr. Muir's _Sanskrit Texts_, i. 365.
[56] Dog and horse, with bites and kicks, kill the monster doe and
free the two brother-heroes in the _Pentamerone_, i. 9.
[57] Cfr. also the sixth of the third book.--In the second story of
the third book of the _Pentamerone_, the sister herself cuts off her
own hands, of which her brother, who wishes to marry her, is
enamoured.--Cfr. the _Mediæval Legends of Santa Uliva_, annotated by
Professor Alessandro d'Ancona, Pisa, Nistri, 1863; and the _Figlia del
Re di Dacia_, illustrated by Professor Alessandro Wesselofski, Pisa,
Nistri, 1866, besides the thirty-first of the stories of the Brothers
Grimm.
[58] The thirty-third of the collection of Karadzik, quoted by
Professor Wesselofsky in his introduction to the story of the _Figlia
del Re di Dacia_.
[59] Cfr. my little essay on the _Albero di Natale_.
[60] _King Richard II._, act. i. scene 2.
[61] Çrutam tac châsur iva vadhrimat yâ hiranyahastam açvinâv adattam;
_Rigv._ i. 116, 13.--Hiranyahastam açvinâ rarânâ putram narâ
vadhrimatyâ adattam; i. 117, 24.--The dog in connection with a man's
hand is mentioned in the Latin works of Petrarch, when speaking of
Vespasian, who considered as a good omen the incident of a dog
bringing a man's hand into the refectory.
[62] Sadyo gañghâm âyasîm viçpalâyai dhane hite sartave praty
adhattam; str. 15.
[63] It is perhaps for this reason that the Hungarians give to their
dogs names of rivers, as being runners; but it is also said that they
do so from their belief that a dog which bears the name of a river or
piece of water never goes mad, especially if he be a white dog,
inasmuch as the Hungarians consider the red dog and the black or
spotted one as diabolical shapes. In Tuscany, when a Christian's tooth
is taken out, it must be hidden carefully, that the dogs may not find
it and eat it; here dog and devil are assimilated.
[64] Scylla laves her groin in a fountain, the waters of which the
enchantress Circe has corrupted, upon which monstrous dogs appear in
her body, whence Ovid--
"Scylla venit mediaque tenus descenderat alvo,
Cum sua foedari latrantibus inguina monstris
Aspicit, ac primo non credens corporis illas
Esse sui partes, refugitque, abiitque timetque
Ora proterva canum."
[65] Hæc lucem accipiunt ab Joinville in Hist. S. Ludovici, dum foedera
inter Imp. Joannem Vatatzem et Comanorum Principem inita recenset, eaque
firmata ebibito alterius invicem sanguine, hacque adhibita ceremonia,
quam sic enarrat: "Et ancore firent-ils autre chose. Car ils firent
passer un chien entre nos gens et eux, et découpèrent tout le chien à
leurs espées, disans que ainsy fussent-ils découpez s'ils failloient
l'un à l'autre."--Cfr. in Du Cange the expression "cerebrare canem."
[66] In a fable of Abstemius, a shepherd's dog eats one of the sheep
every day, instead of watching over the flock. The shepherd kills him,
saying, that he prefers the wolf, a declared enemy, to the dog, a
false friend. This uncertainty and confusion between the dog and the
wolf explains the double nature of the dog; to prove which I shall
refer to two unpublished Italian stories: the first, which I heard
from the mouth of a peasant-woman of Fucecchio, shows the bitch in the
capacity of the monster's spy; the second was narrated a few years ago
by a Piedmontese bandit to a peasant-woman who had shown hospitality
to him, at Capellanuova, near Cavour in Piedmont. The first story is
called _The King of the Assassins_, and is as follows:--
There was once a widow with three daughters who worked as seamstresses.
They sit upon a terrace; a handsome lord passes and marries the eldest;
he takes her to his castle in the middle of a wood, after having told
her that he is the chief of the assassins. He gives her a she-puppy and
says, "This will be your companion; if you treat her well, it is as if
you treated me well." Taking her into the palace, he shows her all the
rooms, and gives her all the keys; of four rooms, however, which he
indicates, there are two which she must not enter; if she does so, evil
will befall her. The chief of the assassins spends one day at home and
then three away. During his absence she maltreats the puppy, and gives
her scarcely anything to eat; then she lets herself be overcome by
curiosity, and goes to see what there is in the two rooms, followed by
the puppy. She sees in one room heads of dead people, and in the other
tongues, ears, &c., hung up. This sight fills her with terror. The chief
of the assassins returns and asks the bitch whether she has been well
treated; she makes signs to the contrary, and informs her master that
his wife has been in the forbidden rooms. He cuts off her head, and goes
to find the second sister, whom he induces to come to him by under
invitation to visit his wife; she undergoes the same miserable fate.
Then he goes to take the third sister, and tells her who he is; she
answers, "It is better thus, for I shall no longer be afraid of
thieves." She gives the bitch soup, caresses her, and makes herself
loved by her; the king of the assassins is contented, and the puppy
leads a happy life. After a month, while he is out and the puppy amusing
itself in the garden, she enters the two rooms, finds her two sisters,
and goes into the other rooms, where there are ointments to fasten on
limbs that have been cut off, and ointments to bring the dead to life.
Having resuscitated her sisters, and given them food, she hides them in
two great jars, furnished with breathing holes, and asks her husband to
take them as a present to her mother, warning him not to look into the
jars, as she will see him. He takes them, and when he tries to look in,
he hears, as he had been forewarned, not one voice, but two whispering
from within them, "My love, I see you." Terrified at this, he gives up
the two jars at once to the mother. Meanwhile his wife has killed the
bitch in boiling oil; she then brings all the dead men and women to
life, amongst whom there is Carlino, the son of a king of France, who
marries her. Upon the return of the king of the assassins he perceives
the treachery, and vows revenge; going to Paris, he has a golden pillar
constructed in which a man can be concealed without any aperture being
visible, and bribes an old woman of the palace to lay on the prince's
pillow a leaf of paper which will put him and all his servants to sleep
as soon as he reclines on it. Shutting himself up in the pillar, he has
it carried before the palace; the queen wishes to possess it, and
insists upon having it at the foot of her bed. Night comes; the prince
puts his head upon the leaf, and he and his servants are at once thrown
into a deep sleep. The assassin steps out of the pillar, threatens to
put the princess to death, and goes into the kitchen to fill a copper
with oil, in which to boil her. Meanwhile she calls her husband to help
her, but in vain; she rings the bell, but no one answers; the king of
the assassins returns and drags her out of bed; she catches hold of the
prince's head, and thus draws it off the paper; the prince and his
servants awake, and the enchanter is burnt alive.
The second story is called _The Magician of the Seven Heads_, and was
narrated to me by the peasant-woman in the following terms:--
An old man and woman have two children, Giacomo and Carolina. Giacomo
looks after three sheep. A hunter passes and asks for them; Giacomo
gives them, and receives in reward three dogs, Throttle-iron,
Run-like-the-wind, and Pass-everywhere, besides a whistle. The father
refuses to keep Giacomo at home; he goes away with his three dogs, of
which the first carries bread, the second viands, and the third wine.
He comes to a magician's palace and is well received. Bringing his
sister, the magician falls in love with her and wishes to marry her;
but to this end the brother must be weakened by the abstraction of his
dogs. His sister feigns illness and asks for flour; the miller demands
a dog for the flour, and Giacomo yields it for love of his sister; in
a similar manner the other two dogs are wheedled away from him. The
magician tries to strangle Giacomo, but the latter blows his whistle,
and the dogs appear and kill the magician and the sister. Giacomo goes
away with the three dogs, and comes to a city which is in mourning
because the king's daughter is to be devoured by the seven-headed
magician. Giacomo, by means of the three dogs, kills the monster; the
grateful princess puts the hem of her robe round Throttle-iron's neck
and promises to marry Giacomo. The latter, who is in mourning for his
sister, asks for a year and a day; but before going he cuts the seven
tongues of the magician off and takes them with him. The maiden
returns to the palace. The chimney-sweeper forces her to recognise him
as her deliverer; the king, her father, consents to his marrying her;
the princess, however, stipulates to be allowed to wait for a year and
a day, which is accorded. At the expiration of the appointed time,
Giacomo returns, and hears that the princess is going to be married.
He sends Throttle-iron to strike the chimney-sweeper (the black man,
the Saracen, the Turk, the gipsy, the monster) with his tail, in order
that his collar may be remarked; he then presents himself as the real
deliverer of the princess, and demands that the magician's heads be
brought; as the tongues are wanting, the trick is discovered. The
young couple are married, and the chimney-sweeper is burnt.
[67] Cfr. the _Biblioteca delle Tradizioni Popolari Siciliane_, edited
by Gius. Pitrè, ii. canto 811.
[68] In Richardus Dinothus, quoted by Aldrovandi.
[69] From a letter of my friend Pitrè.
[70] _De Quadrup. Dig. Viv._ ii.
[71] Cfr. Du Cange, _s. v._ "canem ferre." The ignominy connected with
this punishment has perhaps a phallic signification, the dog and the
phallos appear in connection with each other in an unpublished legend
maliciously narrated at Santo Stefano di Calcinaia, near Florence, and
which asserts that woman was not born of a man, but of a dog. Adam was
asleep; the dog carried off one of his ribs; Adam ran after the dog to
recover it, but brought back nothing save the dog's tail, which came
away in his hand. The tail of the ass, horse, or pig, which is left in
the peasant's hand in other burlesque traditions, besides serving as
an indication, as the most visible part, to find the lost or fallen
animal again, or to return into itself, may perhaps have a meaning
analogous to that of the tail of Adam's dog.--I hope the reader will
pardon me these frequent repugnant allusions to indecent images; but
being obliged to go back to an epoch in which idealism was still in
its cradle, while physical life was in all its plenitude of vigour,
images were taken in preference from the things of a more sensible
nature, and which made a deeper and more abiding impression. It is
well known that in the production of the Vedic fire by means of the
friction of two sticks, the male and the female are alluded to, so
that the grandiose and splendid poetical myth of Prometheus had its
origin in the lowest of similitudes.
CHAPTER VII.
THE CAT, THE WEASEL, THE MOUSE, THE MOLE, THE SNAIL, THE ICHNEUMON, THE
SCORPION, THE ANT, THE LOCUST, AND THE GRASSHOPPER.
SUMMARY.
Mârgâras, mârgaras, mrigas, mrigâris,
mrigarâgas.--Nakulas.--Mûsh.--Vamras, vamrî, vaprî, valmîkam,
_formica_.--The serpent and the ants.--Indras as an ant; the serpent
eaten by the ants.--Vamras drinking, assisted by the Açvinâu.--The
grateful ant; the hermit-dwarfs.--Ants' milk.--Ants' legs.--The ant
dies when its wings grow; the ants and the treasure.--The ants
separate the grains.--The locust and the ant; çarabhas as the
moon.--Grasshopper and ant.--Avere il grillo, aver la luna;
indovinala, grillo.--Wedding between ant and grasshopper.--Locusts
destroyed by fire.--Hippomürmêkes.--The Indian locust that guards
honey again.--The scorpion, and its poison absorbed.--The ichneumon,
enemy of the serpent.--The weasel.--Galanthis.--The cat with ears of
butter.--The cat as a judge.--The lynx.--The penitent cat.--The
beneficent cat.--The cat with a golden tail.--Cat and dog as
friends; the dog carries the cat; they find the lost ring
again.--The new-born son changed for a cat.--The cat that sings and
tells tales.--The cat created by the moon; Diana as a cat.--The
sacred cat.--The funereal and diabolical cat.--Cat and fox.--The cat
hangman.--_Le chat botté_.--_Chatte blanche;_ the cat that spins and
weaves.--The cat becomes a girl.--The enchanted palace of the
cats.--The cats of February; the black cat; the cat dreamed-of.--The
cat becomes a witch at seven years of age.--The cat in the
sack.--The mewing of the cat.--The cats dispute for souls.--Battle
of cats.--The mice that bite their tails or that gnaw the threads of
the net.--The mouse in the honey.--The mouse that becomes a maiden;
the mouse and the mountain.--The mouse that becomes a tiger.--The
souls of the dead pass into mice; funereal and diabolical mice;
superstitions relating to this belief.--The mouse that releases the
lion and the elephant from the trap.--Ganeças crushes the mouse;
Apollo Smyntheus.--When the cat's away the mice can dance.--The
mouse plays blind-man's-buff with the bear.--The grateful
mouse.--The mouse that foresees the future.--Mouse and sparrow,
first friends and then enemies.--The batrachomyomachia.--The mouse,
the tooth, and the coin.--Hiranyakas; the squirrel.--The monster
mole; the mole as a gravedigger; the blind mole.--The snail in the
popular song; the snail and the serpent; the snail as a funereal
animal.
I unite in one series several mythical nocturnal animals, which,
although really of very different natures, enter into only one order
of myths.
They are thieving and hunting animals, and are therefore very aptly
placed in the darkness of night (_naktacârin_ is an epithet applied in
Sanskrit both to the cat and the thief), in the nocturnal forest, in
connection now with Diana the huntress, or the good fairy the moon,
and now with the ugly witch; now appearing as the helpers of the hero,
and now as his persecutors.
The etymologies of several Hindoo words may be of some interest to the
reader, and may with propriety be adduced here. _Mârgâras_, the cat,
means the cleanser (as the animal that, in fact, cleans itself).
Referring to the myth, we know already that one of the principal
exactions of the witch is that her step-daughter should comb her hair,
or else clean the corn, during the night; and that the good fairy, the
Madonna, while she too has her hair combed, scatters gems about,
spins, and cleans the corn for the good maiden. The witch of night
forces the maiden aurora to separate the luminous wheat of evening
from the dark tares of night; the moon with its silvery splendour
disperses the shades of night. The _mârgâras_, or cleanser of the
night, the white cat, is the moon. _Aranyamârgâras_, or cat of the
forest, is the name given to the wild cat, with which the lynx, too,
is identified. As a white cat, as the moon, it protects innocent
animals; as a black cat, as the dark night, it persecutes them. The
cat is a skilful hunter; moreover, it is easy to confound the word
_mârgâras_ (the cleanser) with the word _mârgaras_, the proper meaning
of which is hunter, investigator, he who follows the track, the
_mârgas_, or else the enemy of the _mrigas_ (as mrigâris); the road is
the clean part of the land, as the margin is the white or clean part
of a book. The hunter may be he that goes on the margin or on the
track, or else he that hunts and kills the mrigas or forest animal.
The moon (the huntress Diana) is also called in Sanskrit _mrigarâgas_,
or king of the forest animals; and, as kings are wont, it sometimes
defends its subjects and sometimes eats them. The cat-moon eats the
grey mice of the night.
_Nakulas_ is the name given in Sanskrit to the ichneumon, the enemy of
mice, scorpions, and snakes. The word seems to be derived from the
root _naç_, _nak = necare_, whence nakulas would appear to be the
destroyer (of nocturnal mice).
The mouse, _mûsh_, _mûshas_, _mûshakas_, is the thief, the ravisher,
whence also its name rat (_a rapiendo_).
The Hindoo names of the ant are _vamras_ and _vamrî_ (besides
_pipîlakas_). _Vamrî_ is connected with _vapâ_, _vapram_, _vaprî_,
ant-hole, and, by metathesis, _valmîkam_ (_i.e._, appertaining to
ants), which has the same meaning. The Latin _formica_ unites together
the two forms _vamrî_ and _valmîkam_. The roots are _vap_, in the
sense of to throw, and _vam_, to erupt or to throw out, as the ants do
when they erect little mounds of earth.
In the _Mahâbhâratam_, the hole of a serpent is also called by the name
of _valmîkam_; from this we can explain the fable of the third book of
the _Pancatantram_, where we have a serpent fighting against ants. He
kills many of them, but their number is so interminable that he is at
last forced to succumb. Thus, in the mythical Vedic heavens, it is in
the shape of a vamras or ant that Indras fights victoriously against the
old monster that invades the sky.[72] Nay, more, in the _Pancatantram_,
the ants sting and bite the serpent and kill it; thus Indras (who, as we
have just said, is an ant in the cloud or the night) gives to the ants
the avaricious serpent, the son of Agrus, dragging it out of its
hiding-place.[73] Indras is therefore a variety of the Captain Formicola
of the Tuscan fairy tale. Finally, the _Rigvedas_ offers us yet another
curious particular. The two Açvinâu come to assist Vamras (or Indras in
his form of an ant, _i.e._, they come to assist the ant) whilst it is
drinking (vamram vipipânam). The ant throws or lifts up little hillocks
of earth by biting the ground. The root _vap_, which means to throw, to
scatter, has also the sense of to cut, and perhaps to make a hole in.
The convex presupposes the concave; and _vam_ is related to _vap_ (as
_somnus_ is related to _hüpnos_, to _svapnas_, and to _sopor_). Indras,
as an ant, is the wounder, the biter of the serpent. He makes it come
out of its den, or vomits it forth (eructat); the two etymological
senses are found again in the myth. The weapons with which Indras wounds
the serpent are doubtless now the solar rays, and now the thunderbolts.
Indras, in the cloud, drinks the somas. The ant drinks, and the Açvinâu,
whilst it drinks, come to its help, for no doubt the ant when drinking
is in danger of being drowned. And this brings us to the story of the
grateful animals, in which the young hero finds an ant about to be
drowned.
In the twenty-fourth of the Tuscan fairy tales published by me, when the
shepherd's son, by a good advice which he has received, determines to do
good to every one he meets, he sees on the path an ant-hill, which is
about to be destroyed by water; he then makes a bank round it, and thus
saves the ants;[74] in their turn the ants pay back the debt. The king
of the land demands of the young man, as a condition of receiving his
daughter in marriage, that he should separate and sort the different
kinds of grain in a granary; up marches Captain Formicola with his army,
and accomplishes the stipulated task. In other varieties of the same
story, instead of the embankment, we have the leaf that the hero puts
under the ant to float it out of the water contained in the footprint of
a horse, which again recalls the lotus-leaf on which the Hindoo deity
navigates the ocean. This water in which the ant is drowning was
afterwards changed into the proverbial ants' milk,[75] which is now used
to express an impossibility, but which, when referred to Indras, to the
mythical ant, represents the ambrosial and pluvial moisture. In the
sixth Sicilian story of Signora Gonzenbach, the boy Giuseppe, having
given crumbs of bread to the hungry ants, receives from the king of the
ants the present of an ant's leg, in order that he may use it when
required. When he wishes to become an ant, in order to penetrate into
the giant's palace, he has only to let the ant's leg fall to the ground,
with the words, "I am a Christian, and am becoming an ant," which
immediately comes to pass. In the same story Giuseppe procures sheep, in
order to attract the serpent by their smell, and induce it to come out
of its lurking-place. Here we evidently return to the Vedic subject of
the ant Indras, who tempts the serpent to come out in order to give it
to the ants. In the eighth story of the fourth book of the
_Pentamerone_, the ant shows the third part of the way to the girl
Cianna, who is going to search for the mother of time; on the door of
her dwelling Cianna will find a serpent biting its tail (the well-known
symbol of the cyclical day or year, and of time, in antiquity), and she
is to ask the mother of time, on the ant's part, advice as to how the
ants can live a hundred years. The mother of time answers to Cianna that
the ants will live a hundred years when they can dispense with flying,
inasmuch as "quanno la formica vo morire, mette l'ascelle" (_i.e._, the
wings). The ant, grateful for this good advice, shows Cianna and her
brothers the place underground where the thieves have deposited their
treasure. We also remember the story of the ants who bring grains of
barley into the mouth of the royal child Midas, to announce his future
wealth. In _Herodotus_ (iii.), and in the twelfth book of the stories of
_Tzetza_,[76] I find the curious information that there are in India
ants as large as foxes, that keep golden treasures in their holes; the
grains of wheat are this gold. The morning and evening heavens are
sometimes compared to granaries of gold; the ants separate the grain
during the night, carrying it from west to east, and purifying it of all
that is unclean, or cleansing the sky of the nocturnal shadows. The work
assigned every night by the witch to the maiden aurora of evening is
done in one night by the black ants of the sky of night. Sometimes the
girl meets on the way the good fairy (the moon), who comes to her help;
the maiden, assisted by the ants, meets the madonna-moon. But the moon
is called also the leaper or hopper, a nocturnal locust; the darkness,
the cloud and the dark-coloured earth (in lunar eclipses) are at the
same time ant-hills and black ants, that pass over or before the moon;
and, therefore, in the race between the ant and the locust, it is said
in the fable that the ant won the race. The locust, or _çarabhas_, or
_çalabhas_, is presented to us as an improvident animal in two sentences
of the first and fourth books of the _Pancatantram_. The green
grasshopper or locust leaps; the fair-haired moon leaps. (I have already
noticed in the chapter on the ass how the words _haris_ and _harit_ mean
both green and fair, or yellow; in the second canto of the sixth book of
the _Râmâyanam_, the monkey Çarabhas is said to inhabit the mountain
Candras or Mount Moon; Çarabhas, therefore, appears as the moon.) Locust
and grasshopper jump (cfr. the Chap. on the hare); hence the ant is not
only in connection with the locust, but also with the grasshopper: the
Hindoo expression _çarabhas_ means both grasshopper (in Sanskrit, also
named _varshakarî_) and locust. In one of the popular songs of the
Monferrato collected by Signor Ferraro, we have the wedding of the
grasshopper and the ant; the magpie, the mouse, the ortolan, the crow,
and the goldfinch bring to the wedding a little cut straw, a cushion,
bread, cheese, and wine. In the popular Tuscan songs published by
Giuseppe Tigri, I find the word _grilli_ (grasshoppers) used in the
sense of lovers. In Italian, _grillo_ also means caprice, and especially
amorous caprice; and _medico grillo_ is applied to a foolish doctor.[77]
And yet the grasshopper ought to be the diviner _par excellence_. In
Italy, when we propose a riddle, we are accustomed to end it with the
words "indovinala, grillo" (guess it, grasshopper); this expression
perhaps refers to the supposed fool of the popular story, who almost
always ends by showing himself wise. The sun enclosed in the cloud and
in the gloom of night is generally the fool, but he is at the same time
the fool who, in the kingdom of the dead, sees, hears, and learns
everything; and the moon, too, personified as a grasshopper or locust,
is the supposed fool who, on the contrary, knows, sees, understands, and
teaches everything; from the moon are taken prognostics; hence riddles
may be proposed to the capricious moon, or the celestial cricket. In
Italian, the expressions "aver la luna" (to have the moon), and "avere
il grillo" (to have the grasshopper), are equivalent, and mean to suffer
from a nervous attack, or the spleen. I also find the wedding between
ant and grasshopper in a very popular, but as yet unpublished Tuscan
song. The ant asks the grasshopper whether he desires her for his wife,
and recommends him, if he does not, to look after his own affairs, that
is, to leave her alone. And then the narrative begins. The grasshopper
goes into a field of linen; the ant begs for a thread to make herself
aprons and shirts for the wedding; then the grasshopper says he wishes
to marry her. The grasshopper goes into a field of vetches; the ant asks
for ten vetches, to cook four in a stew, and to put six upon the spit
for the wedding-dinner. After the wedding, the grasshopper follows the
trade of a greengrocer, then that of an innkeeper; but his affairs
succeed so badly, that he first puts his own trousers in pawn, and then
becomes bankrupt, and beats his wife the ant; at last he dies in misery.
Then the ant faints away, throws herself upon the bed, and beats her
breast for sorrow with her heel (as ants do when they die).[78] The
nuptials of the black ant, the gloom of night, with the moon, locust,
or grasshopper, take place in the evening; the grasshopper dies, the
moon pales, and the black ant, the night, also disappears. In the
_Pancatantram_, the locusts are destroyed by fire. In the so-called
letter of Alexander the Great to Olympias,[79] I find the ants scared
away by means of fire, whilst they are endeavouring to keep horses and
heroes at a distance. These extraordinary ants recall to us the
hippomürmêkes of the Greeks, or ants of horses. The ants, the insects of
the forest of night, molest the hero and solar horse that traverse it;
the black ants of night are dispersed by the solar fire of the morning:
this we can understand all the better when Tzetza, quoted before,
speaking of the Indian ants, calls them as large as foxes; when Pliny,
in the eleventh book of his History, says they are of the colour of a
cat, and the size of Egyptian wolves; and when Solinus tells us that
they have the shape of a large dog, with lion's feet, with which they
dig gold up. Ælianos calls them guardians of gold (tôn chrüsôn
phülattontes). Evidently the ants have already taken here a monstrous
and demoniacal aspect. Several other ancient authors have written
concerning these Indian ants, including Herodotus, Strabo, Philostratos,
and Lucian. I shall only mention here, as bearing on our subject, that,
according to Lucian, it is by night that they dig up the gold, and that,
according to Pliny, the ants dig up gold in winter (night and winter are
often equivalent in mythology). "The Indians, moreover, steal it during
summer, whilst the ants stay hidden in their subterranean lurking-places
on account of the vapours; however, tempted forth by the smell, they run
out, and often cut the Indians in pieces, although they flee away on
very swift camels, they are so rapid, ferocious, and desirous of
gold."[80] This monster ant, with lion's claws, which Pliny also
describes as horned, approaches very closely to the mythical black
scorpion of the clouds and the night, the Vedic _Vriçcikas_, which, now
a very little bird (iyattikâ çakuntikâ), now a very small ichneumon
(kushumbhakas, properly the little golden one, perhaps the young morning
sun), destroys with its tooth (açmanâ, properly with the biter),
absorbing or taking away the poison, as jars take off the water, _i.e._,
the sun's rays dissipate the vapours of the sun enclosed in the cloud or
the gloom.[81] Here the ichneumon (viverra ichneumon) appears as the
benefactor of the scorpion rather than as its enemy; it takes its poison
away, that is, it frees the sun from the sign of Scorpio, from the
vapours which envelope it. The ichneumon is in Sanskrit called
_nakulas_. In the twelfth story of the first book of the _Pancatantram_,
we see it, on the contrary, as the declared enemy of the black serpent,
which it kills in its den. But inasmuch as the weasel-ichneumon bites
venomous animals, it is itself obliged to deliver itself from the venom
it has in consequence imbibed. Therefore, in the _Atharvavedas_, mention
is already made of the salutary herb with which the nakulas (which is
also the name of one of the two sons of the Açvinâu, in the
_Mahâbhâratam_) cures himself of the bite of venomous animals, that is,
of serpents, scorpions, and monstrous mice, his enemies. The weasel
(mustela), which differs but little from the ichneumon, is almost the
same in the myths. The weasel, too, as we learn from the ninth book of
Aristotle's _History of Animals_, fights against serpents, after having
eaten the famous herb called rue, the smell of which is said to be
insupportable to serpents. But, as its Latin name tells us, it is no
less skilful as a hunter of mice.[82] The reader is doubtless familiar
with the Æsopian fable of the weasel which petitions the man for its
liberty for the service which it has rendered him by freeing his house
from rats; and with that of Phædrus, of the old weasel which catches
mice in the flour-trough by rolling itself in the flour, so that the
mice approach, under the impression that it is a solid mass. Plautus's
parasite reckons upon a good dinner for himself from having met with a
weasel carrying away the whole of a mouse except its feet (auspicio
hodie optumo exivi foras; mustela murem abstulit præter pedes); but the
expected dinner never appearing, he declares that the presage is false,
and pronounces the weasel a prophet only of evil, inasmuch as in one and
the same day it changes its place ten times. According to the ninth book
of Ovid's _Metamorphoses_, the maid Galanthis was changed by the
goddess Lucina (the moon) into a weasel, for having told a lie,
announcing the birth of Hêraklês before it had taken place:--
"Strenuitas antiqua manet, nec terga colorem
Amisêre suum, forma est diversa priori;
Quæ, quia mendaci parientem juverat ore,
Ore parit."
The popular superstition which makes the weasel bring forth its young
by its mouth, probably had its origin in this fable. From the mouth
intemperate words are brought forth. Simonides, in Stobeus, quoted
already by Aldrovandi,[83] compares wicked women to weasels. The moon
that changes the chattering Galanthis into a weasel appears to be the
same as the white moon itself transformed into a white weasel, the
moon that explores the nocturnal heaven and discovers all its secrets.
Ants, mice, moles (like serpents), love, on the contrary, to stay
hidden, and to keep their secrets concealed. The ichneumon, the weasel,
and the cat generally come out of their hiding-places, and chase away
whoever is concealed, carrying away from the hiding-places whatever they
can. They are both themselves thieves, and hunt other thieves.
It is easy now to pass from the Latin _mustela_ to the Sanskrit cat
_mûshakârâtis_, or _mûshikântakrit_.
In the _Pancatantram_, the cat Butter-ears (dadhikarnas), or he of the
white ears, who feigns to repent of his crimes, is called upon to act
as judge in a dispute pending between the sparrow, kapingalas and the
hare Quick-walker (sîghragas), who had taken up his quarters in the
dwelling of the absent sparrow. Butter-ears solves the question by
feigning deafness, and requesting the two disputants to come nearer,
to confide their arguments in his ears; the hare and the sparrow rely
on his good faith, and approach, when the cat clutches and devours
them both. In the _Hitopadeças_,[84] we have, instead of the sparrow,
the vulture caradgavas, which meets with its death in consequence of
having shown hospitality to the cat, "of which it knew neither the
disposition nor the strength" (agnâtakulaçîlasya). In the
_Tuti-Name_,[85] we have, instead of the cat, the lynx,[86] that
wishes to possess itself of the lion's house, which is guarded by the
monkey; it terrifies the lion, and drives it to flight. In the
_Anvari-Suhaili_,[87] instead of the cat or lynx, we find represented
the leopard. In the _Mahâbhâratam_,[88] we find again the fable of the
penitent cat. The cat, by the austerity which it practises on the
banks of the Ganges, inspires confidence in the birds, which gather
round it to do it honour. After some time, the mice imitate the
example of the birds, and put themselves under the cat's protection,
that it may defend them. The cat makes its meals upon them every day,
by inducing one or two to accompany it to the river, and fattens
exceedingly fast, whilst the mice diminish every day. Then a wise
mouse determines to follow the cat one day when it goes to the river;
the cat eats both the mouse that accompanies it and the spy. Upon this
the mice discover the trick, and evacuate altogether the post of
danger. The penitent cat is already proverbial in the _Code of
Manus_.[89] In the _Reineke Fuchs_ of Goethe,[90] the cat goes to
steal in the priest's house, by the wicked advice of the fox, when
every one falls upon him--
"Sprang er wüthend entschlossen
Zwischen die Schenkel des Pfaffen und biss und kratzte
gefährlich."
