friendly beasts over whom he exercised an extraordinary power, became
the centre of a legend, almost of a cult, like his Christian
counterpart. There were several Abdâls of high repute during the reigns
of the early Ottoman Sultans. Perhaps there was more confidence in their
sanctity than in their sanity, for while the Catholic historian finds it
inconvenient to admit the hypothesis of madness as accounting for even
the strangest conduct of the saints of the desert or their mediæval
descendants, a devout Oriental sees no irreverence in recognising the
possible affinity between sainthood and mental alienation. In India the
holy recluse who tames wild beasts is as much alive to-day as in any
former time. Whatever is very old is still a part of the everyday life
of the Indian people. Accordingly the native newspapers frequently
report that some prince was attacked by a savage beast while out
hunting, when, at the nick of time, a venerable saint appeared at whose
first word the beast politely relaxed his hold. Those who know India
best by no means think that all such stories are invented. Why should
they be? Cardinal Massaia (who wore, by the by, the habit of Francis)
stated that the lions he met in the desert had very good manners. A few
years ago an old lady met a large, well-grown lioness in the streets of
Chatres; mistaking it for a large dog, she patted it on the head and it
followed her for some time until it was observed by others, when the
whole town was seized with panic and barred doors and windows. Even with
the provocation of such mistrust the lioness behaved well, and allowed
itself to be reconducted to the menagerie from which it had escaped.
Those who try to divest themselves of human nature rarely succeed, and
the reason nearest to the surface why, over all the world, the lonely
recluse made friends with animals was doubtless his loneliness. On their
side, animals have only to be persuaded that men are harmless for them
to meet their advances half-way. If this is not always true of wild
beasts, it is because (as St. Francis apprehended) unfortunately they
are sometimes hungry; but man is not the favourite prey of any wild
beast who is in his right mind. Prisoners who tamed mice or sparrows
followed the same impulse as saints who tamed lions or buffaloes. How
many a prisoner who returned to the fellowship of men must have
regretted his mouse or his sparrow! Animals can be such good company.
Still, it follows that if their society was sought as a substitute, they
were, in a certain sense, vicarious objects of affection. We forget that
even in inter-human affections much is vicarious. The sister of charity
gives mankind the love which she would have given to her children. The
ascetic who will never hear the pattering feet of his boy upon the
stairs loves the gazelle, the bird fallen from its nest, the lion cub
whose mother has been slain by the hunter. And love, far more than
charity (in the modern sense), blesses him that gives as well as him
that takes.
But human phenomena are complex, and this explanation of the sympathy
between saint and beast does not cover the whole ground. Who can doubt
that these men, whose faculties were concentrated on drawing nearer to
the Eternal, vaguely surmised that wild living creatures had unperceived
channels of communication with spirit, hidden _rapports_ with the
Fountain of Life which man has lost or has never possessed? Who can
doubt that in the vast cathedral of Nature they were awed by “the
mystery which is in the face of brutes”?
Beside the need to love and the need to wonder, some of them knew the
need to pity. Here the ground widens, for the heart that feels the pang
of the meanest thing that lives does not beat only in the hermit’s cell
or under the sackcloth of a saint.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
XIII
VERSIPELLES
THE snake and the tiger are grim realities of Indian life. They mean a
great deal—they mean India with its horror and its splendour; above all,
with its primary attention given to things which for most Europeans are
_nil_ or are kept for Sunday. And Sunday, the day most calm, most
bright, has only a little portion of them, only the light not the
darkness of the Unknown.
To the despair of the English official, the Hindu, like his forefathers
in remotest antiquity, respects the life of tiger and snake. In doing so
he is not governed simply by the feeling that makes him look on serenely
whilst all sorts of winged and fleet-footed creatures eat up his growing
crops—another tolerance which exasperates the Western beholder: in that
instance it is, in the main, the rule of live and let live which
dictates his forbearance, the persuasion that it is wrong to monopolise
the increase of the earth to the uttermost farthing’s-worth. His
sentiment towards tiger and snake is of a more profound nature.
