THE DOVE, THE DUCK, THE GOOSE, AND THE SWAN.
SUMMARY.
White, red, and dark-coloured doves, ducks, geese, and swans.--The
funereal dove; it is united with the owl; kapotas.--The doves flee
from unhappy persons.--The dove and the hawk.--Two doves sacrifice
themselves, one for the other; a form of the Açvinâu.--The dove and
the ant.--Transformation of the hero and heroine into doves.--The
two prophetic doves upon the cross-trees of the mast.--Among
funereal games, that of shooting arrows at a dove which hangs from
the mast of a ship.--The doves of Dodona.--The dove and the
water.--St Radegonda as a dove preserves sailors from shipwreck.--A
dove guides the Argonauts.--The soul of Semiramis becomes a
dove.--It is sacrilege to eat a dove.--Hero and heroine become
doves, in order to escape.--The dove as the bringer of joy, of
light, of good; it is a symbol of the winter that ends, and of the
spring which is beginning.--The daughters of Anius become white
doves.--Two doves separate the barley for the girl.--The fireworks,
the stove, and the car of Indras, perform the same miracles, _i.e._,
they make beautiful the girl with the ugly skin.--Zezolla benefited
by the dove of the fairies.--The doves on the rosebush.--The nymph
Peristera helps Aphroditê to pluck flowers.--The phallical
dove.--The word _hansas_; the guç-lebedi of Russian tales.--Agnis as
a hansas.--The Marutas as hansâs.--The horses of the two Açvinâu as
hansâs.--The duck makes its nest upon the thief's head.--Bribus on
the thieves' head; Bribus as Indras, and as a bird.--Brahman upon
the hansâs.--The sun as a golden duck.--The betrothed wife as a
duck.--The arrows of Râmas as hansâs.--Kabandhas drawn by
hansâs.--The hansâs as love messengers.--The geese-swans and the
young hero in Russian tales.--The serpent-witch and the princess as
a white duck.--The golden and silver eggs of the duck.--The golden
egg of the duck causes the death of the horse.--The geese of the
Capitol.--The goose which, after having been cooked, rises again
alive.--Geese as discoverers of deceits.--The Valkiries as
swans.--Berta the Reine pédauque.--The wild goose on the bush.--The
goose eaten on St Michael's Day.--The hero and the swan.--The
kingdom of the San Graal.--The legend of Lohengrin; a variety of the
myth of the Açvinâu; Lohengrin and Elsa's brother, the sun and the
moon.--The legend of the Dioskuroi; Zeus as a swan; the Dioskuroi
deliver Helen, as Lohengrin delivers Elsa.
Inasmuch as there is the white dove and the dove-coloured one,[434]
the white duck and goose, the duck and the dark-coloured or
fire-coloured goose, the white swan and the flamingo, the red swan and
the black, these birds, dove, goose, duck, and swan, from the
diversity of colour which they assume upon the earth, also assumed
mythical aspects which are sometimes contradictory when translated to
the sky to represent celestial phenomena. While the white ones served
for the more poetical images of mythology, the red and the dark ones
offered aspects now benignant, now malignant, alluring the hero now to
his ruin, and now, instead, to good fortune. The red hues, for
example, of the western sky appear as flames into which the witch
wishes to precipitate the young hero; the roseate tints of the eastern
heavens, on the contrary, are generally the pyre or furnace in which
the hero burns the ill-favoured witch who endeavours to ruin him; from
the dawn of morning, from the white sky, from the snow of winter, from
the white earth or white swan, the golden egg (the sun) comes forth;
now the beautiful maiden, now the young hero emerges from it--the
aurora and the sun, or else the spring and the sun. The evening sun
and aurora in the night, the sun and the verdant earth, which divests
itself of its varicoloured attire in autumn, veil, cover, and lose
themselves; their most vivid hues become obscure in the gloom of
night, or are covered by the snow of winter; the hero becomes a
dark-coloured dove, or a gloomy swan which crosses the waters. I have
noted more than once how the night of the year corresponds to those of
the day; the sun which hides itself in the night of evening, and the
sun which veils itself in the night of winter, are often represented
by the same mythical images.
Let us now see under what mythical aspects the dove, the duck, and the
swan appear in the East, in order to compare them with Western
traditions.
The _Rigvedas_ presents us with the funereal dove, the grey or
dark-coloured dove, the messenger of the nocturnal or wintry darkness.
