Zoological Mythology Volume Ii Part 11

[208] In _Afana.s.sieff_, i. 14, the hero, Theodore, finds some wolves fighting among themselves for a bone, some bees fighting for the honey, and some shrimps fighting for caviare; he makes a just division, and the grateful wolves, bees, and shrimps help him in need.

[209] Cfr. _Lou loup penjat_ in the _Contes de l'Armagnac_, collected by Blade, Paris, 1867, p. 9.

[210] Cfr. the English expression applied to the moon, "made of green cheese;" this is the connection between green and yellow previously mentioned.

[211] _Afana.s.sieff_, iv. 10.

[212] It is here, perhaps, to be remarked that in the Piedmontese dialect lightning is called _loszna_.

[213] _Afana.s.sieff_, iv. 11. In the fourth story of the second book of the _Pentamerone_, instead of a fox, it is the cat that enriches Pippo Gagliufo and runs before him. In the same way as in the Russian stories the man shows himself ungrateful towards the fox, so in the _Pentamerone_ the cat ends by cursing the ungrateful Pippo Gagliufo whom she had done good to. In the following story the fox offers herself as companion to the young bride who is looking for her lost husband.

[214]

"Pietushok, pietushok, Zalatoi grebeshok, Masliannaja galovka, Smiatanij lobok!

Vighliani v oshko; Dam tebie kashki, Na krasnoi loszkie."

In an unpublished Tuscan story which I heard related at Antignano near Leghorn, a chicken wishes to go with its father (the c.o.c.k) into the Maremma to search for food. Its father advises it not to do so for fear of the fox, but the chicken insists upon going; on the way it meets the fox, who is about to eat it, when the chicken beseeches him to let it go into the Maremma, where it will fatten, lay eggs, bring up young chickens, and be able to provide the fox with a much more substantial meal than it now could. The fox consents. The chicken brings up a hundred young ones; when they are grown up, they set out to return home; every fowl carries in its mouth an ear of millet, except the youngest. On the way they meet the fox waiting for them; on seeing all these animals each with a straw in its beak, the astonished fox asks the mother-hen what it is they carry. "All fox's tails," she answers, upon which the fox takes to its heels.--We find the fox's tail in connection with ears of corn in the legend of Samson; the incendiary fox is also found in Ovid's _Fasti_, iv. 705; (from the malice with which the story-teller (a woman) relates the fable, it is probable that the fox's tail has here also a phallic meaning).--In _s.e.xtus Empiricus_ we read that a fox's tail hung on the arm of a weak husband is of great use to him.

[215] Thus, in the myth of Kephalos, his dog cannot, by a decree of fate, overtake the fox; but inasmuch as, on the other hand, no one also, by decree of fate, can escape from the dog of Kephalos, dog and fox are both, by the command of Zeus, changed into stone (the two auroras, or dying sun and dying moon).

[216] This work has, on the other hand, been already almost accomplished, as regards the Franco-Germanic part, in the erudite and interesting introduction (pp. 5-163) which Ch. Potvin has prefixed to his translation into verse of the _Roman du Renard_, Paris, Bohne; Bruxelles, Lacroix, 1861. I am told that Professor Schiefner read a discourse two years since at St Petersburg upon the story of the fox, but I do not know whether it has been published.

[217] V?ikaya ci? ?asamanaya caktam; _?igv._ vii. 68, 8.--The grateful wolf and crow are found united to a.s.sist Ivan Tzarevic in the twenty-fourth story of the second book of _Afana.s.sieff_.

[218] xix. 108, 109.

[219] Aru?o ma sak?id v?ika? patha yantam dadarca hi u? ?ihite nicayya; _?igv._ i. 105, 18.

[220] Yavaya v?ikya? v?ika? yavaya stenam urmya; _?igv._ x. 127, 6.--A wolf seen in a dream, according to Cardano, announces a robber.

[221] Yo na? pushann agho v?iko du?ceva adidecati apa sma tvam patho ?ahi--Paripanthinam mas.h.i.+va?a? huraccitam--Dvayavina?; _?igv._ i. 42, 2-4.

[222] Svaya? ripus tanva? riris.h.i.+sh?a; _?igv._ vi. 51, 6, 7.

[223] Mayinam m?iga?; _?igv._ i. 80, 7.