The Hindu will not kill a cobra if he can help it, and if one is killed
he tries to expiate the offence by honouring it with proper funeral
rites. The tiger, like the snake, gives birth to those ancient twins,
fear and admiration. The perception of the beautiful is one of the
oldest as it is one of the most mysterious of psychological phenomena in
man and beast. Why should the sheen of the peacock’s tail attract the
peahen? Why should the bower-bird and the lyre-bird construct a lovely
pleasance where they may dance? Man perceived the beautiful in fire and
wind, in the swift air, the circle of stars, the violent water, the
lights of heaven: “being delighted with the beauty of these things, he
took them to be gods”—as was said by the writer of the Wisdom of Solomon
about two hundred years before Christ. He also perceived the beautiful
in the lithe movements of the snake and in the tiger’s symmetry.
As to the sense of fear, how is it that this fear is unaccompanied by
repulsion? To this question the more general answer would seem to be
that Nature, if regarded as divine, cannot repel. But the snake and
tiger are in some special way divine, so that they become still further
removed from the range of human criticism. They are manifestations of
divinity—a safer description of even the lowest forms of zoolatry than
the commoner one which asserts that they are “gods.” Deity, if
omnipresent, “must be able to occupy the same space as another body at
the same time,” which was said in a different connexion, but it is the
true base of all beliefs involving the union of spirit and matter from
the lowest to the highest.
The animal which is a divine agent, ought to behave like one. If it
causes destruction, such destruction should have the fortuitous
appearance of havoc wrought by natural causes. The snake or tiger should
not wound with malice prepense, but only in a fine, casual way. This is
just what, as a rule, they are observed to do. I have seen many snakes,
but I never saw one run after a man, though I have seen men run after
snakes. Now and then the Italian peasant is bitten by vipers because he
walks in the long grass with naked feet. He treads on the snake or
pushes against it, and it bites him. So it is with the Indian peasant.
It is much the same in the case of the normal tiger; unless he is
disturbed or wounded, he most rarely attacks. But there are abnormal
tigers, abnormal beasts of every sort—there is the criminal class of
beast. What of him? It might be supposed that primitive man would take
such a beast to be an angry or vindictive spirit. By no means. He
detects in him a fellow-human. The Indian forestalled Lombroso; the
man-eating tiger is a degenerate, really not responsible for his
actions, and still less is the god behind him responsible for them.
Little need be said of the natural history of the man-eating tiger; yet
a few words may not be out of place. To his abnormality every one who
has studied wild beasts bears witness. All agree that the loss of life
from tigers is almost exclusively traceable to individuals of tiger-kind
which prey chiefly or only on man. The seven or eight hundred persons
killed annually by tigers in British India are victims of comparatively
few animals. Not many years ago a single man-eating tigress was
certified to have killed forty-eight persons. While the ordinary tiger
has to be sought out with difficulty for the sport of those who wish to
hunt him, the man-eater night after night waylays the rural postman or
comes boldly into the villages in search of his unnatural food. During
great scarcity caused by the destruction or disappearance of small game
in the forests, the carnivora are forced out of their habits as the
wolves in the Vosges are induced to come down to the plains in periods
of intense cold. Such special causes do not affect the question of the
man-eater, which eats man’s flesh from choice, not from necessity. Why
he does so Europeans have tried to explain in various ways. One is, that
the unfamiliar taste of human flesh creates an irresistible craving. In
South America they say that a jaguar after tasting man’s flesh once
becomes an incorrigible man-eater for ever after. Others think
man-eating is a form of madness, a disease, and they point to the fact
that the man-eater is always in bad condition; his skin is useless. But
it is not sure if this be cause or effect, since man’s flesh is said to
be unwholesome. A third and plausible theory would attribute man-eating
to the easy capture of the prey: a tiger that has caught one man will
hunt no other fleeter game. Especially in old age, a creature that has
neither horns nor tusks nor yet swift feet must appear an attractive
prey. This coincides with an observation made by Apollonius of Tyana: he
says that lions caught and ate monkeys for medicine when they were sick,
but that when they were old and unable to hunt the stag and the wild
boar, they caught them for food. Aristotle said that lions were more
disposed to enter towns and attack man when they grew old, as old age
made their teeth defective, which was a hindrance to them in hunting.
