looked out of his heavenly house upon the world through a window, he
saw that it was filled with violence. Then he sent Wind and Water to
devastate the earth, and this they did for twenty days and nights.
Pramzimas looked on, and as he looked on, he ate nuts at his window,
and threw the shells down. One shell fell on the top of a mountain, and
some men, women, and beasts scrambled into it and were saved alive,
while all the rest of the inhabitants of the world were drowned. When
the flood drained away, the pairs in the nutshell left it, and were
scattered over the earth. Only one aged couple remained, and they
complained; then God sent them the rainbow to console them, and bade
them jump over the bones of the earth. They jumped nine times, and nine
pairs of living human beings started to life, and founded the nine
races of Lithuanian blood.[230]
Among the negroes of Africa, traditions are faint, or have been little
sought after and collected. The Jumala negroes say that once when the
earth was full of cruelty and wickedness, the good Til destroyed it
with fire, and that one man alone was saved alive, named Musikdgen, _i.
e._, the mountain chief, because he was found without blame.
In America the crop of traditions is abundant.
The Kolosches, living in Russian America, say that the first dweller
on the earth was Kitkhughia-si, and that he resolved to destroy all
his children who sinned against him. Thereupon he brought a flood over
the land, and all perished save a few who escaped in boats to the tops
of mountains, where, say they, the remains of the boats, and the ropes
which fastened them, remained to be seen.[231]
Among the Dog-rib Indians, Sir John Franklin found the story much
more complete; and as this tribe lives near the Polar Sea, far from
any mission stations, it is scarcely possible that the story can have
been derived from Christian teachers. They say that Tschäpiwih, their
great ancestor, lived on a track between two seas. He built a weir,
and caught fish in such abundance that they choked the water-course,
and the water overflowed the earth. Tschäpiwih with his family entered
his canoe, and took with him all kinds of beasts and birds. The land
was covered for many days; at last Tschäpiwih could bear it no longer,
so he sent out the beaver to look for the earth. But the beaver was
drowned. Then he sent out the muskrat, which had some difficulty in
returning, but it had mud on its paws. Tschäpiwih was glad to see the
earth, and moulded it between his fingers, till it became an island on
the surface of the water, on which he could land.[232]
The Pacullies, on the west coast of New Georgia, say that at the Deluge
one man and one woman were saved by escaping into a cave; and they add
that when the earth was drowned, a water rat dived for it and brought
it to the surface again.[233]
A Caddoque tradition is, that Sakechah was a great hunter. One night
he saw in vision the Master of Life, who spoke to the dreamer in these
words:--
“The world is getting very wicked, Sakechah.”
“I know it,” answered the hunter.
“I hear no longer the voices of men supplicating me for favors; they no
longer thank me for what I send them. I must sweep, wash, and purify
the earth; I must destroy all living creatures from off the face of it.”
Then Sakechah said, “What have I done, Master of Life, that I should be
involved in this general destruction?”
The Master answered, “No, Sakechah, thou hast been a good servant; I
will except thee from the general doom. Go now, cut thee a hemlock,
knock off the cones, and bring them, together with the trunk and
leaves, to the bottom of the hill Wecheganawan. Burn them in a fire
made of the dry branches of the oak, kindled with the straw of wild
rice. When the heap is reduced to ashes, take the ashes and strew them
in a circle round the hill. Nothing need be gathered within the circle,
for the living creatures will of themselves retreat to it for safety;
but when this is done, take the trunk of the hemlock, and strike it
into the earth at the spot where the large tuft of grass is growing
on the barren hill. There lies the great fountain of water; and when
the staff is struck into the earth the fountain shall burst forth,
and the earth be swept and washed and purified by the great deluge
that shall overwhelm it. Sakechah and his family shall alone, of all
the inhabitants of the earth, be saved; and the creatures he assembles
around him on the hill Wecheganawan be alone those exempted from the
all-sweeping destruction.”
The hunter obeyed. He took the staff and stuck it deep into the earth
at the place indicated, and the great fountain was broken up, and the
waters burst forth in a mighty volume. Slowly the element began to
creep over the earth, while the hunter and his family looked on. Now
the low grounds appeared but as they appear in the season of showers;
here a little water, and there a little water; soon they became one
vast sheet. Now a little hill sank from view, then the tops of trees
disappeared; again a tall hill hid its head. At length the waves rose
so high that Sakechah could see nothing more; he stood as it were in a
well. The waters were piled up on every side of him, restrained from
harming him, or his, or the beasts that had clustered around him, by
the magic belt of hemlock ashes.
