THE HAWK, THE EAGLE, THE VULTURE, THE PHOENIX, THE HARPY, THE STRIX,
THE BAT, THE GRIFFON, AND THE SIREN.
SUMMARY.
The bird of prey the most heroic of birds.--Indras as a hawk.--The
hawk and the ambrosia; the ambrosia as sperm.--The bird of prey and
the serpent.--Agnis, the Açvinâu, and the Marutas as hawks.--The
place of sacrifice has the form of an eagle.--The two sons of
Vinatâ.--Garudas, the bird of Vishnus; he fights against the
monsters.--Genealogy of the vultures.--Gâtâyus and Sampatis.--The
king or the young hero who offers himself up to be devoured by the
hawk or the eagle.--The grateful hawk or eagle.--Çyena and Çaena;
Simurg; the feather of the bird of prey.--The birds as clouds.--The
eagles as winds; Aquila and Aquilo.--The hawks as luminous birds;
the eagles as demoniacal ones.--Accipiter.--The hawk as an emblem of
nobility.--The hawk as the ensign of Attila.--The hawk in Hellenic
antiquity.--The kite among the stars; it discharges its body upon
the image of the god.--The beetle, the eagle, and Zeus.--The eagle
as the thunderbolt or sceptre of Zeus.--The eagle presages supreme
power and fertility; the eagle and the laurel.--The eagle carries
off the robes of Aphroditê.--The eagle takes away the slippers of
Rhodopê.--The eagle kills Æschilos.--Nisos and Scylla.--The vulture
in ancient classical authors.--The vultures in hell.--The learned
vulture.--Voracity of the vulture.--Imaginary birds.--The sun as a
phoenix.--The demoniacal harpies or Furiæ, canes Jovis.--Strix and
striges; they suck blood.--Proca and Crane.--Bats and vampires.--The
Stymphalian birds.--The birds of Seleucia.--The Gryphes and the
Arimaspi.--The griffons sacred to Nemesis; the hypogriff, gryphos,
logogriph, griffonage.--The Siren now as a bird, now as a
fish.--Circe; a lunar myth.
The most heroic of birds is the bird of prey; the strength of its
beak, wings, and claws, its size and swiftness, caused it to be
regarded as a swift celestial messenger, carrier, and warrior.
The hawk, the eagle, and the vulture, three powerful birds of prey,
generally play the same part in myths and legends; the creators of
myths having from the first observed their general resemblance,
without paying any regard to their specific differences.
The bird of prey, in mythology, is the sun, which now shines in its
splendour, and now shows itself in the cloud or darkness by sending
forth flashes of lightning, thunderbolts, and sunbeams. The flash, the
thunderbolt, and the sunbeam are now the beak, now the claw of the
bird of prey, and now, the part being sometimes taken for the whole,
even the entire bird.
In the _Rigvedas_, the god Indras often appears in the form of a hawk
or çyenas. Indras is like a hawk that flies swiftly over the other
hawks, and, being well-winged, carries to men the food tasted by the
gods.[289] He is enclosed in a hundred iron fortresses; nevertheless,
with swiftness, he succeeds in coming out of them;[290] while flying
away, he carries in his claw the beautiful, virgin, luminous ambrosia,
by means of which life is prolonged and the dead brought to life
again[291] (the rain, which is also confounded with the ambrosial
humour of the moon. In the first strophe of the same hymn, Indus is
also called ambrosia).[292] The hawk with iron claws kills the hostile
demons,[293] has great power of breathing, and draws from afar the
chariot with a hundred wheels.[294] However, while the hawk carries
the ambrosia through the air, he trembles for fear of the archer
Kriçânus,[295] who, in fact, shot off one of his claws (of which the
hedgehog was born, according to the _Âitareya Br._,[296] and according
to the Vedic hymn,[297] one of his feathers which, falling on the
earth, afterwards became a tree). After the victory gained over Ahis,
the serpent-demon, Indras flees like a terrified hawk.[298] This is
the first trace of the legendary and proverbial enmity between the
bird of prey and the serpent. In the third book of the _Râmâyanam_,
Râvanas says that he will carry off Sîtâ as the well-winged one
(carries off) the serpent (suparnah pannagamiva).
Nor is Indras alone a hawk in the _Rigvedas_, but Agnis too. Mâtariçvân
and the hawk agitate, the one the heavenly fire, the other the ambrosia
of the mountain.[299] The chariot of the Açvinâu is also sometimes drawn
by hawks, as swift as heavenly vultures.[300] They are themselves
compared to two vultures that hover round the tree where the treasure
is[301] (we have seen in the preceding chapter that the tree is the
sky). The Marutas are also called Gridhrâs or vultures (falcons
according to Max Müller.[302]) In the _Rigvedas_, again, when the sun
goes to the sea, he looks with a vulture's eye.[303] On account of this
form of a bird of prey, often assumed by the solar god in the Vedic
myths, we read in the _Âitareya Br._, that the place destined for the
sacrifice had the same shape. In the _Râmâyanam_ we find, in the
sacrifice of a horse, that the place of sacrifice has the form of the
bird Garudas, the powerful mythical eagle of the Hindoos. In the 149th
hymn of the tenth book of the _Rigvedas_, the ancient well-winged son of
the sun Savitar is already named Garutman. The mythical bird is the
equivalent of the winged solar horse, or hippogriff; indeed, the 118th
hymn of the first book of the _Rigvedas_, soon after celebrating the
hawks that draw the chariot of the Açvinâu, calls them beautiful flying
horses (açvâ vapushah patamgâh). We have observed that of the two twins,
or the two brothers, one prevails over the other. Thus of the two
mythical vultures, of the two sons of Vinatâ, in the legend of the
_Mahâbhâratam_,[304] their mother having broken the egg before the
proper time, one, Arunas, is born imperfect, and curses his mother,
condemning her to be the slave of her rival Kadrû for five thousand
years, until her other son, the luminous, perfect, and powerful solar
bird Garudas, comes to release her. Arunas becomes the charioteer of the
sun; Garudas is, instead, the steed of the god Vishnus, the solar horse,
the sun itself, victorious in all its splendour. No sooner are the two
birds born, than the horse Uccâihçravas also appears, which again
signifies that solar bird and solar horse are identical. Like the hawk
Indras, or the hawk of Indras, Garudas, the bird of Vishnus, or Vishnus
himself, is thirsty, drinks many rivers,[305] carries off from the
serpents the ambrosia, protected (as in the _Rigvedas_) by a circle of
iron. Like Vishnus, Garudas, from being very tall, makes himself very
little, penetrates among the serpents, covers them with dust and blinds
them; it is, indeed, on account of this feat that Vishnus adopts him for
his celestial steed.[306] The god Vishnus goes on the back of the
well-winged one to fight against the monsters;[307] indignant with them,
he throws them to the ground with the flapping of his wings; the
monsters aim their darts at him as another form of the hero, and he
fights on his own account and for the hero.[308] When the bird Garudas
appears, the fetters of the monsters, which compress like serpents the
two brothers Râmas and Lakshmanas, are loosed, and the two young heroes
rise more handsome and stronger than before.[309] The Nishâdâs come from
their damp abodes, enter into the gaping jaws of Garudas in thousands,
enveloped by the wind and the dust.[310] (The sun of morning and that of
spring devour the black monsters of night and of winter.)
