Zoological Mythology Volume Ii Part 17

I suppose that the same mythical nature belongs to the b.u.t.terfly (perhaps the black little b.u.t.terfly with red spots), which is called in Sicily the little bird of good news (occidduzzu bona nova), or little pig of St Anthony (purcidduzzu di S. Antoni), and which is believed to bring good luck when it enters a house. It is entreated to come into the house, which is then immediately shut, so that the good luck may not go out. When the insect is in the house, they sing to it:--

"In your mouth, milk and honey; In my house, health and wealth."[344]

The b.u.t.terfly was in antiquity both a phallical symbol (and therefore Eros held it in his hand) and a funereal one, with promises of resurrection and transformation; the souls of the departed were represented in the forms of b.u.t.terflies carried towards Elysium by a dolphin. The b.u.t.terfly was also often represented upon the seven strings of the lyre, and upon a burning torch. It dies to be born again. The phases of the moon seem to correspond in the sky to the zoological transformations of the b.u.t.terfly.

Other beetles--the green beetle and the c.o.c.kchafer--have also extraordinary virtues in fairy tales. In the fifth story of the third book of the _Pentamerone_, the c.o.c.kchafer (scarafone; in Toscana, it is called also indovirello) can play on the guitar, saves the hero, Nardiello, and makes the princess laugh that had never laughed before.

In the fifty-eighth story of the sixth book of _Afana.s.sieff_, the green beetle cleans the hero who had fallen into the marsh, and makes the princess laugh who had never laughed before (the beetle, which appears in spring, like the phallical cuckoo, releases the sun from the marsh of winter).

FOOTNOTES:

[331] ?aghasa te visham; _?igv._ i. 191, 11.

[332] Communicated to me by Dr Ferraro.--A similar story is still told in Pomerania, Brandenburg, and Ireland, with the variation of the stork as the eagle's rival in flying: when the stork falls down tired out, the wren, which was hidden under one of its wings, comes forth to measure itself with the eagle, and not being tired, is victorious.--In a popular story of Hesse, the wren puts all the animals, guided by the bear, to flight by means of a stratagem.

[333] Atyunnati? prapya nara? pravara? kitako yatha sa vinacyatyasa?deham; Bohtlingk, _Indische Spruche_, 2te Aufl. Spr. 181.

[334] The same superst.i.tion exists in some parts of England, where the children address it thus:--

"Cow-lady, cow-lady, fly away home; Your house is all burnt, and your children are gone."

The English names for this beetle are ladybird, ladycow, ladybug, and ladyfly (cfr. Webster's English Dictionary). The country-people also call it golden knop or k.n.o.b (Cfr. Trench _On the Study of Words_).

[335]

"Boszia Karovka Paleti na niebo.

Bog dat tibie hleba."

[336]

"La galina d' San Michel Buta j ale e vola al ciel."

[337] Sacred, no doubt, to St Lucia. In the Tyrol, according to the _Festliche Jahr_ of Baron Reinsberg, St Lucia gives presents to girls, and St Nicholas to boys. The feast of St Lucia is celebrated on the 15th of September; that evening no one need stay up late, for whoever works that night finds all the work undone in the morning. The night of St Lucia is greatly feared (the saint loses her sight; the summer, the warm sunny season, comes to an end; the Madonna moon disappears, and then becomes queen of the sky, the guardian of light, as St Lucia), and conjurings are made against nightmare, devils, and witches. A cross is put into the bed that no witch may enter into it.

That night, those who are under the influence of fate see, after eleven o'clock, upon the roofs of houses a light moving slowly and a.s.suming different aspects; prognostications of good or evil are taken from this light, which is called _Luzieschein_.

[338]

"Santu Nicola, Santu Nicola Facitimi asciari ossa e chiova."

(St Nicholas, St Nicholas, Make me find bone and coin.)

[339] Cfr. Menzel, _Die Vorchristliche Unsterblichkeits-Lehre_.

[340] Cfr. Rochholtz, _Deutscher Glaube und Brauch_.

[341] Kuhn und Schwartz, _N. d. S. M. u. G._, p. 377.

[342] In another Tuscan variety, the song begins--

"Lucciola, Lucciola, ba.s.sa, ba.s.sa, Ti dar una matera.s.sa," &c.

(Firefly, firefly, down so low, I will give you a mattra.s.s.)

[343] Pliny, too, wrote in the eighteenth book of his _Natural History_: "Lucentes vespere cicindelas signum esse maturitatis panici et milii." G. Telesius of the Cosentino wrote an elegant Latin poem upon the firefly or cicindela, in the seventeenth century.

[344]

"'Ntr' a to vucca latti e meli, 'Ntr' a me casa saluti e beni."

CHAPTER IV.

THE BEE, THE WASP, THE FLY, THE GNAT, THE MOSQUITO, THE HORSEFLY, AND THE CICADA.

SUMMARY.