Seeing it is joined in the Vedic hymn with the owl, it was supposed
that it represented some other bird than the dove, and interpreters
were fain to recognise in the Vedic kapotas the _turdus macrourus_
rather than the dove; but this interpretation seems to me
inadmissible, since the Vedic kapotas appears as a domestic bird, and
one which approaches the dwellings of men, habits which thrushes have
not, and which doves have. In the 165th hymn of the tenth book of the
_Rigvedas_, the kapotas is exorcised as a messenger of the funereal
Nirritis, of death, and of Yamas the god of the dead, in order that it
may do no evil: "Be propitious to us," cries the poet, "be propitious
to us, rapid (or messenger) kapotas; inoffensive may the bird be unto
us, O gods, in the houses. When the owl emits that painful cry, when
the kapotas touches the fire, honour be to Mrityus, to Yamas, whose
messenger it is."[435] As birds of evil omen also must the doves be
recognised, which flee from the unhappy in the _Pancatantram_.[436] In
the dove pursued by the hawk (the hawk has also in Sanskrit the name
of kapotâris, or enemy of doves) of the Buddhist legend concerning the
king who sacrifices himself to keep his word, which has been recorded
in the chapter on the hawk, the hawk is the form taken by Indras, and
the dove the form of Agnis, the fire. The same legend is found again
in the _Tuti-Name_, with this variation that the vulture takes the
place of the falcon, and Moses that of the Buddhist king. In order to
fulfil the duties of hospitality, he cuts off as much of his own flesh
as the dove weighs, to give it to the vulture, who takes in jest the
same part of the hero which the hatred of races and religious
fanaticism make the Jew of Venice, immortalised by the genius of
Shakspeare, demand with seriousness. In other Hindoo varieties of the
same legend of the hero who sacrifices himself, we find two doves (in
the _Pancatantram_) which sacrifice themselves one for the other; two
doves that love one another (in the _Tuti-Name_,[437] they are two
turtle-doves). Here we have a form of the two Açvinâu, of the two
brothers of whom one sacrifices himself for the other; the well-known
fable of La Fontaine, _Les Deux Pigeons_, is a reminiscence of this
Eastern legend. In the same way, a variety of the legend of the two
brothers is contained in the fable of Æsop, and of La Fontaine, of the
dove that throws a blade of grass into the water to the ant that is
about to drown, and thus saves it, for which reason the grateful ant
soon after bites the foot of the hunter who has caught the dove, so
that he is compelled to let it go. In the chapter which treats of the
swallow, we saw the beautiful maiden upon the tree at the fountain
changed into a swallow by the witch's enchantment; numerous other
legends, instead of the transformation into a swallow, give us that
into a dove.[438] The stories of the maiden Filadoro and of the Island
of the Ogres, in the _Pentamerone_;[439] a Piedmontese story
communicated by me in 1866 to my friend Professor Alexander
Wesselofski, who published it in his essay upon the poet Pucci; the
thirteenth Sicilian story of Signora Gonzenbach (of which the twelfth
story is a variation); the forty-ninth story of the sixth book of
_Afanassieff_ (a variety of which occurs at the end of the fifth of
the stories of Santo Stefano di Calcinaia), and a great number of
analogous European stories, reproduce this subject of the maiden
transformed into a dove by the witch's enchantment: as the swallow is
white and black, so does the dove into which the beautiful maiden is
transformed appear now white and now black. No less numerous are the
stories in which, instead of the young princess, we read of young
princes transformed into doves; I publish here two unpublished Tuscan
stories which refer to this subject, and which (particularly the
second) are of great interest.[440]
Hitherto the dove has appeared as a mournful and diabolical form
assumed by the hero or heroine, on compulsion of external magic. Of
funereal character, too, are the two doves which place themselves upon
the cross-trees of the ship in which Gennariello is carrying a hawk, a
horse, and a white and red bride with black hair to his brother
Milluccio (a variation of the legend of the Açvinâu, and of that of
the youth who sacrifices himself for his brother). The two doves
speak to each other; one says that Gennariello is taking to his
brother Milluccio a hawk which immediately after its arrival will tear
out his eyes, and that he who should warn Milluccio of it, or not take
the hawk to him, would turn to marble; then that Gennariello is taking
to his brother Milluccio a horse which, as soon as it is ridden, will
break his neck, and that he who should warn Milluccio of this, or not
take the horse to him, would turn, to marble; and finally, it says
that Gennariello is taking to his brother a wife on whose account a
dragon will devour the bride and bridegroom during the first night of
their union, and that he who should warn Milluccio of this, or not
take the bride to him, would turn to marble. The cunning Gennariello
takes hawk, horse, and bride to Milluccio; but before he takes the
hawk in his hand, Gennariello cuts off its head; before he rides the
horse, Gennariello cuts its legs off; and before the dragon comes up
to devour the bride and bridegroom, Gennariello shears off its head.
Milluccio, who has not seen the dragon, sees his brother with a knife
in his hand, and thinks that he has come to kill him; he has him bound
and condemned to death. In order not to escape this fate, Gennariello
reveals everything and turns to marble. Milluccio learns that by
anointing the marble with the blood of his two little sons, his
brother can be recalled to life; he slaughters his children; the
mother, in despair, goes to the window to kill herself by throwing
herself down, but she sees her father coming towards her, and
shouting, "Drinto na nugola." He resuscitates her children, saying
that it was to avenge himself, he had caused such bitter pain to all;
on Gennariello, because he had carried off his daughter; on Milluccio,
who was the cause of her being carried off; on his daughter, because
she had eloped from her home. The two doves that perched upon the
crosstrees of the mast were therefore messengers of death to the hero
and to the heroine, as sometimes, on the other hand, they are their
own funereal form. The reader will doubtless remember how, in the
funeral of Patroclus in the _Iliad_, amongst the funereal games, there
is that of shooting arrows at a dove hung upon the mast of a ship.
(He will also remember the two prophetic doves which gave responses
upon two oak-trees or beeches at Dodona, and which cried, "Zeus was,
Zeus is, Zeus will be, O Zeus, the greatest of the gods!") The dove
here appears in connection with funereal waters; the fable is well
known of the dove that meets with its death by beating its head
against a wall upon which water is painted.[441] In the legend of
Queen Radegonda, the holy queen, in the form of a dove, delivers
sailors from shipwreck. According to Apollonios, a dove was the guide
of the Argonauts. It is said that Semiramis was transformed into one
after her death. The dove also appears as a funereal symbol in
Christian monuments; hence, and from its use as the symbol of the St
Esprit, the superstition cherished by a great portion of the people in
Italy, Germany, Holland, and Russia, to the effect that it is a sin to
eat a dove. It is well-known what reverence was shown to it in
antiquity, particularly in Syria and in Palestine.