Hitherto we have seen the hawk, the eagle (as Garudas), and the
vulture exchanged for each other; even the Hindoo mythical genealogy
confirms this exchange. According to the _Râmâyanam_,[311] of Tâmrâ
(properly the reddish one; she also gave birth to Krâunci, the mother
of the herons) was born Çyenî (that is, the female hawk); of Çyenî was
born Vinatâ. Vinatâ (properly the bent one) laid the egg whence Arunas
and Garudas came forth (the two Dioskuroi also came, as is well known,
out of the egg of Léda, united with the swan); Garudas was in his turn
father of two immense vultures, Gâtâyus and Sampatis. In this
genealogy the ascending movement of the sun appears to be described to
us, like the myth of the sun Vishnus, who, from a dwarf, becomes a
giant. The vulture Gâtâyus knows everything that has happened in the
past, and everything that will come to pass in the future, inasmuch
as, like the Vedic sun, he is viçvavedas, all-seeing, omniscient, and
has traversed the whole earth. In the _Râmâyanam_ we read of the last
fierce battle of the aged vulture Gâtâyus with the terrible monster
Râvanas, who carries off the beautiful Sîtâ during the absence of her
husband Râmas. Gâtâyus, although old in years, rises into the air to
prevent the carrying off of Sîtâ by Râvanas in a chariot drawn by
asses; the vulture breaks with his strong claws the bow and arrow of
Râvanas, strikes and kills the asses, splits the chariot in two,
throws the charioteer down, forces Râvanas to leap to the ground, and
wounds him in a thousand ways; but at last the king of the monsters
succeeds with his sword in cutting off the wings, feet, and sides of
the faithful bird, who expires in pain and grief, whilst the demon
carries the ravished woman into Lañkâ.
Thus far, therefore, we always find in the bird of prey a friend of the
hero and the god. Such is also, in the _Râmâyanam_,[312] the immense
vulture that comes to place itself, and to vomit blood upon the standard
of the monster Kharas, to predict his misfortunes to him; and such is
the elder brother of Gâtâyus, the vulture Sampatis, who, coming out of a
cavern, informs the great monkey Hanumant where Sîtâ may be found.
Sampatis, after having seen Hanumant, recovers his own wings, which had
been burnt by the sun's rays, once when he had wished to defend his
younger brother from them whilst they were flying together too high up
in the regions of the sun[313] (a variety of the Hellenic legend of
Dedalus and Icarus, of that of Hanumant who wished to fly after the sun
in order to catch it, and of that of the two Açvinâu).
When, in the very popular Hindoo legend of the Buddhist king who
sacrifices himself instead of the dove that had looked for hospitality
from him, the hawk appears as the persecutor of the dove, this
apparent persecution is only a trial that Indras, the hawk, and Agnis,
the dove, wish to make of the king's virtue. No sooner does the hawk
see that the king offers himself up to be devoured by the hawk, who
complains that the king has taken his prey, the dove, from him, than
both hawk and dove reassume their divine form, and cover the holy king
with benedictions.[314] Indras and Agnis, united together, are also
themselves a form of the two Açvinâu, like the two faithful doves that
sacrifice themselves in the third book of _Pancatantram_.
The wise çaena of the _Avesta_ has a character nearly resembling the
Vedic bird çyenas. According to the _Bundehesh_, two çaenas stay at the
gates of hell, which correspond to the two crepuscular hawks or vultures
of the Vedâs. The bird with wings that strike, into which the hero
Thraetaona is transformed in the _Khorda Avesta_, whilst it reminds us
of the Hindoo warrior vulture, can serve as a link to join together the
Zendic çaena and the Persian Simurg. The bird Simurg has its marvellous
nest upon Mount Alburs, upon a peak that touches the sky, and which no
man has ever yet seen. The child Sal is exposed upon this mountain; he
is hungry and cold, and cries out; the bird Simurg passes by, hears his
cry, takes pity upon him, and carries the child to its solitary peak. A
mysterious voice blesses the glorious bird, who nourishes the boy,
instructs, protects, and strengthens him, and, when he lets him go,
gives him one of his own feathers, saying that when he is in danger he
must throw this feather into the fire, and he will come at once to
assist him,[315] and take him back into the kingdom. He only asks him
never to forget his faithful and loving preserver. He then carries the
young hero to his father's palace. The king praises the divine bird in
the following words:--"O king of birds! Heaven has given thee strength
and wisdom; thou art the assister of the needy, propitious to the good
and the consoler of the afflicted; may evil be dispersed before thee,
and may thy greatness last for ever." In the fifth adventure of
Isfendiar, in _Firdusi_, the gigantic bird Simurg appears, on the
contrary, as demoniacal as he that dims the sunbeams with his wings (in
the _Birds_ of Aristophanes, when a great number of birds appear, the
spectators cry out, "O Apollo, the clouds!") Isfendiar fights with him,
and cuts him to pieces.