The bees and the Acvinau.--Madhumakshas.--Indras, K?ish?as, and Vish?us as Madhavas.--The bees and Madhuhan.--Beowulf.--The G.o.d of thunder and the bees.--Vish?us as a bee.--The _ocymum nigrum_.--The bees as nurses.--Melissai.--Selene as Melissa.--Souls as bees.--The bees born in the bull's dead body.--The bee according to Finnish mythology.--The bees descended from paradise as part of the mind of G.o.d.--Bee's-wax causes light.--The Bienenstock.--The madhumati kaca.--The bees as winds.--Apis and avis.--The mother of the bees.--The young hero as a bee.--The fairy moon as a gnat.--The fly's palace.--The flies bartered for good cattle.--Intelligence of the bee.--The wasp as a judge.--The fly, the gnat, and the mosquito.--The louse and the flea.--The ant and the fly.--The ant and the cicada.--The cicadae and the muses.--t.i.thon as a cicada.--The sparrow and the cicada.--The cicada and the cuckoo.

I find the bee in the Vedic mythology, where the Acvinau "carry to the bees the sweet honey,"[345] where the horses of the Acvinau, compared to "ambrosial swans, innocent, with golden wings, which waken with the dawn, swim in the water, and enjoy themselves, cheerful," are invoked to come, "like the fly of honey," _i.e._, the bee, "to the juices."[346]

The G.o.ds Indras, K?ish?as, and Vish?us, on account of their name Madhavas (that is, born of madhus, belonging to or in connection with it), were also compared in India to bees; the bee, as making and carrying honey (madhukaras), is especially the moon; as sucking it, it is especially the sun. The name of bhramaras or wanderer given in India to the bee, is as applicable to the sun as to the moon. In the _Mahabharatam_[347] it is said that the bees kill the destroyer of honey (madhuhan). In the chapter on the bear, we saw how the bear was killed by the bees (cfr. the name Beowulf, explained as the wolf of bees), and how in India it personified Vish?us. Now it is not uninteresting to learn how Madhuhan, originally the destroyer of the madhu, became a name of K?ish?as or Vish?us in the _Mahabharatam_ and in the _Bhagavata P._; of madhu (honey) was made a demon, killed by the G.o.d (sun and moon, sun and cloud, are rivals; the solar bear destroys the beehive of the moon and the clouds).[348] Vish?us (as Haris, the sun and the moon) is sometimes represented as a bee upon a lotus-leaf, and K?ish?as with an azure bee on his forehead. When the Hindoos take honey out of a hive with a rod, they always hold in one hand the plant toolsy (ocymum nigrum), sacred to K?ish?as (properly the black one), because one of the girls beloved of K?ish?as was transformed into it.[349]

In the legend of Ibrahim Ibn Edhem, in the _Tuti-Name_[350] we read of a bee that carries crumbs of bread away from the king's table to take them to a blind sparrow. Meliai and Melissai, or bees, were the names of the nymphs who nursed Zeus; the priestesses of the nurse-G.o.ddess Demeter were also called Melissai.

According to Porphyrios[351] the moon (Selene) was also called a bee (Melissa). Selene was represented drawn by two white horses or two cows; the horn of these cows seems to correspond to the sting of the bee. The souls of the dead were supposed to come down from the moon upon the earth in the forms of bees. Porphyrios adds that, as the moon is the culminating point of the constellation of the bull (as a bull herself), it is believed that bees are born in the bull's carcase.

Hence the name of _bougeneis_ given by the ancients to bees. Dionysos (the moon), after having been torn to pieces in the form of a bull, was born again, according to those who were initiated in the Dionysian mysteries, in the form of a bee; hence the name of Bougenes also given to Dionysos, according to Plutarch. Three hundred golden bees were represented, in conjunction with a bull's head, in the tomb of Childeric, the king of the Franks. Sometimes, instead of the lunar bull we find the solar lion; and the lion in connection with bees occurred in the mysteries of Mithras (and in the legend of Samson).

According to the Finnish mythology of Toma.s.son, quoted by Menzel,[352]

the bee is implored to fly far away over the moon, over the sun, near to the axis of the constellation of the waggon, into the dwelling of the Creator G.o.d, and carry upon its wings and in its mouth health and honey to the good, and wounds of fire and iron to the wicked.

According to a popular belief (which is in accordance with the legend of the Cerkessians), the bees alone of all animals descended from paradise.[353] Virgil, too, in the fourth book of the _Georgics_, celebrates the divine nature of the bee, which is a part of the mind of G.o.d, never dies, and alone among animals ascends alive into heaven (in popular h.e.l.lenic, Latin, and German tradition, the bee personifies the soul, and this being considered immortal, the bee, too, is supposed to escape death):--

"Esse apibus partem divinae mentis et haustus aethereos dixere: Deumque namque ire per omnes Terrasque, tractusque maris c?lumque profundum.

Hinc pecudes, armenta, viros, genus omne ferarum, Quemque sibi tenues nascentem arcessere vitas; Scilicet huc reddi deinde ac resoluta referri Omnia; nec morti esse loc.u.m; sed viva volare Sideris in numerum atque alto succedere c?lo."

The wax of bees, because it produces light, and is, moreover, used in churches,[354] must also have had its part in increasing the divine prestige of bees, and the belief in their immortality, as being those that feed the fire. According to a writing of 1482, cited by Du Cange, the sacred disease or _ignis sacer_ (pestilential erysipelas) was cured by wax dissolved in water.