“Sakechah!” said the Master of Life, “when the moon is exactly over
thy head, she will draw the waters to the hill. She is angry with me
because I scourged a comet. I cannot prevent her revenge unless I
destroy her, and that I may not do, as she is my wife. Therefore bid
every living creature that is on the hill take off the nail from the
little finger of his right hand, if a man; if a bird, or beast, of the
right foot or claw. When each has done this, bid him blow in the hollow
of the nail with the right eye shut, saying these words, ‘Nail become a
canoe, and save me from the wrath of the moon.’ The nail will become a
large canoe, and in this canoe will its owner be safe.”
The Great Spirit was obeyed, and shortly every creature was floating in
a boat on the surface of the water. And, lest they should be dispersed,
Sakechah bound them together by thongs of buffalo-hide.
They continued floating for a long time, till at last Sakechah said,
“This will not do--we must have land. Go,” said he to a raven that sat
in his canoe near him, “fetch me a little earth from the bottom of
the abyss. I will send a female, because women are quicker and more
searching than men.”
The raven, proud of the praise bestowed on her sex, left her tail
feathers at home, and dived into the abyss. She was gone a long time,
but, notwithstanding her being a woman, she returned baffled of her
object. Whereupon Sakechah said to the otter, “My little man, I will
send you to the bottom, and see if your industry and perseverance
will enable you to accomplish what has been left undone by the wit
and cunning of the raven.” So the otter departed upon his dangerous
expedition. He accomplished his object. When he again appeared on the
earth, he held in his paw a lump of black mud. This he gave into the
hands of Sakechah; and the Great Master bade him divide the lump into
five portions; that which came out of the middle of the lump he was
commanded to mould into a cake and to cast into the water: he did so,
and it became dry land, on which he could disembark; and the earth thus
formed was repeopled from his time. No matter whether the men of the
earth be red or white, all are descended from Sakechah.[234]
The Iroquois tell a very similar story, differing from the above in
merely a few trivial particulars. According to the tradition of the
Knistineaux on the Upper Missouri, all men perished in the Deluge
except one woman, who caught the leg of a bird which carried her to the
top of a rock, where she was confined of twins, of whom the earth was
peopled.[235]
The Appalachian tribe in Florida is a relic of a more ancient nation
than the North American Indian tribes. They relate that the lake Theomi
burst its bounds, and overflowed the earth, and stood above the top of
the highest mountains, saving only the peak Oldamy, on which stood a
temple to the sun. Those men who had succeeded in reaching this temple
were saved, but all the rest perished.[236]
According to the Cherokees, a dog foresaw the destruction that was
coming on the earth. It went every day to the bank of a river and
howled; and when its master rebuked it, it revealed to him what was
about to take place. The man therefore built a boat and entered it with
his family, and he alone of all mankind was saved.[237]
If we turn to Central America, we find that there also traditions of
the Flood abounded.
The ancient inhabitants of Mexico related the event as follows:--
There was a great deluge which destroyed all men and beasts, save
Coxcox and his wife Chichequetzal, who escaped in a cyprus trunk and
landed on Mount Colhuacan, where they became parents of many children,
who, however, were all dumb. Then appeared a dove, which seated
itself on a high tree, and taught them language. But as none of them
understood the speech of the other, they separated and dispersed over
the world. Fifteen heads of families, however, had the good fortune to
speak the same language. These lived together in the same place, but
at last they moved, and after 104 years of wandering they settled in
Aztlan. Thence they journeyed to Chiapultepeque, and then returned to
the Mount Colhuacan and settled in Mexico.[238]
There was a story of similar description connected with the ancient
city of Cholula in the modern province of Puebla. “Before the great
flood in the year 4,008 after the creation of the world, the land
Anaknac (Mexico) was peopled with giants. All those who did not perish,
with the exception of seven, escaped into holes, and were transformed
into fish. When the deluge was over, one of these giants, Xelhuaz
by name, the builder, went to Cholula, and built a pyramid on Mount
Tlalok, to commemorate his having been saved thereon along with his six
brothers.”[239]
The inhabitants of Mechoacan related that, on account of the iniquity
of men, a flood was sent to sweep them all away; but a priest, named
Tezbi, along with his wife and children, were saved in a box of wood
into which they had entered along with all kinds of seeds and animals.