The _Roman du Renard_,[91] when the priest is mutilated by the cat,
makes his wife exclaim--
"C'en est fait de nos amours!
Je suis veuve sans recours!"
In the same _Roman_, when the cat Tibert, the ambassador of King Lion,
arrives at Mantpertuis, where the fox reigns, we read--
"Tibert lui présenta la patte;
Il fait le saint, il fait la chatte!
Mais à bon chat, bon rat! Renard aussi le flatte!
Il s'entend à dorer ses paroles de miel!
Si l'un est saint, l'autre est hermite;
Si l'un est chatte, l'autre est mite."
In the romance of the fox, the fox endeavours to destroy the cat by
inducing it to catch the mice that are in the priest's house. In an
unpublished Tuscan story,[92] we have, on the contrary, the fox that
invites the mouse to the shop of a butcher who has recently killed a
pig. The mouse promises to gnaw the wood till the hole is large enough
for the fox to pass through it; the fox eats till it is able to pass,
and then goes away; the mouse eats and fattens so much that it can no
longer pass; the cat then comes and eats it.
In the thirty-fourth story of the second book of _Afanassieff_, the
cat occurs again, as in India, in connection with the sparrow, but not
to eat it; on the contrary, they are friends, and twice deliver the
young hero from the witch. This is a form of the Açvinâu. In the
sixty-seventh story of the sixth book, the two Açvinâu return in the
shape respectively of a dog and a cat (now enemies one of the other,
as the two mythical brothers often show themselves, and now friends
for life and death). A young man buys for a hundred roubles a dog with
hanging ears, and for another hundred roubles a cat with a golden
tail,[93] both of which he nourishes well. With a hundred roubles
more, he acquires the ring of a dead princess, from which thirty boys
and a hundred and seventy heroes, who perform every kind of marvel,
can come forth at the possessor's will. By means of these wonders, the
young man is enabled to wed the king's daughter; but as the latter
wishes to ruin him, she makes him drunk, steals his ring, and departs
into a far distant kingdom. The Tzar then shuts the youth up in
prison; the dog and the cat go to recover the lost ring. When they
pass the river, the dog swims and carries the cat upon his back (the
blind and the lame, St Christopher and Christ). They come to the place
where the princess lives, and enter into her dwelling. They then
engage themselves in the service of the cook and the housemaid; the
cat, following its natural instinct, gives chase to a mouse, upon
which the mouse begs for its life, promising to bring the ring to the
cat. The princess sleeps with the ring in her mouth; the mouse puts
its tail into her mouth; she spits, the ring comes out, and is taken
by the dog and the cat, who deliver the young man, and force the
fugitive Tzar's daughter to return to her first abode.
In the following story of _Afanassieff_, when the youngest of the
three sisters bears three sons to Ivan Tzarevic, her envious elder
sisters make the prince believe that she has brought forth a cat, a
dog, and a vulgar child. The three real sons are carried off; the
princess is blinded and enclosed with her supposed child in a cask,
which is thrown into the sea. The cask, however, comes to shore and
opens;[94] the supposititious son immediately bathes the princess's
eyes with hot water, and she recovers her sight, after which he finds
her three luminous sons again, who light up whatever is near them with
their splendour, and is again united to her husband. In a Russian
variation of the same story, the three sons are changed by the witch
into three doves; the princess, with her supposed son, is saved from
the sea, and takes refuge upon an island, where, perched upon a gold
pillar, a wise cat sings ballads and tells stories. The three doves
are transformed into handsome youths, whose legs are of silver up to
the knee, their chests of gold, their foreheads like the moon, and
their sides formed of stars, and recover their father and mother.
Thus far we have seen the cat with white ears, who hunts the hare (or
moon), the morning twilight, and the penitent cat who eats mice at the
river's side, and which is mythically the same. We have observed that,
of the two Açvinâu, one represents especially the sun, and the other
the moon; the thieving cat, who is the friend of some thieves and the
enemy of others (whence the Hungarian and Tuscan superstition, to the
effect that for a good cat to be a skilful thief, it must itself have
been stolen; then it is sure to catch mice well), is now the morning
twilight, now the moon who gives chase to the mice of the night.
According to the Hellenic cosmogony, the sun and the moon created the
animals; the sun creating the lion, and the moon the cat. In the fifth
book of Ovid's _Metamorphoses_, when the gods fled from the giants,
Diana took the form of a cat.[95] In Sicily the cat is sacred to St
Martha, and is respected in order not to irritate her: he who kills a
cat will be unhappy for seven years. In the ancient German belief, the
goddess Freya was drawn by two cats. At present, the cat and the
mouse are sacred to the funereal St Gertrude. In the sixty-second
story of the sixth book of _Afanassieff_, we have the chattering cat,
which the hero Baldak must kill in the territory of the hostile Sultan
(that is, in the wintry night). In the eighth story of the fourth book
of the _Pentamerone_, we also find a she-cat that plays the part of
the ogre's spy; in the tenth story of the _Pentamerone_, and in the
first of the _Novelline di Santo Stefano di Calcinaia_, on the
contrary, the cat reveals the witch's treachery to the prince. In the
twenty-third story of the fourth book of _Afanassieff_, the cat
Katofiei appears as the husband of the fox, who passes him off as a
burgomaster. United together, they terrify the wolf and the bear,[96]
the cat climbing up a tree. In the Æsopian fables, on the contrary,
the cat and the fox dispute as to which is the superior animal; the
cat makes the dog catch the fox, whilst it itself climbs up a tree. In
the third story of the second book of _Afanassieff_, the cat
associates with the cock in the search for the bark of trees; it
delivers its comrade three times from the fox that had run off with
it; the third time, the cat not only liberates the cock, but also eats
the four young foxes. In the thirtieth story of the fourth book, the
cat Catonaievic, the son of Cato (this name is derived from the
equivoque between the words _catus_ and _caton_; in French, besides
_chat_, we have _chaton_, _chatonique_, &c.), delivers the cock twice
from the fox, but the third time the fox eats the poor bird. In a
Russian variety of this story, the cat kills the five little foxes and
then the fox, after having sung as follows:--
"The cat walks upon its feet
In red boots;
It wears a sword by its side,
And a stick by its thigh;
It wishes to kill the fox,
And to make its soul perish."[97]
In another variety, the cat and the lamb go to deliver the cock from
the fox. The latter has seven daughters. The cat and the lamb allure
them by songs to come out, and they kill them one after the other,
wounding them in their foreheads; they then kill the fox itself, and
so deliver the cock. In the romance of the fox, the cat is the
hangman, and ties the fox to the gibbet.
In the third story of the first book, the witch's cat, grateful to the
good girl who has given her some ham to eat, teaches her how to
escape, and gives her the usual towel which, when thrown on the
ground, makes a river appear, and the usual comb which, in like
manner, causes an impenetrable forest to arise before the witch who
runs after the girl to devour her.
We have already seen the Vedic moon who sews the wedding-robe with a
thread that does not break. In the Russian story we have already
remarked how the little puppet, to oblige the good maiden, makes a shirt
destined for the Tzar, which is so fine that no one else can make the
like. In the celebrated tale of the witty Madame d'Aulnoy, _La Chatte
Blanche_, we have the white cat Blanchette, veiled in black, who
inhabits the enchanted palace, rides upon a monkey, speaks, and gives to
the young prince, who rides upon a wooden horse (the forest of night),
inside an acorn, the most beautiful little dog that ever existed in the
world, that he may take it to the king his father--a little dog, "plus
beau que la canicule" (evidently the sun itself, which comes out of the
golden egg or acorn), which can pass through a ring (the disc of the
sun), and then a marvellously painted cloth, which is so fine that it
can pass through the eye of a small needle, and is enclosed in a grain
of millet, although of the length of "quatre cents aunes" (the eye of
the needle, the acorn, the grain of millet, and the ring are equivalent
forms to represent the solar disc). This wonderful cat finally herself
becomes a beautiful maiden, "Parut comme le soleil qui a été quelque
temps enveloppé dans une nue; ses cheveux blonds étaient épars sur ses
épaules; ils tombaient par grosses boucles jusqu'à ses pieds. Sa tête
était ceinte de fleurs, sa robe, d'une légère gaze blanche, doublée de
taffetas couleur de rose." The white cat of night, the white moon,
resigns her place in the morning to the rosy aurora; the two phenomena
that succeed each other appear to be metamorphoses of the same being.
The white cat, with its attendant cats, before becoming a beautiful
maiden, invites the prince to assist in a battle which he engages in
with the mice. To this we can compare the Æsopian fable of the young man
who, in love with a cat, beseeches Venus to transform her into a woman.
Venus gratifies him; the youth marries her; but when the bride is in bed
(_i.e._, in the night, when the evening aurora again gives up its place
to the moon, or when it meets with the grey mice of night), a mouse
passes by, and the woman, who still retains her feline nature, runs
after it.
When the sun enters into the night, it finds in the starry heavens an
enchanted palace, where either there is not a living soul to be found,
or where only the cat-moon moves about. Hence, in my opinion, the
origin of the expression that we make use of in Italy to indicate an
empty house--"Non vi era neanche un gatto" (there was not even a cat
there). The cat is considered the familiar genie of the house. The
enchanted palace is always situated either at the summit of a
mountain, or in a gloomy forest (like the moon). This palace is the
dwelling either of a good fairy, or a good magician, or of a witch, or
a serpent-demon, or at least cats. The visit to the house of the cats
is the subject of a story which I have heard told, with few
variations, in Piedmont and in Tuscany.[98]
We have hitherto seen only the luminous or white cat, the cat-moon and
twilight, under a generally benignant aspect. But when the night is
without a moon, we have only the black cat in the dense gloom. This
black cat then assumes a demoniacal character.
In the Monferrato it is believed that all the cats that wander about
the roofs in the month of February are not really cats, but witches,
which one must shoot. For this reason, black cats are kept away from
the cradles of children. The same superstition exists in Germany.[99]
In Tuscany, it is believed that when a man desires death, the devil
passes before his bed in the form of any animal except the lamb, but
especially in that of a he-goat, a cock, a hen, or a cat. In the
German superstition,[100] the black cat that places itself upon the
bed of a sick man announces his approaching death; if it is seen upon
a grave, it signifies that the departed is in the devil's power. If
one dreams of a black cat at Christmas, it is an omen of some alarming
illness during the following year. Aldrovandi, speaking of Stefano
Cardano, narrates that, being old and seriously ill, or rather dying,
a cat appeared unexpectedly before him, emitted a loud cry, and
disappeared. The same Aldrovandi tells us of a cat which scratched the
breast of a woman, who, recognising in it a supernatural being, died
after the lapse of a few days. In Hungary it is believed that the cat
generally becomes a witch from the age of seven years to that of
twelve, and that witches ride upon tom-cats, especially black ones; it
is, moreover, believed that to deliver the cat from the witch, it is
necessary to make upon its skin an incision in the form of a cross.
The cat in the bag of proverbs has probably a diabolical allusion. In
the tenth story of the _Pentamerone_, when the King of Roccaforte,
thinking that he is marrying a beautiful maiden, finds that, on the
contrary, he has espoused a hideous veiled old hag (the night), he
says, "Questo è peo nce vole a chi accatta la gatta dinto lo sacco."
In Sicily, when the Rosary is recited for navigators, the mewing of
the cat presages a tedious voyage.[101] When the witches in _Macbeth_
prepare their evil enchantments against the king, the first witch
commences with the words--
"Thrice the brinded cat hath mewed."
In a German belief noticed by Professor Rochholtz, two cats that fight
against each other are to a sick man an omen of approaching death. These
two cats are probably another form of the children's game in Piedmont
and Tuscany, called the game of souls, in which the devil and the angel
come to dispute for the soul. Of the two cats, one is probably benignant
and the other malignant; they represent perhaps night and twilight. An
Irish legend tells us of a combat between cats, in which all the
combatants perished, leaving only their tails upon the battlefield. (A
similar tradition also exists in Piedmont, but is there, if I am not
mistaken, referred to wolves.) Two cats that fight for a mouse, and
allow it to escape, are also mentioned in Hindoo tradition.[102]
In the 105th hymn of the first book of the _Rigvedas_, and in the
thirty-third of the tenth book, a poet says to Indras, "The thought
rends me, thy praiser, as mice tear their tails by gnawing at
them."[103] But according to another interpretation, instead of
"tails," we should read "threads;" in this case, the mice that rend
the threads would refer to the fable of the mouse that delivers from
the net now the elephant, and now the lion (of which fable I shall
endeavour to prove the Vedic antiquity in the next chapter).
The twelfth story of the third book of the _Pancatantram_ is of great
mythological interest. From the beak of a hawk (in another Hindoo
legend, from two cats that are disputing for it) a mouse takes refuge
in the hands of a penitent, whilst he is bathing in the river. The
penitent transforms the mouse into a beautiful maiden, and wishes to
marry her to the sun; the maiden declines--he is too hot. The penitent
next wishes to marry her to the cloud which defeats the sun; the
maiden declares it is too dark and cold. He then proposes to give her
to the wind which defeats the cloud (in the white _Yagurvedas_, the
mouse is sacred to the god Rudras, the wind that howls and lightens in
the cloud); the maiden refuses--it is too changeful. The penitent now
proposes that she should wed the mountain, against which the wind
cannot prevail, but the girl says it is too hard; and finally the
penitent asks if she would be willing to part with her affections to
the mouse, who alone can make a hole in the mountain; the maiden is
satisfied with this last proposal, and is again transformed into a
female mouse, in order to be able to wed the male mouse. In this
beautiful myth (which is a variation of the other one which we have
already mentioned of the cat-maiden that, though transfigured, still
retains its instinct as a huntress of mice), the whole revolution of
the twenty-four hours of the day is described. The mouse of night
appears first; the twilight tries to make it its prey; the night
becomes the aurora; the sun presents itself for her husband; the sun
is covered by the cloud, and the cloud is scattered by the wind;
meanwhile the evening aurora, the girl, appears upon the mountain; the
mouse of night again appears, and with her the maiden is confounded.
The _Hîtopadeças_ contains an interesting variety of the same myth.
The mouse falls from the vulture's beak, and is received by a wise
man, who changes it into a cat, then, to save it from the dog, into a
dog, and finally into a tiger. When the mouse is become a tiger, it
thinks of killing the wise man, who, reading its thoughts, transforms
it again into a mouse. Here we find described the same circle of daily
celestial phenomena. The succession of these phenomena sometimes
causes transformations in the myths.
The well-known proverb of the mountain that gives birth to the mouse,
refers to the myth contained in the story of the _Pancatantram_. We
already know that the solar hero enters in the evening with the solar
horse into the mountain and becomes stone, and that all the heavens
assume the colour of this mountain. From the mountain come forth the
mice of night, the shadows of night, to which the cat-moon and the
cat-twilight give chase; the thieving propensities of the mice
display themselves in the night. In German superstition the souls of
the dead assume the forms of mice, and when the head of a house dies,
it is said that even the mice of the house abandon it.[104] In
general, every apparition of mice is considered a funereal presage; it
is on this account that the funereal St Gertrude was represented
surrounded by mice. The first witch in _Macbeth_, when she wishes to
persecute the merchant who is sailing towards Aleppo, and shipwreck
him, that she may avenge herself upon his wife, who had refused to
give her some chestnuts, threatens to become like a rat without a
tail. In the _Historia Sarmatiæ_, quoted by Aldrovandi, the uncles of
King Popelus II., whom, with his wife for accomplice, he murders in
secret, and throws into the lake, become mice, and gnaw the king and
queen to death. The same death is said to have been the doom of
Miçcislaus, the son of the Duke Conrad of Poland, for having
wrongfully appropriated the property of widows and orphans; and of
Otto, Archbishop of Mainz, for having burned the granary during a
famine. Mice are said to have presaged at Rome the first civil war, by
gnawing the gold in the temple; and it was, moreover, alleged that a
female mouse had given birth in a trap to five male mice, of which she
had devoured two. Other prodigies, in which mice were implicated, are
mentioned as having taken place at Rome, even in the times of Cato,
who was accustomed to make them the butt of his indignant scorn. To a
person who told him, for instance, how the mice had gnawed the boots,
he answered that this was no miracle; it would have been a miracle if
the boots (_caligæ_) had eaten the mice.
The mouse in the fable is sometimes in connection with the elephant
and the lion, whom it sometimes insults and despises (as in the
_Tuti-Name_),[105] and sometimes comes to help and deliver from their
fetters. The meaning of the myth is evident: the elephant and the lion
represent here the sun in the darkness; in the evening the mouse of
night leaps upon the two heroic animals, which are then old or infirm;
in the morning the sun is delivered out of the fetters of the night,
and it is supposed that it was the mouse which gnawed the ropes and
set at liberty now the elephant, as in the _Pancatantram_, now the
lion, as in the Æsopian fable.
The Hindoo god Ganeças, the god of poets, eloquence, and wisdom, is
represented with an elephant's head, and his foot crushing a mouse.
Thus, among the Greeks, Apollo Smintheus, so called because he had
shot the mice that stole the yearly provisions from Krinos, the priest
of Apollo himself, was represented with a mouse under him. As the
Christian Virgin crushes the serpent of night under her foot, so does
the pagan sun-god crush under his feet the mouse of night.
When the cat's away, the mice may play; the shadows of night dance
when the moon is absent.
In the fifteenth story of the fifth book of _Afanassieff_, the witch
step-mother desires her old husband to lead away his daughter to spin
in the forest[106] in a deserted hut. The girl finds a little mouse
there, and gives it something to eat. At night the bear comes, and
wishes to play with the girl at the game of blind-man's-buff (this
very popular game has evidently a mythical origin and meaning; every
evening in the sky the sun amuses itself by playing blind-man's-buff;
it blinds itself, and runs blind into the night, where it must find
again its predestined bride or lost wife, the aurora). The little
mouse approaches the maiden, and whispers in her ear, "Maiden, be not
afraid; say to him, 'Let us play;' then put out the fire and hide
under the stove; I will run and make the little bells ring." (Mice
seem to have an especial predilection for the sound of bells. It is
well-known how, in the Hellenic fable, the council of mice resolve, to
deliver themselves from the cat, to put a bell round its neck; no one,
however, undertakes to perform the arduous enterprise.) The bear
thinks he is running after the maiden, and runs, on the contrary,
after the mouse, which he cannot catch. The bear tires himself out,
and congratulating the maiden, says to her, "Thou art my mistress,
maiden, in playing at blind-man's-buff; to-morrow morning I will send
you a herd of horses and a chariot of goods." (The morning aurora
comes out of the forest, delivers herself from the clutches of the
bear, from the witch of the night, and appears drawn by horses upon a
chariot full of treasure. The myth is a lucid one.)
In other numerous legends we have the grateful mouse that helps the
hero or heroine. In the thirteenth Calmuc story, the mouse, the
monkey, and the bear, grateful for having been delivered, from the
rogues that tormented them, by the son of the Brahman, come to his
help by gnawing and breaking open the chest in which the young man had
been enclosed by order of the king; afterwards, with the assistance of
the fishes, they help him to recover a lost talisman.
In the fifty-eighth story of the sixth book of _Afanassieff_,[107] the
mouse, the war-horse, and the fish silurus, out of gratitude assist
the honest workman who has fallen into a marsh, and cleanse him; upon
seeing which the princess, that has never laughed, laughs, and
thereafter marries the workman. (The young morning sun comes out of
the marsh or swamp of night; the aurora, who was at first a dark,
wicked, and ugly girl, marries the young sun whom the mouse has
delivered out of the mud, as it delivered the lion out of the toils.)
In the fifty-seventh story of the sixth book of _Afanassieff_, it is
the mouse that warns Ivan Tzarevic to flee from the serpent-witch (the
black night) his sister, who is sharpening her teeth to eat him.
In the third story of the first book of _Afanassieff_, the mice help
the good maiden, who had given them something to eat, to do what the
witch, her step-mother, had commanded.
In the twenty-third story of the fifth book of _Afanassieff_, the
mouse and the sparrow appear at first as friends and associates. But
one day the sparrow, having found a poppy-seed, thinks it so small
that he eats it up without offering a share to his partner. The mouse
hears of it, and is indignant; he breaks the alliance, and declares
war against the sparrow. The latter assembles all the birds of the
air, and the mouse all the animals of the earth, and a sanguinary
battle commences. In a Russian variety of the same story, instead of
the sparrow, it is the mouse that breaks the compact. They collect
together the provisions against winter, but when, towards the end of
the season, they are all but finished, the mouse expels the sparrow,
and the sparrow goes to complain to the king of the birds. The king of
the birds visits the king of the beasts, and sets forth the complaint
of the sparrow; the king of the beasts then calls the mouse to
account, who defends himself with such humility and cunning, that he
ends by convincing his monarch that the sparrow is in the wrong. Then
the two kings declare war against each other, and engage in a
formidable struggle, attended with terrible bloodshed on both sides,
and which ends in the king of the birds being wounded. (The nocturnal
or wintry mouse expels the solar bird of evening or of autumn.)
In the _Batrachomyomachia_, attributed to Homer, the royal mouse
Psicharpax (properly ravisher of crumbs), the third son of Troxartes
(eat-bread), boasts to Phüsignathos (he who inflates his cheeks), the
lord of the frogs, that he does not fear the man, the point of whose
finger (akron daktülôn) he has bitten while he was asleep; whilst, on
the other hand, he has for his enemies the falcon (which we have
already, in the Hindoo story, seen let the mouse fall from its beak)
and the cat. The frog, who wishes to entertain the mouse, invites it
to get upon his back, to be carried to his royal mansion; at first the
mouse is amused with its ride, but when the frog makes it feel the icy
water, the poor mouse's heart begins to fail; finally, at the sight
of a serpent, the frog forgets its rider and runs away, throwing the
mouse head-over-heels into the water to be the prey of the serpent.
Then, before expiring, remembering that the gods have an avenging eye,
it threatens the frogs with the vengeance of the army of the mice. War
is prepared. The mice make themselves good boots with the shells of
beans; they cover their cuirasses of bulrushes with the skin of a
flayed cat; their shield is the centre knob of the lamps (lüchnôn to
mesomphalon, _i.e._, if I am not mistaken, a fragment of a little lamp
of terra-cotta, and, properly speaking, the lower and central part);
for a lance they have a needle, and for a helmet a nutshell. The gods
are present at the battle as neutrals,--Pallas having declared her
unwillingness to help the mice, because they stole the oil from the
lamps burning in her honour, and because they had gnawed her peplum,
and being equally indifferent to the frogs, because they had once
wakened her when returning from war, and when, being tired and weary,
she wished to rest. The battle is fiercely fought, and is about to
have an unfavourable result for the frogs, when Zeus takes pity upon
them; he lightens and hurls his thunderbolts. At last, seeing that the
mice do not desist, the gods send a host of crabs, who, biting the
tails, the hands, and the feet of the mice, force them to flee. This
is undoubtedly the representation of a mythical battle. The frogs, as
we shall see, are the clouds; the night meets the cloud; the mouse
fights with the frog. Zeus, the thunder-god, to put an end to the
struggle, thunders and lightens; at last the retrograde crab makes its
appearance; the combatants, frogs and mice, naturally disappear.
The mouse is never conceived otherwise than in connection with the
nocturnal darkness, and hence, by extending the myth, in connection
also with the darkness of winter, from which light and riches
subsequently come forth. In Sicily it is believed that when a child's
tooth is taken out, if it be hidden in a hole, the mouse will take it
away and bring a coin for the child in compensation. The mouse is
dark-coloured, but its teeth and fore-parts are white and luminous.
The mouse Hiranyakas, or the golden one, in the _Pancatantram_, is the
black or grey mouse of night. It is the red squirrel that, in an
Æsopian fable, answers to the query of the fox why it sharpens its
teeth when it has nothing to eat, that it does so to be always
prepared against its enemies. In the _Edda_, the squirrel runs upon
the tree Yggdrasil, and sets the eagle and Nidhögg at discord.
The mole and the snail are of the same nature as the grey mouse. The
Hindoo word _âkhus_, or the mole (already spoken of as a demon killed
by Indras, in the _Rigvedas_[108]), properly signifies the excavator.
In the _Reineke Fuchs_ the mole appears as a gravedigger, as the
animal that heaves the earth up, and makes ditches underground; it is,
in fact, the most skilful of gravediggers, and its black colour and
supposed blindness are in perfect accordance with the funereal
character assigned to it by mythology. In an apologue of Laurentius,
the ass complains to the mole of having no horns, and the monkey of
having a short tail; the mole answers them--
"Quid potestis hanc meam
Miseram intuentes coecitatem, hæc conqueri?"
According to the Hellenic myth, Phineus became a mole because he had,
following the advice of his second wife, Idaia, allowed his two sons
by his first wife, Cleopatra, to be blinded, and also because he had
revealed the secret thoughts of Zeus.[109]
In Du Cange I find that even in the Middle Ages it was the custom on
Christmas Eve for children to meet with poles, having straw wrapped
round the ends, which they set fire to, and to go round the gardens,
near the trees, shouting--
"Taupes et mulots
Sortez de nos clos
Sinon je vous brulerai la barbe et les os."
We find a similar invocation in the seventh story of the second book
of the _Pentamerone_. The beautiful girl goes to find maruzze, and
threatens the snail to make her mother cut off its horns--
"Iesce, iesce, corna
Ca mammata te scorna,
Te scorna 'ncoppa l'astreco
Che fa lo figlio mascolo."
In Piedmont, to induce the snail to put its horns out, children are
accustomed to sing to it--
"Lümassa, lümassora,
Tira fora i to corn,
Dass no,[110] i vad dal barbé
E it tje fass taié!"
Sicilian children terrify the snail by informing it that their mother
is coming to burn its horns with a candle--
"Nesci li corna ch 'a mamma veni
E t' adduma lu cannileri."
In Tuscany they threaten the white snail (la marinella), telling it to
thrust out its little horns to save itself from kicks and blows--
"Chiócciola marinella,
Tira fuori le tue cornella,
E se tu non le tirerai
Calci e pugni tu buscherai."
In Tuscany it is believed, moreover, that in the month of April the
snail makes love with the serpents, and is therefore venomous; hence
they sing--
"Chi vuol presto morire
Mangi la chiocciola d' aprile."[111]
The snail of popular superstition is demoniacal; hence it is also
invoked by children in Germany by the name of the funereal St
Gertrude--
"Kuckuck, kuckuck Gerderut
Stäk dîne vêr Horns herut."[112]
FOOTNOTES:
[72] Vriddhasya cid vardhato dyâm inakshatah stavâno vamro vi gaghâna
samdihah; _Rigv._ i. 51, 9.
[73] Vamrîbhih putram agruvo adânam niveçanâd dhariva â gabhartha;
_Rigv._ iv. 19, 9.--Another variation is the hedgehog, which, as we
have seen in Chapter V., forces the viper out of its den.
[74] The dwarf-hermits, who transport a leaf upon a car, and are about
to be drowned in the water contained in the foot-print of a cow, and
who curse Indras, who passes smiling without assisting them, in the
legend of the _Mahâbhâratam_, are a variety of these same ants.--Cfr.
the chapters on the Elephant and on the Fishes, where we have Indras
who fears to be submerged.
[75] Fa cunto ca no le mancava lo latto de la formica; _Pentamerone_,
i. 8.
[76] _Biblion Istorikon_, xii. 404.--In the _Epist. Presb. Johannis_,
we find also:--"In quadam provincia nostra sunt formicæ in magnitudine
catulorum, habentes vii. pedes et alas iv. Istæ formicæ ab occasu
solis ad ortum morantur sub terra et fodiunt purissimum aurum tota
nocte--quærunt victum suum tota die. In nocte autem veniunt homines de
cunctis civitatibus ad colligendum ipsum aurum et imponunt
elephantibus. Quando formicæ sunt supra terram, nullus ibi audet
accedere propter crudelitatem et ferocitatem ipsarum."--Cfr. _infra._
[77] Of this expression a historical origin is given, referring it to
a Bolognese doctor of the twelfth century, named Grillo.--Cfr.
Fanfani, _Vocabolario dell 'uso Toscano, s. v._ "grillo."
[78] Here are the words of the song of this curious wedding, which I
heard sung at Santo Stefano di Calcinaia, near Florence:--
"Grillo, mio grillo,
Se tu vuoi moglie, dillo;
Se tu n' la vuoi,
Abbada a' fatti tuoi.
Tinfillulilalera
Linfillulilalà.
"Povero grillo, 'n un campo di lino,
La formicuccia gne ne chiese un filo.
D'un filo solo, cosa ne vuoi tu fare?
Grembi e camicie; mi vuo' maritare.
Disse lo grillo:--Ti piglierò io.
La formicuccia:--Son contenta anch' io.
Tinfillul., &c.
"Povero grillo, 'n un campo di ceci;
La formicuccia gne ne chiese dieci
Di dieci soli, cosa ne vuoi tu fare?
Quattro di stufa, e sei li vuo' girare.
Tinfillul., &c.
"Povero grillo facea l'ortolano
L'andava a spasso col ravanello in mano;
Povero grillo, andava a Pontedera,
Con le vilancie pesava la miseria.
Tinfillul., &c.
"Povero grillo, l'andiede a Monteboni,
Dalla miseria l'impegnò i calzoni;
Povero grillo facea l'oste a Colle,
L'andò fallito e bastonò la moglie.