Another possible clue may be deduced from a belief which exists in
Abyssinia about the man-eating lion. In that country the people dislike
to have Europeans hunt the lion, not only because they revere him as the
king of beasts (though this is one reason, and it shows how natural to
man is the friendly feeling towards beasts, and how it flourishes along
with any sort of religion, provided the religion has been left Oriental
and not Westernised), but also because they are convinced that a lion
whose mate has been killed becomes ferocious and thirsts for human
blood. This belief is founded on accurate observation of the capacity of
wild beasts for affection. The love of the lion for his mate is no
popular error. That noble hunter, Major Leveson, told a pathetic story
of how he witnessed in South Africa a fight between two lions, while the
lioness, palm and prize, stood looking on. A bullet laid her low, but
the combatants were so hotly engaged that neither of them perceived what
had happened. Then another bullet killed one of them: the survivor,
after the first moment of surprise as to why his foe surrendered, turned
round and for the first time saw the hunters who were quite near. He
seemed about to spring on them, when he caught sight of the dead
lioness: “With a peculiar whine of recognition, utterly regardless of
our presence, he strode towards her, licked her face and neck with his
great rough tongue and patted her gently with his huge paw, as if to
awaken her. Finding that she did not respond to his caresses, he sat
upon his haunches like a dog and howled most piteously....” Finally the
mourning lion fled at the cries of the Kaffirs and the yelping of the
dogs close at hand. He had understood the great, intolerable fact of
death. Would any one blame him if he became an avenger of blood?
Supposing that this line of defence could be transferred to the tiger,
instead of being branded as lazy, decrepit, mad, or bad, he might hope
to appear before the public with a largely rehabilitated character.
The natives of the jungle resort to none of these hypotheses to account
for the man-eater: a different bank of ideas can be drawn on by them to
help them out of puzzling problems. The free force of imagination is far
preferable, if admitted, as a solver of difficulties, to all our patient
and plodding researches. The jungle natives tell many stories of the
man-eater, of which the following is a typical example. It was told to a
British officer, from whom I had it.
Once upon a time there was a man who had the power of changing himself
into a tiger whenever he liked. But for him to change back into the
shape of a man it was necessary that some human being should pronounce a
certain formula. He had a friend who knew the formula, and to him he
went when he wished to resume human shape. But the friend died.
The man was obliged, therefore, to find some one else to pronounce the
formula. At last he decided to confide the secret to his wife; so, one
day, he said to her that he should be absent for a short time and that
when he came back it would be in the form of a tiger; he charged her to
pronounce the proper formula when she should see him appear in
tiger-shape, and he assured her that he would then, forthwith, become a
man again.
In a few days, after he had amused himself by catching a few antelopes,
he trotted up to his wife, hoping all would be well. But the woman, in
spite of all that he had told her, was so dreadfully frightened when she
saw a large tiger running towards her, that she began to scream. The
tiger jumped about and tried to make her understand by dumb-show what
she was to do, but the more he jumped the more she screamed, and at last
he thought in his mind, “This is the most stupid woman I ever knew,” and
he was so angry that he killed her. Directly afterwards he recollected
that no other human being knew the right formula—hence he must remain
for ever a tiger. This so affected his spirits that he acquired a hatred
for the whole human race, and killed men whenever he saw them.