In Scandinavian and German mythology, while the hawk is generally a
luminous shape, preferred by the heroes, and by Freya, the eagle is a
gloomy form preferred by demons, or at least by the hero or god (like
Odin)[316] hidden in the gloomy night or in the windy cloud. The
_Edda_ tells us that the winds are produced by the shaking of the
wings of a giant, who sits in the form of an eagle at the extremity of
the sky; the aquila and the wind called aquilo by the Latins, as they
correspond etymologically, seem also to be mythically identical. I
have observed on a previous occasion that in the _Edda_ the witch
rides upon a wolf, using eagles as reins. In the _Nibelungen_,
Krimhilt sees in a dream his beloved hawk strangled by two eagles.
On the other hand, the swallows sing to Sigurd in the _Edda_,
predicting to him his meeting with the beautiful warrior maiden who,
coming forth from the battles, rides upon an eagle. But this warlike
girl was, however, destined to cause the death of Sigurd.
In the chapter on the elephant, we saw how the bird Garudas
transported into the air an elephant, a tortoise, a bough of a tree,
and hermits. In the Greek variety of the same myth, we have the eagle
instead of Garudas. In the _Edda_, three Ases (Odin, Loki, and Hönir)
are cooking an ox under a tree; but from the summit of the tree, an
eagle interrupts the cooking of the meat, because it wishes to have a
share. The Ases consent; the eagle carries off nearly every thing,
upon which Loki, indignant, wounds the eagle with a stake; but whilst
one end of the stake remains attached to the eagle, the other is
fastened to Loki's hand, and the eagle carries him up into the air.
Loki feels his arms break, and implores the eagle to have compassion
upon him; the gigantic bird lets him go, on condition of obtaining,
instead of him, Iduna and her apples.[317] In the twenty-third story
of the fifth book of _Afanassieff_, the eagle, after having been
benefited by a peasant, eats up his sheep. The name of eagles was
given during the Middle Ages to certain demons which were said to
appear in the form of an eagle, especially on account of their
rapacious expression, and aquiline nose.[318]
The hawk, on the other hand, I repeat, usually appears as divine, in
opposition to all that is diabolical. In the twenty-second story of
the fifth and the forty-sixth of the sixth book of _Afanassieff_, the
hero transforms himself into a hawk, in order to strangle the cock
into which the devil has metamorphosed himself (a Russian proverb,
however, says of the devil that he is more pleasing than the luminous
hawk).[319] When they wished, in popular Russian phraseology, to
express something that it is impossible to overtake, it was said,
"Like the hurricane in the field, and the luminous hawk in the sky."
We know that the Latin _accipiter_ and the Greek _ôküpteros_ mean the
swift-winged. In the seventh story of the first book of _Afanassieff_,
the hawk appears in opposition to the black crow. When the young girl,
disguised as a man, succeeds in deceiving the Tzar three times, she
says to him, "Ah! thou crow, crow; thou hast not known, O crow, how to
catch the hawk in a cage."
The hawk was one of the distinctive badges of the mediæval cavalier;
even ladies kept them. Krimhilt brings up a wild hawk; Brunhilt, when
she throws herself upon the funeral pyre, that she may not survive
Sigurd, has two dogs and two hawks immolated along with her. On the
sepulchres of mediæval cavaliers and ladies, a hawk was not
unfrequently found, as an emblem of their nobility. According to a law
of the year 818, the sword and hawk belonging to the losing cavalier
were to be respected by his conqueror, and left unappropriated; the
hawk to hunt, and the sword to fight with. In _Du Cange_, we read that
in 1642 Monsieur De Sassay claimed as his feudal right, "ut nimirum
accipitrem suum ponere possit super altare majus ecclesiæ Ebraicensis
(of Evreux), dum sacra in eo peragit ocreatus, calcaribusque
instructus presbyter parochus d'Ezy, pulsantibus tympanis, organorum
loco." According to the law of the Burgundians, he who attempted to
steal another man's hawk was, before all, obliged to conciliate the
hawk itself by giving it to eat (sex uncias carnis acceptor ipse super
testones comedat); or if the hawk refused to eat, the robber had to
pay an indemnity to the proprietor, besides a fine (sex solidos illi
cujus acceptor est, cogatur exsolvere; mulctæ autem nomine solidos
duos). According to information supplied me by my learned friend Count
Geza Kuun, the hawk (turul) was the military ensign of Attila.
According to a tradition preserved in the chronicle of Keza and of
Buda, Emesu, mother of Attila, saw in a dream a hawk which predicted a
happy future to her, after which dream she became pregnant.
Nor was the hawk less honoured in Hellenic antiquity; according to
Homer, it was the rapid messenger of Apollo; the spy of Apollo, sacred
to Zeus, according to Ælianos; having after death the faculty of
vaticination, according to Porphyrios (who even recommends the heart
of a hawk, a stag, or a mole to any one about to practise divination).
In the _Iliad_, Apollo coming down from Mount Ida, is compared to the
swift hawk, the killer of doves, the swiftest of all birds. Many are
the superstitious beliefs concerning the hawk collected by Ælianos;
such as, for instance, that it does not eat the hearts of animals;
that it weeps over a dead man; that it buries unburied bodies, or at
least puts earth upon their eyes, in which it thinks it sees the sun
again, upon which, as its most beloved star, it always fixes its gaze;
that it loves gold; that it lives for seven hundred years; not to
mention the extraordinary medical virtues which are always attributed
to every sacred animal, and which are particularly considered as
essential to the sacred hawk. Several of the qualities of the sacred
hawk passed also into other falcons of inferior quality, the kite
(milvius),[320] for instance, of which it is said that it was placed
among the stars for having carried to Zeus the entrails of the monster
bull-serpent, and, according to the third book of Ovid's _Fasti_, for
having brought back to Zeus the lost ring (an ancient form of the
mediæval ring of Solomon, _i.e._, the solar disc):--
"Jupiter alitibus rapere imperat, attulit illi,
Milvius, et meritis venit in astra suis."