After some time Tezbi, wearying of his confinement, sent forth the
vulture, which however did not return to him; then he sent forth other
birds, but they did not come back; finally, he sent out the Colibri,
which returned with a branch in its beak.[240] And of this event they
had paintings in their temples which they showed to the white men who
arrived amongst them.
The Indians in Cuba told a similar story, so did those at St. Domingo
and the Antilles.[241]
Nor is South America without a rich crop of similar legends, Humboldt
says, “This belief (in a deluge) is not found merely among the
Tamanaks, but is a portion of a whole system of historical traditions
of which the scattered accounts are to be gathered from the Maipures of
the Great Cataract, the Indians of Rio-Crevato, which pours into the
Cauca, and almost from all the races in the Upper Orinoko.”[242]
This is the tradition of the Tamanaks. “At the time of our ancestors
the whole earth was overflowed. Then two persons alone were saved, a
man and a woman, who remained on Mount Tamanaku, which is not far from
the Cucivero river, where our ancestors formerly dwelt. They lamented
sore over the loss of their friends and relations, and as they wandered
sadly about the mountain they heard a voice which told them to cast
the kernels of the nuts of the _Palma Mauritia_ back-wards over their
shoulders. They did so, and out of the nuts cast by the woman rose
females, and out of those cast by the man sprang males.”[243]
The Peruvians related that their first king and founder of their
nation, Manco Capak, along with his wife Mama Ocllo, after the great
deluge left their land, and came from the holy island in the lake
Titicaca, on which the sun cast its first beam when the flood drained
away.[244]
A Brazilian legend is that the Evil Spirit Arbomoku, and the spirits of
the air, made a compact together to destroy mankind. The former opened
all the fountains of the earth, the latter poured the clouds upon the
ground and inundated it, so that only one mountain-top appeared above
the water, and on that took refuge two persons, a brother and a sister,
from whom all the new generations sprang.[245]
XVI.
THE PLANTING OF THE VINE.
Bowed under his toil, dripping with perspiration, stood the patriarch
Noah, laboring to break the hard clods. All at once Satan appeared and
said to him,--
“What new undertaking have you in hand? What new fruit do you expect to
extract from these clods?”
“I plant the grape,” answered the patriarch.
“The grape! proud plant, most precious fruit! joy and delight to men!
Your labor is great; will you allow me to assist you? Let us share the
labor of producing the vine.”
The patriarch in a fit of exhaustion consented.
Satan hastened, got a lamb, slaughtered it, and poured its blood over
the clods of earth. “Thence shall it come,” said Satan, “that those who
taste of the juice of the grape, shall be soft-spirited and gentle as
this lamb.”
But Noah sighed; Satan continued his work; he caught a lion, slew that,
and poured the blood upon the soil prepared for the plant. “Thence
shall it come,” said he, “that those who taste the juice of the grape
shall be strong and courageous as the lion.”
Noah shuddered. Satan continued his work; he seized a pig and
slaughtered it, and drenched the soil with its blood. “Thence shall
it come,” said he, “that those who drink of the juice of the grape in
excess, shall be filthy, degraded, and bestial as the swine.”[246]
The Mussulman tradition is somewhat similar.
“When Ham had planted the vine, Satan watered it with the blood of a
peacock. When it thrust forth leaves, he sprinkled it with the blood of
an ape; when it formed grapes, he drenched it with the blood of a lion;
when the grapes were ripe, he watered it with the blood of a swine.
“The vine, watered by the blood of these four animals, has assumed
these characters. The first glass of wine makes a man animated, his
vivacity great, his color is heightened. In this condition he is like
the peacock. When the fumes of the liquor rise into his head, he is
gay, leaps and gambols as an ape. Drunkenness takes possession of him,
he is like a furious lion. When it is at its height, he is like the
swine; he falls and grovels on the ground, stretches himself out, and
goes to sleep.”[247]
Mohammed, to justify his forbidding his disciples to drink wine, cites
the history of the two angels, Arot and Harot.
“God,” says he, “charged them with a commission on the earth. A young
lady invited them to dinner, and they found the wine so good that they
got drunk. They then remarked that their hostess was beautiful, and
they were filled with love which they declared to her. This lady, who
was prudent, replied that she would only listen to their protestations
when she knew the words by which they were enabled to ascend to heaven.
