Zoological Mythology Volume Ii Part 22

[413] Cfr. what is said on the whoop, the stork, and the lark.--Concerning the bird _gaulus_, I find in Du Cange as follows: "Gaulus Merops avis apibus infensa, unde et Apiastra vocitatur. Papias: 'Meropes, Genus avium, idem et Gauli, qui parentes suos recondere, et alere dic.u.n.tur, sunt autem virides et vocantur Apiastrae.'"

CHAPTER VIII.

THE LARK AND THE QUAIL.

SUMMARY.

The lark the first of animals.--It existed before the earth.--It buries its father in its own head.--The lark sings the praises of G.o.d.--Pra?apatis creates the stomas first.--The crested sun.--Christos and crista; the crested lark and St Christophoros.--Alauda the lauder.--The lark upon the father's tomb.--The mother-lark.--The lark announces morning and summer.--Bharadva?as, the bringer of food, the bringer of good things and of sound.--Bharadva?as as a mythical singer or poet, nourished by a lark; the son of B?ihaspatis.--The old Bharadva?as ascends into heaven in union with the sun.--The quail.--Vartika, vartakas, wachtel, perepiolka.--The quail and the wolf in the _?igvedas_.--The wise girl upon a hare, with a quail tied to her hand.--Jove as a quail.--The quail sacred to Hercules.--The moon and the quail.--The quail becomes a stone.--The quail believed to eat poisonous h.e.l.lebore.--The quail as a sacred bird.--The game of the quail.--The quail and the c.o.c.k.--The quail as a prophetic bird.--The quail puts a price upon corn.

To the crested lark, in the _Ornithes_ of Aristophanes, the name of king is given, and the same virtue of funereal charity is attributed to it which we have already seen in the redbreast of winter, in the stork, and in the crested whoop. According to Aristophanes the lark was not only the first of animals, but it existed before the earth and before the G.o.ds Zeus and Kronos and the t.i.tans. Hence, when the lark's father died, there was no earth to bury him in; then the lark buried its father in its own head (or in its pyramidal crest).

Goropius explains the belief that the lark existed before the earth, by observing that the lark sings seven times a day the praises of G.o.d in the high air, and that prayer was the first thing which existed in the world. In Hindoo cosmogony, when Pra?apatis, the creator, wishes to multiply himself, he begins by creating the stomas or hymn.[414]

The father of the lark is therefore the G.o.d himself. The crested lark is the same as the crested sun, the sun with his rays. In the legend of St Christopher, I see an equivoque between the word _Christos_ and the word _crista_, and, either way, I see the sun personified. St Christopher, in the legend, carries Christ, and is a.s.sociated with the lark. Goropius, when a child, on seeing a picture representing St Christopher, marvelled that the lark did not flee from the tree-staff of St Christopher, whilst the sparrows, instead, fled before him as soon as he approached; he was answered that the lark is not afraid of St Christopher, because it sees on the saint's shoulders its own creator, G.o.d. Christ, the father of the lark, dies, and the lark buries him in its crista. In the same way an equivoque in speech made of the lark (alauda) the lauder (laudatrix) of G.o.d; thus it seems to me that the equivoque between _crista_ and _Christos_ pa.s.sed into the legend of St Christopher. In the nineteenth Mongol story, the poor young man makes his fortune when he hears a lark upon his father's tomb, which has come and placed itself upon the loom. The lark is a form of the young man himself, the young sun who from poor becomes rich; the loom upon which the lark perches is the sky. The Greek name of the crested lark (korudalos) corresponds to the Latin _galerita_.

The lark with the crest or with the tuft explains the custom of the Gauls, recorded by Suetonius in the Life of Julius Caesar, of representing a crested lark upon their helmets. The aesopian fables of the mother-lark with its young ones, and of the lark with the birdcatcher, show us this bird full of cunning and wisdom. As the larks sing the praises of G.o.d only when the sky is serene, and as they announce the morning[415] and the summer, they represent the crested sun which illumines all, which is all-luminous, all-seeing, (the Vedic _vicvavedas_), the golden sun. In the thirteenth Esthonian story, the maiden that sleeps will waken when she hears again the summer song of the larks. (Here the maiden is the earth, which wakens in the spring.)