This diverting folk-tale shows a root-belief in the stage of becoming a
branch-belief. In the present case the root is the ease with which men
are thought to be able to transform themselves (or be transformed by
others) into animals. The branch is the presumption that a very wicked
animal must be human. The corresponding inference that a very virtuous
animal must be human, throws its reflection upon innumerable
fairy-tales. I think it was the more primitive of the two. Even the
tiger is not everywhere supposed to be the worse for human influence. In
the Sangor and Nerbrudda territories people say that if a tiger has
killed one man he will never kill another, because the dead man’s spirit
rides on his head and guides him to more lawful prey. Entirely primitive
people do not take an evil view of human nature—which is proved by their
confidence in strangers: the first white man who arrives among them is
well received. Misanthropy is soon learnt, but it is not the earliest
sentiment. The bad view of the man-tiger prevails in the Niger delta,
where the negroes think that “some souls which turn into wild beasts
give people a great deal of trouble.” Other African tribes hold that
tailless tigers are men—tigers which have lost their tails in fighting
or by disease or accident. I do not know if these are credited with good
or bad qualities.
By the rigid Totemist all this is ascribed to Totemism. Men called other
tribesmen by the names of their totems; then the totem was forgotten and
they mistook the tiger-totem-man for a man-tiger _et sic de ceteris_. My
Syrian guide on Mount Carmel told me that the ravens which fed Elijah
were a tribe of Bedouins called “the Ravens,” which still existed. If
this essay in the Higher Criticism was original it said much for his
intelligence. But because such confusions may happen, and no doubt do
happen, are they to be taken as the final explanation of the whole vast
range of man and animal mutations? What have they to do with such a
belief as that vouched for by St. Augustine—to wit, that certain witch
innkeepers gave their guests drugs in cheese which turned them into
animals? These witches had a sharp eye to business, for they utilised
the oxen, asses, and horses thus procured, for draught or burden, or let
them out to their customers, nor were they quite without a conscience,
as when they had done using them they turned them back into men. Magic,
the old rival of religion, lies at the bottom of all this order of
ideas. Magic may be defined as the natural supernatural, since by it man
_unaided_ commands the occult forces of nature. The theory of demoniacal
assistance is of later growth.
A story rather different from the rest is told by Pausanias, who records
that, at the sacrifice of Zeus on Mount Lycæus, a man was always turned
into a wolf, but if for nine years in wolf-shape he abstained from
eating human flesh, he would regain his human form. This suggests a
Buddhist source. The infiltration of Buddhist folk-lore into Europe is a
subject on which we should like to know more. Buddhism was the only
missionary religion before Christianity, and there is every probability
that it sent missionaries West as well as East.
The early Irish took so favourable a view of wolves that they were
accustomed to pray for their salvation, and chose them as godfathers for
their children. In Druidical times the wolf and other animals were
divine manifestations, and the Celts were so attached to their
beast-gods that they did not maledict what they had worshipped, but
found it a refuge somewhere. In the earliest Gallic sculpture the
dispossessed animals are introduced as companions of the new Saints.
It will be noticed that in the Indian folk-tale, though the
identification of the man with the man-eater is clear, a very lenient
view is taken of him: he was not always so; even his excursions in
tiger-skin were, at first, purely innocent; he was a good husband and a
respectable citizen till his wife’s nerves made him lose his temper.
In early Christian times, the man-wolf might be not only innocent but a
victim. He might be a particularly good man turned by a sorcerer into a
wolf, and in such cases he preserves his good tendencies. In the seventh
century such a man-wolf defended the head of St. Edward the Martyr from
other wild beasts.
On the other hand, there are stories of Christian saints who turned
evil-disposed persons into beasts by means of the magical powers which,
at first, _all_ baptized persons were thought to possess potentially if
not actively. St. Thomas Aquinas believed in the possibility of doing
this. In a Russian folk-tale the apostles Peter and Paul turned a bad
husband and wife into bears.