Sometimes the form of a dove is voluntarily assumed by the two young
lovers, to flee from the persecution of the monster; as, for instance,
in the sixth of the _Novelline di Santo Stefano_. Sometimes the
funereal dove (like the funereal crow) is the bringer of joy and good
things to men and gods. The popular custom of the artificial dove,
commonly called the dove of the Pazzi (from the name of the noble
Florentine family which possessed the privilege), which, at Florence,
on Holy Saturday, that is to say, Easter Eve, starts from the altar of
the Cathedral, and flies at midday to light the fireworks upon the
little square between Santa Maria del Fiore and the Baptistery of St
John, to announce that Christ has risen to a crowd of peasants, who
have flocked in from the country to augur from the dove's flight
whether they will have a good harvest in the following year,--is a
symbol of the end of winter, and of the commencement of spring. In the
_Metamorphoses_ of Ovid, the daughters of Anius, by the grace of
Bacchus, change into corn, wine, and oil, whatever they touch,
according to the words of the same Anius--
"Tactu natarum cuncta mearum
In segetem, laticemque meri, baccamque Minervæ
Transformabantur."
Agamemnon wishes to have them with him to provision the army; the
daughters of Anius refuse; Agamemnon then purposes compelling them by
main force; but Bacchus takes pity upon them, and transforms them into
white doves. In the thirtieth story of the sixth book of
_Afanassieff_, two doves (a form of the Açvinâu) come to separate the
barley for Masha or Little Mary, the black (cornushka) or ugly or
dirty little girl, the persecuted Cinderella, and then making her
mount upon the stove, transform her into an exceedingly beautiful
maiden, renewing thus the miracle of Indras (and of the Açvinâu), who
restores to beauty the maiden of the ugly skin. The fireworks of the
popular Tuscan custom, the stove, and the car of Indras perform the
same miracle. In the sixth story of the first book of the
_Pentamerone_, the maiden Zezolla, called at home "a cat, a
cinder-girl," because she was always watching the fire, ill-treated at
home by her step-mother, is benefited by the dove of the fairies of
the island of Sardinia, which sends her a plant that yields golden
dates, a golden spade, a little golden bucket, and a silk tablecloth.
The girl must cultivate the plant, and simply remember, when she
wishes for some favour, to say--
"Dattolo mio 'naurato,
Co la zappatella d'oro t'haggio zappato,
Co lo secchietello d'oro t'haggio adacquato,
Co la tovaglia de seta t'haggio asciuttato;
Spoglia a te, e vieste a me."
The date-tree yields some of its riches to adorn the maiden. Thus,
when the young king proclaims a festival, she goes disguised in regal
attire, and dances with an effect that outdazzles like a sun. When she
is followed by the prince the first time, she throws gold behind her;
the second time, pearls; the third, her slipper; and by means of it
she is recognised and espoused. In the twenty-second Esthonian story,
when the young prince-lover arrives, two doves perch upon the
rose-bush, in which the beautiful daughter of the gardener is enclosed
by enchantment; the beautiful maiden comes out of the rose-bush, and,
showing the half of her ring, weds the prince who has preserved the
other half. In the Hellenic myth, Aphroditê and Love play at seeing
who will pluck most flowers; winged Love is winning, but the nymph
Peristera helps Aphroditê; Love indignant, changes her into the
peristera or dove, which Aphroditê, to console her, takes under her
protection. The doves now draw the chariot of Venus, and now (like the
sparrows) accompany it. In the _Odyssey_ the doves bring the ambrosia
to Zeus,[442] and it is in the form of a dove that Zeus (well known
to be an _alter ego_ of Indras) visits the virgin Phthia. Catullus,
speaking of Cæsar's _salacitas_, makes mention of the _columbulum
albulum_, or little dove of Venus.[443] In this passage the dove
becomes a phallical symbol; and we are reminded of the well-known
mythical episode of the animal, bird, or fish which laughs, by the
equivocal Italian proverb, "The dove that laughs wants the bean" (said
of a woman when she smiles upon her lover[444]). It is narrated of
Aphroditê, that she cured Aspasia of a tumour by the help of a dove;
here the dove does to Aspasia the same service as the rudder of
Indras's chariot to Apalâ in the Vedic legend.
But in mythical tradition the place of the doves is sometimes taken by
ducks, which are exchanged for swans.
The Hindoo word _hansas_ means now swan, now duck (anas, anser), now
goose, now phænicopterus. No wonder then that the myths exchanged,
one for another, animals which were confounded together under one and
the same appellation. Russian stories call the birds goose-swans
(guçlebedi) which now carry off, and now save the young hero.
In the Vedic hymns, the hansas (duck-swan or goose-swan) is
represented more than once. Agnis, the fire, when entreated to arouse
himself in houses with the aurora, is compared to a swan in the waters
(or to the light in the darkness, to white upon black, or the sun in
the azure sky[445]). The god Agnis is himself called hansas, the
companion (as a thunderbolt) of the movable (waves or clouds), going
in company with the celestial waters.[446] The song of the companions
of Brihaspatis, singing hymns to the cows or auroræ of the morn,
resembles the song of the hansâs.[447] The Marutas, with the splendid
bodies (the winds that lighten, howl, and thunder) are compared to
hansâs with black backs[448] (which reminds us of the swallows with
black backs and with white ones, of black crows and white crows, black
swans and white ones). The horses of the two Açvinâu are compared to
hansâs, ambrosial, innocent, with golden wings, which waken with the
aurora (being sunbeams), which swim in the waters, joyful and
merry.[449] In the Russian stories of _Afanassieff_,[450] a duck comes
to make its nest upon the head of the thief who has fallen into the
waters out of the sky. The duck lays a golden egg (the sun) in its
nest at morn, and a silver egg (the moon) at even. In the _Rigvedas_,
I read that upon the head of the thieves (Panayas), similar to the
vast forest of the Ganges, at its higher part, Bribuh went to place
himself, scattering thousands of gifts.[451] I think I can recognise
in Bribus a bird and a personification of Indras. Bribus is, in
Çâñkhâyanas, represented as a takshan, which is explained as a
constructor, an artificer, a carpenter; hence Bribus is supposed to be
the carpenter of the Panayas. But this seems improbable, besides being
in contradiction to the Vedic strophe. The proper primitive sense of
the word _takshan_ is the cutter, he who breaks in pieces; in Bribus,
therefore, I recognise not the carpenter of the Panayas, but their
destroyer. As we also find, in another Vedic hymn,[452] Bribus in
connection with two other birds, viz., the bharadvagas (the lark) and
the stokas (the cuckoo), I am induced to suppose that Bribus too is a
bird. Finally, as I find Bribus in connection with Indras, I see in
this bird that perches upon the head of the Panayas, a form of the god
Indras himself. The duck, in Russian stories, deposits its egg upon
the robber's head; thus Indras takes their treasures off the head of
the Panayas. We already know of the pearls which fall from the head of
the good fairy, combed by the virtuous maiden; we also know that the
mythical waters are in relation with the treasures. We must record
here the legend of the _Râmâyanam_ concerning the origin of the
Ganges, which, before pouring its waters upon the earth, let them
wander for a long time upon the hairy head of the god Çivas, who is a
more elevated form of Kuveras, the god of riches.[453] We know also
that the pearl and the egg are the same in the myths.