Tinfillul., &c.
"La formicuccia andò alla festa a il Porto,
Ebbe la nova che il suo grillo era morto
La formicuccia, quando seppe la nova
La cascò in terra, stette svenuta un 'ora.
La formicuccia si buttò su il letto,
Con le calcagna si batteva il petto.
Tinfillul.," &c.
[79] Cfr. Zacher, _Pseudo-Callisthenes_, Halle, 1867.
[80] Pliny, _Hist. Nat._ xi. 31.
[81] Iyattikâ çakuntikâ sakâ gaghâsa te visham; _Rigv._ i. 191, 11.
[82] iv. 1.
[83] _De Quad. Dig. Viv._ ii.
[84] i. 49.
[85] ii. 22.
[86] The forgetfulness of the lynx, as well as of the cat, is
proverbial. St Jerome, in the Ep. ad Chrisog.--"Verum tu quod natura
lynces insitum habent, ne post tergum respicientes meminerint priorum,
et mens perdat quod oculi videre desierint, ita nostræ es
necessitudinis penitus oblitus." Thus of the lynx it is said by
Ælianos that it covers its urine with sand (like the cat), so that men
may not find it, for in seven days the precious stone lyncurion is
formed of this urine. The cat that sees by night, the lynx that sees
through opaque bodies, the fable of Lynkeus, who, according to Pliny,
saw in one day the first and the last moon in the sign of Aries, and
the lynx that, according to Apollonios, saw through the earth what was
going on in hell, recall to us the moon, the wise and all-seeing fairy
of the sky, and the infernal moon.
[87] Quoted by Benfey in the Einleitung to the _Pancatantram_.
[88] v. 5421-5448.
[89] "Let no man, apprised of this law, present even water to a priest
who acts like a cat;" iv. 192, version of Jones and Graves' _Chamney
Haughton_, edited by Percival, Madras, 1863.--In a Russian story
quoted by Afanassieff in his observations to the first volume of his
stories, the cat Eustachio feigns itself penitent or monk in order to
eat the mouse when it passes. It being observed that the cat is too
fat for a penitent, it answers that it eats from the duty of
preserving its health.
[90] iii. 147, Stuttgart, Cotta, 1857.
[91] Translation by Ch. Potvin, Paris and Brussels, 1861.
[92] From the peasant-woman Uliva Selvi, who told it to me at
Antignano, near Leghorn.
[93] Cfr. _Afanassieff_, v. 32, where a cat is bought by a virtuous
workman for the price of a kapeika (a small coin), the only price that
he had consented to take as a reward for his work; the same cat is
bought by the king for three vessels. With another kapeika, earned by
other work, the workman delivers the king's daughter from the devil,
and subsequently marries her.
[94] Cfr. analogous subjects in Chapter I., _e.g._, Emilius the lazy
and stupid youth, and the blind woman who recovers her sight.
[95]
Huc quoque terrigenam venisse Typhoea narrat,
Et se mentitis superos celasse figuris;
Duxque gregis, dixit, fit Jupiter; unde recurvis
Nunc quoque formatus Lybis est cum cornibus Ammon
Delius in corvo, proles Semeleia capro
Fele soror Phoebi, nivea Saturnia vacca,
Pisce Venus latuit, Cyllenius ibidis alis.
--v. 325-332.
[96] In the eighteenth story of the third book of _Afanassieff_ it is
in company with the lamb (in the nineteenth, with the he-goat) that
the cat terrifies the wolf and the bear.
[97]
"Idiot kot na nagáh,
V krasnih sapagáh;
Nessiot sabliu na plessié;
A palocku pri bedrié,
Hociet lissu parubít,
Ieià dushu zagubít."
Puss-in-boots (le chat botté), helps the third brother in the tale of
Perrault.
[98] In Tuscany the previously mentioned story-teller, Uliva Selvi, at
Antignano, near Leghorn, narrated it to me as follows:--A mother has a
number of children and no money; a fairy tells her to go to the summit
of the mountain, where she will find many enchanted cats in a
beautiful palace, who give alms. The woman goes, and a kitten lets her
in; she sweeps the rooms, lights the fire, washes the dishes, draws
water, makes the beds, and bakes bread for the cats; at last she comes
before the king of the cats, who is seated with a crown on his head,
and asks for alms. The great cat rings the golden bell with a golden
chain, and calls the cats. He learns that the woman has treated them
well, and orders them to fill her apron with gold coins (rusponi). The
wicked sister of the poor woman also goes to visit the cats, but she
maltreats them, and returns home all scratched, and more dead than
alive from pain and terror.
[99] Cfr. Rochholtz, _Deutscher Glaube und Brauche_, i. 161.
[100] _Ib._--I find the same belief referred to in the twenty-first
Esthonian story of Kreutzwald.
[101] It is almost universally believed that when the cat cleans
itself behind its ears with its wet paw, it presages rain. And yet the
Latin proverb says--
"Catus amat pisces, sed aquas intrare recusat;"
and the Hungarian proverb, that the cat does not die in water. It is
for this reason, perhaps, that it is said, in a watery autumn the cat
is worth little--("The cat of autumn and the woman of spring are not
worth much;" _Hung. prov._)
[102] Polier, _Mythologie des Indes_, ii. 571.
[103] Mûsho na çiçnâ vy adanti mâdhyah stotâram te çatakrato; _Rigv._
i. 105, 8.--The commentator now interprets _çiçnâ_ by _sutrâni_,
threads, and now calls the reader's attention to the legend of the
mice that lick their tails after plunging them into a vase full of
butter, or some other savoury substance; but here _vy adanti_ can only
mean, they lacerate by biting, as in the preceding strophe we have the
thought that tears by biting, as the wolf tears the thirsty wild beast
(mâ vyanti âdhyo na trishnagam mrigam).--The mouse in the jar of
provisions also occurs in the fable of the mouse and the two penitents
in the _Pancatantram_, in the Hellenic fable of the son of Minos and
of Pasiphäe, who, pursuing a mouse, falls into a jar of honey, in
which he is suffocated, until recalled to life by a salutary herb.
[104] Den Mäusen pfeifen, heisst den Seelen ein Zeichen geben, um von
ihnen abgeholt zu werden; ebenso wie der Rattenfänger zu Hameln die
Lockpfeife bläst, auf deren Ton alle Mäuse und Kinder der Stadt mit ihm
in den Berg hineinziehen, der sich hinter ihnen zuschliesst. Mäuse sind
Seelen. Die Seele des auf der Jagd entschlafenen Königs Guntram kommt
schlängleinartig aus seinem Munde hervor, um so in einen nächsten Berg
und wieder zurückzulaufen. Der goethe'sche Faust weigert sich dem Tanz
mit dem hübschen Hexenmädchen am Blocksberg fortzusetzen:--
"Den mitten im Gesange sprang
Ein rothes Mäuschen ihr aus dem Munde."
--Rochholtz, _Deut. Glaube u. Brauch_, i. 156, 157.
[105] i. 268.
[106] The mouse that passes over the yarn occurs again in German
tradition:--"Gertrudenbuchlein ab: Zwei Mäuschen nagen an einer
flachsumwundenen Spindel; eine Spinnerinn sitzt am St Gertrudentag,
noch in der Zeit der Zwölften, wo die Geister in Gestalt von Mäusen
erscheinen, darf gesponnen werden;" Rochholtz, _ut supra_, i. 158.
[107] Cfr. _Pentamerone_, iii. 5.--In the story, iv. 1, the grateful
mice assist Minec Aniello to find the lost ring by gnawing the finger
on which the magician wears it.
[108] Alâyyasya paraçur nanâça tam â pavasya (pavasva according to
Aufrecht's text, and according to the commentator--cfr. Bollensen, Zur
Herstellung des Veda, in the _Orient und Occident_ of Benfey, ii. 484)
deva soma; âkhum cid eva deva soma; _Rigv._ ix. 67, 30.
[109] Cfr. the _Antigonê_ of Sophocles, v. 973, _et seq._
[110] This _dass no_ of the Piedmontese means "if not," and is
evidently of Germanic origin. The Piedmontese dialect has also taken
from the Germanic languages the final negative.--In Germany, children
sing to the snails--
"Schneckhûs, peckhûs,
Stäk dîn vêr hörner rût,
Süst schmît ick dî in'n graven
Da frêten dî de raven."
--Cfr. Kuhn und Schwartz, _N. d. S. M. u. G._, p. 453.
[111] In _Rabelais_, i. 38, when Gargantua has eaten five pilgrims in
his salad, another still remains hidden under a leaf of lettuce. His
father says to him--"Je crois que c'est là une corne de limasson, ne le
mangez point. Pourquoy? dist Gargantua, ilz sont bons tout se moys."
[112] Simrock, _Handbuch der Deutschen Mythologie_, 2te Aufl., p. 516.
CHAPTER VIII.
HARE, RABBIT, ERMINE, AND BEAVER.
SUMMARY.
The hare is the moon; _çaças_ and _çaçin_.--The hares at the lake
of the moon; the king of the hares in the moon.--The hare and the
elephant.--The hare and the lion.--The hare devours the western
monster; the hare devours his mother the mare.--_Mortuo leoni
lepores insultant_.--The hare and the eagle.--The hare that guards
the cavern of the beasts.--The hare comes out on the 15th of the
month and terrifies the wolf.--The hare transformed into the moon
by Indras.--Ermine and beaver.--Hare's-foot.--Hare and moon
fruitful.--Hare and moon that guide the hero.--_Somnus
leporinus_.--The hare and the bear.--The hare and the nuptial
procession.--The hare that contains a duck.--The girl riding upon
the hare.
The mythical hare is undoubtedly the moon. In Sanskrit, the _çaças_
means properly the leaping one, as well as the hare, the rabbit, and the
spots on the moon (the _saltans_), which suggest the figure of a hare.
Hence the names of _çaçin_, or furnished with hares, and of
_çaçadharas_, _çaçabhrit_, or he who carries the hare given to the moon.
In the first story of the third book of the _Pancatantram_, the hares
dwell upon the shore of the Lake Candrasaras, or lake of the moon; and
their king, Vigayadattas (the funereal god, the god of death), has for
his palace the lunar disc. When the hare speaks to the king of the
elephants who crushed the hares (in the same way as we have seen the cow
do in Chapter I.), he speaks in the moon's name. The hare makes the
elephant believe that the moon is in anger against the elephants because
they crush the hares under their feet; then the elephant demands to see
the moon, and the hare conducts him to the lake of the moon, where he
shows him the moon in the water. Wishing to approach the moon and ask
forgiveness, the elephant thrusts his proboscis into the water; the
water is agitated, and the reflection of the moon is disturbed, and
multiplied a thousand-fold. The hare makes the elephant believe that the
moon is still more angry because he has disturbed the water; then the
king of the elephants begs for pardon, and goes far away with his
subjects; from that day the hares live tranquilly on the shores of the
moon-lake, and are no longer crushed under the ponderous feet of their
huge companions. The moon rules the night (and the winter), the sun
rules the day (and the summer). The moon is cold, the sun is hot. The
solar elephant, lion, or bull, goes down at even to drink at the river,
at the lake of the nocturnal moon; the hare warns the elephant that if
he does not retire, if he continues to crush the hares on the shores of
the lake, the moon will take back her cold beams, and then the elephants
will die of thirst and excessive heat. The other story of the
_Pancatantram_ is a variety of the myth, which we mentioned in the
chapter of the dog, of the hare who conducts to his ruin the hungry lion
who wishes to eat her, by making him throw himself into a fountain or
well. This myth, which is analogous to that of the mouse as the enemy of
now the elephant, now the lion, and now the hawk, is already very
clearly indicated in the Vedic hymns. In the twenty-eighth hymn of the
tenth book of the _Rigvedas_, in which the fox comes to visit the
western lion (the sick lion[113]), in which we have the lion who falls
into the trap[114] (and whom the mouse insults in the evening, and
delivers in the morning by gnawing at the ropes which bind it: in the
Hellenic proverb it is the hare that draws the lion into the golden
net--"elkei lagôs lionta chrüsinô brochô," in the same way as in the
_Pancatantram_, it allures him into the well), and in which the hare
devours the western monster[115] (a variety of the Hellenic tradition of
the hare brought forth by a mare, and which immediately thereafter
devours its mother)--in this hymn we find the germ of several fables of
animals of the same cycle. The inferior animal vanquishes the superior
one, and upon this peculiarity the whole hymn turns; for this reason,
too, in the same hymn, the dog or jackal (canis aureus) assails the wild
boar,[116] and the calf defeats the bull.[117] The hare occurs again as
the proverbial enemy of the lion (whence the Latin proverb, "Mortuo
leoni lepores insultant," or _saltant_; the moon jumps up when the sun
dies), in the last book of the _Râmâyanam_, where the great king of the
monkeys, Bâlin, regards the king of the monsters, Râvanas, as a lion
does a hare, or as the bird Garudasa serpent.[118]
In _Æsop_ we find the hare that laughs at its enemy, the dying eagle,
because the hunter killed it with an arrow furnished with eagle's
feathers. In another Æsopian fable, the rabbit avenges itself upon the
eagle which has eaten its young ones, by rooting up and throwing down
the tree upon which the eagle has its nest, so that the eaglets are
killed.
In the seventeenth Mongol story, the hare is the guardian of the
cavern of the wild beasts (or the moon, the mrigarâgas and guardian of
the forest of night); in the same story an old woman (the old fairy or
old Madonna) is substituted for the hare. In the twenty-first Mongol
story, the hare sets out on a journey with the lamb, on the fifteenth
day of the month, when the moon comes forth, and defends the lamb from
the wolf of night, terrifying the latter by telling it that it has
received a writing from the god Indras, in which the hare is ordered
to bring to Indras a thousand wolves' skins.
In a Buddhist legend, the hare is transfigured by Indras into the
moon, because it had freely given him its flesh to eat, when,
disguised as a pilgrim, he came up begging for bread. The hare, having
nothing else to offer him, threw itself upon the fire, that Indras
might appease his hunger.[119]
In the _Avesta_ we find the ermine as the king of the animals, and the
beaver as the sacred and inviolable animal, in whose skin the pure
Ardvîçûra is invested (white and silvery as the white dawn, rosy and
golden as the aurora; unless Ardvîçûra, whose diadem is made of a
hundred stars, should also be interpreted as denoting the moon, which
is now silvery, and now fair and golden). Moreover, for the beaver to
represent the moon (the chaste Diana) is in perfect accordance with
the reputation it has as a eunuch (castor _a castrando_) in popular
superstition; whence the words of Cicero concerning beavers,[120] and
the verses of Juvenal--
"Imitatus castora qui se
Eunuchum ipse facit cupiens evadere damnum
Testiculorum, adeo medicatum intelliget unguen."[121]
In the twenty-first Esthonian story, a silly husband is called by the
name of Hare's-foot. In _Aldrovandi_, on the other hand, Philostratos
narrates the case of a woman who had miscarried seven times in the act
of child-birth, but who the eighth time brought forth a child, when
her husband unexpectedly drew a hare out of his bosom. Although the
moon is herself the timid and chaste goddess (or eunuch), she is, as
pluvial, the _fæcundatrix_, and famous as presiding over and
protecting child-birth; this is why, when the hare-moon, or Lucina,
assisted at parturition, it was sure to issue happily. The mythical
hare and the moon are constantly identified. It is on this account
that in _Pausanias_, the moon-goddess instructs the exiles who are
searching for a propitious place to found a city, to build it in a
myrtle-grove into which they should see a hare flee for refuge. The
moon is the watcher of the sky, that is to say, she sleeps with her
eyes open; so also does the hare, whence the _somnus leporinus_ became
a proverb. In the ninth Esthonian story, the thunder-god is compared
to the hare that sleeps with its eyes open; Indras, who transforms the
hare into the moon, has already been mentioned; Indras becomes a
eunuch in the form of sahasrâkshas, or of the thousand-eyed god (the
starry sky in the night, or the sun in this starry sky); the thousand
eyes become one, the _milloculus_ becomes _monoculus_, when the moon
shines in the evening sky; hence we say now the hundred eyes of Argos,
and now simply the eye of Argos--the eye of God.
In a Slavonic tale,[122] the hare laughs at the bear's cubs, and spits
upon them; the bear runs after the hare, and in the hunt is decoyed
into an intricate jungle, where it is caught. As the lion is unknown
in Russia, the bear is substituted for it; the Russian hare allures
the bear into the trap, as the Hindoo and Greek one causes the lion to
fall into it. This hare which does harm to the solar hero or animal of
evening is the same as that which, in the fiftieth story of the fifth
book of _Afanassieff_, and in Russian popular tradition, meeting the
nuptial car, bodes evil to the wedding, and is of evil omen to the
bride and bridegroom. The hare-moon, the chaste protectress of
marriages and births, the benefactress of mankind, must not meet the
car; if she opposes the wedding (perhaps at evening and in the
autumn), or if the hare is crushed or overtaken by the car (as the
proverb says), it is a bad presage, not only for the wedded couple,
but for all mankind; solar as well as lunar eclipses were always
considered sinister omens in popular superstition. In the Russian
popular tales we frequently find mention of the hare under a tree, or
on a rock in the midst of the sea, where there is a duck, which
contains an egg; the yoke of this egg (the solar disc) is a precious
stone; when it falls into the hands of the young hero, the monster
dies, and he is able to espouse the young princess.[123] The girl of
seven years of age, who, to solve in action the riddle proposed by
the Tzar, who offers to marry her, rides upon a hare, is a variety of
this myth. By the help of the moon, the sun and evening aurora arrive
at the region of the morning, find each other, and are married; the
moon is the mediatrix of the mythical nuptials; the hare which
represents it must therefore not only not oppose them, but help them
materially; at evening the moon separates the sun from the aurora; at
morning she unites them again.
FOOTNOTES:
[113] Lopâçah sinham pratyancam atsâh; _Rigv._ x. 28, 4.
[114] Avaruddhah paripadam na sinhah; x. 28, 10.
[115] Çaçah kshuram pratyancam gagâra; x. 28, 9.
[116] Kroshtâ varâham nir atakta kakshât; x. 28, 4.
[117] Vatso vrishabham çûçuvânah; x. 28, 9.
[118] Sinhah çaçamivâlakshya garudo vâ bhugañgamam; _Râmây._ xxiii.
[119] Cfr. _Mémoires sur les Contrées Occidentales_, traduits du
Sanscrit par Hiouen Thsang, et du Chinois par St Julien, i. 375.
[120] Redimunt ea parte corporis, propter quam maxime expetuntur; _Pro
Æmilio Scauro_. It is said that when the beaver is pursued by hunters,
it tears off its testicles, as the most precious part for which
beavers are hunted, popular medical belief attributing marvellous
virtues to beavers' testicles.
[121] xii. 35.
[122] Cited by Afanassieff in the observations on the first volume of
the Russian stories.
[123] Cfr. _Afanassieff_, i. 14, ii. 24, v. 42.
CHAPTER IX.
THE ANTELOPE, THE STAG, THE DEER, AND THE GAZELLE.
SUMMARY.
Luminous stag and black stag.--The Marutas drawn by antelopes, and
dressed in antelopes' skins.--The stag, the gazelle, and the
antelope as forms assumed or created by the demon to ruin several
heroes whilst they hunt.--Marîcas.--Indras kills the mrigas.--The
solar hero or heroine transformed into a stag, a gazelle, or an
antelope.--Aktaion.--Artemis and the stag.--The stags of the
Yggdrasill.--The stag Eikthyrner.--The hind as a nurse.--The hind
and the old woman on the 1st of January.--The hind and the snow;
the white hind.
The stag represents the luminous forms that appear in the cloudy or
the nocturnal forest; these, therefore, are now lightning and
thunderbolts, now the cloud itself from which the lightning and
thunderbolts are discharged, now the moon in the gloom of night. The
mythical stag is nearly always either entirely luminous or else
spotted; when it is black it is of a diabolical nature, and represents
the whole sky of night. Sometimes the luminous stag is a form assumed
by the demon of the forest to compass the ruin of the hero.
The _Rigvedas_ represents to us the Marutas, or winds that lighten and
thunder in the clouds, as drawn by antelopes. The Marutas "are born
shining of themselves, with antelopes, with lances, amid
thunder-peals and flashes of lightning."[124] "They have yoked, with
a red yoke, the antelopes.[125] The young battalion of the Marutas
goes of itself, and has an antelope for its horse."[126] The horses of
the Marutas, which we already know to be antelopes, are called
winged,[127] and are said to have golden fore-feet.[128] The antelopes
of the Marutas are splendid.[129] Nor are the Marutas only carried by
antelopes; they also wear upon their shoulders antelopes' skins.[130]
But the antelope, the gazelle, and the stag generally, instead of
helping the hero, involve him rather in perplexity and peril. This
mythical subject is amplified in numerous Hindoo legends.
In the first scene of Kâlidâsas' _Çakuntalâ_, a black-spotted
(krishnasâras) gazelle misleads King Dushyantas.
In the _Mahâbhâratam_,[131] King Parîkshit pursues a gazelle and
wounds it (as the god Çivas one day wounded the gazelle of the
sacrifice); he then follows its track, but the gazelle flees at sight
of him, inasmuch as it has taken the path of heaven in its primitive
(_i.e._, celestial) form. The king loses the track of his prey, and in
trying to find it again, brings death upon his head.
In the same _Mahâbhâratam_,[132] King Pandus dies at the moment when
he is uniting himself with his wife Mâdrî, because he had one day in
the chase transfixed a male gazelle at the instant when it was about
to have fruit of its union with a female gazelle.
In the _Vishnu P._,[133] King Bharatas, who has abandoned his throne
to give himself up entirely to penitence, loses the fruit of his
ascetic life, by becoming passionately enamoured of a fawn.
In the _Râmâyanam_,[134] Marîcas, who is possessed by a demon,
becomes, by order of Râvanas, the king of the monsters, a golden stag
spotted with silver, having four golden horns adorned with pearls, and
a tongue as red as the sun, and tempts Râmas to pursue him in order to
procure his silver-spotted skin, for which Sîtâ has expressed a
desire, that she might lie down upon it and rest herself. In this way
the stag (here an equivalent of the hare) succeeds in separating Râmas
from Sîtâ. It then emits a lamentable cry, imitating the voice of
Râmas, so as to induce Lakshmanas, his brother, to come to his
assistance, and leave Sîtâ alone, that Râvanas may then be able to
carry her off with impunity. Lakshmanas leaves her unwillingly,
because, perceiving that the stag shines like the constellation of the
head of the stag (or gazelle, Mrigaçiras), he suspects it to be an
apparition of Marîcas, who, as a stag, has already caused the ruin of
many other princes who have hunted him. The moon, in Sanskrit, besides
the name of Çaçadharas, or who carries the hare, has also that of
Mrigadharas, or who carries the gazelle (or stag). The solar hero
loses himself in the forest of night while pursuing the gazelle-moon.
A demoniacal gazelle seems to appear even in the _Rigvedas_, where
Indras fights and kills a monster called Mrigas. In Germanic
tradition there are numerous legends in which the hero who hunts the
stag meets with his death or is dragged into hell.[135]
As the moon is a stag or gazelle, and comes after the sun, so it was
also sometimes imagined that the solar hero or heroine was transformed
into a stag or hind.
In the _Tuti-Name_,[136] a king goes to the chase, kills an antelope,
doffs the human form, and disguises himself as an antelope. This
mythical disguise can be understood in two ways. The evening sun
reflects its rays in the ocean of night, the sun-stag sees its horns
reflected in the fountain or lake of night, and admires them. At this
fountain sits a beautiful and bewitching siren, the moon; this fountain
is the dwelling of the moon; she allures the hero-stag that admires
itself in the fountain, and ruins it, or else the stag attracts the hero
to the fountain, where it causes him to meet with his death.[137] The
stag of the fable, after admiring itself in the fountain, is torn to
pieces by the dogs who overtake it in the forest because its horns
become entangled in the branches; the solar rays are enveloped in the
branches of the nocturnal forest. Aktaion, who, for having seen Artemis
(the moon) naked in the bath, is changed into a stag and torn by dogs,
is a variety of the same fable. In _Stesichoros_, quoted by Pausanias,
Artemis puts a stag's skin round Aktaion and incites the dogs to devour
him in order that he may not be able to wed the moon. Sun and moon are
brother and sister; the brother, wishing to seduce his sister, meets
with his death. A Lithuanian song describes the moon Menas (the Hindoo
Manu-s) as the unfaithful husband of the sun (who is a female), being
enamoured of Aushrine (the Vedic Usrâ, the morning aurora). The god
Perkuns, to avenge the sun, kills the moon. In a Servian song, the moon
reproaches his mistress or wife, the morning aurora, on account of her
absence. The aurora answers that she travels upon the heights of
Belgrade, that is, of the white or the luminous city, in the sky, upon
the lofty mountains.
The king in the _Tuti-Name_ who assumes the guise of an antelope,
appears to be a variety of the solar hero at the moment of the
approach of night, or of the ass that invests itself in the lion's
skin. But inasmuch as the Indian moon is Mrigarâgas, or king of the
wild animals, no less than the lion, inasmuch as the moon succeeds the
sun, one mrigas another, one lion another, or one stag another, when
the solar hero or heroine enters into the night, he or she appears in
the form of a luminous stag or hind, no longer as the sun, but as the
moon, which, although luminous, penetrates into hell, and is in
relation with demons and itself demoniacal.
Artemis (the moon) is represented as a hunting goddess in the act of
wounding, with her left hand, an antelope between the horns. To this
goddess is also attributed the merit of having overtaken the stags
without the help of dogs, perhaps because, sometimes, she is herself a
dog, surprising the solar stag of evening. The four stags of Artemis
connect themselves in my mind with the four stags that stay round the
tree Yggdrasill in the _Edda_, and which come out of the river
Häeffing. The stag Eikthyrner which, eating the leaves of the tree
Lerad, causes all its waters to flow out, seems, on the other hand, to
refer to the sun as it merges and loses its rays in the cloud (the
solar stag is also referred to in the _Edda_).
Artemis, who substitutes a hind for Iphigeneia, who was to have been
sacrificed, seems to point to the moon-hind as taking the place of the
evening aurora. We also recognise the moon in the hind which, according
to Ælianos and Diodoros, nourished Telephos, son of Hêraklês (Hêraklês
in his fourth labour overtakes the stag with golden horns), who had been
exposed in the forest by the order of his grandfather; as well as in
that which, according to Justinus, fed with its milk in the forest the
nephew of the king of the Tartessians, and afterwards, according to the
"Lives of the Saints," the blessed Ægidius, the hermit who lived in the
forest. There are numerous mediæval legends which reproduce this
circumstance of the young hero abandoned in the forest and nourished now
by a goat, now by a hind, the same which afterwards serves as a guide to
the royal father in recovering the prince his son, or to the
prince-husband in recovering the abandoned princess his bride. It was
probably by some such reminiscence of the mythical nourishing hind that,
as I read in Du Cange,[138] silver images of stags (cervi argentei) were
placed in ancient Christian baptistries.
Among the customs of the primitive Christians condemned by St
Augustine, St Maximus of Turin, and other sacred writers, was that of
disguising one's self on the 1st of January as a hind or an old woman.
The old woman and the hind here evidently represent the witch or ugly
woman of winter; and inasmuch as the winter is, like the night, under
the moon's influence, the disguise of a hind was another way of
representing the moon. When the moon or the sun shines, the hind is
luminous and generally propitious, the wild goat is beneficent (the
wild goat, the deer, and the stag are the same in the myths; the same
word, _mrigas_, serves in India to express the constellation of the
gazelle and that of the capricorn or wild goat), and hunts the wolves
away from the sleeping hero in the forest.[139] When the sky is dark,
the hind, from being luminous, has become black, and, as such, is the
most sinister of omens; sometimes, in the midst of the night or of the
winter, the beautiful luminous hind, or moon, or sun, disappears, and
the black monster of night or of winter remains alone. In the ninth
story of the _Pentamerone_, the Huorco (the rakshas or monster)
transforms himself into a beautiful hind to allure the young
Canneloro, who pursues it in the hope of securing it. But it decoys
him into the midst of the forest (of winter), where it causes so much
snow to fall, "che pareva che lo cielo cadesse" (the white hind into
which the witch transforms the beautiful maiden, in the story of
Madame d'Aulnoy, would seem to have the same meaning); then the hind
becomes a monster again in order to devour the hero. The period in
which the moon is hidden or on the wane, in which the night is dark,
was considered ill-omend by the ancient Hindoos, who held, on the
other hand, that the time of full moon, or at least of the crescent
moon, was propitious. Our country-people have preserved several
superstitions relative to a similar belief. In a Rutenian legend,
published by Novosielski, the evening star (Lithuanian, _vakerinne_;
Slavonic, _vecernitza_, the evening aurora) prays its friend Lunus
(the moon is masculine in Slavonic as in Sanskrit) to wait a little
before rising, that they may rise together, and adds, "We shall
illumine together sky and earth: the animals will be glad in the
fields, and the traveller will bless us on his way."
FOOTNOTES:
[124] Ye prishatîbhir rishtibhih sâkam vâçîbhir angibhih--agâyanta
svabhânavah; _Rigv._ i. 37, 2.
[125] Upo ratheshu prishatîr ayugdhvam prashtir vahati rohitah; i. 39,
6.
[126] Sa hi svasrit prishadaçvo yuvâ ganah: i. 87, 4.
[127] Â vidyunmadbhir marutah svarkâi rathebhir yâtha rishtimadbhir
açvaparnâih; i. 88, 1.
[128] Açvâir hiranyapânibhih; viii. 7, 27.
[129] Çubhe sammiçlâh prishatîr ayukshata; iii. 26, 4.
[130] Anseshu etâh; _Rigv._ i. 166, 10.--Concerning the use of similar
skins for dress in India, cfr. the long and instructive note of
Professor Max Müller, _Rigveda-Sanhita Translated and Explained_, i.
221-223.