With regard to the kite, we find an apologue,[321] according to which
the kite, at the point of death, asks its mother to beg grace from the
neighbouring statue of the god, and especially forgiveness, for the
sacrilege which it had frequently committed, discharging its body upon
the image of the god (the sun upon the sky).
A richer variety of this story is found in another apologue, which
illustrates a Greek proverb ("æton kantaros maieusomai"); but instead
of the hawk, we have the beetle, and instead of the statue, the god
himself, Zeus, with eagle's eggs in his lap. The beetle (the
hostess-moon), wishing to punish the eagle, which had violated the
laws of hospitality with regard to the hare (also the moon), attempts
to destroy its eggs; the eagle goes and places them in the lap of
Zeus; the beetle, who knows that Zeus hates everything that is
unclean, lets some dung fall upon him; Zeus forgets the eggs, shakes
himself, and breaks them. Here the eagle is identified with Zeus, as
in the Vedic hymns the hawk with Indras. In the first of Pindar's
Pythic odes, the poet speaks of the eagle as sleeping on the sceptre
of Zeus (as a thunderbolt, which is the real sceptre of Zeus). The
eagle of Zeus is also represented as holding the thunderbolt in its
claws, which is in accordance with the sentence, "Fulmina sub Jove
sunt." When Zeus is equipping himself to fight against the Titans, the
eagle brings his dart to him, for which reason Zeus adopted the eagle
as his ensign of war. In _Dion Cassius_, the eagles let the golden
thunderbolts drop out of their talons into the camp of the Pompeians,
and fly towards the camp of Cæsar to announce his victory. We find
very numerous examples in the ancient classics of eagles that presage
now victory, now supreme power to the heroes, that now nourish, now
save them, and now sacrifice themselves for them.[322] The eagle of
Zeus, the royal eagle, does not feed upon flesh, but upon herbs,
properly upon the moisture of these herbs, by means of which we can
comprehend the rape of Ganymede, the cup-bearer of Zeus, carried off
by the eagle in the same way as the hawk of Indras carries off the
somas in the _Rigvedas_. The Hellenic eagle is generally, like Zeus, a
bringer of light, fertility, and happiness. Pliny narrates of an
eagle, that immediately after the wedding of Augustus it let fall, as
an omen of fecundity in the family of Augustus, into the lap of Livia
Drusilla a white hen, having a branch of laurel in its beak; this
branch was planted, and grew into a dense laurel-grove; the hen had so
many descendants, that afterwards the villa where this happened was
called the Villa of the Hens. Suetonius adds that in the last year of
the life of Nero all the hens died, and all the laurel plants were
dried up. We also find the eagle in connection with the laurel in the
myth of Amphiaraos, whose spear, carried off by the eagle and plunged
into the ground, grew into a laurel plant.
In the first chapter of the first book, when speaking of the myth of
the aurora, we mentioned the young hero who disrobes the beautiful
princess on the bank of the river and carries her apparel away. In the
Hellenic myth we find a zoological variety of this myth. Aphroditê
(here the evening aurora) bathes in the Acheloos (the river of night);
Hermês (the extreme western light, and perhaps even the moon) becomes
enamoured of her, and makes the eagle (the bird of night) carry off
her garments, to obtain which, Aphroditê satisfies the desire of
Hermês. In _Strabo_ we find a variation of the same story which
reminds us of the fairy-tale of Cinderella. Whilst Rhodopê is bathing,
the eagle snatches one of her slippers out of her maid's hands and
carries it off to the king of Memphis, who, seeing the slipper, falls
in love with the foot that wore it, gives orders to search everywhere
for the girl to whom the slipper belongs, and, when Rhodopê is found,
marries her. Ælianos says that this king was Psammetichos. But the
Hellenic eagle is divine as long as the god Zeus, whom it represents,
is propitious; when Zeus becomes the tyrant of heaven, and condemns
Prometheus to be bound upon a rock, the eagle goes to gnaw at his
heart. And because the poet Æschilos glorified Prometheus, making him
curse the tyranny of Zeus, hence, doubtless, arose the legend that
Æschilos was, when old and bald, killed by a tortoise, which the
eagle, mistaking the head of Æschilos for a white rock, had let fall
from the sky in order to break it and feed upon it. The eagle which,
according to Theophrastos, announced death to the cutters of black
hellebore, was also a funereal and demoniacal bird. In the eighth book
of Ovid's _Metamorphoses_, King Nisos, the golden-haired (the sun of
evening), is transformed into a marine eagle (the night or winter),
when his daughter Scylla (the night, or winter), in order to give him
up to his enemies, destroys his strength by cutting his hair (an
evident variation of the solar legend of Delilah and Samson).
The vulture, too, is a sacred bird in the legends of ancient classical
authors; Herodotos says that it is very dear to Hêraklês (the killer of
the eagle that gnaws at the heart of Prometheus, who had made for the
hero the cup in which he had been enabled to cross the sea); it
announces sovereign dominion to Romulus, Cæsar, and Augustus. Pliny
writes that burnt vulture's feathers make serpents flee; the same
feathers, according to Pliny, have the property of facilitating
parturition, inasmuch as, as St Jerome writes (adversus Jovinianum ii.),
"Si medicorum volumina legeris, videbis tot curationes esse in vulture,
quot sunt membra."[323] Two vultures (a form of the Açvinâu) eat every
day, in hell, the liver that continually grows again (the _immortale
jecur_ of Virgil) of the giant Tityo, the offender of Latona (the moon),
dear to Jupiter. (The monster of night is killed every day and rises
again every night). The two youths Ægipios and Nephrôn are another form
of the Açvinâu, who, hating each other on account of the love which each
has for the other's mother, are changed by Zeus into two vultures, after
that Ægipios, by a stratagem of Nephrôn, united himself with his own
mother. Iphiklos consults the birds to have children, from the vulture
downwards, who alone knew how to assign the reason why Iphiklos had no
children and indicate the means of obtaining them. Philakos had tried to
kill Iphiklos; not having succeeded, he fastened his sword on a wild
pear-tree; around the sword a covering of bark grew, which hid it from
the sight of men. The vulture shows the place where this tree grows, and
advises Iphiklos to take the bark off, to clean the rust off the sword,
and after ten days to drink the rust in a toast; Iphiklos thus obtains
offspring.