The god Brahman is represented in Hindoo mythology riding upon a white
hansas.
In the _Râmâyanam_, the sky is compared to a lake of which the
resplendent sun is the golden duck.[454] Râmas (a form of the sun
Vishnus), whose speech has the accent of the hansas drunk with
love,[455] hurls with his divine bow an arrow which penetrates through
seven palm-trees, the mountain, and the earth, out of which it
afterwards comes, and returns to Râmas in the form of a hansas.[456]
Kabandhas, who, when traversing the fire, is released by his monstrous
form, is drawn by hansâs whilst ascending into heaven.[457] Finally,
the hansâs are well known which served as love-messengers between the
prince Nalas and the Princess Damayantî in the celebrated episode of
the _Mahâbhâratam_.
In the fourth story of the first book of _Afanassieff_, little Johnny
(Ivasco) is upon an oak-tree, which the witch is gnawing, to possess
herself of him; three flights of geese-swans pass one after the other;
Johnny begs for their assistance; the first flight refuse; as also
the second; those of the third take Johnny upon their wings and carry
him home.[458] In the nineteenth story of the sixth book, the
geese-swans assume, on the contrary, a malignant aspect, carrying the
little brother on their wings away from his negligent sister. The
story says that these animals have had for a long time the evil
reputation of carrying little children off. The geese-swans carry the
boy into a fairy's house, where he plays with golden apples. The
sister follows upon his track; she inquires at a stove, an apple-tree,
and a brook of milk, where the goose-swans have carried the boy to,
but learns nothing; at last the malicious little iosz (the sea-urchin)
reveals to her the secret. The sister takes her brother and carries
him home, having been followed by the geese-swans and having had to
hide herself during her flight by the brook, by the apple-tree and
then by the stove.
But if geese, ducks, and swans sometimes do evil, or are sometimes
diabolical forms assumed by the witch's deceit, they generally produce
good and conduct to good. In a variation of the forty-sixth story of
the sixth book of _Afanassieff_, the geese predict the future to Ivan
the merchant's son, who, having been to school under the devil, learns
there, amongst other things, the language of birds. In the sixtieth
story of the sixth book of _Afanassieff_, the swan, a beautiful
maiden, helps the unhappy Danilo, whom the prince has ordered to sew a
pelisse which must have golden lions for buttons and birds from beyond
the seas for button-holes; the same swan performs other miracles for
the youth whom she loves. In the forty-sixth story of the fourth book
of _Afanassieff_, the old serpent-witch makes the princess become a
white duck during the prince's absence. The duck lays three eggs, out
of which she has three sons, two handsome, and one ill-favoured, but
cunning. The witch kills, during their sleep, the two handsome sons
and turns them to ducks; the third escapes by means of his cunning;
the white duck, anxious about her sons, flies to the prince's palace
and begins to sing--
"Krià, krià, my little sons!
Krià, krià, little pigeons!
The old witch has extinguished you;
The old witch, the malignant serpent,
The deceitful malignant serpent!
Your own father has carried you off,
Your own father, my husband!
She drowned us in the rapid stream,
She transformed us into little white ducks,
And she herself lives in regal pomp!"
The prince has the duck caught by the wings, and says, "White
birch-tree, put thyself behind; beautiful maiden, before." At this
magical formula, the tree rises behind him and he finds his beautiful
princess before him. He then compels the witch to bring the little
children to life again.
The death of the duck sometimes makes the fortune of the hero or the
heroine, on account of the egg which it produces (the sun in the
morning and the moon in the evening). In the fifty-third story of the
fifth book of _Afanassieff_, the young hero, by the advice of an
unknown young man, goes to seek under the roots of a birch-tree a duck
which lays one day (in the morning) a golden egg, and next day (in the
evening) a silver one; upon its breast, the following words are
written in golden letters:--"He who eats its head will become king; he
who eats the heart will spit gold." He carries it to his mother when
his father is absent and his mother has an intrigue with another
gentleman. The gentleman reads the golden letters and advises the
woman to have the duck cooked; but the two sons are before him; and
whilst their mother is at mass, one eats the head and the other the
heart of the duck, and meet with the adventures which are related in
the chapter on the Horse.[459] The golden egg of the duck causes the
death of the witch and the monster in numerous Slavonic stories. In
the thirty-third story of the fifth book of _Afanassieff_, a
marvellous goose, of the same nature as those that in the Capitol
warned the Romans of the ambuscade of the Gauls, discovers the
traitors. The wife of a rich merchant asks her husband to procure for
her the marvel of marvels. Her husband buys, in the twenty-seventh
world and in the thirtieth kingdom (which is the kingdom of the other
night-world), from an old man,[460] a goose which, after having been
cooked and eaten, all except the bones, rises again alive. The goose
performs the same miracle in the merchant's house; on the morrow, when
the husband is absent, his wife invites a lover of hers into the house
and wishes to cook the goose to welcome him. She says to it, "Come
here;" the goose obeys; she commands it to get into the frying-pan,
but it refuses. The woman puts it in by force, but remains fastened to
the frying-pan;[461] the lover tries to release her, but sticks fast
also; the servants come to the rescue, and stick one to the other and
all to the frying-pan, until the husband appears, hears his wife's
confession, thrashes the lover and releases the woman from the goose.