[131] i. 1665.
[132] i. 3811, _et seq._; i. 4585, _et seq._
[133] ii. 13, translated by Wilson.
[134] iii. 40, 48, 49.
[135] Cfr. Simrock, the work quoted before, p. 354.
[136] ii. 258, Rosen's version.
[137] Oft führt der Hirsch nur zu einer schönen Frau am Brunnen; sie
ist aber der Unterwelt verwandt und die Verbindung mit ihr an die
Bedingung geknüpft, dass die ungleiche Natur des Verbundenen nicht an
den Tag gezogen werde.
[138] Du Cange adds: "Quoad baptismam, quomodo cervus ad fontes
aquarum, summo desiderium perveniendum esse monstraretur."
[139] Cfr. Porchat, _Contes Merveilleux_, xiii.
CHAPTER X.
THE ELEPHANT.
SUMMARY.
The myth of the elephant is entirely Indian.--The Marutas as
elephants; Indras as an elephant.--The elephant ridden by Indras
and Agnis.--The four elephants that support the world.--Âiravanas
and Âiravatas.--The elephant becomes diabolical.--Nâgas and nagas;
çriñgm.--The monkeys fight against the elephants.--The elephant in
the marsh.--The elephant and the tortoise; war between them.--The
eagle, the elephant, and the tortoise.--The bird, the fly, and the
frog lure the elephant to his death.--Hermit dwarfs.--Indras and
his elephant fall together.
The whole mythical history of the elephant is confined to India. The
strength of his proboscis and tusks, his extraordinary size, the ease
with which he carries heavy burdens, his great fecundity in the season
of loves, all contributed to his mythical importance, and to his fame
as a great ravager of the celestial gloomy or cloudy forest, as an
Atlas, a supporter of worlds, and the steed of the pluvial god.
The elephant has a place even in the Vedic heavens.
The Marutas, drawn by antelopes, are compared to wild elephants that
level forests;[140] the horns of the antelopes, the tusks of the wild
boar, the trunk and tusks of the elephant, are of equivalent
significance, and are seen in the solar rays, in lightnings and
thunderbolts. The pluvial and thundering god Indras is compared to a
wild elephant that expends his strength[141]--to a wild elephant that,
in the season of loves, is, on all hands, in a constant state of
feverish agitation.[142] The god Agnis is invoked to come forth like a
formidable king upon an elephant.[143]
The elephant generally represents the sun as it shuts itself up in the
cloud or the darkness, or comes out of it, shooting forth rays of
light or flashes of lightning (which were also supposed to be caused
by the friction on the axle of the wheel of the sun's chariot). The
sun, in the four seasons, visits the four quarters of the earth, east
and west, south and north; hence, perhaps, the Hindoo conception of
four elephants that support the four corners of the earth.[144]
Indras, the pluvial god, rides upon an enormous elephant, Âiravatas or
Âiravanas, the cloud or darkness itself, with its luminous eruptions;
âiravatam and âiravatî are also appellations of the lightning. The
elephant Âiravanas or Âiravatas is one of the first of the progeny of
the heavens, begotten of the agitation of the celestial ocean.
It plays a prominent part in the battles of Indras against the monsters;
hence Râvanas, the monster king of Lañkâ, still bears the scars of the
wounds given him by the elephant Airavatas, in the war between the gods
and the demons,[145] although this same Râvanas boasts of having one day
defeated Indras, who rode upon the elephant Âiravanas.[146]
But the mythical elephant did not always preserve the character of an
animal beloved of the gods; after other animals were admitted into
special favour, it too assumed, in time, a monstrous aspect. The sun
hides itself in the cloud, in the cloudy or nocturnal mountain, in the
ocean of night, in the autumn or the snowy winter. Hence we have the
white elephant (Dhavalas), the malignant killer of wise men (rishayas,
the solar rays); the wind, father of Hanumant, in the form of a
monkey, lacerates him with his claws, and tears out his tusks; the
elephant falls like a mountain[147] (the mountain of snow, or white
cloud, dissolve themselves; this white elephant and the white
mountain, or Dhavalagiris, are the same; the equivoque easily arose
between nâgas, elephant, and nagas, mountain and tree; the word
_criñgin_, properly horned, means tree, mountain, and elephant; the
wind breaks through and disperses the cloud, and pushes forward the
avalanches of snow). Thus it is said that the monkey Sannâdanas was
one day victorious over the elephant Âiravatas.[148] (The northern
path of the moon is called âiravatapathâ.)
We have already seen the elephant that crushes the hares under his
feet on the shores of the moon-lake, and disturbs with his trunk the
waters of this lake. In the _Râmâyanam_,[149] Bharatas considers it as
of a sinister omen his having dreamed of a great elephant fallen into
marshy ground. The sun plunges into the ocean of night, and of the
autumnal rains.
The elephant near or in the waters is mythically equivalent to the
lunar and solar tortoise that dwells on the shores of the lake and
sea, or at the bottom of the sea. In the Hindoo cosmogony, it is now
the elephant and now the tortoise that supports the weight of the
world. For this reason there is rivalry between these two mythical
animals. . Therefore the eagle, or king of birds, or the bird
Garudas, the solar bird, is represented as a mortal enemy now of the
serpent, now of the elephant (the word _nâgas_ means equally serpent
and elephant; Âiravatas is also the name of a monstrous serpent), and
now of the tortoise. In the _Râmâyanam_,[150] the bird Garudas carries
into the air an elephant and a tortoise (the relative occidental
fables are evidently of Hindoo origin), in order to eat them. The same
legend is developed in the _Mahâbhâratam_,[151] where two brothers
dispute with each other about the division of their goods, each curses
the other, and they become, the one a colossal elephant, and the other
a colossal tortoise, and, as such, continue to fight fiercely against
each other in a lake, until the gigantic bird Garudas (the new sun),
takes them both and carries them to the summit of a mountain.
In the fifteenth story of the first book of the _Pancatantram_, we
find birds represented as enemies of the elephant, on account of the
ravages it commits, where the bird, the fly, and the frog work the
ruin of the elephant; the fly enters into one of the elephant's ears;
the bird pecks at its eyes, and blinds it; the frog croaks on the
banks of a deep pool; the elephant, impelled by thirst, comes to the
pool and is drowned.
The Vedic elephant has a divine nature, being connected with the pluvial
Indras; but when Indras fell, to give place to Brahman, Vishnus, and
Çivas, his elephant was also fated to become the prey of the bird of
Vishnus, of the bird Garudas (or the sun). In the fable of the
_Pancatantram_ quoted above, the elephant brings upon its head the
vengeance of the sparrow, because it had rooted up a tree upon which the
sparrow had made its nest and laid its eggs, which were broken in
consequence. The Vishnuitic legend of the _Mahâbhâratam_ relating to the
bird Garudas, which carries the elephant into the air, offers several
other analogous and interesting particulars. The bird Garudas flies away
with the elephant and the tortoise; on the way, being tired, it rests
upon the huge bough of a tree; the bough breaks under the enormous
weight. From this bough are suspended, with their heads down, in
penitence, several dwarf hermits, born of the hairs of Brahman; then the
bird Garudas takes in its beak the whole bough, with the little hermits,
and carries them up in the air till they succeed in escaping. These
hermit dwarfs upon the branch (who remind us of the ants), had one day
cursed Indras. Kaçyapas Pragâpatis, wishing one day to make a sacrifice
in order to obtain the favour of a son, orders the gods to provide him
with wood. Indras, like the four elephants who support the world, places
upon his shoulders a whole mountain of wood. Laden with this weight, he
meets on the way the hermit dwarfs, who were carrying a leaf in a car,
and were in danger of being drowned in a pool of water, the size of the
foot-print of a cow. Indras, instead of coming to their assistance,
smiles and passes by; the hermit dwarfs, in indignation, pray for the
birth of a new Indras; on this account the Indras of birds was born--the
bird of Garudas, the steed of Vishnus, which naturally makes war against
the steed of Indras, the elephant.
FOOTNOTES:
[140] Mrigâ iva hastinah khâdathâ vanâ yad ârunîshu tavishîr
ayugdhvam; _Rigv._ i. 64, 7.
[141] Mrigo na hastî tavishîm ushânah; _Rigv._ iv. 16, 14.
[142] Dânâ mrigo na vâranah purutrâ caratham dadhe; _Rigv._ viii. 33, 8.
[143] Yâhi râgevâmavân ibhena; _Rigv._ iv. 4, 1.
[144] _Râmây._ i. 42.
[145] iii. 36.
[146] iii. 47.
[147] _Râmây._ v. 3
[148] vi. 3.
[149] ii. 71.
[150] iii. 39.
[151] i. 1353, _seq._
CHAPTER XI.
THE MONKEY AND THE BEAR.
SUMMARY.
Monkey and bear are already associated together in India; Gambavant
is a great monkey and the king of the bears.--Haris, kapis, kapilâ,
kapidhvagas; rikshas, arkas, ursus, arktos, rakshas; the Great Bear;
rishayas, harayas.--The Marutas as rivals of Indras; Vishnus as
Indras' rival; the monkeys allied to Vishnus; the Vedic monster
monkey killed by Indras; Haris or Vishnus.--Harî mother of monkeys
and horses.--Bâlin, king of the monkeys, son of Indras, defeated by
his brother Sugrîvas, son of the sun.--Hanumant in opposition to
Indras; Hanumant son of the wind; Hanumant as the brother of
Sugrîvas; Hanumant is the strong brother or companion.--Hanumant
flies; he presses the mountain and makes the waters come out of it;
he draws the clouds after himself.--The epic monkeys and the
Marutas.--The monkey and the water.--The monkeys and the salutary
herbs.--The sea-monster draws to itself the shadow of Hanumant and
swallows him; Hanumant comes out of the monster's body safe and
sound; the mountain Hiranyanabhas.--Hanumant makes himself as small
as a cat in order to search for Sîtâ; Hanumant proves his power to
Sîtâ by making himself as large as a cloud or a mountain; he
massacres the monsters with a pillar; Dadhyanc, Hanumant, Samson;
Hanumant bound; he sets fire to Lañkâ with his tail.--The monkey
sacrificed to cure the burns of horses.--Sîtâ has a weakness for
Hanumant.--Dvividas a monster monkey.--The monkey destroys the
sparrow's nest.--The monkey draws a king into the jaws of an aquatic
monster.--The demoniacal monkey; monkey and fox.--The monkey
deceiver.--Sinister omens of the monkey.--The monkey envies the
fox's tail.--The stupid monkey.--The bear of the Marutas.--Triçañkus
with the skin of a bear; the seven rishayas.--Riksharâgas; the moon
as a reputed father.--Bears and monkeys in the forest of honey;
Balarâmas; medvjed; the bear and the honey; Italian proverbs; the
bear and the peasant; the deceived bear; the vengeance of the bear;
the bear in the sack; the demoniacal bear; the bear and the fox; the
monkey and the woodcutter; the bear and the trunk of a tree; the
peasant and the gentleman; the death of the athlete Milôn; the bear
entangled in the waggon that had fallen into the cistern.--The king
bear, monster of the fountain; sons sacrificed to the bear by their
father; the young men flee from the bear; the sleep of the
bear.--The bear's cub.--The bear and women.--The hero-bear; the
heroine she-bear.--The virgin she-bears.--Ursula, rikshikâ.--Ivanko
Medviedko.--Kalistos.--The bear as a musician.--The quartette of
animals.--Bear and monkey.--Bear and ass.--The monkey as a
messenger, an intermediate form.
I here unite under one heading two animals of very diverse nature and
race, but which, from some gross resemblances, probably helped by an
equivoque in the language, are closely affiliated in the Hindoo myth.
I say Hindoo in particular, because the monkey, which is so common in
India, was long unknown to many of the Indo-European nations in their
scattered abodes, so that if they had some dim reminiscence of it as
connected with that part of Asia where the Âryan mythology took its
rise, they soon forgot it when they no longer had under their eyes the
animal itself which had suggested the primitive mythical form. But as
they held tenaciously by the substance of the myth, they by and by
substituted for the original mythical animal, called monkey, in the
south the ass, and in the north often the bear. Even in India, where
the pre-eminent quality of the monkey was cunning, we already find
monkeys and bears associated together. A reddish colour of the skin,
want of symmetry and ungainliness of form, strength in hugging with
the fore paws or arms, the faculty of climbing, shortness of tail,
sensuality, capacity for instruction in dancing and in music, are all
characteristics which more or less distinguish and meet in bears as
well as in monkeys.
In the _Râmâyanam_, the wise Gâmbavant, the Odysseus of the expedition
of Lañkâ, is called now king of the bears (rikshapârthivah),[152] now
great monkey (mahâkapih).[153]
The word _haris_ means fair, golden, reddish, sun, and monkey; the word
_kapis_ (probably, the changeful one) means monkey and sun. In Sanskrit,
the _vidyut_ or thunderbolt, the reddish thunderbolt, of the colour of a
monkey, is also called _kapilâ_. Argunas, the son of Indras, has for
insignia the sun or a monkey, whence his name of Kapidhvagas.
Professor Kuhn also supposes that the word _rikshas_, which means bear
and star, is derived from the root _arc_ in the sense of to shine
(_arkas_ is the sun), on account of the reddish colour of the bear's
skin.[154] But _rikshas_ (like ursus and arktos) may also be derived
from _rakshas_, the monster (perhaps as a keeper back, a constrictor,
arctor); so that the very word which names it supplies the point of
transition from the idea of the divine bear to that of the monster bear.
In the _Rigvedas_, the Marutas are represented as the most powerful
assistants of Indras; but a Vedic hymn already shows them in the light
of Indras' rivals. The god Vishnus in the _Rigvedas_ is usually a
sympathetic form of Indras; but in some hymns he already appears as his
antagonist. In the preceding chapter we spoke of the Vishnuitic bird, of
the wind, father of Hanumant, and of a monkey, as enemies of Indras'
elephant. In Hindoo epic tradition, Vishnus, personified in Râmas, has
the monkeys for his allies. The most luminous and effulgent form of the
god is very distinct from his occult and mysterious appearances.
Vishnus, the sun, the solar rays, the moon and the winds that lighten,
are an army of golden monkeys to fight the monster. For the same reason
the monkey, on the contrary, has in the _Rigvedas_ a monstrous form;
that which was diabolical becomes divine in the lapse of time, and
similarly that which was divine, diabolical. In the eighty-sixth hymn of
the tenth book of the _Rigvedas_, Vishnus, personified in Kapis
(monkey), or Vrishâkapis (monkey that pours out, pluvial monkey), comes
to destroy the sacrificial offerings loved by Indras. Indras, being
superior to all, cuts off his head, as he wishes not to be indulgent to
an evil-doer.[155] This monkey is probably the pluvial, reddish
lightning cloud carried by the wind, which Indras pierces through with
his thunderbolt, although these same lightning and thundering clouds,
carried by the winds or Marutas (_i.e._, the Marutas themselves), are
usually represented in the _Rigvedas_ as assisting the supreme deity. A
difference having arisen between Vishnus and Indras, and between the
Marutas and Indras, the Marutas took Vishnus' part, and became monkeys
like Vishnus,--the word _haris_, which is a favourite name of Vishnus
(now moon, now sun), meaning also monkey. Vishnus surrounds himself with
fair, reddish, or golden monkeys, or with harayas (solar rays or
lightning, thunder-striking and thundering clouds), in the same way as
the Vedic Indras was drawn by harayas. Râmas _kapirathas_ is simply an
incarnation of Vishnus, who usurps the rights of Indras, which last, as
we have seen, had lent his harayas to Vishnus, in order that he might
take his three famous steps. Evidently Vishnus forgot to return the
fair-haired ones to his friend; hence from this time the strength of
Indras passes almost entirely into Vishnus, who, in the form of Râmas,
helped by the harayas or red-haired ones, _i.e._, by the monkeys, moves
across the Dekhan (a region densely inhabited by monkeys) to the
conquest of the isle of Lañkâ. The _Mahâbhâratam_ informs us that
monkeys and horses had Harî for their mother.[156] The splendid Marutas
form the army of Indras, the red-haired monkeys and bears that of Râmas;
and the mythical and solar nature of the monkeys and bears of the
_Râmâyanam_ manifests itself several times. The king of the monkeys is a
sun-god. The ancient king was named Bâlin, and was the son of Indras
(Çakrasûnus). His young brother, Sugrîvas, he who changes his shape at
pleasure (kâmarûpas), who, helped by Râmas, usurped his throne, is said
to be own child of the sun (bhâskarasyâurasah putrahsûryanandanah).[157]
Here it is evident that the Vedic antagonism between Indras and Vishnus
is reproduced in a zoological and entirely apish form. The old Zeus must
give way to the new, the moon to the sun, the evening to the morning
sun, the sun of winter to that of spring; the young sun betrays and
overthrows the old one. We have already seen that the legend of the two
brothers, Bâlin and Sugrîvas, is one of the forms which the myth of the
Açvinâu assumes. Râmas, who treacherously kills the old king of the
monkeys, Bâlin, is the equivalent of Vishnus, who hurls his predecessor,
Indras, from his throne; and Sugrîvas, the new king of the monkeys,
resembles Indras when he promises to find the ravished Sîtâ, in the same
way as Vishnus, in one of his incarnations, finds again the lost Vedâs.
And there are other indications in the _Râmâyanam_[158] of opposition
between Indras and the monkeys who assist Râmas. The great monkey
Hanumant, of the reddish colour of gold (hemapiñgalah), has his jaw
broken, Indras having struck him with his thunderbolt, and caused him to
fall upon a mountain, because, while yet a child, he threw himself off a
mountain into the air in order to arrest the course of the sun, whose
rays had no effect upon him.[159] (The cloud rises from the mountain and
hides the sun, which is unable of itself to disperse it; the tempest
comes, and brings flashes of lightning and thunderbolts, which tear the
cloud in pieces.)
The whole legend of the monkey Hanumant represents the sun entering
into the cloud or darkness, and coming out of it. His father is said
to be now the wind, now the elephant of the monkeys[160]
(kapikungaras), now keçarin, the long-haired sun, the sun with a mane,
the lion sun (whence his name of _keçarinah putrah_). From this point
of view, Hanumant would seem to be the brother of Sugrîvas, who is
also the offspring of the sun, the strong brother in the legend of the
two brothers connected with that of the three; that is to say, we
should have now Bâlin, Hanumant, and Sugrîvas brothers, now Râmas,
Hanumant, and Lakshamanas. The strong brother is between the other
two; the sun in the cloud, in the darkness or in the winter, is placed
between the evening sun and that of morning, or between the dying sun
of autumn and the new one of spring.
Hanumant flies (like the ass); his powers of flight are seated in his
sides and his hips, which serve him for wings. Hanumant ascends to the
summit of Mount Mahendras, in order to throw himself into the air;
whilst he presses the mountain (a real vrishâkapis), he makes the
waters gush out of it; when he moves, the trees of the mountain-forest
are torn up by their roots, and follow him in the current made by him
as he cuts his way through the air (here we meet once more with the
mythical forest, the mythical tree that moves of itself like a cloud).
The wind in his armpits roars like a cloud (gîmûta iva gargati), and
the shadow that he leaves behind him in the air resembles a line of
clouds (megharâgîva vâyuputrânugâminî);[161] he draws the clouds after
him.[162] Thus all the epic monkeys of the _Râmâyanam_ are described
in the twentieth canto of the first book by expressions which very
closely resemble those applied in the Vedic hymns to the Marutas, as
swift as the tempestuous wind (vâyuvegasamâs), changing their shape at
pleasure (kâmarûpinas), making a noise like clouds, sounding like
thunder, battling, hurling mountain-peaks, shaking great uprooted
trees, armed with claws and teeth, shaking the mountains, uprooting
trees, stirring up the deep waters, crushing the earth with their
arms, lifting themselves into the air, making the clouds fall. Thus
Bâlin, the king of the monkeys, comes out of the cavern, as the sun
out of the cloud (toyadâdiva bhâskarah).[163]
In the same way as we have seen the harayas, or horses of Indras, the
gandharvâs, and the mythical ass in connection with the salutary waters,
with the herbs, and with the perfumes, so in the _Râmâyanam_ it is the
monkeys that carry the herbs and the salutary roots of the mountain,
that is, of the cloud-mountain or of the mountain of perfumes.
The cloud in which the sun Hanumant travels through the air throws a
shadow upon the sea; a sea-monster perceives this shadow, and by it
attracts Hanumant to himself. (We have already seen the fearless hero
who is misled by his own shadow and lost.) Hanumant is kâmarûpas, like
Sugrîvas, and like all the other monkeys, his companions. When he sees
that the monster is about to swallow him, he distends and expands his
figure out of all measure; the ogress assumes the same gigantic
proportions; when she does so, Hanumant (repeating the miracle of his
type Haris, or the dwarf Vishnus), becomes as small as a man's thumb,
enters into the vast body of the monster, and comes out on the other
side. Hanumant continues to fly across the ocean, in order to arrive
at the island of Lañkâ. The ocean takes pity upon him, and, to help
him, raises up Mount Hiranyanabhas, _i.e._, of the golden navel, the
mountain whence the sun comes out; indeed, Hanumant says[164] that he
struck the mountain with his tail, and broke its summit, that shone
like the sun, in order to rest upon it. Hanumant then recommences his
flight, and finds a new obstacle in the marine monster Sinhikâ (the
mother of Râhus, the eclipse with a serpent's tail, which devours now
the sun, now the moon). She also draws to herself the shadow of
Hanumant; Hanumant, resorting once more to his former stratagem,
becomes small, and enters into her body; but he is no sooner inside
than he increases in bulk, swells out, tears her, kills her, and
escapes, a feat for which he receives the homage of the birds, who
will thenceforth be able to cross the ocean with impunity.[165] When
he arrives in Lañkâ, Hanumant, that he may search for and find Sîtâ by
moonlight, becomes as small as a cat (vrishadançapramânas); when he
finds her, and offers to carry her away from Lañkâ, she cannot believe
that so small an animal is able to accomplish so great an enterprise;
then Hanumant makes himself as tall as a black cloud, as a high
mountain; he breaks down the whole forest of açokâs, mounts upon a
temple that stands on a thousand columns, claps his hands, and fills
all Lañkâ with the din; he tears from the temple a pillar adorned with
gold, and, swinging it around, devotes the monsters to wholesale
slaughter.[166] The mythical monkey and the mythical ass resemble each
other; hence the analogy between the legend of Dadhyanc (quoted in the
second chapter), that of Samson, and that of Hanumant. But the legend
of the monkey Hanumant presents another curious resemblance to that
of Samson. Hanumant is bound with cords by Indragit, son of
Ravanas;[167] he could easily free himself, but does not wish to do
so. Ravanas, to put him to shame, orders his tail to be burned,
because the tail is the part most prized by monkeys (kapînâm kila
lâñgulam ishtam, whence the fable of the monkey who complains of
having no tail). Hanumant's tail is greased and set on fire, and
himself thereafter marched in this plight ignominiously through the
streets of Lañkâ. But Sîtâ having invoked the favour of the god Agnis,
the fire, though it plays round the tail of Hanumant, does not burn
it, and Hanumant by this means is able to avenge himself for the
insult, by setting fire to and burning to ashes the city of
Lañka.[168] (The tail of Hanumant, which sets fire to the city of the
monsters, is probably a personification of the rays of the morning or
spring sun, which sets fire to the eastern heavens, and destroys the
abode of the nocturnal or winter monsters.) The enterprise of the
Marutas in the _Rigvedas_, and that of the monkey Hanumant in the
_Râmâyanam_, assume such dimensions that they obscure the fame of both
Indras and Râmas; the former without the Marutas, the latter without
Hanumant, would be unable to defeat the monsters. Sîtâ perceives this
so clearly, that, at the end of the poem, she makes Hanumant such a
present that Râmas might well become jealous. Hanumant, however, is an
honest and pious cavalier; it suffices him to have defended justice
in the service of his master, nor does he ask to be recompensed for
the hard achievement that he has accomplished. For the rest, a popular
Hindoo sentence says that monkeys are not accustomed to weep for
themselves;[169] they weep (rodanti) for others. The same is true of
the Rudrâs, or winds, that weep in the cloud; they do not lament for
themselves; their tears fall upon the ground in beneficent rain that
fertilises our fields and tempers the heat of our summers;
nevertheless, they themselves afterwards feel, as solar rays, the
benefit of weeping, that is, of rain. In the _Râmâyanam_, monkeys who
die in battle are resuscitated by rain; when the cloud dissolves
itself in rain, the fair-haired, the golden ones, the harayas, the
sunbeams or monkeys, show themselves again in all their vigour.
We have seen thus far the cloud-monkey, from which the sun emerges, and
into which he re-enters. But we have already said more than once that
the sun often assumes a monstrous form, when enclosed in the cloud or
the darkness. It is thus we explain the divine hero Balarâmas, who, in
the _Vishnu P._,[170] destroys the demon Dvividas, who had taken the
form of a monkey. In the eighteenth story of the first book of the
_Pancatantram_, a monkey, whilst the wind blows and the rain falls,
shakes a tree upon which a sparrow has made its nest, and breaks the
eggs in pieces. In the tenth story of the fifth book, the king of the
monkeys, by means of a crown of pearls, attracts a king of men who had
killed monkeys to cure his horses (to which the fire had been
communicated by the wool of a ram which the cook had chased away from
the kitchen with a burning brand) to a fountain guarded by a monster
who devours the king and his suite. In the eleventh story of the same
book, a monkey upon a tree is the friend of one of the two crepuscular
monsters, and this monster invites it to eat the man; the man, however,
retaliates, and fiercely bites its long tail; the monkey then believes
this man to be stronger than the monster, and the latter believes the
man who holds the monkey by the tail with his teeth to be the monster of
the other twilight, _i.e._, the morning twilight. Here the monkey is
confounded with the fox, which is a mythical animal of a specially
crepuscular nature, and which also comes to ruin on account of its tail.
The reader has already observed how the incendiary monkey-tail of
Hanumant corresponds to the tails of the foxes in the legend of Samson.
The Hellenic and Latin proverbs generally regard the monkey as a very
cunning animal, so much so that Hercules and the monkey represented the
combination of strength and deceit. According to Cardano, a monkey seen
in dreams is a presage of deceit. According to Lucian, it was an augury
of an unlucky day to meet with a monkey in the early morning. The
Spartans considered it an omen of most sinister import that the monkey
of the king of the Molossians had upset their urn while they were going
to consult the oracle. According to Suetonius, when Nero thought he saw
his horse flee, having the shape of a monkey in his hind parts, he
believed it to prognosticate death. The monkey, accordingly, was usually
conceived of in Greece and at Rome as a cunning and demoniacal animal.
The hero in the cloud, in the dark, or in hell, on the other hand,
learns wisdom; and just as before this he is only a poor fool, so the
monkey, too, is also sometimes represented in the ancient fables of
Southern Europe as an animal full of simplicity. In Italy we have a
proverb which says that every monkey thinks her young ones beautiful;
this refers to the apologue of the monkey that believes her young ones
to be the most beautiful animals in the world, because Jove, seeing them
one day leaping about, could not refrain from laughing. The fox, in an
epigram, laughs at the monkey who craves from him the half of his tail,
on the plea that it would disencumber himself of just so much useless
appendage, and supply his suitor with the very covering required to
protect his all too naked buttocks:--
"Malo verrat humum quam sit tibi causa decoris,
Quam tegat immundas res bene munda nates."
In India the analogy between the monkey and the ass, as a stupid
animal, is of still more frequent occurrence. In the _Pancatantram_ we
have the monkeys who try to warm themselves by the light of the
glowworm; a monkey presuming to correct the handiwork of a carpenter,
meets with its death by putting its hands into the cleft of a tree
trunk, and heedlessly withdrawing the wedge that caused it. In the
_Tuti-Name_,[171] we find a variety of the story of the ass and the
lyre, _i.e._, the wise Sâz-Perdâz, who learns from the monkey,
assisted by the wind, the way to form musical instruments. (The
thundering cloud is the mythical musical instrument _par excellence_;
it is the wind that moves it, it is the wind that makes it sound: the
hero in the cloud, gandharvas, ass or monkey, is a musician.)
The strong, powerful, and terrible bear of the Marutas,[172] or winds,
in the stormy, lightning and thundering cloud, is already mentioned in
the Vedic hymn. So the constellation of the she-bear[173] seems also
to be referred to in them. In the _Râmâyanam_,[174] we find in
connection with it the legend of King Triçañkus, who, cursed by the
sons of Vasishthas, becomes a candalas, covered with the skin of a
bear (rikshacarmanivâsî). Viçvâmitras, the rival of Vasishthas,
promises to introduce it into heaven, under cover of his own body; but
Indras scorns to admit it, and indignantly spurns it, hurling it down
heels over head. Viçvâmitras arrests it in its descent as it falls
with its head downmost, within the constellation of the seven rishayas
or wise men, that is to say, in the constellation of the Great Bear.
And as the bear is in relation with the polar constellation, with the
north, the frigid regions, the winter and the stars, so the moon, who
rules particularly over the cold night in the icy season, is called in
Sanskrit _riksharâgas_ and _riksheças_, or king of the luminous ones,
king of the stars, king of the bears. The king of the bears also takes
part in the expedition to Lañka. The king of the bears (here in
relation to the moon) is the eunuch, the reputed, father, the St
Joseph, of the king of the monkeys, Sugrîvas, who was, on the
contrary, really generated in the bosom of the wife of the bear-king,
by the magnanimous sun.[175] Led on by the bear or monkey Gâmbavant,
the king of the bears (rikshapârthivas), the monkeys enter into the
forest of the honey (madhuvanam), guarded by the monkey Dadhimukhas
(mouth of butter, generated by Somas, the ambrosial god Lunus),[176]
and devastate and ransack the forest in order to suck its honey.[177]
In the _Vishnu P._,[178] even Balarâmas, brother of the god Krishnas,
makes himself drunk with the spirituous liquor contained in the
fissure of a tree.