The vulture, therefore, generally preserves in Græco-Latin tradition
the heroic and divine character which it has in Indian tradition,
although its voracity became proverbial in ancient popular
phraseology. Lucian calls a great eater the greatest of all the
vultures. Moreover, the special faculty of distinguishing the smell of
a dead body, even before death, is attributed to him; whence Seneca,
in an epistle against the man who covets the inheritance of a living
person, says "Vultur es, cadaver expecta," and Plautus in the
_Truculentus_ says of certain parasitical servants: "Jam quasi
vulturii triduo prius prædivinabant, quo die esituri sient."
Besides these royal birds of prey that become mythical, there are
several mythical birds of prey that never existed, still to be
noticed, such as the phoenix, the harpy, the griffon, the strix, the
Seleucide birds, the Stymphalian birds, and the sirens. Popular
imagination believed in their terrestrial existence for a long time,
but it can be said of them all as of the Arabian Phoenix:--
"All affirm that it exists;
Where it is no one can tell."[324]
In point of fact, no man has ever seen them; a few deities or heroes
alone approached them; their seat is in the sky, where, according to
their several natures and the different places occupied by the sun or
the moon in the sky, they attract, ravish, seduce, enchant, or destroy.
The phoenix is, beyond all doubt, the eastern and western sun; hence
Petrarch was able to say with reason,
"Nè 'n ciel nè 'n terra è più d'una Fenice,"
as there is not more than one sun; and we, like the ancient Greeks,
say of a rare man or object, that he or it is a phoenix. Tacitus, who
narrates, in the fourteenth book, the fable of the phoenix, calls it
_animal sacrum soli_; Lactantius says that it alone knows the secrets
of the sun--
"Et sola arcanis conscia Phoebe tuis,"
and represents it as rendering funereal honours to its father in the
temple of the sun; Claudian calls it _solis avem_ and describes its
whole life in a beautiful little poem.
It is born in the East, in the wood of the sun, and until it has
assumed its whole splendid shape it feeds upon dew and perfumes,
whence Lactantius--
"Ambrosios libat coelesti nectare rores
Stellifero teneri qui cecidere polo.
Hos legit, his mediis alitur in odoribus ales,
Donec maturam proferat effigiem."
It then feeds upon all that it sees. When it is about to die it thinks
only of its new birth--
"Componit bustumque sibi, partumque futurum" (_Claudian_);
inasmuch as it is said to deposit a little worm, the colour of milk,
in its nest, which becomes a funeral pyre,
"Fertur vermis lacteus esse color" (_Lactantius_).
Before dying, it invokes the sun:
"Hic sedet, et solem blando clangore salutat
Debilior, miscetque preces, et supplice cantu
Præstatura novas vires incendia poscit;
Quem procul abductis vidit cum Phoebus habenis,
Stat subito, dictisque pium solatur alumnum" (_Claudian_).
The sun extinguishes the conflagration, which consumes the phoenix,
and out of which it has to arise once more. At last the phoenix is
born again with the dawn--
"Atque ubi sol pepulit fulgentis lumina portæ,
Et primi emicuit luminis aura levis,
Incipit illa sacri modulamina fundere cantus,
Et mira lucem voce ciere novam" (_Lactantius_).
In my opinion, no more proofs are required to demonstrate the identity
of the phoenix with the sun of morning and of evening, and, by
extension, with that of autumn and of spring. That which was fabled
concerning it in antiquity, and by reflection, in the Middle Ages,
agrees perfectly with the twofold luminous phenomenon of the sun that
dies and is born again every day and every year out of its ashes, and of
the hero or heroine who traverses the flames of the burning pyre intact.
The nature of the phoenix is the same as that of the burning bird
(szar-ptitza) of Russian fairy tales, which swallows the dwarf who
goes to steal its eggs (the evening aurora swallows the sun).[325]
The solar bird of evening is a bird of prey; it draws to itself with
its damp claw; it draws into the darkness of night; it has night
behind it; its appearance is charming and its countenance alluring,
but the rest of its body is as horrid as its nature.
Virgil and Dante ascribe women's faces to the Harpies--
"Ali hanno late e colli e visi umani
Piè con artigli e pennuto il gran ventre."
Rutilius[326] says that their claws are glutinous--
"Quæ pede glutineo, quod tetigere trahunt."
Others give them vultures' bodies, bears' ears, arms and feet of men,
and the white breasts of women. Servius, speaking of the name they bear
of _canes Jovis_, notes that this epithet was given them because they
are the Furies in person, "Unde etiam epulas apud Virgilium abripiunt,
quod Furiarum est." Ministers of the vengeance of Zeus, they contaminate
the harvests of the king-seer Phineus, inspired by Apollo, whom some
consider to be a form of Prometheus, the revealer of the secret of Zeus
to mankind, and others, the blinder of his own sons.
The bird of prey, the evening solar bird, becomes a strix, or witch,
during the night. We have already noticed the popular belief that the
cat, at seven years of age, becomes a witch. An ancient superstition
given by Aldrovandi also recognises witches in cats, and adds that, in
this form, they suck the blood of children. The same is done by the
witches of popular stories,[327] and by the striges. During the night
they suck the blood of children; that is to say, the night takes away
the colour, the red, the blood of the sun. Ovid, in the sixth book of
the _Fasti_, represents the maleficent striges as follows:
"Nocte volant, puerosque petunt nutricis egentes,
Et vitiant cunis corpora rapta suis.
Carpere dicuntur lactentia viscera rostris,
Et plenum poto sanguine guttur habent."
Festus derives the word strix _à stringendo_, from the received opinion
that they strangle children. The striges, in the book of the _Fasti_,
previously quoted, attack the child Proca, who is only five days old--
"Pectoraque exhorbent avidis infantia linguis."
The nurse invokes the help of Crane, the friend of Janus, who has the
faculty of hunting good and evil away from the doorsteps of houses.
Crane hunts the witches away with a magical rod, and cures the child
thus--
"Protinus arbutea postes ter in ordine tangit
Fronde ter arbutea limina fronde notat.