[224] Te na asno v?ika?am adityaso mumocata; _?igv._ viii. 56, 14.--Pars.h.i.+ dine gabhira a? ugraputre ?igha?sata?; _?igv._ viii. 56, 11.

[225] Matsya? na dina udani ks.h.i.+yantam; _?igv._ x. 68, 8.

[226] iii. 45.--In the twenty-second night of the _Tuti-Name_, the wolf enters, on the contrary, into the house of the jackal; here wolf and jackal are already distinguished in it from one another,--that is, as red wolf and black wolf.

[227] i. 253.

[228] i. 271.

[229] Cfr. _Afana.s.sieff_, vi. 51, v. 27, and v. 28.

[230] It is also said that the nurse of the Latin twins was a strumpet, because _lupae_ or _lupanae f?minae_ were names given to such women, whence also the name of _lupanaria_ given to the houses to which they resorted: "Abscondunt spurcas haec monumenta lupas." Olaus Magnus wrote, that wolves, attracted by smell, attack pregnant women, whence the custom that no pregnant woman should go out unless accompanied by an armed man. The ancients believed that the phallos of the wolf roasted and eaten weakened the Venus.

[231] In the _Legendes et Croyances Superst.i.tieuses de la Creuse_, collected by Bonnafoux, Gueret, 1867, p. 27, we read concerning the loup garou, that the wolf thanks whoever wounds him. It is said that they who are disguised in the skin of the loup garou are condemned souls: "Chaque nuit, ils sont forces d'aller chercher la maudite peau a un endroit convenu et ils courent ainsi jusqu'a ce qu'ils rencontrent une ame charitable et courageuse qui les delivre en les blessant."

[232]

"... devant qu'il fut nuit Il arriva nouvel encombre; Un loup parut, tout le troupeau s'enfuit Ce n'etait pas un loup, ce n'en etait que l'ombre."

The sheep were right, however, to flee. In the _Edda_, the fourth swallow says, "When I see the wolf's ears, I think that the wolf is not far off." The twilight is the shadow or ear of the wolf.

[233] Lous loups-garous soun gens coumo nous autes; mes an heyt un countrat dab lou diable, e cado se soun fourcatz de se cambia en bestios per ana au sabbat e courre touto la neyt. Y a per aco un mouyen de lous goari. Lous can tira sang pendent qu' an perdut la forme de l'home, e asta leu la reprengon per toutjour; Blade, _Contes et Proverbes Populaires recueillis en Armagnac_, Paris, 1867, p. 51.

[234] We ought perhaps to add here the tradition cited by Caesarius Heisterbacensis of a wolf who, biting the arm of a girl, drags her to a place where there is another wolf; the more she cries the more fiercely the wolf bites her. The other wolf has a bone in his throat, which the girl extracts; here the girl takes the place of the crane or stork of the fable; the bone may be now the moon, now the sun.

[235] In another pa.s.sage in the _Edda_, the eagle sits upon the wolf.

According to the Latin legend of the foundation of Lavinium, the Trojans saw a singular prodigy. A fire arises in the woods; the wolf brings dry twigs in his mouth to make it burn better, and the eagle helps him by fanning the flames with his wings. The fox, on the other hand, dips its brush in the river to put out the fire with it, but does not succeed.

[236] Cfr. _Afana.s.sieff_, iii. 19.

[237] Les loups, qui ont tres peu d'amis en France, et qui sont obliges d'apporter dans toutes leurs demarches une excessive prudence, cha.s.sent presque toujours a la muette. J'ai ete plusieurs fois en position d'admirer la profondeur de leurs combinaisons strategiques; c'est effrayant de sagacite et de calcul; Toussenel, _L'Esprit des Betes_, ch. i.--And Aldrovandi, _De Quadrup. Dig. Viv._ ii. "Lupi omnem vim ingenii naturalem in ovibus insidiando exercent; noctu enim ovili appropinquantes, pedes lambunt, ne strepitum in gradiendo edant, et foliis obstrepentibus pedes quasi reos mordent."

[238] In Piedmont it is also said in jest, that a man once met a wolf and thrust his hand down its throat, so far down that it reached its tail on the other side; he then pulled the tail inside the wolf's body and out through its throat, so that the wolf, turned inside out, expired.