The bear-eater of honey is an extremely popular subject of Russian
tradition; the very name of the bear, medv-jed, means in Russian, "he
who eats honey" (_miod_ is honey, and _iest_ to eat; but the form
_medv_ [medu] is more perfectly equivalent to the Hindoo _madhu_ = the
sweet honey ambrosia; the bear in the _madhuvanam_ corresponds
entirely to the medvjed or bear who eats honey of the Russians). In a
Slavonic story referred to by Afanassieff in the observations to the
first book of the Russian stories, the bear, deceived by the hare, is
left shut up in the trunk of a tree. A peasant passes by; the bear
begs him to deliver it from this trunk, promising to show him a
bee-hive, and beseeching him not to tell any one that a hare had
deceived it. The peasant frees the bear; the bear shows the bee-hive,
the peasant takes the honey and goes home.[179] The bear goes and
listens at the door to overhear the conversation. The peasant narrates
how he had procured the honey by means of a bear who, following a
hare, had been caught in a tree. The bear determines to have its
revenge. One day it finds the peasant in the field, and is about to
fall upon and rend him,[180] when the fox makes its appearance, shakes
its tail, and says to the peasant, "Man, thou hast ingenuity in thy
head, and a stick in thy hand." The peasant immediately understands
the stratagem. He begs the bear to let him perform his devotions
first; and offers, as a devotion, instead of doing penance, to carry
the bear, shut up in a sack, three times round the field, after which
the bear is to do with him whatever it likes. The bear, proud of
being carried by the man,[181] enters into the sack; the man binds it
strongly, and then beats it so with his stick that it dies.
The bear, representing usually the luminous one in the darkness, has
frequently in Slavonic tradition a demoniacal character,[182] or else
that of a fool, like the ass. In the first of the Russian stories, the
fox terrifies the bear, and then delivers the peasant from it. (The
peasant in popular rustic narratives is almost always a heroic
personage, who becomes a wiseacre and a prince.) The peasant cheats
his companion, the bear, twice: when they sow turnips together, the
peasant reserves for himself whatever grows underground, and leaves to
the bear whatever comes out of the earth and appears above; when they
sow wheat, the bear, thinking to be very knowing, takes for his own
part what grows under, and gives to the peasant what grows above the
ground. The peasant is about to be devoured by the bear, when the fox
comes to the rescue.[183] In the first story of the fourth book of
_Afanassieff_, the fox goes to pass the winter in the bear's den, and
devours all the provision of hens that the bear had laid up. The bear
asks what it is eating, and the fox makes him believe that it is
taking meat from its own forehead. The bear asks whether it is good,
upon which the fox gives him some to taste; the bear then tries also
to take meat from his forehead, and dies; thus the fox has enough to
eat for a year.
The romance of the fox also presents to us the fox in opposition to
the bear, whom he induces to put his paws into the cleft of the trunk
of a tree, as happened to the Hindoo monkey of the _Pancatantram_. In
the Russian story,[184] instead of the fox, we have the peasant, and
instead of the monkey and the bear, we have the gentleman (who in the
poor man's eyes is often a personification of the demon) who is caught
by his hands in the fissure of a tree. The peasant revenges himself in
this way upon the gentleman who had, after having bought from others a
little canary for fifteen roubles, refused to buy from him a large
goose for a hundred roubles. The very strong athlete Milôn of Kroton,
who in one day used to eat an ox four years old, a legendary hero, is
torn to pieces by wild beasts, having been caught by the hands in the
crevice of a log which he was splitting. Animal and hero continually
alternate in myths. In the fourth story of the fifth book of
_Afanassieff_, the peasant meets with his death on account of the
funereal and demoniacal storks and the bear. The peasant binds himself
to his waggon in order not to fall off; the horse wishes to drink,
and drags the waggon into a well. The bear, being pursued, passes by,
falls unexpectedly into the well, becomes involved with the waggon,
and, in order to extricate himself, is constrained to drag out waggon,
peasant, and all. Soon afterwards the bear, in search of honey, climbs
up a tree; another peasant passes, sees the bear upon the tree, and
wishing to secure the animal, cuts down the tree; bear and waggon fall
down, and the peasant is killed, whilst the bear releases itself and
escapes. The bear which is looking for honey and the bear in the well
remind us of the _asinus in unguento_, and of the ass in the roses:
the ass who is the friend of the gardener or of the priest of Flora
and Pomona, in the fable of La Fontaine,[185] has the same
signification. In the twenty-eighth story of the fifth book of
_Afanassieff_, King Bear lies hidden in a fountain (we have already
seen the Hindoo monkey that draws a king into a fountain, into the
monster's jaws); a king goes to hunt; feeling thirsty, he wishes to
drink at this fountain; the bear clutches him by the beard, and only
releases him on condition that he will give up in his stead whatever
he has at home without knowing it (this is a variation of the story of
Hariçcandras). The king consents, and returning home, learns that
twins, named Ivan and Maria, are born to him. To save them from the
bear, their father has them lowered into a subterranean cavern, well
furnished and very deep, which he supplies with abundant provisions.
The twins grow up healthy and strong; the king and queen die, and the
bear comes to search for the twins. He finds in the royal palace a
pair of scissors, and asks them where the king's sons are; the
scissors answer, "Throw me upon the ground in the courtyard; where I
fall, there search." The scissors fall over the very place under which
Ivan and Maria are concealed. The bear opens the ground with his paws,
and is about to devour the young brother and sister; they beg for
their lives, and the bear spares them, at sight of the abundance of
hens and geese provided for them. The bear then resolves to take them
into his service; they twice attempt in vain to escape, the first time
with the help of a hawk, the second with that of an eagle: at last a
bull succeeds in releasing them. Pursued by the bear, they throw down
a comb, and an impenetrable forest springs up; the bear lacerates and
wounds himself all over in passing through. Ivan then spreads out a
towel which makes a lake of fire; at this sight the bear, who is
afraid of being burned, who does not like heat, but, on the contrary,
prefers cold, goes back.
In the twenty-seventh story of the fifth book of _Afanassieff_, a
demoniacal bear with iron hairs, devastates a whole kingdom, devouring
all the inhabitants; Ivan Tzarevic and Helena Prekrasnaia alone remain;
but the king has them placed with provisions upon a high pillar (a new
form of Mount Hiranyanabhas, whence the sun issues forth, which comes up
from the bottom of the sea, and upon which the great monkey Hanumant
places himself. The bear is also found in connection with a gem in the
_Vishnu P._[186]) In the _Tuti-Name_,[187] the carpenter teaches two
bears to take their food upon a statue which is a perfect image of his
companion the miserly goldsmith, who had defrauded him of some money. By
means of the bears, whom he represents as the two sons of the goldsmith
who had run away from him, he terrifies him. The goldsmith, perceiving
the carpenter's craftiness, gives him back his money. The famished
bear approaches the pillar. Ivan throws him down some food; the bear,
after having eaten, goes to sleep.[188] While he sleeps, Ivan and Helena
flee away upon a horse; the bear awakes, overtakes them, brings them
back to the pillar, and makes them throw him down some food, after which
he again goes to sleep. The young brother and sister then try to escape
upon the backs of geese; the bear again wakens, overtakes them, burns
the geese, and takes Ivan and Helena back to the pillar. Having a third
time supplied the bear with food, it is again overcome by sleep; this
time the deliverer comes in the shape of a bull, who blinds the bear
with his horns, and throws him into a stream, where he is drowned. In
the same story, the demon, wishing to expose Ivan to certain death,
sends him to search for the milk of a she-bear.[189] The demon appears
again in the form of a bear in the fiftieth story of the fifth book of
_Afanassieff_, where the dog of a soldier rends him to pieces. But
although the bear is demoniacal, the bear's cub, on the other hand,
helps the hero.[190] In the eleventh story of the sixth book of
_Afanassieff_, a woman who is gathering mushrooms loses herself and
enters into the bear's den--the bear takes her to himself. We have
already seen the bear that plays at blind-man's-buff with the mouse,
thinking that he is playing with the beautiful maiden. The wind Rudras
and Æolus, king of the winds, we have already seen, in the first chapter
of this book, to be passionately fond of beautiful nymphs. In a
Norwegian story (a variation of that of the White Cat), in _Asbiörnsen_,
the hero is disguised as a bear, and becomes a beautiful young man by
night. His wife, by her indiscreet curiosity, _i.e._, because she had
wished to see him by lamplight, loses him, and her place is taken by the
long-nosed princess, until, with the help of a golden apple and a horse,
she is able to find her husband again. In the sixth story of the second
book of the _Pentamerone_, it is, on the other hand, the girl Pretiosa
who, to escape the embraces of her father, goes into the forest
disguised as a she-bear. A young prince, the son of the king of the
water, becomes enamoured of her, and takes her to the palace. The prince
becomes ill for love of the she-bear; she assists him and cures him.
While he is kissing her, she becomes a beautiful girl ("la chiù bella
cosa de lo Munno"). We learn from two mediæval writings quoted by Du
Cange (_s. v. Ursus_), that it was already the custom in the Middle Ages
to lead the bear round to make him play indecent games ("Nec turpia joca
cum urso vel tornatricibus ante se facere permittat"), and that hairs of
a bear stained in some ointment used to be sold, "Tamquam philacteria,
ad depellendos morbos, atque, adeo oculorum fascinos amoliendos." The
Athenians called she-bears the virgins sacred to the chaste Artemis, the
friend of closed places; and to this, it would appear, must also be
referred the interesting Christian legend of the virgin St Ursula,[191]
whom Karl Simrock identifies with the demoniacal, funereal, somniferous,
death-bringing Holda. Were this identification accepted, Ursula would
be, moreover, in close ideal and etymological relation with the Vedic
monster Rikshikâ.
But to return to the Russian story, the woman who enters into the bear's
den unites herself with him, and subsequently gives birth to a son, who
is a man down to the waist, and a bear from the waist downwards. His
mother, therefore, names him Ivanko-Medviedko (Little John, the son of
the bear). This half-man half-bear becomes a cunning animal, and cheats
the devil, making him fight with the bear, and persuading him to think
that the bear is his middle brother (that is, the strong brother). In a
Danish tradition we read of a girl violated by a bear, who gives birth
afterwards to a monster. According to the Hellenic myth, the nymph
Kalistos, daughter of King Lykaon, violated by Zeus, is changed by Juno
or by Artemis into a she-bear, gives birth to Arkas, and, being killed
with her son by shepherds, is converted into a star.
The cunning bear appears again as a musician (like the ass) in the
seventeenth story of the third book of _Afanassieff_, where he sings
so well that he deceives the old shepherdess, and succeeds in carrying
off her sheep. In a note to the ninth Esthonian story of Kreutzwald,
Herr Löwe observes, that in the Northern languages, the god of thunder
and the bear are synonymous. The bear, the monkey, the ass, and the
bull (all of which are personifications of the cloud), form a musical
quartette in a fine fable of Kriloff. The bear is made to dance like
the monkey,[192] the ass, and the gandharvas, his mythical equivalent.
In the same way as the ass's skin chases away fear, the eye of a bear
dried and hung upon a child's neck preserves from fear.[193] In the
legends of the saints, especially of the hermits, to whom the bear,
inspired by God, often gives up his den in obedience to their
commands, we read of St Maximin that he transformed a bear into an ass
because he had eaten an ass that carried a load.
In the nineteenth fable of the twelfth book of _La Fontaine_, the
monkey appears as a messenger of Jove, with the caduceus, to
"Partager un brin d'herbe entre quelques fourmis;"
while two enormous animals, the elephant and the rhinoceros, are
contending for the superiority. The monkey, as Mercury, as an
intermediate and mediating form between two heroic similar animals,
comes near to the knowing fox, the reddish colour of which (as well as
of the bear) it partakes of. It is no longer the pure fair sun of day,
and it is not yet the black monster of night; it is too black to be
red, and too red to be black; it has all the cunning of the devils,
and is acquainted with all the habits of the saints. The monkey, the
imitator of man (a Darwinist would say his progenitor), partakes, like
man, of the nature of the brutish demon and of the intelligent god.
FOOTNOTES:
[152] _Râmây._ iv. 63.
[153] v. 55.
[154] For the connection between the seven rikshas (rishayas, wise men,
stars, or bears) of the Hindoos and the septemtriones, the seven stars
of the she-bear (Arktos, Arkturus), and the Arctic regions, cfr. the
interesting discussion of Professor Max Müller, in the second series of
his Lectures.--The seven rishayas are the same as the seven Añgirasas,
the seven harayas, and the Marutas, who are seven (multiplied by three,
that is, twenty-one). In the Marutas, as harayas, we have the monkeys.
Even the wife of the king of the monkeys is named Târâ, or, properly,
the star. Thus there seems to exist between the monkey and the star the
same relation as between the bear and the star, a new argument to
vindicate the identity of the two animals in mythology.
[155] Priyâ tashtâni me kapir vyaktâ vy adûdushat çiro nv asya
râvisham na sugam dushkrite bhuvam viçvasmâd indra uttarah; str. 5.
[156] i. 2628.
[157] iii. 75.
[158] iv. 5.
[159] v. 2, vii. 39.
[160] v. 3.
[161] _Râmây._ v. 4, v. 5.
[162] v. 55.
[163] _Râmây._ iv. 12, v. 6.--The monkey on the sea is also to be
found in a Greek apologue, but the subject is somewhat different. A
monkey, which during a tempest had been washed from a ship, and tossed
about upon the stormy waves under the promontory of Attica, is
mistaken by a dolphin for a man; the dolphin, having great affection
for the race to which he presumed he belonged, takes him up and
carries him towards the shore. But before letting him touch firm
ground, he asks him whether he is an Athenian; the monkey answers that
he is of illustrious birth; the dolphin asks if he knows the Piræus;
the monkey, thinking that it is a man's name, answers that he is a
great friend of his; upon which the dolphin, indignant at having been
deceived, lets the monkey fall again into the sea.
[164] _Râmây._ v. 56.
[165] v. 8.
[166] v. 37.
[167] _Râmây._ v. 56.
[168] v. 50.--In the _Pancatantram_, v. 10, it is said, on the
contrary, that monkeys possess the virtue of healing the wounds of
horses that have been scalded or burned, as the sun of morning chases
the darkness away. According to a variety of this story contained in
the _Tuti-Name_, i. 130, the bite of a monkey can be cured only by the
blood of the very monkey who had inflicted it.
[169] Agnatakulaçîle 'pi prîtim kurvanti vânarâh âtmârthe ca na
rodanti; Böhtlingk, _Indische Sprüche_, 107.
[170] v. 36.
[171] i. 266.
[172] Riksho na vo mârutah çimîvân amo dadhro gâuriva bhîmayuh _Rigv._
v. 56, 3.
[173] Amî ya rikshâ nihitâsa uccâ; _Rigv._ i. 24, 10.
[174] _Râmây._ i. 60-62.
[175] vi. 46.
[176] vi. 6.
[177] v. 59.
[178] v. 25.
[179] This story, with some variations, was already known in the
sixteenth century: "Demetrius Moschovitarum legatus Romam missus, teste
Paulo Jovio (quoted by Aldrovandi), narravit proximis annis viciniæ suæ
agricolam quærendi mellis causa in prægrandem et cavam arborem superne
desiliisse, eumque profundo mellis gurgite collo tenus fuisse immersum
et biduo vitam solo melle sustinuisse, cum in illâ solitudine vox
agricolæ opem implorantis ad viatorum aures non perveniret. Tandem hic,
desperata salute, ursæ beneficio extractus evasit, nam hujus feræ ad
mella edenda more humano in arboris civitatem se demittentis, pellem
tergoris manibus comprehendit et inde ab ursa subito timore exterrita et
retrocedente extractus fuit."--The bear is also celebrated in Kriloff's
fables as an eater of honey.--In an apologue of Abstemius, the bear,
when searching for honey, is stung by a bee; he avenges himself by
destroying the honeycombs, but the swarms of bees fly upon him, and
sting and torment him on every side; the bear then complains that by not
having known how to support a small evil he had drawn upon himself a
very grave one.--The pears of the Italian proverb in connection with the
bear also refer to hydromel or to honey. The Italian proverbs are as
follows: "Dar le pere in guardia all' orso" (to give the pears to be
guarded by the bear); "Chi divide la pera (or il miele) all' orso ne ha
sempre men che parte" (he who divides the pear (or the honey) with the
bear, always has less than a part, that is, the bear eats it all), and
"L'orso sogna pere" (the bear dreams of pears). To catch the bear is the
same as to be inebriated; the bear, in fact, is, in the legends, often
inebriated himself with honey, as the Vedic Indras with the ambrosia,
and as Balarâmas in the spirituous liquor contained in the fissure of a
tree (_Vishnu-P._ v. 25). The sun in the cloud or in the rainy or wintry
season drinks more than necessary. Cfr. also Ralston, _Songs of the
Russian People_, p. 182.
[180] In the fifteenth story of _Afanassieff_, the bear revenges
himself upon an old man who had cut off one of his paws with a
hatchet; the bear makes himself a paw from the wood of a linden-tree,
takes the old man and the old woman by surprise in their house and
devours them. In the nineteenth story of the fourth book, the bear
allies himself with the fox lamed by the peasant, and with the gadfly
that the peasant had placed behind the straw, in order to revenge
himself upon the peasant, who, promising to cover him with spots like
the horse, had struck him here and there on the body with a red-hot
axe, so that the bones were left bare. This fable is perhaps connected
with the Hindoo superstition that the burns of a horse are cured by
means of a monkey. As to the wooden paws, they are doubtless the
branches of the cloudy or nocturnal forest. In the _Edda_ of Sömund it
is said that the Alfes are accustomed to call the trees the beautiful
arms; we already know the meaning of the boy with the golden hand.
[181] In the tenth story of the third book of _Afanassieff_, Nadzei,
the son of a virgin who is the daughter of a priest, makes himself
formidable by cutting down the forest and drawing, without assistance,
out of the forest the bear that destroyed the cats.
[182] In a description of the last Sunday of the Roman carnival of the
thirteenth century, in Du Cange, _s. v. Carnelevarium_, we read:
"Occidunt ursum, occiditur diabolus, id est, temptator nostræ
carnis."--In Bohemia it is still the custom at the end of the carnival
to bring the bear,--that is, a man disguised as a bear, with straw,
who goes round to ask for beer (or hydromel, which takes the place of
the mythical honey or ambrosia). The women take the straws to put them
into the place where the hens lay their eggs, to make them lay better.
In Suabia the straw bear is accused of having killed a blind cat, and
therefore condemned, with all formality, to death, after having had,
before his death, two priests to console him; on Ash-Wednesday the
bear is solemnly buried.--Cfr. Reinsberg von Düringfeld, _Das
festliche Jahr_.--The poet Hans Sachs, quoted by Simrock, covers with
a bear's skin two old women who are to be presented to the devil.
[183] Cfr., moreover, _Afanassieff_, ii. 33.--In a popular Norwegian
story, the fox makes the bear catch fish with his tail, which is
frozen in the water.
[184] _Afanassieff_, v. 2.
[185] viii. 10.
[186] iv. 13.
[187] i. 6.
[188] Concerning the bear's sleep, it is interesting to read the
curious information furnished by Aldrovandi (_De Quadr. Dig. Viv._
i.): "Devorant etiam ursi ineunte hyeme radices nomine nobis adhuc
ignotas, quibus per longum temporis spatium cibi cupiditas expletur et
somnus conciliatur. Nam in Alpibus Helveticis aiunt, referente
Gesnero, vaccarum pastorem eminus vidisse ursum, qui radicem quemdam
manibus propriis effossam edebat, et post ursi discessum, illuc se
transtulisse; radicemque illam degustasse, qui postmodum tanto somni
desiderio affectus est, ut se continere non potuerit, quin in viâ
stratus somno frueretur." The bear, as a nocturnal and wintry animal,
must of necessity conciliate sleep.
[189] Cfr. _Afanassieff_, vi. 5.--According to Hellenic tradition,
Paris and Atalanta were nourished with the milk of a she-bear.
[190] Cfr. _Afanassieff_, v. 27, v. 28.--According to Cardano, to meet
with a bear's cub just born indicated a change of fortune for the
better.
[191] Cfr. the work of Schade, _Die Sage von der Heiligen Ursula_. She
is also to be found among the _Leggende del Secolo Decimoquarto_,
published at Florence by Signor Del Lungo (Barbera, publisher).
[192]
"... il parle, on l'entend, il sait danser, baller
Faire des tours de toute sorte
Passer en des cerceaux."
--_La Fontaine, Fables_, ix. 3.
In _La Fontaine_, the monkey is again identified with the ass, as a
judge on the tribunal between the wolf and the fox, and afterwards as
dressed in the skin of the dead lion. In the fourth fable of the
eleventh book, La Fontaine makes the monkey M.A. narrate the story of
the _asinus asinum fricat;_ in the second fable of the twelfth book
the monkey scatters the miser's treasure, as in Hindoo tradition it
spoils the sacrificial offerings.
[193] Cfr. Aldrovandi, _De Quadr. Dig. Viv._
CHAPTER XII.
THE FOX, THE JACKAL, AND THE WOLF.
SUMMARY.
Lopâças, lopâçikâ.--The jackal takes in Hindoo tradition the place
of the fox.--What the fox represents in mythology, and why the
jackal is his mythical equivalent.--Double aspect of the mythical
fox, in connection with the cock and in connection with the wolf,
turned towards the day and towards the night, now friendly, now
hostile to the hero.--The fox deceives all the other animals, in
order to have all the prey to itself.--The fox is the monster's
enemy.--The blue jackal.--The inquisitive jackal.--The avenging
jackal.--The astute fox; the woman more cunning than the fox.--The
fox's skin.--The buttered tail of the jackal.--The fox eats the
honey, the butter, or the cake belonging to the wolf, and then
accuses him.--The fox sends the wolf to fish.--The fox eats the
woman whom he had promised to bring to life.--The fox as a
mourner.--The peasant ungrateful to the fox.--"Cauda de vulpe
testatur."--The fox eats the bear; the bird feeds the fox, and
afterwards draws it in among the dogs.--Former hospitality is to be
forgotten.--The fox as the cat's wife.--The round cheese of the myth
is the moon.--The fox steals the fishes.--The fox is of every
profession.--The grateful fox enriches the poor hero.--King Fire and
Queen Loszna.--The house of the fox and that of the hare.--The fox
deceives the cock; the cock deceives the fox.--The fox's tail in the
beaks of the chickens.--The fox's malice; the ideal of a prince
according to Macchiavelli; fox and serpent.--The fox cheats almost
all the animals; it does not, however, succeed in cheating the other
foxes, and sometimes not even the lion.--The Catholic Church
furnishes new types for the legend of the fox.--Union of the fox
with the wolf.--Diverse nature of the wolf.--The red wolf.--The
thieving wolf.--The wolf (or the devil) and the fishes; the fish in
shallow water.--The dog and the wolf.--The wolf as a
shepherd.--Wolf's belly.--The good wolf and the good maiden.--The
son of the wolf understands the language of birds.--The she-wolf as
a nurse; she-wolves and strumpets.--Disguises in a wolf's
skin.--Wolf-hunter.--The wolf's shadow.--Wolves that chastise in the
name of God; sanctified wolves.--The dead wolf; the wolf's
skin.--Diabolical wolves.--The white
wolf.--Wulfesheofod.--Ysengrin.--The wolf sings psalms.--The cunning
of the wolf.--The wolf's tail.--The dwarf in the wolf's body; the
dwarf in the wolf's sack.--The she-wolf at Rome.--Dante's she-wolf.
The fox is scarcely spoken of once in the _Rigvedas_ by the name of
lopâças (alôpêx), as penetrating to the old Western lion; this word
(like _lopâkas_, which is interpreted in the Petropolitan Dictionary as
"a kind of jackal") seems to mean properly "the destroyer" (according to
Professor Weber, _Aasfresser_). The Sanskrit language also gives us the
diminutive _lopâçikâ_, which is interpreted as the female of a jackal
and as the fox (vulpecula). The legendary fox, however, is generally
represented in Hindoo tradition by the jackal, or _canis aureus_
(srigâlas, kroshtar, gomâyus, as a shouter). The fox is the reddish
mediatrix between the luminous day and the gloomy night: the crepuscular
phenomenon of the heavens taking an animal form, no form seemed more
adapted to the purpose than that of the fox or the jackal, on account of
their colour and some of their cunning habits: the hour of twilight is
the time of uncertainties and of deceits. Professor Weber[194] supposes
that all the cunning actions attributed to the jackal in Hindoo fables
were taken on loan from the fox of Hellenic fables. We must certainly
assign no undue importance to the expressions _vancakas_ and
_mrigadhûrtakas_ (the cheater of animals), given in Hindoo lexicons to
the jackal, inasmuch as these lexicons are not of very remote antiquity;
but at the same time we must confess, that the cunning of the fox has
been exaggerated by popular superstition as much as the stupidity of the
ass, for a mythical reason, and from tradition, far more than by the
observation of exceptional habits in these animals, which could easily
be identified in mythology, in which, as I have already observed, some
few gross and accidental similarities are enough to cause the same
phenomena to be represented by animals of a very different genus. Thus
the hairy reddish bodies of the bear and the monkey, and certain
postures which they assume in common, are enough to make us understand
how they are sometimes substituted for each other in legends; for the
same reason, to the monkey and to the bear are attributed some of the
enterprises for which the legendary fox is celebrated. How much greater,
therefore, must have been the confusion which arose between the _canis
vulpes_ (the reddish fox) and the _canis aureus_ (or jackal), animals
which agree in showing themselves towards night, in feeding upon little
animals, in having skins of the same colour, who have very bright eyes,
and several other zoological characteristics in common?
The legendary fox (or the jackal, which is its mythical equivalent)
has, like nearly all mythical figures, a double aspect. As it
represents the evening, and as the sun is represented as a bird (the
cock), the fox, the proverbial enemy of chickens, is, in the sky too,
the robber and devourer of the cock, and as such the natural enemy of
the man or hero, who ends by showing himself to be more cunning than
it is, and by effecting its ruin. The fox cheats the cock in the
evening, and is cheated by the cock in the morning. It is therefore an
animal of demoniacal nature, when considered as the devourer or
betrayer of the sun (cock, lion, or man), in the form of the red
western sky, or of the evening aurora, and as being killed or put to
flight by the sun itself (cock, lion, or man), in the form of the red
eastern sky, or the morning aurora.[195] We have already seen, in the
first chapter of this work, the aurora both as a wise girl and a
perverse one; in its animal metamorphosis, the fox reproduces this
aspect. But the aurora has not this mythical aspect alone. If, as she
is turned towards or against the sun, she is supposed to be the killer
of the luminous day in the evening, and to be chased away by the
luminous day in the morning, she also, when considered as turning
towards or against the night, assumes a heroic and sympathetic aspect,
and becomes the friend and assister of the solar hero or animal
against the wolf of the darkness of night. In these two mythical
aspects is contained and explained all the essential legendary story
of the fox, to narrate which, as far as it concerns Western tradition,
volumes have already been written. I shall limit myself to culling and
summarising from Oriental and Slavonic tradition their chief
characteristics, in order to compare them briefly with the most
generally known particulars of Western legendary lore; as it seems to
me that when I shall have shown the double nature of the fox in
mythology, as representing the two auroras, when I shall have proved
that the sun is personified now as a hero, now as a cock, and now as a
lion, and the night as a wolf, it will be easy to refer to this
interpretation the immense variety of legendary subjects to which, on
account of the smaller proportions to which I have been obliged to
reduce this work, I shall be unable to allude.
In the _Mahâbhâratam_,[196] a learned jackal, who has finished his
studies, associates with the ichneumon, the mouse, the wolf, and the
tiger, but only in order to cheat them all. He makes the tiger kill a
gazelle, and then sends all the animals to bathe before eating it.
Then, when the tiger returns, he makes him run after the mouse, by
representing it as having boasted that it had killed the tiger; he
makes the mouse flee, persuading it that the ichneumon has bitten the
gazelle, and that its flesh is therefore poisonous; he makes the wolf
take to its heels, by informing it that the tiger is coming to devour
it; he makes the ichneumon glad to escape, by boasting that he has
vanquished the other three animals; then the jackal eats the whole
gazelle himself. In the _Pancatantram_,[197] the jackal cheats, in a
similar manner, the lion and the wolf out of their part of a camel; we
have already seen how it cheated the lion out of the ass. In the
twentieth Mongol story, the fox stirs up discord between the two
brothers, bull and lion, who kill each other in consequence.
In the _Râmâyanam_,[198] the jackal appears as the hero's friend,
inasmuch as by howling, and vomiting fire, he is of sinister omen to the
monster Kharas, who prepares to attack Râmas. In the _Khorda-Avesta_, a
hero devoured by Agra-Mainyu, the god of the monsters, is named
Takhmo-urupis, or Takhma-urupa, which means strong fox.
One of the most interesting fables, in a mythological point of view,
is that of the jackal who, falling among pigments, comes out blue, or
of opaline lustre, and passes himself off as a peacock of the sky. The
animals make him their king, but he betrays himself by his voice:
hearing other jackals howling, he howls also; upon which the lion, the
real king of the beasts, tears him to pieces.[199] This is a variety
of the ass dressed in the lion's skin, but yet more so of the crow
that takes up and decks itself in the peacock's feathers; the black
night shines as an azure sky, as sahasrâkshas (an appellation of
Indras and of the peacock, as having a thousand eyes or stars). The
evening aurora, the fox, transforms itself into the azure sky of
night, until at morn, the deceit being exposed, the lion (_i.e._, the
sun) rends the fox, and disperses the night and the aurora.