Spargit aquis aditus, et aquæ medicamen habebant,
Extaque de porca cruda bimestre tenet."
The usual conjurings are added, and the incident ends thus--
"Post illud, nec aves cunas violasse feruntur,
Et rediit puero qui fuit ante color."
Quintus Serenus, when the _strix atra_ presses the child, recommends
as an amulet, garlic, of which we have seen that the strong odour puts
the monstrous lion to flight.
The same maleficent and demoniacal nature is shared in by the bats and
the vampires, which I recognise in the "two winged ones entreated not
to suck" of a Vedic hymn.[328]
Of analogous nature were the Stymphalian birds, which obscure the
sun's rays with their wings, use their feathers as darts, devour men
and lions, and are formidable on account of their claws--
"Unguibus Arcadiæ volucres Stymphala colentes" (_Lucretius_);
which Hêraklês, and afterwards the Argonauts, by the advice of the
wise Phineos, put to flight with the noise of a musical instrument,
and by striking their shields and spears against each other. The bird
of Seleucia which Galenus describes as "of an insatiable appetite,
malignant, astute, a devourer of locusts," also has the same
diabolical nature. If our identification of the locust with the moon
be accepted, to kill the locust, its shadow alone sufficed. But
inasmuch as the locusts are considered destroyers of corn, the birds
of Seleucia, which come to devour them, are held to be beneficent, and
the ministers of Zeus.
The gryphes are represented as of double nature, now propitious, now
malignant. Solinus calls them, "Alites ferocissimæ et ultra rabiem
sævientes." Ktesias declares that India possesses gold in mountains
inhabited by griffins, quadrupeds, as large as wolves, which have the
legs and claws of a lion, red feathers on their breasts and in their
other parts, eyes of fire and golden nests. For the sake of the gold,
the Arimaspi, one-eyed men, fight with the griffins. As the latter
have long ears, they easily hear the robbers of the gold; and if they
capture them, they invariably kill them. In Hellenic antiquity, the
griffins were sacred to Nemesis, the goddess of vengeance, and were
represented in sepulchres in the act of pressing down a bull's head;
but they were far more celebrated as sacred to the golden sun, Apollo,
whose chariot they drew (the hippogriff, which, in mediæval
chevaleresque poems, carries the hero, is their exact equivalent).
And as Apollo is the prophetical and divining deity, whose oracle,
when consulted, delivers itself in enigmas, the word _griffin_, too,
meant enigma, logogriph being an enigmatical speech, and griffonnage
an entangled, confused, and embarrassing handwriting.
Finally, the siren, or mermaid, who had a woman's face, and ended now
as a bird, now as a fish; and who, according to Greek grammarians, had
the form of a sparrow in its upper parts and of a woman in the lower,
seems to be a lunar rather than a solar animal. The sirens allure
navigators in particular, and fly after the ship of the cunning
Odysseus, who stuffs his ears; for which reason they throw themselves
in despair into the sea. The sirens are fairies like Circe; hence
Horace[329] names them together--
"Sirenum voces et Circes pocula nosti."
Pliny, who believed that they existed in India, attributed to them the
faculty of lulling men to sleep by their songs, in order to tear them
to pieces afterwards; they calmed the winds of the sea by their
voices, they knew and could reveal every secret (like the fairy or
Madonna moon). Some say that the sirens were born of the blood of
Acheloos, defeated by Hêraklês; others, of Acheloos and one of the
Muses; others, again, narrate that they were once girls, and that
Aphroditê transformed them into sirens because they wished to remain
virgins. In the sixteenth Esthonian story, the beautiful maiden of
the waters, daughter of the mother of the waters, falls in love with a
young hero with whom she stays six days of the week; the seventh day,
Thursday, she leaves him, to go and plunge into the water, forbidding
the youth to come and see her: the young man is unable to repress his
curiosity, surprises the maiden when bathing, and discovers that she
is a woman in her upper and a fish in her lower parts--
"Desinit in piscem mulier formosa superne;"
the maiden of the waters is conscious of being looked at, and
disappears sorrowfully from the young man's sight.[330]
FOOTNOTES:
[289] Pra çyenah çyenebhya âçupâtvâ--Acakrayâ yat svadhayâ suparno
havyam bharan manave devagushtam; _Rigv._ iv. 26, 4.--The somah
çyenâbhritah is also mentioned in the _Rigv._ i. 80, 2, iv. 27, ix.
77, and other passages.
[290] Çatam mâ pura âyasîr arakshann adha çyeno gavasâ nir adîyam;
_Rigv._ iv. 27, 1.
[291] Yam te çyenaç cârum avrikam padâbharad arunam mânam andhasah--enâ
vayo vi târy âyur givasa enâ gagâra bandhutâ; _Rigv._ x. 144, 5.
[292] In the _Mahâbhâratam_ (i. 2383), the ambrosia takes the shape of
sperm. A king, far from his wife Girikâ, thinks of her; the sperm
comes from him and falls upon a leaf. A hawk carries the leaf away;
another hawk sees it and disputes with it for the possession of the
leaf; they fight with one another and the leaf falls into the waters
of the Yamunâ, where the nymph Adrikâ (equivalent to Girikâ), changed
by a curse into a fish, sees the leaf, feeds upon the sperm, becomes
fruitful, and is delivered; cfr. the chapter on the Fishes.
[293] Çyeno 'yopâshtir hanti dasyûn; _Rigv._ x. 99, 8.--In the Russian
stories the hawk and the dog are sometimes the most powerful helpers
of the hero.
[294] Ghrishuh çyenâya kritvana âsuh; _Rigv._ x. 144, 3.--Yam suparnah
parâvatah çyenasya putra âbharat çatacakram; _Rigv._ x. 144, 1.
[295] Sa pûrvyah pavate yam divas pari çyeno mathâyad ishitas tiro
ragah sa madhva â yuvate yevigâna it kriçânor astur manasâha
bibhyushâ; _Rigv._ ix. 77, 2.
[296] iii. 3, 26.