In the _Pentamerone_, too, geese appear as discoverers of deceits.
Marziella, when she combs her hair, scatters pearls and flower-buds
about her; when she walks, lilies and violets grow up under her
feet;[462] her brother Ciommo is to conduct her to the king as his
wife; but the old aunt changes the bride, putting her own ugly
daughter in the place of her beautiful niece. The indignant king sends
Ciommo to pasture the geese; he neglects them, but Marziella, who had
been carried off by a siren, comes from the bottom of the sea to feed
them, "de pasta riale," and to give them "rose-water" to drink. The
geese grow fat, and begin to sing near the king's palace--
"Pire, pire, pire;
Assai bello è lo sole co la luna;
Assai chiù bella è chi coverna a nuie."
The king sends a servant after the geese, and thus discovers
everything; he wishes to marry the beautiful maiden, but the siren
keeps her tied with a golden chain; the king, with a noiseless file,
files with his own hands the chain which keeps the maiden's foot fast,
and thereafter marries her.[463] It is a gooseherd who, in the
twentieth Esthonian story, releases the beautiful girl from the
monster husband, the killer of his wives (a form of Barbebleu).
In the Russian story, the fairy maidens (in German traditions, the
Virgin Mary too) sometimes take, in order to cross the waters, the
form of geese-swans; thus in the _Eddas_, three Valkyries spin on the
shores of the lake, with their swan forms close behind them. "The
maidens," sings the poem of Völund, "flew from the south across
Mörkved, in order that the young Allhvit might be able to accomplish
his destiny. The daughters of the South sat down upon the shore to
spin the precious cloth. One of them, the most beautiful maiden of the
world, was clasped to the white bosom of Egil; Svanhvit, the second,
wore swan's feathers; the third embraced the white neck of
Völund."[464] To the Bertha of popular German tradition, only the foot
of the white goose or of the swan of the Valkyries has remained; hence
her name of Foot-of-goose and of _Reine pédauque_, in the same way as
the swan's foot alone has remained to the goddess Freya.
When the form of a duck, a goose, or a swan is destroyed, the young hero
or the young heroine alone remain. In a German tradition, quoted by
Simrock in his _German Mythology_, we find an enchanted hunter who
strikes a wild goose on the flight, and which falls into a bush; he
comes up to take it, and instead of it (in the same way as we saw above,
the rosebush on which the doves perch) a naked woman rises before him.
The custom of eating a goose in England on St Michael's Day, is referred
by tradition to the times of Queen Elizabeth, who, on St Michael's Day,
received the news of the defeat of the Invincible Armada, when she had
just eaten a goose. But inasmuch as, according to Baron von
Reinsberg-Düringsfield, the custom of eating a goose on St Michael's Day
dates from the times of Edward IV., we must admit that Queen Elizabeth
conformed to a popular custom which already existed in England.[465] St
Michael's goose announces the winter like the halcyon. It is eaten as an
augury of the termination of the rainy and wintry season, inasmuch as
when the aquatic bird, the halcyon, the goose, the duck, or the swan,
finds no more water, when the sea of night, or the snow of winter dries
up, when the aquatic bird is wounded, or is eaten, or dies, the golden
egg is found, the sun comes out, the aurora returns, the winter appears
again, the young hero and the beautiful maiden come forth. When the hero
or heroine becomes an aquatic bird,[466] when he becomes a swan, is
drawn by a swan, or rides upon it, it means that he is traversing the
sea of death, and that he is returning to the kingdom of the San Graal.
When he comes on the swan to meet the beautiful maiden, no one must ask
him whence he came. The swan awaits him and will draw him once more
under its magic power, and into its gloomy kingdom, as soon as this
kingdom is remembered by the living. The imagination of the Celtic and
Germanic nations has, in a cycle of numerous and fascinating legends,
invested with solemn mystery this myth, to which the inspired and
classical music of Richard Wagner has, in Lohengrin, imparted a new
attractive magic. Lohengrin, the _recens natus_, the hero born of
himself, arrives in a boat drawn by a swan, into which a sorceress has
transformed Elsa's young brother: he comes to deliver the Princess Elsa,
and is about to marry her, but he does not forget that as long as he
remains with her, so much the longer will the torment of her brother
endure, so much the longer will he suffer in the shape of a swan; woe to
him if any one asks who he is, whence he came, or what that swan is, for
he would then be obliged to remember that the swan waits for him to
deliver it. Lohengrin must either renounce his love for Elsa, or betray
his cavalier's faith to the swan, of whose mysterious nature he is
cognisant; he bids a funereal farewell to Elsa, reunites her with her
young brother, and mournfully disappears on the gloomy waters, over
whose moonlit depths he had come. This is the legend of the two
brothers, raised to its utmost poetic and ideal power by Northern
genius. The sun and the moon appear in turns before the dawn and the
spring. They are separated, and one delivers the other in the legends
inspired by the good genie of man, as in others inspired by his evil
genie, one persecutes and deceives the other. We have, even in the Vedic
hymns, the Açvinâu, the divine twins, identified now with the twilights,
now with the sun and the moon, drawn by swans; Lohengrin is the sun;
Elsa's brother is the moon. When the evening aurora, when the autumnal
earth, loses the sun, it finds the moon; when the morning aurora or the
vernal earth loses the moon, the sun takes its place; the lovers change
places. One swan causes the birth of the other, carries the other, dies
for the other, like one dove for the other, and as the Dioskuroi lay
down their lives for each other. And, in truth, the legend of the
Dioskuroi is, in some points, in marvellous accordance with the Northern
legends of the rider of the swan. Zeus becomes a swan and unites himself
with Leda, wife of Tyndareos, and generates by her the sun and the moon,
Polüdeukes and Helen; according to Homer Helen alone is Zeus's daughter,
and Polüdeukes and Kastor are sons of Tyndareos; according to Herodotos,
Helen, on the contrary, is the daughter of Tyndareos, and this is in
accordance with Euripides, who tells us that the Dioskuroi are sons of
Zeus. In the _Heroides_ of Ovid, where the primitive tradition has
already been altered, Leda, after having united herself to the swan
Zeus, gives birth to two eggs; Helen comes out of one, Kastor and
Polüdeukes out of the other. Evidently _tot capita tot sententiæ_; but
these contradictions, far from excluding the myth of the sun, the moon,
and the aurora (or of the spring) confirm it. It is always difficult to
determine the paternity of a child who is born in an irregular manner,
and the birth of Helen and her two brothers was certainly extraordinary.