The _Pancatantram_ contains two other narratives relating to the
legendary jackal--viz., the inquisitive and silly jackal, who, in an
attempt to break the skin of a drum to see what is inside, breaks one
of his teeth, and who, wishing to eat the string of a bow, has his
mouth lacerated and dies;[200] and the vile jackal who, brought up
among the lion's cubs, reveals his vulpine nature when he should have
thrown himself with the two lions, his adoptive brothers, upon the
elephant, but, instead of that, took to flight.[201] In the
_Tuti-Name_,[202] the jackal desires to revenge himself upon the
parrots, whom he judges indirectly implicated in the death of his
young ones; up comes the lynx, who is astounded that the jackal,
celebrated for its craftiness, is unable to devise a way of ruining
the parrots. At last the lynx advises him to pretend being lame, and
let himself be followed by a hunter as far as the abode of the
parrots, at which place he will be able to skulk away, and the hunter,
seeing the parrots, will set his nets and catch them.
In the _Tuti-Name_ we also find several other particulars relating to
the jackal, which will pass into the Russian stories of the fox.
The jackal makes the wolf come out of his den, which the latter had
taken possession of, by calling the shepherd.[203] In another place, the
cunning fox laughs at the stolid tiger, but the woman proves herself to
be more cunning than the fox.[204] It is also in the _Tuti-Name_[205]
that we read of a companion of the poor Abdul Megid, enamoured of the
king's daughter, who teaches him how to enrich himself, or rather to
appear rich, in order to wed her. In a much more scientific and
interesting variety of this legend, in the Russian stories, it is, on
the contrary, the fox who enriches the poor hero. The nineteenth Mongol
story, in which the false hero makes his fortune by means of the spoils
of a certain designated fox, is another intermediate form between the
two traditions, the Hindoo and the Russian.
The name of a jackal in the _Pancatantram_ is Dadhi-pucchas, which
means tail of butter, buttered tail (the aurora is ambrosial).
In the first of the stories of _Afanassieff_, the fox eats the honey
belonging to the wolf (which reminds one of the sentence of Plautus,
"Sæpe condita luporum fiunt rapinæ vulpium"[206]), and then accuses
the wolf of having eaten it himself; the wolf proposes a sort of
judgment of God; they are to go together to the sun, and he who pours
out honey will be accounted guilty: they go and lie down; the wolf
falls asleep, and when the honey comes out of the fox, he pours it
upon the wolf, who, when he awakes, confesses his fault. In the first
story of the fourth book of _Afanassieff_, the cock and the hen bring
ears of corn to the old man and poppies to the old woman; the old
couple make a cake of them and put it out to dry.[207] Up come the fox
and the wolf and take the cake, but finding that it is not yet dry,
the fox proposes going to sleep whilst it is drying. While the wolf
sleeps, the fox eats the honey that is in the cake, and puts dung in
its place. The wolf awakens, and after him the fox too pretends to
waken, and accuses the wolf of having touched the cake; the wolf
protests his innocence, and the fox proposes, as a judgment of God,
that they shall go to sleep in the sunshine; the wax will come out of
him who has eaten the honey.[208] The wolf really goes to sleep, and
the fox goes meanwhile to a neighbouring beehive, eats the honey, and
throws the honeycombs upon the wolf, who, wakening from his slumbers,
confesses his fault, and promises in reparation to give his share of
the prey to the fox as soon as he procures any. In the continuation of
the story, the fox sends the wolf to fish with his tail (the same as
the bone of the dog) in the lake, and, after having made his tail
freeze, feigns to be himself ill, and makes the wolf carry him,
murmuring on the way the proverb, "He who is beaten carries him who is
not beaten." In a variety of the same story, the fox eats the wolf's
butter and flour; in another, the fox pretends to be called during the
night to act as the rabbit's midwife, and eats the wolf's butter,
accusing him afterwards of having eaten it himself; in order to
discover the guilty one, they resolve upon trying the judgment by
fire, before which the two animals are to go to sleep, and the one
from whose skin the butter shall come out, is to be accounted guilty;
whilst the wolf is asleep and snoring, the fox upsets the rest of the
butter over him. In the seventh story of the fourth book of
_Afanassieff_, the fox promises to an old man to bring his wife to
life again; he requests him to warm a bath, to bring flour and honey,
and then to stand at the door without ever turning round to look at
the bath; the old man does so, and the fox washes the old woman and
then eats her, leaving nothing but the bones; he then makes a cake of
the flour and honey, and eats that too, after which he cries out to
the old man to throw the door wide open, and escapes. In the first
story of the first book, the old man whose wife is dead goes to look
for mourners; he finds the bear, who offers to do the weeping, but the
old man thinks that he has not a sufficiently good voice; going on, he
meets the fox, who also offers to perform the same service, and gives
a good proof of his skill in singing (this particular would appear to
be more applicable to the crying jackal than to the fox). The old man
declares himself perfectly satisfied, and places the cunning beast at
the foot of the corpse to sing a lament, whilst he himself goes to
make the grave; during the old man's absence, the fox eats everything
he finds in the house, and the old woman too. In the ninth story of
the fourth book the fable ends otherwise; the fox does his duty as a
weeper, and the old man rewards him by the gift of some chickens; the
fox, however, demanding more, the old man puts into a sack two dogs
and a chicken, and gives it to the fox, who goes out and opens the
sack. The dogs run out and pursue him; he takes refuge in his den, but
neglects to draw in his tail, which betrays him. "Cauda de vulpe
testatur," said also the Latin proverb. In a variety of the first
story of the first book, it is as a reward for having released the
peasant from the bear that the fox receives a sack containing two hens
and a dog. The dog pursues the fox, who takes to his hole, and then
asks his feet what they have done; they answer that they ran away; he
then asks his eyes and ears, which answer that they saw and heard;
finally he asks his tail (here identified with the phallos), which,
confused, answers that it put itself between his legs to make him
fall. Then the fox, wishing to chastise his tail, puts it out of the
hole; the dog, by means of it, drags out the whole fox, and tears him
to pieces. In the fourth story of the third book, the fox delivers the
peasant from, not the bear, but the wolf; the peasant then cheats him
in the same way, by putting dogs into the sack; the fox escapes, and
to punish his tail for impeding his flight, leaves it in the dog's
mouth, and runs off; afterwards the fox is drowned by falling into a
barrel which is being filled with water (the deed of the phallos; cfr.
the chapter on the Fishes), and the peasant takes his skin. In another
Russian story, recorded by _Afanassieff_ in the observations to the
first book of his stories, the fox, having delivered the peasant from
the bear, asks for his nose in way of recompense, but the peasant
terrifies him and puts him to flight. In a Slavonic story referred to
in the same observations, the bird makes its nest, of which the fox
covets the eggs; the bird informs the dog, who pursues the fox; the
latter, betrayed by his tail, holds his usual monologue with his feet,
eyes, ears, and tail. In the twenty-second story of the third book,
the fox falls with the bear, the wolf, and the hare, into a ditch
where there is no water. The four animals are oppressed by hunger, and
the fox proposes that each should raise his voice in succession and
shout his utmost; he who shouts feeblest will be eaten by the others.
The hare's turn comes first, then that of the wolf; bear and fox alone
remain. The fox advises the bear to put his paws upon his sides;
attempting to sing thus, he dies, and the fox eats him. Being again
hungry, and seeing a bird feeding its young, he threatens to kill the
young birds unless the parent brings him some food; the bird brings
him a hen from the village. The fox afterwards renews his threats,
desiring the bird to bring him something to drink; the bird
immediately brings him water from the village. Again the fox threatens
to kill the young ones if the old bird does not deliver him out of the
ditch; the bird throws in billets of wood, and thus succeeds in
helping him out. Then the fox desires the bird to make him laugh; the
bird invites him to run after it; it then goes towards the village,
where it cries out, "Woman, woman, bring me a piece of tallow" (babka,
babka, priniessi mnié sala kussók); the dogs hear the cry, come out,
and rend the fox. In the twenty-fourth story of the third book, the
fox again delivers the peasant from the wolf, whom he had shut up in a
sack to save him from the persecution of the hunters. The wolf is no
sooner out of danger than he wishes to eat the peasant, saying that
"old hospitality is forgotten."[209] The peasant beseeches him to
await the judgment of the first passer-by; the first whom they meet is
an old mare who has been expelled from the stables on account of her
age, after having long served her masters; she finds that the wolf's
sentence is just. The peasant begs the wolf to wait for a second
passer-by; this is an old black dog who has been expelled from the
house after long services, because he can no longer bark; he also
approves the wolf's decision. The peasant again begs them to wait for
a third and decisive judgment; they meet the fox, who resorts to a
well-known stratagem; he affects to doubt that so large an animal as
the wolf could get into so small a sack. The wolf, mortified at so
unjust a suspicion, wishes to prove that he has told the truth,
re-enters into the sack, and is beaten by the peasant till he dies.
But the peasant himself then proves ungrateful to the fox, saying,
too, that old hospitality is to be forgotten (properly the hospitality
of bread and salt, _hlieb-sol_). In the eighth story of the fourth
book, the fox brings upon his back to her father and mother a girl
who, having lost herself in the forest, was weeping upon a tree. The
old man and woman, however, are not grateful to the fox; for on the
latter asking for a hen in reward, they put him into a sack with a
dog; the rest of the story is already known to the reader. In the
twenty-third story of the fourth book, the fox marries the cat and
puts the bear and the wolf to flight. We have already mentioned the
fox of the Russian story who sends the wolf to catch fish in the river
with his tail, by which means the tail is frozen off. In a popular
Norwegian story, instead of the wolf, it is the bear who is thus
cheated by the fox. In a Servian story, we hear of a fox who steals
three cheeses off a waggon, and afterwards meets the wolf, who asks
where he had found them. The fox answers, in the water (the sky of
night). The wolf wishing to fish for cheeses, the fox conducts him to
a fountain where the moon is reflected in the water, and points to it
as a cheese; he must lap up the water in order to get at it. The wolf
laps and laps till the water comes out of his mouth, nose, and ears
(probably because he was drowned in the fountain. The wolf, the black
monster of night, takes the place of the crow in connection with the
cheese (the moon) and the fox; the Servian story itself tells us what
the cheese represents[210]). In a Russian story, published in the year
1860, by the Podsniesznik, and quoted in the observations to the first
book of the stories of _Afanassieff_, the fox is killed by a peasant
whose fish he had stolen; the peasant takes his skin and goes off. Up
comes the wolf, and seeing his god-father without a skin, weeps over
him according to the prescribed ceremony, and then eats him. We have
already seen the fox as a mourner and as a midwife. In the twentieth
story of the third book of _Afanassieff_, the fox wishes to work as a
blacksmith. In other Russian stories we have the fox-confessor and the
fox-physician; finally, the fox as a god-mother is a very popular
subject of Russian stories. In a Russian story, published in the
fourth number of the Russian _Historical and Juridical Archives of
Kalassoff_, the fox appears as a go-between for the marriage of two
young men with two princesses. But, above all, the fox is famous for
having brought about the wedding of the poor Buhtan Buhtanovic and of
his _alter ego_, Koszma Skorobagatoi (Cosimo the swiftly-enriched)
with the daughter of the Tzar. Buhtan had only five kapeika (twopence
in all). The fox has them changed, and asks the Tzar to lend him some
bushels to measure the money with. These bushels are each time found
too small, and larger ones are demanded, using which, the cunning fox
always takes care to leave some small coin at the bottom. The Tzar
marvels at the riches of Buhtan, and the fox then asks for Buhtan the
Tzar's daughter to wife. The Tzar wishes first to see the bridegroom.
How dress him? The fox then makes Buhtan fall into the mud near the
king's palace whilst they are passing over a little bridge. He then
goes to the Tzar, relates the misfortune, and begs him to lend him a
dress for Buhtan. Buhtan puts it on, and never ceases regarding his
changed appearance. The Tzar being astonished at this, the fox hastens
to say that Buhtan was never so badly dressed before, and takes the
first opportunity of warning him in private against conduct so
suspicious. Then, withdrawn from himself, he does nothing but stare at
the golden table, which again astonishes the Tzar; this is accounted
for by the fox, who explains that in Buhtan's palace similar tables
are to be found in the bath-room; meanwhile the fox hints to Buhtan to
look more about him. The wedding ceremony is performed and the bride
led away. The fox runs on before; but instead of leading them into
Buhtan's miserable hut, he takes them to an enchanted palace, after
having, by a trick, chased out of it the serpent, the crow, and the
cock that inhabited it.[211]--Poor Kuszinka has only one cock and five
hens remaining. He takes the fox by surprise whilst he is attempting
to eat his hens, but moved by the fox's prayers, releases him. Then
the grateful fox promises to transform him into Cosimo the
swiftly-enriched. The fox goes into the Tzar's park and meets the
wolf, who asks him how he is become so fat; he answers that he has
been banqueting at the Tzar's palace. The wolf expresses a desire to
go there too, and the fox advises him to invite forty times forty more
wolves (that is 1600 wolves). The wolf follows his advice, and brings
them all to the Tzar's palace, upon which the fox tells the Tzar that
Cosimo the swiftly-enriched sends them to him as a gift. The Tzar
marvels at the great riches of Cosimo; the fox uses the same stratagem
twice again with the bears and the martens. After this, he asks the
Tzar to lend him a silver bushel, pretending that all Cosimo's golden
bushels are full of money. The Tzar gives it, and when the fox sends
it back, he leaves a few small coins at the bottom, returning it with
the request that the Tzar would give his daughter to Cosimo in
marriage. The Tzar answers that he must first see the pretender to her
hand. The fox then makes Cosimo fall into the water, and arrays him in
robes lent by the Tzar, who receives him with every honour. After
some time, the Tzar signifies his desire of visiting Cosimo's
dwelling. The fox goes on before, and finds on the way flocks of
sheep, and herds of hogs, cows, horses, and camels. He asks of all the
shepherds to whom they belong, and is uniformly answered, "To the
serpent-uhlan." The fox orders them to say that they belong to Cosimo
the swiftly-enriched, or else they will see King Fire and Queen
Loszna,[212] who will burn everything to ashes. He comes to the palace
of white stone, where the king serpent-uhlan lives. He terrifies him
in the same way, and compels him to take refuge in the trunk of an
oak-tree, where he is burnt to death. Cosimo, the swiftly-enriched,
becomes Tzar of all the possessions of the uhlan-serpent and enjoys
them with his bride.[213] (I need not dwell upon the mythological
importance of this story; the serpent consumed by fire is found in the
most primitive myths; here the canis-vulpes, the red bitch, the fox
seems to play part of the _rôle_ of the Vedic messenger-bitch.)
In the first story of _Afanassieff_, the fox chases the hare, instead
of the serpent, out of its home. The fox has a house of ice and the
hare one of wood. At the arrival of spring, the fox's house melts;
then the fox, under the pretext of warming itself, enters the hare's
house and sends its occupant away. The hare weeps, and the dogs come
to chase the fox away, but it cries out from its seat by the stove,
that when it leaps out, whoever is caught will be torn into a thousand
pieces; hearing which, the dogs run away in terror. The bear comes,
and then the bull, but the fox terrifies them too. At last the cock
comes up with a scythe, and loudly summons it to come out or be cut to
pieces. The terrified fox jumps out and the cock cuts it to pieces
with the scythe. In another story of Little Russia, mentioned by
_Afanassieff_ in the observations to the first book of his stories,
the fox, on the contrary, is the victim which the hairy goat wishes to
expel from its home. Several animals, wolf, lion, and bear, present
themselves to help it, but the cock alone succeeds in expelling the
intruder. Here the cock appears as the friend of the fox and the enemy
of the goat. In the twenty-third story of the third book of
_Afanassieff_, the fox defends the sheep against the wolf, who accuses
it of having dressed itself in his skin, and brings about the ruin of
the wolf by its craftiness. In the third story of the fourth book, the
cat and the lamb release the cock from the fox; these contradictions
are explained by the double mythical significance which we have
attributed above to the fox, and by its double appearance as aurora in
the evening and in the morning. In the evening, it generally cheats
the hero; in the morning it cheats the monster. In the second story of
the fourth book of _Afanassieff_, the fox requests the cock to come
down from a tree to confess itself to him. The cock does so, and is
about to be eaten by the fox, but it flatters him so much that he lets
it escape again. (The solar cock, supposed to be in the fox's power at
night, escapes from it and comes forth again in the morning.) The
third story of the fourth book gives us the interesting text of the
words sung by the fox to deceive the cock:
"Little cock, little cock,
With the golden crest,
With the buttered head,
With the forehead of curdled milk!
Show yourself at the window;
I will give you some gruel
In a red spoon."[214]
The cock, when caught by the fox, invokes the cat's assistance,
crying, "Me the fox has carried away; he carried away me, the cock,
into the gloomy forest, into distant lands, into foreign lands, into
the three times ninth (twenty-seventh) earth, into the thirtieth
kingdom; cat Catonaievic, deliver me!"
The knavish actions of the fox, however, are far more celebrated in
the West than in the East. A proverb says that, to write all the
perfidious knaveries of the fox, all the cloth manufactured at Ghent,
turned into parchment, would not be sufficient. This proverb justifies
me in saying but little of it, as I am unable to say as much as I
should wish. Greeks and Latins are unanimous in celebrating the
sagacity and perfidy of the fox. The cynic Macchiavelli, in the
eighteenth chapter of the _Principe_, asserts that a good prince must
imitate two animals, the fox and the lion, (must, that is to say, have
deceit and strength), but especially the fox; and this answers to the
sentence attributed by Plutarch (in the _Memorable Sayings of the
Greeks_) to Lysander, "Where the lion's skin does not suffice, put on
that of the fox." Aristotle, in the ninth book of the _History of
Animals_, also considers the fox as the serpent's friend, probably
because of the analogy existing between them in respect of
perfidiousness, according to another Greek saying, viz., "He who hopes
to triumph, must arm himself with the strength of the lion and the
prudence of the serpent." A proverbial Latin verse says--
"Vulpes amat fraudem, lupus agnam, fæmina laudem."
There is scarcely an animal which is not deceived by the fox in Greek
and Latin fable; the fox alone does not succeed in deceiving the fox.
In Æsop, the fox who has lost his tail in a trap endeavours to
persuade the other foxes of the uselessness of that appendage; but the
latter answer that he would not have given them such advice were he
not aware that a tail is a useful member. The fox deceives the ass,
giving it up as prey to the lion (as in the _Pancatantram_); it
deceives the hare by offering it as a prey to the dog, who, pursuing
the hare, loses both hare and fox;[215] it deceives the goat, by
cozening it into the well that it may escape out of it, and then
leaving it there to its fate; it cheats in several ways now the cock,
now the wolf; and it imposes upon even the powerful king of beasts,
whom, however, he sometimes cannot deceive. A graceful apologue of
Thomas Morus shows us the counterpart of the Hellenic fable of the fox
and the sick lion, that is to say, the sick fox visited by the lion:--
"Dum jacet angusta vulpes ægrota caverna
Ante fores blando constitit ore leo.
Etquid, amica, vale. Cito, me lambente, valebis,
Nescis in lingua vis mihi quanta mea.
Lingua tibi medica est, vulpes ait, at nocet illud
Vicinos, quod habet, tam bona lingua, malos."
But when we come down to the Middle Ages, the fable of the fox
develops into such manifoldness, that the study of all the phases in
which it unfolds itself ought to be the subject of a special
work.[216] Suffice it to notice here that, to popularise in Flanders,
and subsequently in France and Germany, the idea of the fox as the
type of every species of malice and imposture, it is the priest who,
for the most part, is the human impersonation of the masculine
Reinart. The _Procession du Renart_ is famous; it was a farce
conceived in 1313 by Philippe le Bel, on account of his quarrel with
Pope Boniface VIII., and acted by the scholars of Paris. The principal
personage was a man disguised in the skin of a fox, and wearing over
all a priest's surplice, whose chief industry it was to give chase to
chickens. This form of satire, however, directed against the Church,
is certainly much older than those times, and goes back to the epoch
of the first differences between the Church and the Empire in the
eleventh century, at which time two mediæval Latin poems appeared,
_Reinardus Vulpes_ and _Ysengrimus_; with the schism of England and
the Reformation of the sixteenth century, however, _Reinardus Vulpes_
decisively became a Romish fox. The finesse and perfection of the
satirical poem which S. Naylor, its English translator, calls "the
unholy bible of the world," also increased the fox's popularity, and
made it yet more proverbial. The principal subjects of the poem
existed previously, not only in oral, but also in literary tradition;
they were grouped together and put in order, and a more human, more
malicious nature was given to the fox, a nature more hypocritical even
than before, and more priestly, whence it now more than ever--
"Urbibus et castris regnat et ecclesiis."
Macchiavelli, St Ignazio di Loyola, and St Vincenzo de' Paoli took upon
themselves the charge of propagating its type over the whole world.
The wolf is better, when he is a wolf, for then we know at least what he
wants; we know that he is our enemy, and are accordingly on our guard;
but he, too, sometimes disguises himself, by imposture or magic, as a
sheep, a shepherd, a monk, or a penitent, like Ysengrin; and from this
point of view resembles not a little his perfidious god-mother the fox;
it is well known that amongst the exploits of Reinart there is that of
his extra-matrimonial union with the she-wolf.
In the _Rigvedas_ we already find several interesting mythical data
concerning the wolf; he is in it entirely demoniacal, as the exhausted
Vrikas, to which, in a hymn, the Açvinâu give back its strength,[217]
seems, as it appears to me, not to be the wolf, but the messenger crow
which, during the night, must carry the solar hero.
As in the Zendic _Vendidad_,[218] the souls of good men, when on the
way to heaven, are afraid of meeting the wolf, so in the _Rigvedas_,
the devotee says that once the reddish wolf (which seems to be
confounded here with the jackal or the fox) saw him coming on the way,
and fled in terror;[219] he invokes the (luminous) night to send the
wolf, the robber far away,[220] and the god Pûshan (the sun) to remove
the evil wolf, the malignant spirit, from the path of the devotees,
the wolf that besieges the roads, thieving, fraudulent,
double-dealing.[221] The poet, after having called the enemy Vrikas,
prays, with imprecations, that he may lacerate his own body;[222] and
the wild beast, full of witchcraft,[223] which Indras kills, is
probably a wolf. But, besides this, I think I can find in the
_Rigvedas_ the _lupus piscator_ of Russian and Western tradition;
(according to Ælianos there were wolves friendly to fishermen near the
Palus Moeotis.) In the fifty-sixth hymn of the eighth book, Matsyas
(the fish) invokes the Âdityas (that is, the luminous gods) to free
him and his from the jaws of the wolf. So in another strophe of the
same hymn, we must in reason suppose that it is a fish that speaks
when she who has a terrible son (_i.e._, the mother of the sun) is
invoked as protectress from him who in the shallow waters endeavours
to kill him.[224] We also find a fish lying in shallow water
explicitly mentioned in another hymn;[225] which proves to us the
image of the fish without water, which was widely developed in later
Hindoo tradition, to have been in the Vedic age already a familiar
one. We find the dog as the enemy of the wolf in the Hindoo words
_vrikâris vrikârâtis_, and _vrikadanças_. (In the thirteenth story of
the fourth book of _Afanassieff_, the wolf wishes to eat the dog; the
latter, who feels himself too weak to resist, begs the wolf to bring
him something to eat, in order that he may become larger, and be more
tender for the wolf's teeth; but when he is in good condition, he
acquires strength and makes the wolf run. The enmity of the dog and
the wolf was also made popular in the Æsopian fables.)
In the _Râmâyanam_,[226] we already meet with the proverbial
expression of the sheep who do not increase when guarded by the wolf
or jackal (rakshayamânâ na vardhante meshâ gomâyunâ).
In the _Mahâbhâratam_, the second of the three sons of Kuntî, the
strong, terrible, and voracious Bhîmas, is called Wolf's-belly
(Vrikodaras, the solar hero enclosed in the nocturnal or winter
darkness). Here the wolf has a heroic and sympathetic form, as in the
_Tuti-Name_[227] he, although famished, shows compassion upon a maiden
who travels to fulfil a promise; as in the same _Tuti-Name_[228] he
helps the lion against the mice, and in the story of Ardschi Bordschi,
the boy, son of a wolf, understands the language of wolves, and
teaches it to the merchants with whom he lives; like the Russian
she-wolf that gives her milk to Ivan Karolievic, in order that he may
take it to the witch, his wife, who induced him to fetch it in the
hope that he would thereby meet with his death;[229] and like the
she-wolf of the fifteenth Esthonian story, who comes up on hearing the
cry of a child, and gives its milk to nourish it. The story tells us
that the shape of a wolf was assumed by the mother of the child
herself, and that when she was alone, she placed her wolf-disguise
upon a rock, and appeared as a naked woman to give milk to her child.
The husband, informed of this, orders that the rock be heated, so that
when the wolf's skin is again placed upon it, it may be burnt, and he
may thus be able to recognise and take back to himself his wife. The
she-wolf that gives her milk to the twin-brothers, Romulus and Remus,
in Latin epic tradition, was no less a woman than the nurse-wolf of
the Esthonian story.[230] The German hero Wolfdieterich, the wolves
who hunt for the hero in Russian stories, sacred to Mars and to Thor
as their hunting dogs, have the same benignant nature. (The evening
aurora disguises herself in the night with a wolf's skin, nourishes as
a she-wolf the new-born solar hero, and in the morning puts down her
wolf's skin upon the fiery rock of the East, and finds her husband
again.) What Solinus tells us of the Neuri, viz., that they
transformed themselves into wolves at stated periods; and what used to
be narrated of the Arcadians, to the effect that when they crossed a
certain marsh, they became wolves for eight years,--suggests us a new
idea of the zoological transformations of the solar hero.[231] In La
Fontaine,[232] the shadow of the wolf makes the sheep flee in the
evening. As a hero transformed, the wolf has a benignant aspect in
legends. According to Baronius, in the year 617, a number of wolves
presented themselves at a monastery, and tore in pieces several
friars who entertained heretical opinions. The wolves sent by God tore
the sacrilegious thieves of the army of Francesco Maria, Duke of
Urbino, who had come to sack the treasure of the holy house of Loreto.
A wolf guarded and defended from the wild beasts the head of St Edmund
the Martyr, King of England. St Oddo, Abbot of Cluny, assailed in a
pilgrimage by foxes, was delivered and escorted by a wolf; thus a wolf
showed the way to the beatified Adam, in the same way as, in
_Herodotos_, the wolves served as guides to the priests of Ceres. A
wolf, having devoured two mares which drew a cart, was forced by St
Eustorgius to draw the cart in their stead, and obeyed his orders. St
Norbert compelled a wolf, first to let a sheep go after having
clutched it, and then to guard the sheep all day without touching
them. We read of the youth of the ancient Syracusan hero Hielon that,
being at school, a wolf carried off his tablets in order to make him
pursue it; no sooner was Hielon out, than the wolf re-entered the
school, and massacred the master and the other scholars.
And even after his death the wolf is useful. The ancients believed
that a wolf's hide, when put on by one who had been bitten by a mad
dog, was a charm against hydrophobia. According to Pliny, wolf's teeth
rubbed on the gums of children during teething relieves the pain
(which is quite credible, but any other sharp tooth would serve the
same purpose, by making the teeth cut sooner). In Sicily it is
believed that a wolf's head increases the courage of whoever puts it
on. In the province of Girgenti shoes are made of wolf's skin for
children whom their parents wish to grow up strong, brave, and
pugnacious. The animals themselves that are ridden by persons who wear
these shoes are cured of their pain. The animal _allupatu_ (that is,
which has once been bitten by a wolf) becomes invulnerable, and never
feels any other kind of pain. It is also believed in Sicily that when
a wolf's skin is exposed in the open air, it causes drums to break
when they are beaten. This superstition reminds us of the fable of the
fox that kills itself by breaking the drum or biting the string of a
bow; the mythical drum (that is, the cloud) is destroyed when the
wolf's skin is taken off. In Æsop's fable, the wolf's skin is
recommended by the fox as a cure for the sick lion.
But the wolf of tradition usually has a perverse or diabolical
signification; and as the demon is represented now as a master of
every species of perfidy and wickedness, and now as a fool, so is the
wolf. In the Hellenic myth, Lycaon, King of Arcadia, became a wolf
because he had fed upon human flesh. According to Servius, the wolves
among the people, called for this reason Hirpini (the Sabine word
_hirpus_ meaning a wolf), carried off the entrails of the victim
sacrificed to Pluto, and therefore brought down a pestilence upon the
land. Wolves tore the hero Milôn to pieces in the forest. Wolves are
an omen of death; the loup garou of popular French tradition is a
diabolical form.[233] In the _Edda_, the two wolves Sköll and Hati
wish to take, one the sun and the other the moon; the wolf devours the
sun, father of the world, and gives birth to a daughter. He is then
killed by Vidarr. Hati precedes the luminous betrothed of the sky; the
wolf Fenris, son of the demoniacal Lokis, chained by the Ases, bites
off the hand that the hero Tyr, as an earnest of the good faith of the
Ases, had put into his mouth,[234] when chained to the western gate.