[297] Antah patat patatry asya parnam; _Rigv._ iv. 27, 4.--Cfr. for
this mythical episode the texts given by Prof. Kuhn and the relative
discussions, _Die Herabkunft d. F. u. d. S._, pp. 138 _seq._ and 180
_seq._
[298] Çyeno na bhîtah; _Rigv._ i. 32, 14.
[299] Anyam divo mâtariçvâ gabhârâmathnâd anyam pari çyeno adreh;
_Rigv._ i. 93, 6.
[300] Â vâm çyenâso açvinâ vahantu--ye apturo divyâso na gridhrâh;
_Rigv._ i. 118, 4.
[301] Gridhreva vriksham nidhimantam acha; _Rigv._ ii. 39, 1.
[302] _Rigv._ i. 88, 4.--In fact, in the hymn i. 165, 2, the Marutas
are explicitly compared to hawks that fly through the air (çyenân iva
dhragato antarikshe).
[303] Drapsah samudram abhi yag gigâti paçyan gridhrasya cakshasâ;
_Rigv._ x. 123, 8.
[304] i. 1078, _seq._
[305] _Mbh._ i. 1495.
[306] _Ib._ i. 1496, _seq._
[307] _Râmây._ vii. 6.
[308] _Ib._ vii. 7.
[309] _Ib._ vi. 26.
[310] _Mbh._ i. 1337, _seq._
[311] iii. 20.
[312] iii. 29.
[313] _Râmây._ iv. 58, 59.
[314] For the numerous Eastern varieties of this legend, cfr. the
Einleitung to the _Pancatantram_, of Prof. Benfey, p. 388, _seq._--In
the fifth story of the first book of _Afanassieff_ (cfr. the sixth of
the same book), Little John is carried back from the bottom of the
earth into Russia upon the wings of an eagle. When the eagle is hungry
it turns its head, and Johnny gives it food; when the provisions come
to an end, Johnny feeds it with his own flesh.--In the twenty-seventh
story of the second book, the two young people are carried from the
world of darkness into that of light on the wings of the bird
Kolpalitza; when the provisions come to an end, it is the girl that
gives flesh, cut off her thigh, to the bird. But the youth, who has
with him the water of life, heals the amorous maiden; cfr. also
_Afanassieff_, v. 23, and v. 28, where, instead of the eagle, we find
the hawk.--The same sacrifice of himself is made in a Piedmontese
story, recorded by me in first number of the _Rivista Orientale_, by a
young prince, who wishes to cross the sea in order to see the princess
that he loves; the same is done by the young hero of the following
unpublished Tuscan story, which I heard from a certain Martino Nardini
of Prato:--"A three-headed dragon steals during the night the golden
apples in the garden of the king of Portugal; the three sons of the
king watch during the night: the first two fall asleep, but the third
discovers the thief and wounds him. The day after, the three brothers
follow the track caused by the robber's blood: they come to a
beautiful palace, in which there is a cistern, into which the third
brother is lowered down, taking a trumpet with him to sound when he
wishes to be taken up. Following a dark path he comes to a fine
meadow, where there are three splendid palaces, one of bronze, one of
silver, and one of gold; following the trace of blood, he goes to the
palace of bronze; a beautiful maiden opens the gate to him, and
wonders why he has come down to the world underground; the young
couple are pleased with each other, and promise to marry one another;
the maiden has a crown of brilliants, of which she gives him half as a
pledge. The dragon comes back home, and says:--
"Ucci, ucci
O che puzzo di Cristianucci,
O ce n' è, o ce n' è stati,
O ce n' è di rimpiattati."
The maiden, who has concealed the young hero, caresses the dragon and
makes him fall asleep. When he is asleep, she brings the young man out
of his concealment, gives him a sword and tells him to cut the three
heads off at one blow. Helped by a second maiden, the young hero
prepares to accomplish a second undertaking in the silver palace of the
five-headed dragon. He must cut the five heads off at a blow, for if one
remains, it is as if he had cut none off. After having killed the
dragon, he promises to marry the second maiden too. Finally, he knocks
at the gate of the golden palace, which is opened by a third maiden; she
too asks, "What ever induced you to come to lose your life in the lower
world? The seven-headed dragon lives here." He promises to marry her;
the dragon does not wish to go to rest this night; but the maiden
persuades him to do so, upon which the youth cuts off the seven heads in
two strokes. The three girls, who were three princesses carried off by
the dragons, are released, and take all the riches that they can find in
order to carry them into the upper world. They come to the cistern, the
hero sounds the trumpet, and the two brothers draw up all the riches,
the three maidens, shutting up the entrance with a stone, and leaving
their young brother alone in the subterranean world. The two elder
brothers force the three princesses to declare that they had delivered
them; they then go to the King of Portugal and boast of this feat,
saying, that the third brother is lost. The three princesses are sad, at
which the King of Portugal wonders. The elder brothers wish to marry the
maiden who was in the bronze palace; but she declares that she will only
marry him who brings to her the other half of the crown of brilliants.
They send to all the goldsmiths and jewellers to find one who can make
it. Meanwhile, the third brother, abandoned underground, cries out for
aid; an eagle approaches the tomb, and promises to carry him into the
world above, if he will allay its hunger. The young hero, by the eagle's
advice, puts lizards and serpents into a sack, and calls the eagle after
having made a plentiful provision of food. He fastens the sack round his
neck in order to give an animal to the eagle each time that it asks for
food. When they are a few arms' length distant from the upper world, the
sack is empty; the youth cuts his flesh off with a knife and gives it to
the eagle, which carries him into the world, when the young man asks him
how he can return home. The bird directs him to follow the high road. A
charcoal-seller passes by; the young man proposes himself as his
assistant, on condition that he give him some food. The charcoal-seller
takes him with himself for some time, and then recommends him to an old
man, his friend, who is a silversmith. Meanwhile, the king's servants
have been six months wandering towards the sunset, searching for a
silversmith capable of making the other half of the crown, but in vain;
they then wander for six months towards the sunrise till they come to
the dwelling of the poor silversmith where the third brother serves as
an assistant. The old man says he is not able to make the half crown;
but the young man asks to see the other half, recognises it, and
promises to give it back entire in eight days. At the expiration of this
time, the king sends for the crown and the manufacturer, but the youth
sends his master instead of himself. The princess, however, insists upon
seeing the young assistant too; he is sent for and brought to the
palace; the king does not recognise him, and asks what reward he wants;
he answers that he wishes for what the crown cost to the princess. The
latter recognises him, after which his father does so too. The young
hero weds the princess to whom he had promised himself; and the two
brothers are covered with inflammable gums, and used as lamps to light
up the wedding.