In Europe by degrees the harmless were-wolf entirely disappeared but the
evil one survived. The superstition of lycanthropy concentrated round
one point (as superstitions often do): the self-transformation of a
perverse man or sorcerer into an animal for nefarious purposes. The
object of the transformation might be the opportunity for giving free
range to sanguinary appetites; but there was another object lurking in
the background, and this was the acquirement of second sight, which some
animals (if not all) are supposed to be endowed with. Just as Varro and
Virgil believed in lycanthropy, so the most highly educated Europeans in
the time of Louis XIV. and after, believed in were-wolves. The choice of
the animal was immaterial, but it fell naturally on the most prominent
and feared wild animal which was locally extant. A fancy or exotic
animal would not do, which illustrates the link there is between popular
beliefs and _facts_; distorted facts, it may be, but real and not
imaginary things. If a bear of bad morals appears in Norway, people
declare that it can be “no Christian bear”—it must be a Lapp or a Finn,
both these peoples, who are much addicted to magic, being supposed to
have the power of changing into bears when they choose. Instead of
seeking the wild beast in man, people sought the man in the wild beast.
As in Asia so in Europe, it was noticed and pondered that the normal
wild beast is dangerous, perhaps, but not from a human point of view
perverse. The normal wolf like the normal tiger does not attack or
destroy for the love of destruction. Wolves attack in packs, but the
instinct of the single individual is to keep out of man’s way. He does
not kill even animals indiscriminately. In the last times when there
were wolves in the Italian valleys of the Alps, the news spread that a
wolf had killed a number of sheep. What had really happened was this,
which an old hunter told at Edolo to a relative of mine. The wolf jumped
down into a sheepfold sunk in the ground. He killed a sheep and ate some
of it and then found, to his dismay, that he could not get up the wall
of the sheepfold. Nothing daunted, however, he killed a sufficient
number of sheep to form a mound, up which he climbed and so effected his
escape. No one thought such a clever wolf as this a _lupo manaro_. But
some wolves, like some dogs, are subject to fits of mental alienation,
in which they slay without rhyme or reason. Sheep are found killed all
over the countryside, and men or children may be among the victims. The
question arises of who did it—a wolf, a man, or both in one? The
material fact is there, and it is a fact calculated to excite terror,
surprise, curiosity. That the fact may remain always a mystery recent
experience shows. When the were-wolf mania was rampant in France,
honestly conducted judicial inquiry succeeded in a few cases, in tracing
the outrages to a real wolf or to a real man. At last, in 1603, a French
court of law pronounced the belief in were-wolves to be an insane
delusion, and from that date it slowly declined. Heretics were suspected
of being were-wolves. As late as fifty years ago, a reminiscence of the
_loup garou_ existed in most parts of France, in the shape of the
_meneux des loups_, who were supposed to charm or tame whole packs of
wolves which they led across the waste lands on nights when the moon
shone fitfully through rifts in hurrying clouds. The village recluse,
the poacher, the man who simply “knew more than he should,” fell under
the suspicion of being a “wolf-leader,” and, of course, the usual
“eye-witness” was forthcoming to declare that he had _seen_ the
suspected individual out upon his midnight rambles with his wolves
trotting after him. In some provinces all the fiddlers or bag-pipers
were thought to be “wolf-leaders.”
[Illustration:
_Maurice Sand._
“LE MENEUR DES LOUPS.”]
If the wolf turnskin died out sooner in England than in France, it was
because there were no wolves to fasten it upon. Throughout the horrible
witch-mania British sorcerers were supposed to turn into cats, weasels,
or innocent hares! Italian witches still turn into cats. I remember how
graphically C. G. Leland described to me a visit he had paid to a Tuscan
witch; her cottage contained three stools, on one of which sat the
witch, on the second her familiar jet-black cat, and on the third my old
friend, who, I feel sure, had come to believe a good deal in the “old
religion,” and who, in his last years, might have sat for a perfect
portrait of a magician! The connexion of the witch and the cat is a form
of turnskin-belief in which the feature of the acquirement of second
sight is prominent. No witch without a cat! The essential _fact_ in the
superstition is the fondness of poor, old friendless women for
cats—their last friends. A contributing fact lay in the mysterious
disappearances and reappearances of cats and in their half-wild nature.
The cat in Indian folk-lore is the tiger’s aunt.