Nanna, of the _Pentamerone_, after having travelled over the world, is
disguised in the shape of a wolf, and changes in character and in
colour, becoming malicious; the three sons of the Finns go to inhabit
the Valley of the Wolf, near the Wolf's Lake, and find there three
women spinning, who can transform themselves into swans. On Christmas
Eve, the King Helgi meets a witch who rides upon a wolf, having eagles
for bridles.[235] Wolves eat each other; the wolf Sinfiölti becomes a
eunuch; the wolf who flees before the hero is an omen of victory, as
well as the wolf who howls under the branches of an ash-tree. (The
howling of the wolf, the braying of the ass, the hissing of the
serpent, announce the death of the demoniacal monster; this howling
must necessarily take place in the morning, or the spring, when the
hero has recovered his strength, as the _Edda_ says that "a hero must
never fight towards sunset)." If Gunnar (the solar hero) loses his
life, the wolf becomes the master of the treasure, and of the heritage
of Nifl; the heroes roast the wolf. All these legendary particulars
relating to the wolf in the _Edda_ concur in showing us the wolf as a
gloomy and diabolical monster. The night and the winter is the time of
the wolf spoken of in the _Voluspa_; the gods who enter, according to
the German tradition, into wolves' skins, represent the sun as hiding
himself in the night, or the snowy season of winter (whence the
demoniacal white wolf of a Russian story,[236] in the midst of seven
black wolves). Inasmuch as the solar hero becomes a wolf, he has a
divine nature; inasmuch, on the contrary, as the wolf is the proper
form of the devil, his nature is entirely malignant. The condemned
man, the proscribed criminal, the bandit, the _utlagatus_ or outlaw,
were said in the Middle Ages to wear a _caput lupinum_ (in England,
_wulfesheofod_; in France, _teste loeue_). The wolf Ysengrin,
descended partly from the Æsopian wolf, and partly from Scandinavian
myths, which were propagated in Germany, Flanders, and France,
possesses much of the diabolical craftiness of the fox; he usually
adopts against sheep the same stratagems which the fox makes use of to
entrap chickens. The French proverb makes the fox preach to the fowls;
the Italian proverb makes the wolf sing psalms when he wishes to
ensnare the sheep. As we have seen the jackal and the fox confounded
in the East, so Reinart and Ysengrin are sometimes identified by their
cunning in Western tradition. A recent French writer, who had observed
the habits of the wolf, says that he is "effrayant de sagacité et de
calcul."[237] In the second story of the second book of
_Afanassieff_, the same wizard-wolf who knew how to imitate the goat's
voice to deceive the kids, goes to the house of an old man and an old
woman, who have five sheep, a horse, and a calf. The wolf comes and
begins to sing. The old woman admires the song, and gives him one
sheep, then the others, then the horse, next the calf, and finally
herself. The old man, left alone, at last succeeds in hunting the wolf
away. In the preceding story, where the animals accuse each other, the
demoniacal wolf, when his turn comes, accuses God. We have already
spoken of the wolf who, by the order of St Eustorgius, draws the cart
instead of the mares which he had eaten. In the twenty-fifth story of
the third book of _Afanassieff_, the wolf comes up to the sleeping
workman, and smells him; the workman awakes, takes the wolf by the
tail,[238] and kills him. Another time the same workman, when he goes
with his father to the chase, after having enriched himself with money
which he had taken from three brigands who had hidden it in a deserted
mill, meets again with two wolves who eat the horses, but, entangling
themselves in the reins, they are compelled to draw the car home again
themselves; here, therefore, we have the miracle of St Eustorgius
reduced to its natural mythical proportions. Here, evidently, the wolf
begins to show himself as a stupid animal; the demon teaches his art
to the little solar hero in the evening, and is betrayed by the hero
himself in the morning; the fox cheats the solar cock in the evening,
and is deceived by it in the morning; the wolf succeeds by his
wickedness in the evening, and is ruined in the morning. We have
already mentioned the Norwegian story of the little Schmierbock, who,
put into a sack by the witch, twice makes a hole in the sack and
escapes, and the third time makes the witch eat her own daughter.
Schmierbock is the ram; the witch or night puts him into the sack. In
the Piedmontese story,[239] and in the Russian one, instead of
Schmierbock, we have Piccolino (the very little one), and the Small
Little Finger (malcik-s palcik, that is, the little finger, which is
the wise one, according to popular superstition). The Russian story is
as follows: An old woman, while baking a cake (the moon), cuts off her
little finger and throws it into the fire. From the little finger in
the fire, a dwarf, but very strong son, is born, who afterwards does
many wonderful things. One day he was eating the tripe of an ox in the
forest; the wolf passes by, and eats dwarf and tripe together. After
this, the wolf approaches a flock of sheep, but the dwarf cries out
from within the wolf, "Shepherd, shepherd, thou sleepest and the wolf
carries off a sheep." The shepherd then chases the wolf away, who
endeavours to get rid of his troublesome guest; the dwarf requests the
wolf to carry him home to his parents; no sooner have they arrived
there than the dwarf comes out behind and catches hold of the wolf's
tail, shouting, "Kill the wolf, kill the grey one." The old people
come out and kill it.[240] The mythical wolf dies now after only one
night, now after only one winter of life. To the mythical wolf,
however, bastard sons were born, who, changing only their skin,
succeeded in living for a long period among mortals in the midst of
civil society, preserving, nevertheless, their wolf-like habits. The
French proverb says, "Le loup alla à Rome; il y laissa de son poil et
rien de ses coutumes." The pagan she-wolf gave milk to the Roman
heroes; the Catholic wolf, thunderstruck by Dante,[241] on the
contrary, feeds upon them--
"Ed ha natura sì malvagia e ria,
Che mai non empie la bramosa voglia,
E dopo il pasto ha più fame che pria.
Molti son gli animali a cui s'ammoglia."
FOOTNOTES:
[194] Cfr. _Ueber den Zusammenhang indischer Fabeln mit griechischen_,
Berlin, Dümmler, 1855.
[195] In a German tradition referred to by Schmidt, _Forschungen_, s.
105, we have the deity who presents himself as a fox to the hunter
voluntarily to be sacrificed; the hunter flays him, and the flies and
ants eat his flesh. In a Russian story of which I shall give an
abridgment, the wolf eats the fox when he sees it without its hairy
covering.
[196] i. 5566, _et seq._
[197] i. 16, iv. 2; cfr. also iv. 10, and the chapter on the Hare.--In
the story, iii. 14, of the _Pancatantram_, the jackal cheats the lion
who has occupied his cave, by making him roar; and thus assuring
himself that the lion is in the cave, he is able to escape.
[198] iii. 29.
[199] Cfr. _Pancatantram_, i. 10; _Tuti-Name_, ii. 146.
[200] i. 2, ii. 3.--In the nineteenth Mongol story, the young man who
passes himself off as a hero is ordered to bring to the queen the skin
of a certain fox which is indicated to him; on the way the youth loses
his bow; returning to look for it, he finds the fox dead close to the
bow, which it had tried to bite, and which had struck and killed it.
[201] iv. 4.
[202] i. 134, 135.
[203] _Tuti-Name_, ii. 125.--In the stories of the same night (the
twenty-second) of the _Tuti-Name_, we have the lynx (lupus cervarius)
who wishes to take the house of the monkey who occupies the lion's
house, and the jackal who runs after the camel's testicles, as in the
_Pancatantram_ he runs after those of the bull. In the story, ii. 7,
the fox lets his bone fall into the water in order to catch a fish (a
variety of the well-known fable of the dog and of the wolf or devil as
fisherman).
[204] _Tuti-Name_, ii. 142, 143.
[205] i. 168, _et seq._
[206] _Querolus_, i. 2.
[207] In the eighteenth story of the fourth book of _Afanassieff_, an
extraordinary cake escapes from the house of an old man and woman, and
wanders about; it finds the hare, the wolf, and the bear, who all wish
to eat it; it sings its story to them all, and is allowed to go; it
sings it to the fox, too, but the latter praises the song, and eats
the cake, after having made it get upon his back.
[208] In _Afanassieff_, i. 14, the hero, Theodore, finds some wolves
fighting among themselves for a bone, some bees fighting for the
honey, and some shrimps fighting for caviare; he makes a just
division, and the grateful wolves, bees, and shrimps help him in need.
[209] Cfr. _Lou loup penjat_ in the _Contes de l'Armagnac_, collected
by Bladé, Paris, 1867, p. 9.
[210] Cfr. the English expression applied to the moon, "made of green
cheese;" this is the connection between green and yellow previously
mentioned.
[211] _Afanassieff_, iv. 10.
[212] It is here, perhaps, to be remarked that in the Piedmontese
dialect lightning is called _loszna_.
[213] _Afanassieff_, iv. 11. In the fourth story of the second book of
the _Pentamerone_, instead of a fox, it is the cat that enriches Pippo
Gagliufo and runs before him. In the same way as in the Russian stories
the man shows himself ungrateful towards the fox, so in the
_Pentamerone_ the cat ends by cursing the ungrateful Pippo Gagliufo whom
she had done good to. In the following story the fox offers herself as
companion to the young bride who is looking for her lost husband.
[214]
"Pietushók, pietushók,
Zalatói grebeshók,
Másliannaja galovka,
Smiatanij lobók!
Vighliani v oshko;
Dam tebie kashki,
Na krasnoi loszkie."
In an unpublished Tuscan story which I heard related at Antignano near
Leghorn, a chicken wishes to go with its father (the cock) into the
Maremma to search for food. Its father advises it not to do so for
fear of the fox, but the chicken insists upon going; on the way it
meets the fox, who is about to eat it, when the chicken beseeches him
to let it go into the Maremma, where it will fatten, lay eggs, bring
up young chickens, and be able to provide the fox with a much more
substantial meal than it now could. The fox consents. The chicken
brings up a hundred young ones; when they are grown up, they set out
to return home; every fowl carries in its mouth an ear of millet,
except the youngest. On the way they meet the fox waiting for them; on
seeing all these animals each with a straw in its beak, the astonished
fox asks the mother-hen what it is they carry. "All fox's tails," she
answers, upon which the fox takes to its heels.--We find the fox's
tail in connection with ears of corn in the legend of Samson; the
incendiary fox is also found in Ovid's _Fasti_, iv. 705; (from the
malice with which the story-teller (a woman) relates the fable, it is
probable that the fox's tail has here also a phallic meaning).--In
_Sextus Empiricus_ we read that a fox's tail hung on the arm of a weak
husband is of great use to him.
[215] Thus, in the myth of Kephalos, his dog cannot, by a decree of
fate, overtake the fox; but inasmuch as, on the other hand, no one
also, by decree of fate, can escape from the dog of Kephalos, dog and
fox are both, by the command of Zeus, changed into stone (the two
auroras, or dying sun and dying moon).
[216] This work has, on the other hand, been already almost
accomplished, as regards the Franco-Germanic part, in the erudite and
interesting introduction (pp. 5-163) which Ch. Potvin has prefixed to
his translation into verse of the _Roman du Renard_, Paris, Bohné;
Bruxelles, Lacroix, 1861. I am told that Professor Schiefner read a
discourse two years since at St Petersburg upon the story of the fox,
but I do not know whether it has been published.
[217] Vrikâya cig gasamânâya çaktam; _Rigv._ vii. 68, 8.--The grateful
wolf and crow are found united to assist Ivan Tzarevic in the
twenty-fourth story of the second book of _Afanassieff_.
[218] xix. 108, 109.
[219] Aruno mâ sakrid vrikah pathâ yantam dadarça hi ug gihîte
nicâyya; _Rigv._ i. 105, 18.
[220] Yâvayâ vrikyam vrikam yavaya stenam ûrmya; _Rigv._ x. 127, 6.--A
wolf seen in a dream, according to Cardano, announces a robber.
[221] Yo nah pûshann agho vriko duhçeva âdideçati apa sma tvam patho
gahi--Paripanthinam mashîvânam huraçcitam--Dvayâvinah; _Rigv._ i. 42,
2-4.
[222] Svayam ripus tanvam rîrishîshta; _Rigv._ vi. 51, 6, 7.
[223] Mâyinam mrigam; _Rigv._ i. 80, 7.
[224] Te na âsno vrikânâm âdityâso mumocata; _Rigv._ viii. 56,
14.--Parshi dîne gabhîra ân ugraputre gighânsatah; _Rigv._ viii. 56, 11.
[225] Matsyam na dîna udani kshiyantam; _Rigv._ x. 68, 8.
[226] iii. 45.--In the twenty-second night of the _Tuti-Name_, the
wolf enters, on the contrary, into the house of the jackal; here wolf
and jackal are already distinguished in it from one another,--that is,
as red wolf and black wolf.
[227] i. 253.
[228] i. 271.
[229] Cfr. _Afanassieff_, vi. 51, v. 27, and v. 28.
[230] It is also said that the nurse of the Latin twins was a
strumpet, because _lupæ_ or _lupanæ foeminæ_ were names given to such
women, whence also the name of _lupanaria_ given to the houses to
which they resorted: "Abscondunt spurcas hæc monumenta lupas." Olaus
Magnus wrote, that wolves, attracted by smell, attack pregnant women,
whence the custom that no pregnant woman should go out unless
accompanied by an armed man. The ancients believed that the phallos of
the wolf roasted and eaten weakened the Venus.
[231] In the _Legendes et Croyances Superstitieuses de la Creuse_,
collected by Bonnafoux, Guéret, 1867, p. 27, we read concerning the loup
garou, that the wolf thanks whoever wounds him. It is said that they who
are disguised in the skin of the loup garou are condemned souls: "Chaque
nuit, ils sont forcés d'aller chercher la maudite peau à un endroit
convenu et ils courent ainsi jusqu'à ce qu'ils rencontrent une âme
charitable et courageuse qui les délivre en les blessant."
[232]
"... devant qu'il fût nuit
Il arriva nouvel encombre;
Un loup parut, tout le troupeau s'enfuit
Ce n'était pas un loup, ce n'en était que l'ombre."
The sheep were right, however, to flee. In the _Edda_, the fourth
swallow says, "When I see the wolf's ears, I think that the wolf is
not far off." The twilight is the shadow or ear of the wolf.
[233] Lous loups-garous soun gens coumo nous autes; mès an heyt un
countrat dab lou diable, e cado sé soun fourçatz de se cambia en
bestios per ana au sabbat e courre touto la neyt. Y a per aco un
mouyén de lous goari. Lous can tira sang pendent qu' an perdut la
forme de l'home, e asta leu la reprengon per toutjour; Bladé, _Contes
et Proverbes Populaires recueillis en Armagnac_, Paris, 1867, p. 51.
[234] We ought perhaps to add here the tradition cited by Cæsarius
Heisterbacensis of a wolf who, biting the arm of a girl, drags her to
a place where there is another wolf; the more she cries the more
fiercely the wolf bites her. The other wolf has a bone in his throat,
which the girl extracts; here the girl takes the place of the crane or
stork of the fable; the bone may be now the moon, now the sun.
[235] In another passage in the _Edda_, the eagle sits upon the wolf.
According to the Latin legend of the foundation of Lavinium, the Trojans
saw a singular prodigy. A fire arises in the woods; the wolf brings dry
twigs in his mouth to make it burn better, and the eagle helps him by
fanning the flames with his wings. The fox, on the other hand, dips its
brush in the river to put out the fire with it, but does not succeed.
[236] Cfr. _Afanassieff_, iii. 19.
[237] Les loups, qui ont très peu d'amis en France, et qui sont
obligés d'apporter dans toutes leurs démarches une excessive prudence,
chassent presque toujours à la muette. J'ai été plusieurs fois en
position d'admirer la profondeur de leurs combinaisons stratégiques;
c'est effrayant de sagacité et de calcul; Toussenel, _L'Esprit des
Bêtes_, ch. i.--And Aldrovandi, _De Quadrup. Dig. Viv._ ii. "Lupi
omnem vim ingenii naturalem in ovibus insidiando exercent; noctu enim
ovili appropinquantes, pedes lambunt, ne strepitum in gradiendo edant,
et foliis obstrepentibus pedes quasi reos mordent."
[238] In Piedmont it is also said in jest, that a man once met a wolf
and thrust his hand down its throat, so far down that it reached its
tail on the other side; he then pulled the tail inside the wolf's body
and out through its throat, so that the wolf, turned inside out,
expired.
[239] In an unpublished, though very popular Piedmontese story,
Piccolino is upon a tree eating figs; the wolf passes by and asks him
for some, threatening him thus: "Piculin, dame ün fig, dass no, i t
mangiu." Piccolino throws him down two, which are crushed upon the
wolf's nose. Then the wolf threatens to eat him if he does not bring
him a fig down; Piccolino comes down, and the wolf puts him in a sack
and carries him towards his house, where the mother-wolf is waiting
for him. But on the way the wolf is pressed by a corporeal necessity,
and is obliged to go on the roadside; meanwhile, Piccolino makes a
hole in the sack, comes out and puts a stone in his place. The wolf
returns, shoulders the sack, but thinks that Piccolino has become much
heavier. He goes home and tells the she-wolf to be glad, and prepare
the cauldron full of hot water; he then empties the sack into the
cauldron; the stone makes the boiling water spurt out upon the wolf's
head, and he is scalded to death.
[240] Cfr. the well-known English fairy-tales of _Tom Thumb_ and
_Hop-o'-my-Thumb_.
[241] _Inferno_, c. i.
CHAPTER XIII.
THE LION, THE TIGER, THE LEOPARD, THE PANTHER, AND THE CHAMELEON.
SUMMARY.
Lion and tiger symbols of royal majesty.--Tvashtar as a lion.--The
hair of Tvashtar in the fire.--Winds that roar like lions.--The
lion-seducer.--The lion and the honey; the lion and
riches.--Nobility of the lion.--The lion's part.--The monster
lioness.--The old and sick lion; the lion with a thorn in its
foot.--Monster and demoniacal lions.--The lion is afraid of the
cock.--Sterility of the lion.--The story of Atalanta.--The sun in
the sign Leo.--The virgin and the lion.--Çivas, Dionysos, and the
tiger.--A hair from the tiger's tail; the Mantikora.--The
chameleon; the god chameleon.
The tiger and the lion have in India the same dignity, and are both
supreme symbols of royal strength and majesty.[242] The tiger of men
and the lion of men are two expressions equivalent to prince, as the
prince is supposed to be the best man. It is strength that gives
victory and superiority in natural relations; therefore the tiger and
the lion, called kings of beasts, represent the king in the civic
social relations among men. The narasinhas of India was called, in the
Middle Ages, the king _par excellence_; thus in Greece the king was
also called leôn.
The myth of the lion and the tiger is essentially an Asiatic one;
notwithstanding this, a great part of it was developed in Greece, where
lion and tiger were at one time not unknown, and must have, as in India,
inspired something like that religious terror caused by oriental kings.
We have already mentioned the Vedic monster lion of the West, in which
we recognise the expiring sun. The strong Indras, killer of the
monster, Vritras, is also represented as a lion. In the same way as
the Jewish Samson is found in connection with the lion, and this lion
with honey, and as the strength of the lion and that of Samson is said
to be centred in the hair (the sun, when he loses his rays or mane,
loses all his strength), so in the parallel myth of Indras we find
analogous circumstances. Tvashtar, the Hindoo celestial blacksmith,
who makes weapons now for the gods and now for the demons (the reddish
sky of morning and of evening is likened to a burning forge; the solar
hero or the sun in this forge, is a blacksmith), is also represented
in a Vedic hymn[243] as a lion, turned towards which, towards the
west, heaven and earth rejoice, although (on account of the din made
by him when coming into the world) they are, before all, terrified.
The form of a lion is one of the favourite shapes created by the
mythical and legendary blacksmith.
In the _Mârkandeya-P._,[244] this same Tvashtar (which the _Rigvedas_
represents as a lion), wishing to avenge himself upon the god Indras,
who had (perhaps at morn) killed one of his sons, creates another,
son, Vritras (the coverer), by tearing a lock of hair off his head and
throwing it into the fire (the sun burns every evening in the western
forge, his rays or mane, and the gloomy monster of night is born).
Indras makes a truce with Vritras (in Russian stories, heroes and
monsters nearly always challenge each other to say before fighting
whether they will have peace or war), and subsequently violates the
treaty; for this perfidy he loses his strength, which passes into
Mârutas, the son of the wind (the Hanumant of the _Râmâyanam_. In a
Vedic hymn, the voice of the Mârutas is compared to the roar of
lions),[245] and into the three brothers Pândavas, sons of Kunti (the
passage of the legend from the Vedas to the two principal Hindoo epic
poems is thus indicated). Thus, in the same _Mârkandeya-P._, Indras,
having violated Ahalyâ, the wife of Gâutamas, loses his beauty (in
other Puranic legends he becomes a eunuch or has a thousand wombs.
Indras is powerful as the sun; he is powerful, too, in the cloud, by
means of the thunderbolt; but when he hides himself in the serene and
starry sky, he is powerless), which passes to the two Açvinâu, who
afterwards renew themselves in the two Pândavâu sons of Mâdrî, as the
sons of the demons were personified in the sons of Dhritarâshtras.
Tvashtar, the creator, now of divine, now of monstrous forms, Tvashtar
the lion, must necessarily create leonine forms. In a Tuscan story,
the blacksmith makes a lion by means of which Argentofo penetrates by
night into the room of a young princess, with whom he unites himself.
In the third story of the fourth book of the _Pentamerone_, the three
prince brothers, when the fairy's curse is over, return home with
their brides, drawn by six lions. This lion-seducer reminds us of
Indras, who was also a lion and a seducer of women. A hymn tells us
that Indras fights like a terrible lion;[246] in another hymn, the
same lion is considered, as in the legend of Samson, in connection
with honey.[247] In the twenty-second night of the _Tuti-Name_, the
lion presents himself in connection with riches; flattered by a man
who calls him a king, he lets him collect the riches scattered on the
ground by a caravan which the lion had destroyed.[248] His royal
nature is also shown in the _Râmâyanam_,[249] in which King Daçarathas
says that his son Râmas, the lion of men, after his exile, will
disdain to occupy the kingdom previously enjoyed by Bharatas, in the
same way as the lion disdains to feed upon flesh which has been licked
by other animals. It is perhaps for this reason that, in the fable,
the lion's part means all the prey. The proud one becomes the violent
one, the tyrant, and hence the monster. In the _Âitareya Br._,[250]
the earth, full of gifts made by the right hand--that is, by the
eastern part--presented by the Âdityâs (or luminous gods) to the
Añgirasas (the seven solar rays, the seven wise men, and hence the
priests), attacks, in the evening, the nations with its mouth wide
open, having become a lioness (sinhîbhûtvâ). In the _Râmâyanam_,[251]
the car that carries the monster Indragit is impetuously drawn by four
lions. In the _Tuti-Name_,[252] we have the fable of the lion, instead
of the wolf, that accuses the lamb, and the lion who is afraid of the
ass, of the bull (as in the introduction to the _Pancatantram_), and
of the lynx. The Western lion-sun is now monstrous, now aged, now ill,
now has a thorn in his foot,[253] is now blind, and now foolish. The
monstrous lion who guards the monster's dwelling, the infernal abode,
is found in a great number of popular stories. In Hellenic tradition
the monstrous lion occurs more than once; such is the lion that
ravages the country of the King of Megara, who promises his daughter
to wife to the hero that will kill it; such is the lioness who, with
her bloody jaws (the purple in the dog's mouth and the meat in the
dog's mouth of the myths are of equivalent import) makes Thysbe's veil
bloody, so that when Pyramos sees it he believes Thysbe to be dead,
and kills himself; when Thysbe sees this, she too kills herself in
despair (an ancient form of the death of Romeo and Juliet); such is
the Nemæan lion strangled by Hêraklês; such the lion of Mount Olympos
which the young Polydamos kills without weapons; such were the leonine
monsters with human faces which, according to Solinus, inhabited the
Caspian; such was the Chimæra, part lion, part goat, and part dragon,
and several other mythical figures of the passage of the evening sun
into the gloom of night.
And it is under the conception of the lion as monstrous that the
ancients were unanimous in believing that he fears above all animals the
cock, and especially its fiery comb. The solar cock of morning entirely
destroys the monsters. In a fable of Achilles Statius, the lion
complains that Prometheus had allowed a cock to frighten him, but soon
after consoles himself, upon learning that the elephant is tormented by
the little mosquito that buzzes in its ears. Lucretius, too, in the
fourth book _De Rerum Naturâ_ represents the cock as throwing seeds:--
"Nimirum quia sunt Gallorum in corpore quædam
Semina, quæ cum sint oculis immissa Leonum
Pupillas interfodiunt acremque dolorem[254]
Præbent, ut nequeant contra durare feroces."
Sometimes the hero or god passes into the form of a lion to vanquish the
monsters, like Dionysos, Apollon, Hêraklês, in Greece, and Indras and
Vishnus in India. In the legend of St Marcellus, a lion having appeared
to the saint in a vision as killing a serpent, this appearance was
considered as a presage of good fortune to the enterprise of the Emperor
Leo in Africa. Sometimes, on the other hand, hero and heroine become
lion and lioness by the vengeance of deities or monsters. Atalanta
defies the pretenders to her hand to outstrip her in running, and kills
those who lose. Hippomenes, by the favour of the goddess of love, having
received three apples from the garden of the Hesperides, provokes
Atalanta to the race; on the way, he throws the apples down; Atalanta
cannot resist the impulse to gather them up, and Hippomenes overtakes
her, and unites himself with her in the wood sacred to the mother of the
gods; the offended goddess transforms the young couple into a lion and a
lioness. In the _Gesta Romanorum_, a girl, daughter of the Emperor
Vespasian, kills the claimant of her hand in a garden, in the form of a
ferocious lion. Empedokles, however, considered the transformation into
a lion as the best of all human metamorphoses. When the sun enters into
the sign of the lion, he arrives at his greatest height of power; and
the golden crown which the Florentines placed upon their lion in the
public square, on the day of St John, was a symbol of the approach of
the season which they call by one word alone, _sollione_. This lion is
enraged, and makes, as it is said, plants and animals rage. The pagan
legend says of Prometheus--
"Insani leonis
Vim stomacho apposuisse nostro."[255]
But the mythical lion, the sun, does not inspire the man with rage
alone, but strength also.[256]
The tiger, the panther, and the leopard possess several of the
mythical characteristics of the lion as a hidden sun, with which they
are, moreover, sometimes confounded in their character of omniform
animals. The leopard was sacred to the god Pan, whose nature we
already know, and the panther to Protheus and Dionysos, because it is
said to have a liking for wine (we have seen the Vedic lion Indras in
connection with honey, and Indras himself in connection with the
somas), and because the nurses of Dionysos were transformed into
panthers. Dionysos appears now surrounded by panthers, by means of
which he terrifies pirates and puts them to flight, and now drawn by
tigers. Dionysos is at the same time a phallical and an ambrosial god,
and hence the god of wine; thus in India, Çivas, the phallical god,
_par excellence_, and who is omniform like Tvashtar and Yamas, his
almost equivalent forms, has the tiger for his ensign, and is covered
with a tiger's skin. It is a singular fact that in Hindoo tradition a
murderous strength is attributed to the tiger's tail. A Hindoo proverb
says that a hair of the tiger's tail may be the cause of losing one's
life,[257] which naturally suggests to our minds the tiger
Mantikora,[258] which has in its tail hairs which are darts thrown by
it to defend itself, and are spoken of by Ktesias, in _Pausanias_.
Finally, having considered the tiger, the panther, and the leopard,
variegated and omniform animals, and compared them with the lion,
whose combat with the serpent we have also mentioned, it is natural to
add a few more words concerning the chameleon, of whose enmity to the
serpent and medicinal virtues Greek and Latin authors have written at
such length. The _krikalâças_ or _krikalâsas_, or chameleon, is
already spoken of in a Vedic _Brâhmanam_. In the fifty-fifth canto of
the last book of the _Râmâyanam_, we read that King Nrigas was
condemned to remain invisible to all creatures in the form of a
chameleon during many hundreds and thousands of years, until the god
Vishnus, humanised in the form of Vasudevas, will come to release him
from this curse, incurred for having delayed to judge a controversy
pending between two Brâhmans concerning the ownership of a cow and a
calf. In the stories of grateful animals, as is well-known, the hero
often earns their gratitude by intervening to divide their prey into
just portions, while they are disputing over it themselves. From the
last book of the _Râmâyanam_, we learn also that the form of the
chameleon is that assumed by Kuveras, the god of riches, when the gods
flee terrified from the sight of the monster Râvanas. As Yamas and
Çivas are almost equivalent forms, so between Yamas and Kuveras there
is the same relation as between Pluto and Plutus. To the tiger Çivas
corresponds the chameleon Kuveras; and the chameleon god of wealth,
enemy of the serpent, is closely connected in mythology with the lion
Indras, with the lion that kills the monster serpent, and with the
lion that covets the treasure.
FOOTNOTES:
[242] Hêraklês, Hektor, Achilles, among the Greek heroes;
Wolfdieterich, and several other heroes of Germanic tradition, have
these animals for their ensigns; the lion is the steed of the hero
Hildebrand. Cfr. _Die Deutsche Heldensage_ von Wilhelm Grimm, Berlin,
Dümmler, 1867.--When Agarista and Philip dreamed of a lion, it was
considered an augury, the one of the birth of Pericles, and the other
of that of Alexander the Great.
[243] Ubhe tvashtur bibhyatur gâyamânât pratîcî sinham prati
goshayete; _Rigv._ i. 95, 5.
[244] v.
[245] Te svânino rudriyâ varshanirnigah sinhâ na heshakratavah
sudânavah; _Rigv._ iii. 26, 5.--In the Bohemian story of grandfather
_Vsievedas_, the young hero is sent by the prince who wishes to ruin
him to take the three golden hairs of this grandfather (the sun).
[246] Sinho na bhîma âyudhâni bibhrat; _Rigv._ iv. 16, 14. Cfr. i.
174, 3.
[247] Sinham nasanta madhvo ayâsam harim aru ham divo asya patim;
_Rigv._ ix. 89, 3.
[248] In the Greek apologue, Ptolemy, king of Egypt, wishes to send
some money to Alexander in homage to him; the mule, the horse, the
ass, and the camel offer themselves of their own accord to carry the
sacks. On the way, they meet the lion, who wishes to join the party,
saying that he too carries money; but not being accustomed to such
work, he modestly begs the other four to divide his load among
themselves. They consent; soon afterwards, passing through a country
rich in herds, the lion feels inclined to stay, and demands his
portion of the money, but as his money resembles that of the others,
not to mistake, he takes by force both his own and theirs.
[249] ii. 62.
[250] vi. 5, 35.
[251] v. 43.
[252] i. 229.
[253] The anecdote of Androkles and the lion grateful for having a
thorn extracted from his foot, is also related in almost the same
words of Mentor the Syracusan, Helpis of Samos, the Abbot Gerasimos,
St Jerome and (as to the blinded lion whose sight is given back to
him) of Macharios, the confessor. The thorn in the lion's foot is a
zoological form of the hero who is vulnerable in his feet. In the
sixth of the Sicilian stories published by Signora Gonzenbach, the boy
Giuseppe takes a thorn out of a lion's foot; the grateful lion gives
him one of his hairs; by means of this hair, the young man can, in
case of necessity, become a terrible lion, and as such, he bites off
the head of the king of the dragons.