[315] In a hitherto unpublished story of the Monferrato, communicated to
me by Signor Ferraro, a king with three sons is blind; he would be cured
if he could bathe his eyes in oil with a feather of the griffon-bird,
which lives upon a high mountain. The third brother succeeds in catching
one, having been kind to an old woman; he brings the griffon-bird to his
father, who recovers his sight and his youth.--Cfr. the third story of
the fourth book of the _Pentamerone_, in which a hawk that is a princess
transformed, also gives to the brother of his wife one of his feathers,
which he is to throw to the ground in case of necessity; indeed, when
young Tittone requires it, a battalion of hawks appear in order to free
the imprisoned maiden loved by Tittone.--In the fifth story of the fifth
book of the _Pentamerone_, the hawk serves as a guide to a young king to
find a beautiful princess whom a witch has put to sleep, and who is
believed to be dead. This princess becomes the mother of two sons, who
are called Sun and Moon.--In the sixth Sicilian story of Signora
Gonzenbach, a young man releases an eagle that was entangled in the
branches of a tree; the grateful eagle gives him one of its feathers;
letting it fall to the ground, the youth can become an eagle at
pleasure.
[316] In the ninth Esthonian story it is the eagle that takes the
message to the thunder-god to enable him to recover his weapon, which
the devil had carried off.--In the first Esthonian story, the eagle
also appears as the propitious messenger of the young prince.
[317] In the story of Santo Stefano, _La Principessa che non ride_,
the eaglets have the same faculty of drawing after themselves
everything that they touch; and, as forms of the winds (or the
clouds), in which character they sometimes appear, we can understand
this property of theirs; the wind, too, draws after itself everything
that comes in its way, and especially the violent north wind
(aquilo).--In Russian stories we have, instead, now the funereal
storks, now the marvellous goose taking the place of the eagle that
drags things behind it.
[318] In the tenth Sicilian story of Signora Gonzenbach, it is in the
shape of a silver eagle that the king of the assassins penetrates into
the room where the young wife of the king sleeps, upon whom he wishes
to avenge himself.--Stephanus Stephanius, the interpreter of _Saxo
Grammaticus_, writes, that among the English, the Danes, and other
Northern nations, it was the custom when an enemy was defeated, to
thrust a sword, as a greater mark of ignominy, into his back, in such
a manner as to separate the backbone on both sides by a longitudinal
wound; thence stripes of flesh having been cut off, they were fastened
to the sides, so as to represent eagle's wings. (In Russian popular
stories, when heroes and monsters fight, we find frequent reference to
a similar custom.)
[319] Panravílas sataná lucshe yasnavo sakalá, _Afanassieff_, vi.
16.--The proverb, however, may have another sense, viz., better the
devil in person than a beautiful but diabolical shape. The devil
sometimes assumed the form of a hawk, as we learn from the legend of
Endo, an English man-at-arms, who became enamoured of one into which
the devil had transformed himself, in Guillelmus Neubrigensis, _Hist.
Angl._ i. 19.
[320] In Plato's _Phædon_, rapacious men are transformed into wolves
and kites.
[321] Cfr. Aldrovandi, _Ornith._ v.--And, moreover, in the same
Aldrovandi:--"Narrant qui res Africanas literis mandarunt Aquilam
marem aliquando cum Lupa coire ... producique ac edi Draconem, qui
rostro et alis avis speciem referat, cauda serpentem, pede Lupum, cute
esse versicolorem, nec supercilia posse attollere."
[322] I recommend, to whoever wishes to find all these circumstances
united, the perusal of the first volume of the _Ornithologia_ of
Aldrovandi, who dedicated in it to birds of prey a long and detailed
study.--Cfr. also Bachofen. _Die Sage von Tanaquil_, Heidelberg, 1870.
[323] Comparative popular medicine might be the subject of a special
work which could not fail to be instructive and interesting.
[324]
"Come l'Araba Fenice;
Che ci sia, ciascun lo dice;
Dove sia, nessun lo sa."
[325] Cfr. _Afanassieff_, v. 27.
[326] _Itin._ i.
[327] In the first chapter of the first book we saw how the witch
sucked the breasts of the beautiful maiden.--In _Du Cange_, s. v.
_Amma_, we read as follows: "Isidorus, lib. xii. cap. vii. bubo strix
nocturna: 'Hæc avis, inquit ille, vulgo Amma dicitur ab amando
parvulos, unde et lac præbere dicitur nascentibus.' Anilem hanc
fabulam non habet Papias MS. Ecclesiæ Bituricensis. Sic enim ille:
Amma avis nocturna ab amando dicta, hæc et strix dicitur a stridore."
[328] Mâ mâm ime patatrinî vi dugdhâm; _Rigv._ i. 158, 4.--In Sicily,
the bat called _taddarita_ is considered as a form of the demon; to
take and kill it, one sings to it--
"Taddarita, 'ncanna, 'ncanna,
Lu dimonio ti 'ncanna
E ti 'ncanna pri li peni
Taddarita, veni, veni."
When it is caught, it is conjured, because, when it shrieks, it
blasphemes. Hence it is killed at the flame of a candle or at the
fire, or else is crucified.
[329] According to a Sicilian story, as yet unpublished, communicated
to me by Dr Ferraro, a siren once carried off a girl, and bore her out
to sea with her; and, though she occasionally allowed her to come to
the shore, she secured her against running away by means of a chain
which was fastened to her own tail. The brother released his sister by
throwing bread and meat to the siren to satiate her hunger, employing
seven blacksmiths the while to cut the chain.
[330] Cfr. the _Pentamerone_, iv. 7; and the legend of Lohengrin, in
the chapter on the Swan.