The Hindoo name of the lark is no less interesting than the Latin _alauda_. Bharadva?as, or the lark, may mean the bringer of food or of goods (as the sun), as well as the bringer of sound (the singer of hymns) and the sacrificer. In this triple interpretation which can be given to the word _bharadva?as_, nearly all the myth of the lark seems to be contained. Bharadva?as, afterwards, also becomes the name of a celebrated poet, and of one of the seven mythical sages, who, according to the legend, was nourished by a lark, and who is said to be the son of B?ihaspatis, the G.o.d of sacrifice, Fire, identified with Divodasas, one of the favourites of the G.o.d Indras, who destroys for him the strong celestial cities of cambaras. The _Taittiriya-brahma?am_ also shows us the wise Bharadva?as in connection with Indras. Bharadva?as has become old whilst travelling three degrees of the life of a studious penitent; Indras approaches the aged sage, and asks him, how, if he still had many years to live, he would employ his lifetime? The sage answers that he would continue to live in penitence and in study. In the three first degrees of his life, Bharadva?as has studied the three Vedas (the _Atharva-veda_ having come afterwards, or not being as yet recognised as a sacred book). In the fourth period, Bharadva?as learns universal science (carvavidya), becomes immortal, and ascends into heaven in union with the sun (adityasya sayu?yam).

The quail is also in intimate relation with the summer sun, but especially with the moon.

Vartika and vartakas are its Indian names, which may mean both she who is turned towards, the animated one, the ready, the swift, the watchful (cfr. the German _Wachtel_), and the pilgrim (cfr. the Russian _perepiolka_). In the _?igvedas_, the Acvinau deliver the quail from torments; they release the quail from the rage of the wolf; they liberate it from the jaws of the wolf that is devouring it.[416]

In the forty-first story of the sixth book of _Afana.s.sieff_, the wise girl comes upon a hare with a quail tied to her hand, and presents herself before the Tzar, whose riddle she must solve in order to marry him. This quail is the symbol of the Tzar himself, or the sun; the wise girl is the aurora (or the spring), who arrives near the sun upon the hare, that is, upon the moon, traversing the shadows of night (or winter). The Greeks and Latins, observing, perhaps, that the moon takes sleep away from the quail, believed that the quail was sacred to Latona, and relate that Jove became a quail to lie with Latona, of which union Diana and Apollo (moon and sun) were born.[417] Others also affirm that the quail was sacred to Hercules, who, by the scent of a quail, recovered his life, which had been taken from him by Tuphon. It is believed that when the moon rises, the quail cries out and is excited to agitation against it, and that the quail's head increases or diminishes according to the moon's influence. As the quail seems to represent the sun, and loves heat, it fears the cold moon. From these mythical relations of the quail was doubtless derived the fear which the ancients had for the quail, which they believed to eat poisonous h.e.l.lebore during the night, and to be therefore poisonous and subject to epilepsy. Plutarch, in the _Apophtegmata_, relates that Augustus punished with death a president of Egypt who had eaten a quail which had carried off the prize in the fight; for it was long the custom to make quails fight with one another, in the same way as at Athens the game of the quail was a favourite diversion, in which several quails were placed in a circle, and he who hit one carried off all the others. According to Artemidoros, quails announced to their feeders the evils by which they would be visited from the side of the sea. The quail which agitates itself against the moon (thus aelianos writes that the c.o.c.k excites himself and exults when the moon rises[418]) presages the bad season, the pluvial or wintry season, and makes use of its own presage to migrate to warmer regions. The quail watches, travels, and cries out during the night; from the number of times that it cries out in succession in the fields, the peasants of Tuscany infer the price of corn; as the quail generally renews its cry three, four or more times, when it cries three times they say that corn will be cheap, and that, when it cries out four or more times, it will be dear; and so they say that the quail puts a price upon corn.[419] The quail arrives with the sun in our fields in spring, and goes away with the sun in September. In the _Mahabharatam_,[420] when the hero Bhimas is squeezed by an enormous serpent, a quail appears near the sun, dark (pratyadityamabhasvara), with only one wing, one eye, and one foot, horrible to the sight, vomiting blood (rakta?

vamanti). This quail may represent either the red sky of evening, in the west, or the red heavens at the conclusion of summer.

FOOTNOTES:

[414] _Taittiriya Ya?urv._ vii. 1, 4.