[254] Thus, the ancients attributed to the lion a particular antipathy
to strong smells, such as garlic, and the pudenda of a woman. But this
superstition must be classed with that which ascribes sterility to the
lioness. The women of antiquity, when they met a lioness, considered
it as an omen of sterility. In the Æsopian fable, the foxes boast of
their fruitfulness before the lioness, whom they laugh at because she
gives birth to only one cub. "Yes," she answers, "but it is a lion;"
under the sign of the lion, the earth also becomes arid, and
consequently unfruitful.
[255] Horace, _Carm._ i. 16.
[256] Sculpebant Ethnici auro vel argento leonis imaginem, et ferentes
hujusmodi simulacra generosiores et audaciores evadere dicebantur;
idcirco non est mirum si Aristoteles (in lib. de Secr. Secr.)
scripserit annulum ex auro vel argento, in quo coelata sit icon puellæ
equitantis leonem die et hora solis vagantis in domicilio leonis
gestantes, ab omnibus honorari; Aldrovandi, _De Quadrup. Dig. Viv._
i.--In the signs of the Zodiac, Virgo comes after upon Leo; Christians
also celebrate the assumption of the Virgin into heaven towards the
middle of August, when the sun passes from the sign of the lion into
that of the virgin.
[257] Cfr. Böhtlingk, _Indische Sprüche_, 2te Auflage, i. 1.
[258] Ktesias explains this word as "devourer of men," but by means of
Sanskrit it can only be explained by substituting to the initial _m_
one of the words that signify man, such as _nara_, _gana_, _manava_,
_mânusha_, &c. _Antikora_ would seem to be derived from the Sanskrit
_antakara_ = destroyer, who puts an end to, killer.
CHAPTER XIV.
THE SPIDER.
SUMMARY.
Tuscan superstition relating to the spider; the red sky of
evening.--The night, the moon, and the aurora as
weavers.--Arachnê.--Âurnavabhas.--Dhatâ and Vidhatâ.--Golden
cloths.--The spider and his prey.--The golden veil.--The lake of
fire and the witch burnt.--The eagle and the spider.--The sack
made of a spider's web.
There is in Tuscany a very interesting superstition relating to the
spider: it is believed that if a spider be seen in the evening it must
not be burnt, as it is destined to bring good fortune; but when seen in
the morning, it must be burnt without being touched. The evening and
morning aurora are compared to the spider and the spider's web; the
evening aurora must prepare the morning aurora during the night. We have
quoted on a previous occasion the Piedmontese proverb, "Rosso di sera,
buon tempo si spera" (red at night, we hope for fine weather). If the
sun dies in the west without clouds, if the luminous spider shows itself
in the western sky, it augurs for the morrow a fine morning and a fine
day. In the _Rigvedas_ we have on this subject several interesting data;
the aurora weaved during the night (and is therefore called
vayantî;[259] sometimes she is helped by Râkâ, the full moon[260]) the
robe for her husband. But, in another hymn, she is entreated to shine
soon, and not to stretch out or weave her work too long, in order that
the sun with his rays may not fall upon it and burn it like a
thief.[261] In the legend of Odysseus, Penelopê undoes in the night the
work of the day; this is another aspect of the same myth: Penelopê, as
aurora, undoes her web at even, to weave it again at morn. The myth of
Arachnê (the name of the spider, and of the celebrated Lydian virgin
whom Athenê, the aurora, according to Professor Max Müller, taught to
spin, and whose father was Idmon, a colourer in purple), whom Athenê,
jealous of the skill she had acquired in weaving in purple colours,
strikes on the forehead and transforms into a spider, is a variety of
the same myth of the weaving aurora. When the spider becomes dark, and
when its web is gloomy, then the spider, or son of the spider, or
Âurnavabhas, assumes a monstrous form. Âurnavabhas (ûrnavâbhis,
ûrnanâbhis, ûrnanabhas, as spider, are already spoken of in the Vedic
writings) is the name of the gloomy monster Vritras, killed by the god
Indras, the terrible monster which Indras, immediately after his birth,
is obliged to kill[262] at the instigation of his mother. In the
_Mahâbhâratam_[263] we find two women that spin and weave, Dhatâ and
Vidhatâ; they weave upon the loom of the year with black and white
threads, _i.e._, they spin the days and the nights. We, therefore, have
a beneficent spider and a malignant one.
In the fourth story of the fifth book of the _Pentamerone_, the young
Parmetella marries a black slave, who gives her as servants swans,
"Vestute de tela d'oro, che, subeto 'ncignannola da capo a pede, la
mesero 'n forma de ragno, che pareva propio na Regina." (The black man
becomes a handsome youth during the night, perhaps as the moon; she
wishes to see his features, and he disappears; this is a variety of the
popular story of the wife's indiscretion.) In the fifth story of the
second book of _Afanassieff_, the spider sets its web to catch flies,
mosquitoes, and wasps; a wasp, being caught in the web, begs to be
released in consideration of the many children that she will leave
behind her (the same stratagem that is used by the hen against the fox
in the Tuscan story previously mentioned.) The credulous spider lets her
go; she then warns wasps, flies, and mosquitoes to keep hidden. The
spider then asks help from the grasshopper, the moth, and the bug
(nocturnal animals), who announce that the spider is dead, having given
up the ghost upon the gibbet, which gibbet was afterwards destroyed (the
evening aurora has disappeared into the night). The flies, mosquitoes,
and wasps again come out, and fell into the spider's web (into the
morning aurora). In the eighteenth story of the sixth book of
_Afanassieff_, the beautiful girl who flees from the house of the witch
that persecutes her, stretches out a veil, which, by the help of a
beautiful young maiden (the moon), she has embroidered with gold;
immediately a great sea of fire springs up, into which the old witch
falls and is burned; and here we come back to the popular Italian
superstition that the spider must be burned in the morning.
The spider is an animal of the earth, but it weaves its web in the air;
and as such--as intermediary between the animals of the earth and those
of the air--supplies us with a bridge by which we may pass naturally
from the first to the second part of the present work.[264] I hope that
this bridge will prove as sufficient as the sack in which the young
Esthonian hero carries the treasure away from hell, a sack composed of
the threads of a spider, so strong that it is impossible to tear them. I
wish I had, in the first book, some of the skill of the spider, and that
I could weave with a few threads from the labyrinth of Âryan legendary
tradition concerning animals a web which, if it be not as luminous as
that of Arachnê, may be more durable than that of Penelopê.
FOOTNOTES:
[259] _Rigv._ ii. 38, 4.--In the fifty-fourth story of the fourth book
of _Afanassieff_, the king who has no children makes the maiden seven
years old manufacture a fisherman's net in the space of only one night.
[260] In the German legend we have the spinner in the moon. "Die
Altmärkische Sage bei Temme 49, 'die Spinnerin im Monde,' wo ein
Mädchen von seiner Mutter verwünscht wird, im Monde zu sitzen und zu
spinnen, scheint entstellt, da jener Fluch sie nicht wegen Spinnens,
sondern Tanzens im Mondschein trifft;" Simrock, _Deutsche Mythologie_,
2te Aufl. p. 23.--Cfr. also the first chapter of this work, and that
on the bear, where we read of a girl dancing with the bear in the
night.--Perhaps there is also some correspondence between the Vedic
word _râkâ_ and _a-rachnê_.
[261] Vy uchâ duhitar divo mâ ciram tanutha apah net tvâ stenam yathâ
ripum tapâti sûro arcishâ; _Rigv._ v. 79, 9.
[262] Vritram avâbhinad dânum âurnavâbham; _Rigv._ ii. 11,
18.--Gagnâno nu çatakratur vi prichad iti mâtaram ka ugrâh ke ha
çrinvire âd îm çavasy abravîd âurnavâbham ahîçuvam te putra santu
nishturah; _Rigv._ viii. 66, 1, 2.
[263] i. 802, 825.
[264] I observe, moreover, how in the Russian fables of Kriloff the
same part is attributed to the spider as in the West to the wren (the
regulus) and to the beetle. The eagle carries, without knowing it, a
spider in its tail upon a tree; the spider then makes its web over it.
Bird and spider therefore exchange places.
Second Part.
THE ANIMALS OF THE AIR.
CHAPTER I.
BIRDS.
SUMMARY.
The sky-atmosphere and the sky-tree.--The sun, the Açvinâu, Indras,
the Marutas, and Agnis as birds.--Indras cuts off the wings of the
mountains.--Indras and Somas as two birds hovering round the same
tree of honey.--The wisdom of birds.--The birds requested to
sacrifice themselves to fulfil the duties of hospitality,
refuse.--The dvigas bird and brâhman.--Penitent birds.--Consolatory
birds.--Presages of birds in India.--Verethraghna as a bird.--The
bird's feather.--The red bird.--Grateful and prophetic birds.--The
hero that understands the language of birds.--The bird and the two
cypresses.--The hero becomes a bird by acquiring Solomon's
ring.--The blue bird.--The bird caught by putting salt upon its
tail.--The excrement of birds is propitious.--The demoniacal
bird.--The bird that feeds the heroes.--Birds and poets; singers and
prophets.--Auguries and auspices.--The auguries were laughed at in
Greece.--Flight to right and to left.
The sky, especially by night, is conceived now as a road on which one
can walk, and where sometimes the traveller may be lost, or make
others lose their way; now as the air itself, in which one flies or is
carried in flight, with the risk sometimes of falling; now as a tree,
in which one speaks or builds nests, with the risk of the words being
sometimes sinister, or the nests falling; and now as a sea in which
one navigates in peril of shipwreck.
The sky-atmosphere and the sky-tree are the world of the mythical
flying birds and insects. The god, the demon, the hero, and the
monster, when traversing this field, either take the forms of winged
animals, or make use of them to ascend to the celestial paths, or else
are conducted by them to their ruin.
The sun and the moon, the sunbeams, the thunderbolts, flashes of
lightning, auroras, clouds that move and thunder, and the very shadows
that move, often take in myths the forms of flying animals.
In the _Rigvedas_, the sun is called a bird (vih);[265] the Açvinâu
come with the wheels of the car like a bird with feathers;[266] Indras
is the well-winged red one;[267] the Marutas perch like birds upon the
culm of buttered grass;[268] Agnis accomplishes the wish of the
bird;[269] the well-winged ones of Agnis (_i.e._, the thunderbolts)
appear as destroyers when the black bull has bellowed (that is, when
the black cloud has thundered);[270] Savitar must not destroy the
woods of the birds;[271] from the house of the aurora the birds come
forth;[272] the goddesses and the brides of the heroes are requested
to come to the assistance of men with unclipt wings.[273] Finally, an
interesting Vedic hymn shows us the sun and the moon, Indras and
Somas, as two well-winged birds united in friendship, that continually
fly round the same tree (_i.e._, the sky); of these, one eats the
sweet pippalas, the other shines without eating. Both, well-winged,
sing as they safely guard the treasure of ambrosia. The honey of this
tree is called pippalas: of this tree all the birds eat the honey, and
on it they build their nests.[274]
The wisdom of birds is much celebrated in popular Aryan tradition. On
this subject the _Mârkandeya-P._[275] narrates a long and instructive
legend.
The wise Gâiminis wishes some episodes of the great legend of the
_Mahâbhâratam_, which seem obscure, to be explained to him. He has
recourse to the learned Mârkandeyas; but the latter says he does not
know how to enlighten him, and advises him to interrogate the birds, the
best of the birds, sons of Dronas, who know the essence of things, who
meditate upon the sacred treatises, the birds Piñgâkshas, Vibodhas,
Supattras, and Sumukhas, who will disperse his doubts. They live in a
cave in the middle of the Vindhyâs; let him go to them and ask them.
Gâiminis wonders how simple birds can possess so much wisdom.
Mârkandeyas then relates to him their genealogy. A nymph, who had
seduced by her song the penitent Durvâsas, was condemned to be born
again in the family of the bird Garudas, and to spend sixteen years in
the form of a bird, until, after giving birth to four sons, she should
be wounded by an arrow and regain once more her primitive form in
heaven. As a bird she is named Târkshî, and is married to the bird
Dronas, who is wise and instructed in the Vedâs and Vedâñgâs. Târkshî is
present at the battle between the Kâuravâs and the Pândavâs; a dart
strikes her in the belly, from which four eggs that shine like the moon
fall to the ground. After the battle, the ascetic Çamîkas approaches the
place where the four eggs lie, and hears the young birds chirping
cicíkucí. The wise man marvels at seeing that they have escaped such
carnage, concludes they must be Brâhmans, and thinks this a circumstance
of most favourable augury and a presage of great fortune
(mahâbhâgyapradarçinî). He carries the birds to his house, and places
them where they run no risk of being harmed by cats, mice, hawks, or
weasels. The birds are taken care of and nourished by the wise man, and
grow up strong and learned, listening to the lessons that the wise man
gives in school, and, being grateful to him as their deliverer,
expressing their gratitude by means of words which, by exercise, they
articulate clearly. Interrogated as to their previous existence, they
remember that there was once a sage named Vipulâçvan, father of two
children, Sukrishas and Tumburus; these four were sons of Tumburus.
Whilst they lived in the woods with their father, Indras, the king of
the gods, comes to them in the form of a gigantic old bird, and demands
human flesh from the hospitable sage. The wise man wonders that a bird,
so old, that is, at an age in which every desire should be extinguished,
should be so cruel as to wish for human flesh. Nevertheless he requests
(like Viçvâmitras in the legend of Çunahcepas previously mentioned) his
own sons to sacrifice themselves in fulfilment of this duty. They do not
at first refuse this act of hospitality, but when they hear that they
are to be eaten by the bird, they decisively refuse, pleading, among
other arguments, the physiological, or rather, materialistic one, that
if they are virtuous, their virtue too will perish with their bodies,
whilst, on the other hand, in order to preserve their virtue long, they
think themselves bound to prolong their existence as much as possible
(we have already seen the cat adopting a similar argument to justify his
fatness). Their father, indignant at this refusal after giving their
promise, curses them, condemning them to be born again as animals, and
then magnanimously offers himself to the famished bird. Upon which
Indras reveals himself in his proper divine form, and then disappears
after blessing the sage. The sons beseech their father to release them
from the malediction; he takes pity upon them, but is unable to revoke
his words; it is only in his power to temper the severity of the
punishment. They are condemned to retain the animal form; but in that
form they are to be recompensed with the gift of insight into the
mysteries of being. It is for this reason that, when Çamîkas finds them,
he salutes them by the name of Brâhmans. For the rest, the equivoque is
easily comprehensible, when we reflect that the word _dvigas_, or twice
born, means bird (that is, born first as an egg, and afterwards as an
animal), as well as Brâhman (who, by taking the sacred cord, the
prætexta, and the sacrament of the holy oil, is born again). Etymology
here assists our comprehension of the legend. In the same way as the
Brâhman is the wisest of men, so are the dvigâs or birds the wisest of
animals. The birds, cursed by the hermit their father, go therefore to
Mount Vindhyas, which is watered by many blessed streams, where they
live as austere penitents. Gâiminis goes to consult them; when he
approaches their abode, he hears them speaking distinctly to each other.
He then comes up and sees them perched on the top of a rock. Gâiminis
addresses them with amiable words; the birds answer him that, since so
great a sage is come to visit them, their wish is accomplished and their
curse come to an end. Then follow the questions of Gâiminis relating to
Ganârdanas, Drâupadî, Baladevas, and the five sons of Drâupadî. The
birds, before answering, sing a kind of hymn to Vishnus, and expound his
principal incarnations. In the _Mahâbhâratam_,[276] the ascetic Brâhmans
go in the forms of birds to console the rishis Mândavyas, impaled by
order of the king, for having given hospitality to the robbers of the
royal booty.
Birds know everything, and hence presages are taken especially from
them, whence the name _auspicium_ or _augurium_, applied specifically
to a presage. In the last book of the _Râmâyanam_,[277] the monsters
are terrified by such omens as the following:--"Thousands of vultures
and ducks with mouths that throw flames, which form a circle like that
of the god of death upon the battalions of the monsters; the doves,
the red-feet, the sârikâs (turdus salicæ) were dispersed."
In the _Avesta_, Verethraghna often appears as a bird, and as
understanding the language of birds. A bird's feather, in the
_Avesta_, assists Verethraghna, as in Firdusi, a feather of the bird
Simurg, burnt by Zal, calls up to his assistance the bird Simurg in
person.[278] According to a legend of the _Khorda-Avesta_, the
splendour of the old Yima, who had become proud and false-tongued
(thus, in India, the celestial Yamas and the happy Çivas become
infernal destroying deities), fled away in the form of a bird.
According to the popular superstition of White Russia, the little bird
diedka (the little one), is the guardian of treasures and has eyes of
fire and a fiery beard (this is doubtless a representation of the
demoniacal sun of evening, of Kuveras or of Plutos.[279]) In the
_Contes Merveilleux_ of Porchat, the red bird appears as a messenger.
In the legend of Sal, in Firdusi, there is a riddle about two
cypresses, one withered and the other verdant, upon first the one and
then the other of which a bird regularly builds his nest. The hero
Sal, who solves the riddle, says that the two cypresses are the two
opposite seasons of the year or the two sides of the sky, and that
the bird is the sun.[280]
In the eighteenth Esthonian story, two birds, speaking to each other,
signify where the famous enchanted ring of Solomon is to be found,
which the young hero is looking for. When the hero finds the ring, he
is able to transform himself at will into a bird; but the daughter of
hell, in the shape of an eagle, carries it off from him. In the fourth
Esthonian story, the girl of seven years of age becomes, by beneficent
magic, a bird, when she is obliged to travel far. In the thirty-fifth
of the stories of Santo Stefano di Calcinaia, the wife of the
bird-catcher terrifies the devil in the form of an enormous and
monstrous bird. In the fifth story of the fourth book of the
_Pentamerone_, a fairy in the form of a bird arrests the arm of the
king of Alta-Marina whilst he is about to kill his own wife Portiella.
The fairy was grateful to the young woman, because, when she was
asleep in a wood, Portiella had awakened her to deliver her from a
satyr who was attempting to violate her.[281] The king shuts Portiella
up in a tower without light; the bird makes a hole in it and brings
food to her, stealing the fowls from the kitchen during the cook's
absence. Portiella gives birth to a son, who is also nourished by the
bird. The _oiseau bleu_, _couleur du temps_, of the story of Madame
d'Aulnoy, who flies at night from the cypress to the window of the
beautiful imprisoned Florine, is a beautiful variety of this same
story. Several Russian stories end with the following refrain of an
azure bird (sinicka, little azure one): "little azure one flies and
says, Azure, but beautiful."[282] Inasmuch as the sun of morning, or
spring, comes out of the dark-blue bird of night, or of winter, we can
understand the popular Italian and German superstition, that when the
excrement of a bird falls upon a man it is an omen of good luck. The
excrement of the mythical bird of night, or of winter, is the sun.
Considered in connection with morning or spring, the dark-coloured
bird of night, or winter, is propitious; considered by itself, or in
relation to the evening sun or the dying summer, it is a funereal and
diabolical animal. Such is the bird Kâmek of the _Avesta_, which
stretches its wings over all mankind, which carries off and hides the
sun, creates darkness, keeps back the waters and devours all
creatures, until after seven years and seven nights, the hero
Kereçâçpa strikes it and makes it fall.
Moreover, the bird that brings food is a subject which is very popular
in almost all the traditions of the Indo-European nations. Every one
has heard of the bird which nourished Semiramis, abandoned by her
mother in a desert and stony place, with curdled milk and cheese (the
moonlight), stolen from the neighbouring flocks of sheep, according to
the narrative of Diodorus Siculus; and the same Persian bird
nourishes, according to the legend, several other children, future
heroes of Iran, who had been similarly exposed; in the legend of
Romulus and Remus, the woodpecker assumes the same place and office as
the nurse she-wolf. In the watery night and the watery winter, the
solar child-hero, abandoned to himself, is nourished by birds. The
nightingale or singer of the night sends forth his melodious notes
from the nocturnal tree, predicting thus the renewal of daylight; in
the tree-cloud, the thunder rumbles, the oracle speaks, and the bird
prophesies. Theokritos calls poets the birds of the Muses (mousôn
ornithas). The kokilas is the bird of the Hindoo poets and teaches
them melody; to this bird corresponds the Hindoo Kyknos of the
_Tuti-Name_, of which it is said that it has innumerable holes in its
beak, from each of which a melodious sound comes forth.
The Hindoo _kavis_, the Latin _vates_, and the Hellenic _mantis_
represent at once both the singer and the sage; thus the singers of
the woods are at the same time omniscient prophets. They began with
prophecies about the weather, as the thunder announces the storm, and
finished by prophesying everything. The peasantry of Tuscany endeavour
to this day to guess what weather it will be on the morrow from the
songs of the birds.[283] The augures, the auguremens, the aucelli, and
the aruspices were preserved even in the Middle Ages, according to
the testimony of Du Cange.[284] As to the auguries and auspices of the
ancient Greeks and Romans, I refer the reader to the numerous erudite
works which treat of them in a particular manner. I must observe,
however, that whilst among the Latins augury was deemed such a solemn
thing that Publius Claudius and Lucius Junius were judged worthy of
death for having set out on a voyage against the will of the auguries,
and that whilst _ave_, that is to say, good augury, was still the
solemn formula of Roman salutation, the Greeks had already turned
auguries and auspices into derision. The reader remembers, no doubt,
how in the _Iliad_ the hero Hektor declares that he cares not whether
the birds go to the right, towards the aurora and the sun, or to the
left, towards the sunset. In Eusebius[285] we read that a bird was
presented to Alexander, the Macedonian, when on the point of setting
out for the Red Sea, in order that he might read the auguries by it
according to custom; Alexander, in answer, killed the bird with an
arrow; the bystanders being offended by this breach of the rules, the
Macedonian hero added, "What folly is this? In what way could this
bird, which could not foresee its death by this arrow, predict the
fortunes of our journey?" Auguries and auspices were also taken in
India. According to the _Râmâyanam_,[286] birds seen at a wedding to
go to the left, are a sinister omen;[287] birds that fly, crying, to
the left of Râmas, announce to him a serious disaster, viz., the
carrying off of Sîtâ.[288]
FOOTNOTES:
[265] _Rigv._ i. 72, 9.
[266] Vir na parnâih; _Ib._ i. 183, 1.
[267] Arunah suparnah; _Ib._ x. 55, 6.
[268] Vayo na sîdann adhi barhishi priye; _Ib._ i. 85, 7.
[269] Manmasâdhano veh; _Ib._ i. 96, 6.
[270] Â te suparnâ aminantan evâih krishno nonâva vrishabho yadîdam;
_Ib._ i. 79, 2.
[271] Vanâni vibhyo nakir asya tâni vratâ devasya savitar minanti;
_Ib._ ii. 38, 7.
[272] Ut te vayaçcid vasater apaptan; _Ib._ i. 124, 12.--In the
twenty-third story of the second book of _Afanassieff_, when the
beautiful girl Helen, another form of the aurora, is at the king's
ball, she throws bones with one hand, when birds spring up, and water
with the other, when gardens and fountains spring up.
[273] Abhi no devîr avasâ mahah çarmanâ nripatnîh achinnapatrâh
sacantâm; _Rigv._ i. 22, 11.--If the goddesses are here the same as
the nymphs, they may be the same as the clouds, and I should refer to
this passage, the legend of the _Râmâyanam_ (v. 56), according to
which the lofty mountains were once winged (the clouds) and wandered
about the earth at pleasure; Indras, with his thunderbolt, cut their
wings, and they fell down.
[274] Dvâ suparnâ sayugâ sakhâyâ samânam vriksham pari shasvagâte
tayor anyah pippalam svâdv atty anaçnann anyo abhi câkaçîtî--Yatrâ
suparnâ amritasya bhâgam animesham vidathâbhisvaranti; _Rigv._ i. 164,
20.--Perhaps we should compare to this legend the two birds Amru and
Camru of the _Khorda-Avesta_, of which one makes the seeds of the
three mythical trees fall, and the other scatters them about.
[275] Calcutta, 1851.
[276] i. 4305.
[277] Sixth canto.
[278] Professor Spiegel says in a note, _Khorda-Avesta_, p. 147: "Die
Beschwörung vormittelst einer Feder ist gewiss eine alteranische
Vorstellung."--In a story, hitherto unpublished, of the Monferrato,
communicated to me by Signor Ferraro, a woman, who had gone to eat
parsley in the garden of a sorceress, was obliged to give her daughter
up to her as a penalty for the offence. The girl was afterwards
subjected to three difficult trials; to sunder in one day a mountain of
wheat and millet into the grains composing it, to eat in one day a
mountain of apples, and to wash, dry, and iron in one hour all the linen
of a year. In the first trial, by means of two bird's feathers, she
calls up a thousand birds, who separate the grain from the millet.--In
the fourth story of the fifth book of the _Pentamerone_, the birds strip
themselves of their feathers to fill a mattress which the witch has
ordered the young Permetella to make. In a Tuscan story, for the
possession of a peacock's feather, the young brother is killed.
[279] In _Afanassieff_, v. 38, a similar little bird ravages during
the night the field of a lord; the youngest of the three brothers, who
is believed to be foolish, catches it and sells it to the king, who
shuts it in a room under lock and key. The king's son releases the
little bird, which in gratitude gives him a horse that wins battles,
and a golden apple, by means of which he is able to wed a
princess.--In the story v. 22, the young man who has been instructed
by the devil transforms himself into a bird and tells his father to
sell him, but not to give up the cage. The devil buys the bird, but
does not obtain the cage; he puts the bird into a handkerchief to take
it to his daughter, but when he comes home the bird has
disappeared.--In the story v. 42, the king of birds releases Ivan from
the witch who wishes to eat him, and takes him to his betrothed. The
witch tears a few feathers off the king of birds, but does not succeed
in stopping him.--In the story v. 46, the devil teaches the language
of birds to the young hero.--In the story vi. 69, the wise maiden goes
to take into the kingdom of darkness the bird that speaks, the tree
that sings, and the water of life, with which she brings to life her
two brothers, born before her, whom a witch had thrown into a fountain
(the aurora delivers the Açvinâu).--In the fifth Sicilian story of
Signora Gonzenbach, brother and sister go into the witch's castle to
take the water that dances and the bird that speaks. The bird tells
the water, in the king's presence, the story of the two young
people.--In the fifth story of the second book of the _Pentamerone_,
the fox teaches the young Grannonia what birds say.--In the seventh
story of the fifth book of the _Pentamerone_, it is the youngest of
the five brothers that acquires the faculty of understanding the
language of birds.--In Pietro de Crescenzi (x. 1), we find a "rex
Daucus (Dacus?) qui divino intellectu novit naturam accipitrum et
falconum et eos domesticare ad prædam instruere, et ab ægritudinibus
liberare."--In the legend of St Francis of Assisi, the great saint was
able to make himself understood to birds, and to make the swallows be
silent; the same saint made a wolf mild and tame; the miracle of
Orpheus is repeated in numerous other legends.--In the sixteenth
Mongol story of Siddhikür, a wise dwarf, who understands the language
of birds, hears two birds, father and son, speak to each other on the
summit of a tree about the king's son, who had been assassinated by
the son of the minister.--In the _Edda_, Atli has a long dialogue with
a bird whose language he understands.--Finally, the whole of the
comedy of Aristophanes entitled _The Birds_ (Ornithes) shows the
wisdom and divining power of birds, and, as animals of presage, their
intimate relation with the thunderbolts of Zeus.--According to the
German belief, the fat of a serpent teaches how to understand the
language of birds. Cfr. Simrock, the work previously quoted, p. 457.
[280]
"Die zwei Cypressen sind die Himmelsseiten,
Die beiden, die uns Glück und Leid bereiten;
Der Vogel, der drin nistet, ist die Sonne,
Sie giebt beim Schneiden Schmerz, beim Kommen Wonne."
--Schack, _Heldensagen von Firdusi_, p. 122.
[281] A variety of the myth of Priapos, mentioned in the chapter on
the Ass.
[282] Sinicka letat i gavarít: Sin da charosh.--The dark-blue bird is a
symbol of the azure sky of night or winter, whilst, on the other hand,
the wooden bird, at which the maidens of Westphalia throw sticks on St
John's Day, seems to be a phallical symbol; she who hits the bird is
queen. The bird is a well-known phallical symbol; and a phallical origin
must be ascribed to the popular superstition that a bird may be rendered
helpless by putting salt upon its tail. The salacitas of an animal, when
given way to, takes every energy from it; the ûrdhvaretas alone is
strong. It was perhaps for a similar reason that in the Middle Ages,
when a city was destroyed to its foundations, it was the custom to throw
salt upon it, in order that it might never rise again. Salt thrown away
is like seed sown in the desert, where it is fruitless.
[283] It is a mountaineer of the province of Siena that speaks: "I
perceived by the song of the birds that the weather was about to
change; their voice told me, it was so merry;" Giuliani, _Moralità e
Poesia del Vivente Linguaggio della Toscana_, p. 149.
[284] Cfr. among others, the words _albanellus_ (haubereau) _avis
auguralis species_, and _aucellus_.
[285] _De Proeparat. Evang._ lib. ix.
[286] i. 76.
[287] Amongst the Romans, on the contrary, the flight to the left was
an excellent omen; thus Plautus in the _Epidicus_: "Tacete, habete
animum bonum, liquido exeo foras auspicio, ave sinistra." (But this
change from right to left may depend upon the various positions taken
by the observer in placing himself.) In the mediæval legend of
Alexander, a bird with a human face (a harpy) meets Alexander and
advises him to turn to the right, when he will see marvellous
things.--Cfr. Zacher, _Pseudo-Callisthenes_, Halle, 1867, p. 142.
[288] _Râmây._ iii. 64.