What is important here is that we have the swan which generates sons in
Leda; these sons, who are partly of the nature of the bird, and partly
of that of the woman, must assume a double form, and now become swans
like their father, now shine in their mother's beauty; when, moreover,
we think that only one of the brothers was, with Helen, born of the
swan, it becomes natural to think of the other brother who may love
Helen without being guilty of incest.[467] Before becoming famous by the
varied fortunes of Troy, Helen, as a girl, had her adventures; Theseus
seduced her and carried her off. The Dioskuroi come to deliver her in
the same way as Lohengrin comes upon the swan to deliver Elsa, whilst
her seducer is about to effect her ruin. Finally, the adventures of the
two Dioskuroi, of whom one sacrifices himself for the other, correspond
to the legend of the Schwanritter, the brother, or brother-in-law, who,
on account of the swan offers up his own life. Thus India, Greece, and
Germany united, in various forms, the figure of the swan with the story
of the two brothers, or of the two companions; India created the myth,
Greece coloured it, Germany has imbued it with passionate energy and
pathos.
FOOTNOTES:
[434] The Indian word _kapotas_, which means a dove, also indicates
the grey colour of antimony, the colour of the commonest species of
doves, and of those which are fed on St Mark's Place at Venice.
[435] Çivah kapota ishito no astu anâgâ devâh çakuno griheshu; str.
2.--For the fourth strophe, cfr. the chapter which treats of the Owl.
[436] ii. 9.
[437] ii. 239.--Cfr. the chapter on the Eagle.
[438] It appears to me that the same confusion arose between _coluber_
and _columba_ as between _chelüdros_, a kind of serpent, and
_chelidôn_, a swallow. The beautiful maiden upon a tree occurs even in
the _Tuti-Name_, i. 178, _seq._
[439] ii. 7, and v. 9
[440] They were related to me at Antignano near Leghorn by the peasant
woman Uliva Selvi:--
A gentleman had twelve sons and one daughter, who had, by enchantment,
been metamorphosed into an eagle, and was kept in a cage. The father
takes the twelve sons to mass every day; every day he meets an old
beggar-woman and gives alms to her; one day, however, he has no money
with him, and therefore gives her nothing; the old woman curses him,
wishing that he may never see his sons again. No sooner said than
done; the twelve sons become twelve doves and fly away. The despairing
father and mother begin to weep; in their despair they forget to feed
the eagle. Opposite the gentleman's house the king lived, who becomes
enamoured of the eagle as though of a beautiful maiden; he has her
stolen and replaced by another eagle. Not far thence there lived a
washerwoman who had such a beautiful daughter that she never let her
go out except at night. They wash at the fountain surrounded by
poplar-trees; at midnight, as they wash, they hear a noise among the
poplar-trees, and the maiden is afraid. One night they listen and hear
the doves speaking and telling one another the incidents of the day,
where they had been and what they had been doing. They then fly into a
beautiful garden; the girl follows them; they enter into a beautiful
palace, and the washerwoman relates what she has seen to the
gentleman, who rejoices, and promises a great reward to the
washerwoman if she will show him where his sons go to sleep. Both
father and mother go to see; the pigeons speak, and say, "Were our
mother to see us ..."; they then fly away. The gentleman then consults
an astrologer, who advises him to allure the old witch into his house
by the promise of alms, to shut her up in a room, and to compel her by
main force to indicate the means of turning the pigeons into youths
once more, or else to kill her. The old woman gives a powder which,
when scattered on the highest mountain, will make the pigeons return
home. The father goes to the mountain, scatters the powder and returns
home, where he finds his sons, who are inquiring after the eagle. They
go to see it and do not recognise it; they complain to their mother of
this. Meanwhile, the young king is always near his eagle as if making
love to it; and his mother is displeased at it. The twelve brothers
meet a fairy who, for some alms, tells who has their eagle, and that
it will soon return home a beautiful maiden. And the eagle becomes a
beautiful girl and is married by the king.