When she had learned these words, she mounted to the throne of God,
who, as a reward for her virtue, transformed her into a shining star
(the Morning Star), and condemned the two drunken angels to await the
day of judgment, suspended by their heels in the well of Babel, near
Bagdad, which Mussulman pilgrims visit.”
According to Tabari,[248] Ham, for having laughed at his father’s
drunkenness, was cursed by Noah, that his skin should become black,
as well as all the fruits which were to grow in the land he should
inhabit, and thus the purple grape arose. It was the white grape that
Ham transplanted, but it blackened in his hands.
Abulfaraj relates that after the Deluge, Noah divided the habitable
world between his sons. He gave to Ham the country of the Black, to
Shem that of the Brown, and to Japheth that of the Red.[249] Noah also,
he continues, said to his son Shem, “When I am dead, take the bier of
our father Adam from the ark, and, together with your son Melchizedek,
who is a priest of the Most High, go with the body of Adam whither an
angel shall guide you.”
This they did; and an angel directed them to mount Breitalmakdes
(Jerusalem), where they deposited the bier on a certain hill, and
instantly it sank out of their sight into the ground. Then Shem
returned to his home, but not so Melchizedek, who remained to guard the
body of Adam: and he built there a city called Jerusalem, and he was
called Melek Salim, the King of Peace, and there he spent the rest of
his life in the worship of God; he touched not women, nor shed blood,
but offered to God oblations of bread and wine.[250]
Eutychius, the Egyptian patriarch of Alexandria, in his Annals, which
are rife with Oriental traditions, gives a fuller account of the same
incident.
When Noah was near his death, he bade Shem take the body of Adam,
and go with Melchizedek, son of Peleg, whither the angel of the Lord
should lead. “And,” said he, “thou shalt enjoin on Melchizedek to fix
his habitation there, to take to him no wife, and to spend his life in
acts of devotion, for God has chosen him to preserve His true worship.
He shall build himself no house, nor shall he shed blood of beast, or
bird, or any animal; nor shall he offer there any oblation save bread
and wine; and let the skins of lions be his only vesture; he shall
remain alone there; he shall not clip his hair, or pare his nails;
for he is a priest of the Most High. The angel of God shall go before
you, till ye come to the place where ye shall bury the body of Adam,
and know that that place is the middle of the world.” Now Noah died on
Wednesday, at the second hour, in the second month of Ayar, which is
the same as Bashnes, in the nine hundred and fiftieth year of his age.
And this year Shem was aged forty-five. The sons of Noah buried him,
and bewailed him forty days.[251]
The wife of Noah is said by some to have been called Bath-Enos, or
the daughter of Enos; but the Rabbi Gedaliah says her name was Noema;
others say it was Tethiri, or Tithœa, the nurse of men, as Eve was
the mother of men. The Gnostics called her Noria. She is, however,
generally supposed by the Rabbis to have been Naamah, the sister of
Tubal-cain.[252] But Eutychius, of Alexandria, says she was called
Haical, and was the daughter of Namus, son of Enoch; and that the wives
of Shem, Ham, and Japheth were the three daughters of Methuselah.
Shem’s wife was named Salith; the wife of Ham, Nahlath; and the wife of
Japheth, Arisivah.[253]
The nurse of Noah was an important personage, and must not be
forgotten. She was named Sambethe, and was the first Sibyl. Suidas, the
grammarian, says, “The Chaldee Sibyl, named Sambethi by the Hebrews,
and identified with the Persian Sibyl, was of the race of Noah. She
foretold those things which were to befall Alexander of Macedon. She
also predicted the coming of the Lord Christ, and many other things,
through divine inspiration.”[254]
XVII.
THE SONS OF NOAH.
Ham, the accursed, the third son of Noah, was the inventor or the
preserver of magic. As we have already seen, he buried the books
of magic which existed in the world, before the Deluge swept over
the globe; and when it abated he exhumed them. Cerco d’Ascoli, in
the fourth chapter of his “Commentary on the Sphere of Sacrabosco,”
declares that he had seen a book of magic which had been composed by
Ham, “which contained the elements and practice of necromancy.” Certain
it is that apocryphal books of alchemy and conjuration of spirits
existed in the Middle Ages, which purported to have been composed by
Ham.