In Germany the death of their master is announced to the bees in the little stick round which the honey is made in the hive. The hive or the Bienenstock, partic.i.p.ates in the divine nature of the bees, and calls my attention to the madhumati kaca or madhoh kaca of the _?igvedas_, and of the _Atharvavedas_, attributed to the Acvinau, and destined to soften the sacrificial b.u.t.ter, which is of a nature similar to the _caduceus_ of Mercury, and to the magical rod, born of all the various elements and of none in particular, daughter of the wind, and sometimes perhaps itself the wind; the _anima_, the soul (the bee), is a breath, a breeze, a wind (anemos, anilas), which changes its place, but never dies; it collects and scatters honey and perfumes, and pa.s.ses away, changeful as the American flybird that sucks honey, the continual beating of whose wings resembles the buzzing of a bee; the _apis_ and _avis_ are a.s.similated. In Du Cange,[355] I find an oration to the mother of the bees, to call back the dispersed ones of her family, conceived thus:--"Adjuro te, Mater aviorum per Deum regem c?lorum et per ilium Redemptorem Filium Dei te adjuro, ut non te altum levare, nec longe volare, sed quam plus cito potest ad arborem venire; ibi te allocas c.u.m omni tua genera, vel c.u.m socia tua, ibi habeo bono vaso parato, ut vos ibi, in Dei nomine, laboretis," &c.

In the twenty-second story of the fifth book of _Afana.s.sieff_, a bee transforms itself into a young hero, in order to prove to the old man that he is able to fetch back his son, who has remained three years under the instruction of the devil (the moon enables the old sun to find the young one; it helps the sun to cheat the devil of night). In the same story it is in the form of a gnat that the guardian-fairy perches herself upon the young hero, whom his father has to recognise amongst twelve heroes that bear the greatest resemblance to one another. In the forty-eighth story of the fifth book, the gnat distinguishes, among the twelve maidens that resemble each other extremely, the one whom the young hero loves, that is, the daughter of the priest, whom the devil had taken possession of, because her father had once said to her, "The devil take you." This indicatory gnat occurs in numerous fairy tales, and discharges the office of the fairy moon; this is the guide and messenger of the hero. We have already seen the moon as a hostess. In the thirty-first story of the fourth book of _Afana.s.sieff_, we have the fly that entertains in its palace (according to the sixteenth story of the third book, a horse's head) the louse, the flea, the mosquito, the little mouse, the lizard, the fox, the hare, and the wolf, until the bear comes up and crushes with one paw the whole palace of the fly, and all the mythical nocturnal animals that it contains. We have also seen the hero who barters his bull for a vegetable which brings him fortune, and we have seen above the bee that is born of the dead bull. In the seventh story of the third book of _Afana.s.sieff_, the third brother, supposed to be foolish, collects, on the contrary, flies and mosquitoes in two sacks, which he suspends upon a lofty oak-tree, where he barters them for good cattle (the moon is the pea of good fortune, the giver of abundance). We know that the moon was represented as the judge of the departed in the kingdom of the dead, and as an omniscient fairy. The industrious bees have a singular reputation for superior intelligence.[356] In the thirteenth fable of the third book of _Phaedrus_, proof of the same wisdom is given by the wasp, who sits in the tribunal as a conscientious judge between the drones and the working bees in regard to the honey which the bees had collected and stored up on a lofty oak-tree, and to which the drones had pretensions.

The fly, the gnat, and the mosquito, though small, annoy, and sometimes cause the death of, the most terrible animals; the beetle gets upon the eagle to escape the hare; the hare allures the elephant and the lion into the water;[357] the moon allures the sun into the night and the winter; the moon overcomes the sun, devoid of rays; the sun is deprived of its rays, the hero loses his strength with his hair; the fly alights upon the bald head of the old man, and annoys him in every way; the old man, wis.h.i.+ng to strike the fly, only slaps himself. In _Phaedrus_, again, we find the fly quarrelling with the rustic ant; the fly boasts of partaking of the offerings given to the G.o.ds, of dwelling amidst the altars, of flying through every temple, of sitting upon the heads of kings, of the kisses of beautiful women, and that without the necessity of submitting to any labour. The ant answers the fly by referring to the certain approach of winter, during which the ant, who had worked hard, has abundant provisions, and lives, whilst the fly dies of cold and starvation. Moreover, the ant says to it in one expressive verse--

"aestate me lacessis; c.u.m bruma est, siles."

This same discussion is reported, with more semblance of truth, by other fabulists, as having happened between the shrill and inert cicada and the silent and laborious ant.

In the preceding chapter we saw the musical beetle. We are tempted to figure the bee as a musician, from the form of the bee being sometimes attributed to the h.e.l.lenic Muses and Apollo, and the name "bee of Delphi" being given to the Pythoness (as a cloud). But according to Plato, the Muses transformed into cicadae the men who amused themselves by singing, and were so absorbed in that occupation they forgot to eat and to drink. If this myth be not a satirical invention of Plato's against poets, the bees as Muses, and those who became cicadae on account of the Muses, should enter into the same mythical family.