There was once a king who had a handsome son, enamoured of a beautiful
princess. He is carried off with two servants by the magicians and
transformed into a pigeon; the servants undergo the same
metamorphosis; one becomes green, one red, and the other greyish
violet (pavonazzo). They take him into a beautiful palace where he
must stay for seven years. Each has a large basin,--one is of gold,
another of silver, and the third of bronze. When they plunge into
them, they become three handsome youths. The princess, meanwhile, is
dying to know where her lover is gone; she goes to have her hair
combed on a terrace; the three pigeons carry away her looking-glass,
then the ribbon of her hair, and then her comb. A great festival
occurs in this town, to which the girls of the land go by night; on
the way, one of them, near the break of day, turns aside for a few
minutes; she sees a golden gate, finds a little gold key on the earth,
opens the door and enters into a fine garden. At the end of the path
there is a beautiful palace, into which she goes; she finds the three
basins of gold, silver, and bronze, and sees the pigeons become young
men. Meanwhile the king's daughter falls ill of grief, and is to all
appearance dying; the king resolves to have her cured at any cost. The
girl who had been in the place relates to the king's daughter all that
she has seen; the latter is cured and goes with the girl to the
palace; they find it, enter, and see a table laid for three persons;
the two girls hide themselves. The prince and the princess meet with
one another; but the prince, upon seeing her, is full of despair,
saying that her impatience has prolonged the enchantment for seven
years more, whilst it had at the time only three more days to run. He
becomes a pigeon again; she must stay for seven years upon a tower
exposed to all the inclemency of the seasons. Seven years pass by; the
princess has become so ugly that she looks like a beast, with long
hair all over her burned skin. The enchantment comes to an end for him
after seven years; he goes to look for her; she says, "How much have I
suffered for you!" The prince does not recognise her, and leaves her;
she is left naked in a dense forest, and goes to seek her father.
Night comes on, and the princess and her servant-maid do not know
where to take refuge; they climb up a tree, whence they perceive a
light. They walk towards it and find a beautiful little palace; a
beautiful lady, a fairy, shows herself, and asks, "Is this you,
Caroline?" This was the princess's name. But the fairy can give no
news of the prince, and sends her on to another fairy, her sister,
with the same result; she then goes to a third fairy, walking a double
distance each time. The three fairies were three queens who had been
betrayed by the same young prince. The third fairy gives to the
princess a magical rod; she must go to the prince and do to him what
he did to her--spit in his face, to wit. She is brought in a boat
before the young king's palace, and there, following the fairy's
instructions, she raises, by means of the rod, a beautiful palace, a
palace more beautiful than that of the king, with a beautiful
fountain. The young king wishes to go and see it; he sees a beautiful
princess and kisses his hand to her, but she shuts the window in his
face. He then invites her to dinner, but she refuses. He sends her a
magnificent diamond, which she gives to her majordomo, saying that she
has many more beautiful. He then sends her a splendid dress, which can
be taken in the palm of the hand; she tears it into pieces and gives
it to the cook to be used for kitchen purposes. The young king becomes
passionately enamoured of her, and sends to her his best watch, which
she gives also to her majordomo. He falls ill of a dreadful fever and
wishes to marry her; he sends his mother. The princess laughs at the
prince and refuses to come, saying, "Why does he not come himself?"
His mother begs again that she will come. "Let him come," she answers;
and at last she consents to come if they will make from her palace to
that of the king a covered way so well and thickly made that not a ray
of light can enter, and which she may be able to pass through with her
equipage. Half way, the covering opens, and the sunbeams enter, upon
which she disappears. (Cfr. the Indian myth of Urvaçî). The king being
about to die, his mother returns to the princess, who demands that
they bring him to her as if dead, in a bier. The king confesses that
he has betrayed four maidens, and that it is on account of the fourth
that he is coming to such a miserable end. The princess laughs at him
and spits twice in his face; the third time he rises again, they are
reconciled and married. (The spitting of the princess, which makes the
dead prince rise again, is the dew of the ambrosia, or of spring,
which brings the sun to life again.)--Cfr. the stories ii. 5, iv. 8,
of the _Pentamerone_, and v. 22 of _Afanassieff_.
[441] It is said of the widowed turtle-dove that it will never drink
again in any fountain of limpid water for fear of reviving the image
of its lost companion by seeing its own in the water. The Christians
pretend that the voice of the turtle-dove represents the cry, the
sighing, and afterwards, for the resurrection of Christ, the joy of
Mary Magdalen. Ælianos says that the turtle-dove is sacred not only to
the goddess of love, and to the goddess of harvests, but also to the
funereal Parcæ.
[442] In the legend of St Remy it is a dove that carries to the saint
the flagon of water with which he must baptize King Clodoveus.
[443]
"Et ille nunc superbus et superfluens
Perambulabit omnium cubilia,
Ut albulus columbus, aut Adoneus?
Cinæde Romule, hæc videbis et feres?"
The chastity and the proverbial conjugal fidelity attributed to doves is
here denied. Catullus had evidently closely observed the habits of these
animals, which are sometimes, on the contrary, of a shameless
infidelity. I have seen a white dove, who, in the presence of his wife,
intent upon hatching her eggs, violated the nuptial bed of a gray dove,
at a moment when the jealous husband was eating; the wife accepted the
caresses of the husband and of the lover in the same passive attitude.
[444] We may also record here another Italian proverb, "To take two
doves with one bean." In Italian anatomy a part of the phallos is
called a bean (fava). The birds, and especially the thrushes and the
doves, according to the popular belief, not only have the faculty of
making other birds, but even plants fruitful. The words of Pliny,
_Hist. Nat._ xvi. 44, have already been quoted by Prof. Kuhn: "Omnino
autem satum nullo modo nascitur, nec nisi per alvum avium redditum,
maxime palumbis ac turdis."
[445] Çvasity apsu hanso na sîdan kratvâ cetishtho viçâm usharbhut;
_Rigv._ i. 65, 9.
[446] Bîbhatsûnâm sayugam hansam âhur apâm divyânâm sakhye carantam;
x. 124, 9.
[447] Hansâir iva sakhibhir vâvadadbhir açmanmayâni nahanâ vyasyan
brihaspatir abhi kanikradad gâ; x. 67, 3.