[239] In an unpublished, though very popular Piedmontese story, Piccolino is upon a tree eating figs; the wolf pa.s.ses by and asks him for some, threatening him thus: "Piculin, dame un fig, da.s.s no, i t mangiu." Piccolino throws him down two, which are crushed upon the wolf's nose. Then the wolf threatens to eat him if he does not bring him a fig down; Piccolino comes down, and the wolf puts him in a sack and carries him towards his house, where the mother-wolf is waiting for him. But on the way the wolf is pressed by a corporeal necessity, and is obliged to go on the roadside; meanwhile, Piccolino makes a hole in the sack, comes out and puts a stone in his place. The wolf returns, shoulders the sack, but thinks that Piccolino has become much heavier. He goes home and tells the she-wolf to be glad, and prepare the cauldron full of hot water; he then empties the sack into the cauldron; the stone makes the boiling water spurt out upon the wolf's head, and he is scalded to death.

[240] Cfr. the well-known English fairy-tales of _Tom Thumb_ and _Hop-o'-my-Thumb_.

[241] _Inferno_, c. i.

CHAPTER XIII.

THE LION, THE TIGER, THE LEOPARD, THE PANTHER, AND THE CHAMELEON.

SUMMARY.

Lion and tiger symbols of royal majesty.--Tvash?ar as a lion.--The hair of Tvash?ar in the fire.--Winds that roar like lions.--The lion-seducer.--The lion and the honey; the lion and riches.--n.o.bility of the lion.--The lion's part.--The monster lioness.--The old and sick lion; the lion with a thorn in its foot.--Monster and demoniacal lions.--The lion is afraid of the c.o.c.k.--Sterility of the lion.--The story of Atalanta.--The sun in the sign Leo.--The virgin and the lion.--civas, Dionysos, and the tiger.--A hair from the tiger's tail; the Mantikora.--The chameleon; the G.o.d chameleon.

The tiger and the lion have in India the same dignity, and are both supreme symbols of royal strength and majesty.[242] The tiger of men and the lion of men are two expressions equivalent to prince, as the prince is supposed to be the best man. It is strength that gives victory and superiority in natural relations; therefore the tiger and the lion, called kings of beasts, represent the king in the civic social relations among men. The narasinhas of India was called, in the Middle Ages, the king _par excellence_; thus in Greece the king was also called leon.

The myth of the lion and the tiger is essentially an Asiatic one; notwithstanding this, a great part of it was developed in Greece, where lion and tiger were at one time not unknown, and must have, as in India, inspired something like that religious terror caused by oriental kings.

We have already mentioned the Vedic monster lion of the West, in which we recognise the expiring sun. The strong Indras, killer of the monster, V?itras, is also represented as a lion. In the same way as the Jewish Samson is found in connection with the lion, and this lion with honey, and as the strength of the lion and that of Samson is said to be centred in the hair (the sun, when he loses his rays or mane, loses all his strength), so in the parallel myth of Indras we find a.n.a.logous circ.u.mstances. Tvas??ar, the Hindoo celestial blacksmith, who makes weapons now for the G.o.ds and now for the demons (the reddish sky of morning and of evening is likened to a burning forge; the solar hero or the sun in this forge, is a blacksmith), is also represented in a Vedic hymn[243] as a lion, turned towards which, towards the west, heaven and earth rejoice, although (on account of the din made by him when coming into the world) they are, before all, terrified.

The form of a lion is one of the favourite shapes created by the mythical and legendary blacksmith.

In the _Marka?deya-P._,[244] this same Tvash?ar (which the _?igvedas_ represents as a lion), wis.h.i.+ng to avenge himself upon the G.o.d Indras, who had (perhaps at morn) killed one of his sons, creates another, son, V?itras (the coverer), by tearing a lock of hair off his head and throwing it into the fire (the sun burns every evening in the western forge, his rays or mane, and the gloomy monster of night is born).

Indras makes a truce with V?itras (in Russian stories, heroes and monsters nearly always challenge each other to say before fighting whether they will have peace or war), and subsequently violates the treaty; for this perfidy he loses his strength, which pa.s.ses into Marutas, the son of the wind (the Hanumant of the _Ramaya?am_. In a Vedic hymn, the voice of the Marutas is compared to the roar of lions),[245] and into the three brothers Pa??avas, sons of Kunti (the pa.s.sage of the legend from the Vedas to the two princ.i.p.al Hindoo epic poems is thus indicated). Thus, in the same _Marka?deya-P._, Indras, having violated Ahalya, the wife of Gautamas, loses his beauty (in other Puranic legends he becomes a eunuch or has a thousand wombs.