Ham was turned black, according to the Talmud, because he did not
maintain himself in perfect continence whilst in the ark;[255] other
authorities say his skin became sooty in consequence of his scoffing
at his father’s drunkenness; and Japheth, for having smiled, says the
Mussulman lost the gift of prophecy from his family.[256]
Berosus supposed that Ham was the same as Zoroaster.
Japheth, according to Khondemir, was given by his father all the land
to the east and north of Ararat; he was the progenitor of the Turks,
the Sclaves, of Gog and Magog, says Tabari. Before he started with his
family to people these countries, Noah gave him a stone, on which was
written the great name of God. The Turks say that, by means of this
stone, Noah was able to guide the course of the ark without sail or
oars. The Turks have similar stones, which, they pretend, came by a
process of generation from the parental stone given to Japheth.[257]
He is said by the Mussulmans to have had eleven male children: Sin
or Tchin, the father of the Chinese; Scklab, the ancestor of the
Sclavonian races; Manschug or Magog, the parent of the Scythians
and Kalmuks; Gomari, the father of the Franks; Turk and Khalos, the
ancestors of the Turks; Khozaz, from whom the Khozarans trace their
pedigree; Rus, father of the Russians; Souffan, Ghoy, and Tarag, from
whom the Turcomans derive.
Ilak, son of Turk, discovered the use of salt by having let fall a
piece of meat he was eating on the ground covered with saline deposit.
Of Shem the Rabbis have somewhat to say. “I have found in the Midrash
that the Rabbi Johanan, son of Nuri, said: ‘The holy, ever-blessed God
took Shem, son of Noah, and consecrated him priest of the Most High,
that he should minister before Him: and He let his Majesty dwell with
Him, and He gave him the name Melchizedek, a priest of the Most High
God, king of Salem. His brother Japheth learnt the law of him in his
school, till Abraham came, who learnt it in the school of Shem. For
this Abraham obtained, praying to God that his Majesty should remain
and dwell in the house of Shem, wherefore it was said of him, _Thou art
a priest forever after the order of Melchizedek_.’”[258]
Shem learned his knowledge from the Book of Wisdom which Raphael,
the holy angel, gave to Adam; but Shem’s instructor was the angel
Jophiel.[259]
The Rabbi Gerson writes in his book called “Sepher geliloth erez
Israel,” that having travelled through the lands of Og, king of Bashan,
he saw there a grave which measured eighty ells, and it was indicated
to him as the sepulchre of Shem.[260] A curious tradition that Shem,
Ham, and Japheth fell asleep in a cave, and woke up at the Nativity of
Christ, and that they were themselves the three wise men who came to
adore Him, shall be mentioned more fully when we treat of the legends
connected with the New Testament characters.
Shem is said to have received the priesthood instead of Noah, because
Noah was bitten by the lion as he was leaving the ark, and, being
suffused with blood, became incapable of receiving the priesthood.
Shem is believed to have written many books, and apocryphal writings of
his exist.
XVIII.
RELICS OF THE ARK.
We have already seen that Berosus relates how in his time portions of
the ark were removed, and used as amulets. Josephus says that remains
of the ark were to be seen at his day upon Ararat; and Nicolas of
Damascus reports the same. S. Epiphanius writes: “The wood of the ark
of Noah is shown to this day in the Kardæn (Koord) country.”[261] And
he is followed by a host of fathers. El Macin, in his History of the
Saracens, relates that the Emperor Heraclius visited the relics after
he had conquered the Persians, in the city of Thenia, at the roots of
Ararat. Haithon, the Armenian, declares that upon the snows of Ararat a
black speck is visible at all times: this is Noah’s ark.[262] Benjamin
of Tudela, in his Itinerary, says that all the wood was carried away
by the Caliph Omar, in A. D. 640, and was placed by him in a temple or
mosque he erected in an island formed by the Tigris. One of the beams
is shown in the Lateran at Rome. In 1670, Johann Jansenius Strauss
ascended to a hermit’s cell on the side of Ararat, to bind up the
cœnobite’s leg which was broken. The hermit’s cell, said Strauss, was
five days’ journey up the mountain, athwart three clouds, and above
a region of intolerable cold, in a calm warm atmosphere. From the
account of the hermit, Herr Strauss learnt that the old man had dwelt
there twenty-five years, and that he had felt there neither rain nor
winds. On the top of the mountain, fifteen Italian miles from the cell,
through the clear air, was distinguishable the great vessel grounded in
the snow. The hermit had reached it, and of one of its planks had cut a
cross, which he exhibited to the German traveller.