[448] Sasvaç cid dhi tanvah çumbhamânâ â hansâso nîlaprishthâ apaptan;
vii. 59, 7.
[449] Cfr. the chapter which treats of the Bee.
[450] vi. 2.
[451] Adhi bribuh panînâm varshishthe mûrdhann asthât uruh kaksho na
gâñgyah; _Rigv._ vi. 45, 31.--Bribum sahasradâtamam sûrim
sahasrasâtamam; vi. 45, 33.--Cfr. also the 32d strophe.
[452] _Rigv._ vi. 46.
[453] The goose is found in connection with robbers in the
twenty-third story of the sixth book of _Afanassieff_. Two servants
stole a precious pearl from the king; being about to be found out,
they give the pearl, by the advice of an old woman, to the grey goose
in a piece of bread; the goose is then accused of having stolen the
pearl. It is killed, the pearl is found, and the two robbers escape.
[454] v. 55.--In the forty-ninth story of the fifth book of
_Afanassieff_, a riddle occurs where the betrothed wife is represented
as a duck. A father sends his son to find the wife who is predestined
for him, with the following enigmatical order: "Go to Moscow; there
there is a lake; in the lake there is a net; if the duck has fallen
into the net, take the duck; if not, withdraw the net." The son
returns home with the duck--that is to say, with his betrothed wife.
[455] ii. 46.
[456] iv. 11.
[457] iii. 75.
[458] Cfr. _Afanassieff_, vi. 17, and a variety of the vi. 19.
[459] Cfr. an interesting variety of this story in the _Griechische
und Albanische Märchen_ of Hahn.
[460] Thus, in a Norwegian story, the dirty cinder-girl carries silver
ducks away from the magicians.--In the eighth Esthonian story, the third
brother is sent to hell for the ducks and geese with golden feathers.
[461] In a Scandinavian and Italian variety of this story, instead of
the goose we have the eagle and eaglets; the goose returns, in the first
story of the fifth book of the _Pentamerone_, to do the same duty as in
the Russian story, but with some more vulgar and less decent incidents.
[462] The image of the legs which, when they move, make flowers grow
up, is very ancient; students of Hindoo literature will remember the
pushpinyâu carato ganghe of the _Âitareya Br._, in the story of
Çunahçepas.
[463] The ninth of the _Novelline di Santo Stefano di Calcinaia_ is an
interesting variety of this; the beautiful maiden who feeds the geese
is disguised in an old woman's skin; the geese, who see her naked, cry
out: "Cocò, la bella padrona ch 'i' ho," until the prince, by means of
a noiseless file, makes the cook enter the room and carry the old
woman's skin away while she sleeps, and then weds her.--The following
unpublished story, communicated to me by Signor Greco from Cosenza in
Calabria, is a variation of that of the _Pentamerone_:--
Seven princes have a very beautiful sister. An emperor decides upon
marrying her, but upon the condition that if he does not find her to
his taste, he will decapitate her seven brothers. They set out
altogether, and the mother-in-law with her daughter follow them. On
the way, the sun is hot, and the elder brother cries out, "Solabella,
defend me from the heat, for you must please the king." The
step-mother advises her to take off her necklaces and to put them on
her half-sister. The second brother next complains of the heat, and
the step-mother advises her to take off her gold apparel and to put it
on her half-sister. By such means the step-mother at last succeeds in
making her naked; they come to the sea, and the step-mother pushes her
in; she is taken by a siren, who holds her by her foot with a golden
chain. The princes arrive with the ugly sister; the king weds the ugly
wife and cuts off the heads of the seven brothers. When the maiden is
wandering about in the sea, she asks the king's ducks for news of her
brothers; the ducks answer that they have been executed. She weeps;
the tears become pearls and the ducks feed upon them. This marvel
comes to the ears of the king, who follows the ducks and asks the girl
why she shuns the society of men; to which she answers: "Alas! how can
I, who am fastened by a golden chain?" and then relates everything.
Having recognised his bride, the king gives her this advice: she must
ask how, after the siren's death, she would be able to free herself;
and then he departs. Next day, Solabella tells the king that the siren
will not die, because she lives in a little bird, enclosed in a silver
cage which is shut up in a marble case, and seven iron ones, of which
she has the keys, and that if the siren died, a horseman, a white
horse, and a long sword would be necessary to cut the chain. The king
brings her a certain water, which he advises her to give the siren to
drink; she will then fall asleep, and the girl will be able to take
the keys and kill the little bird. When it is killed, the white horse
plunges into the sea, and the sword cuts the chain. Then the king
takes his beautiful bride to his palace, and the old step-mother is
burned in a shirt of pitch; the seven brothers are rubbed with an
ointment which brings them to life again, each exclaiming, "Oh! what a
beautiful dream I have had!"
[464] The old ogress of the ninth story of the fifth book of the
_Pentamerone_, who keeps three beautiful maidens shut up in three
citron-trees, and who feeds the asses which kick the swans upon the
banks of the river, is a variety of the same myth.
[465] Instead of geese, swans were also solemnly eaten; a popular
mediæval German song in Latin offers the lamentation of the roasted
swan; cfr. Uhland's _Schriften_, iii. 71, 158.--In the _Pancatantram_,
we have the swan sacrificed by the owl. In order to allure the swan,
the funereal owl, who wishes to kill it, invites it into a grove of
lotus-flowers, only, however, to decoy it subsequently into a dark
cavern, where the swan is killed by some travelling merchants, who
believe it to be an owl.
[466] In the _Eddas_, when the hero Sigurd expires, the geese bewail
his death.
[467] Cfr. also, with regard to this subject, the twenty-fourth
Esthonian story of the princess born in the egg, of whom her brother,
born in a more normal manner of the queen, becomes enamoured.