[415] Hence Gregory of Tours relates, in _Du Cange_: "In Ecclesia Arverna, dum matutinae celebrarentur Vigiliae, in quadam civitate avis Corydalus, quam Alaudam vocamus, ingressa est."

[416] Vartika? grasitam amuncatam; _?igv._ i. 112, 8.--Amuncata?

vartikam a?hasa?; i. 118, 8.--asno v?ikasya vartikam abhike yuva? nara nasatyamumuktam; i. 116, 14.--V?ikasya cid vartikam antar asyad yuva?

cacibhir grasitam amuncatam; x. 39, 13.

[417] The same fable is also related in a different way: Jove cohabits with Latona, and subsequently forces her sister, Asterien, who is, in pity, changed by the G.o.ds into a quail. Jove becomes an eagle to catch her; the G.o.ds change the quail into a stone--(cfr. the stories of Indras as a cuckoo and Rambha, of Indras as a c.o.c.k and Ahalya. It is a popular superst.i.tion that quails, like the crane, when they travel, let little stones fall in order to recognise on their return the places by which they pa.s.sed the first time)--which lies for a long time under water, till by the prayer of Latona it is taken out.

[418] aelianos says that the c.o.c.k is in the moon's favour, either because it a.s.sisted Latona in parturition, or because it is generally believed (as a symbol of fecundation) to be the facilitator of childbirth. As a watchful animal it was natural to consider it especially dear to the moon, the nocturnal watcher.--The c.o.c.k, as an announcer of news, was sacred to Mercury; as the curer of many diseases, to aesculapius; as a warrior, to Mars, Hercules, and Pallas, who, according to Pausanias, wore a hen upon her helmet; as an increaser of the family, to the Lares, &c. Even Roman Catholic priests will deign to receive with especial favour, ad majorem Dei gloriam, the homage of c.o.c.ks, capons, and chickens.

[419] This year, my quails cried out six times; and the corn in Italy is very dear, the spring having been a very rainy one.

[420] iii. 12,437.

CHAPTER IX.

THE c.o.c.k AND THE HEN.

SUMMARY.

Alektruon, a satellite of Mars, the lover of Venus, becomes a c.o.c.k.--Indras, the lover of Ahalya as a c.o.c.k; Ahalya turned to stone.--Indras as a eunuch or as a ram.--Pra?apatis loves his daughter the aurora, and becomes a goat.--Ahalya in the ashes, like Cinderella.--The thunder and the eggs; the iron nail and the laurel in the nest.--To be made of stucco, to be turned to stone by the thunder which astonishes.--It is a sacrilege to kill c.o.c.ks and hens.--The c.o.c.k Parodars in the _Avesta_.--The c.o.c.k chases the demons away.--The c.o.c.k wakens the aurora and arouses mankind.--Christus and the c.o.c.k as _cristiger_, _cristatus_, _cristeus_.--The c.o.c.k sacred to St James, to St Christopher and Donar.--St James as a c.o.c.k.--The hen crows like a c.o.c.k.--Men turned to stone, and the c.o.c.k who calls them to life again.--The c.o.c.k as a devil.--The enchanted hut stands upon a hen's little feet.--c.o.c.ks killed as a form of witches.--The _lapillus alectorius_; the same enclosed in a ring.--To dream of brood-hens with chickens.--The egg is more cunning than the hen.--The golden c.o.c.k on the rock; marvels come out of the rock.--The egg which becomes a girl.--The c.o.c.k on the top of high buildings, to indicate the winds, and also the hours.--The black c.o.c.k and the red one.--The black hen.--The c.o.c.k sacrificed.--The c.o.c.k, son of Mars.--c.o.c.kfights.--Auguries taken from c.o.c.ks and hens; these auguries held up to derision.--The hen's egg; "Gallus in sterquilinio suo plurimum potest."--The pearl is an egg; the hen's egg in the sky is the sun.--The white hen.--Easter eggs.--The golden egg.--The cosmic egg.--It is an excellent augury to begin with the egg; "Ab ovo ad malum."--To begin _ab ovo_.

Alektruon (the Greek name of the c.o.c.k) was the companion and satellite of Mars. When Mars wished to spend the night with Venus during the absence of Vulcan, he placed Alektruon to watch at the door.

Alektruon, however, fell asleep; and Mars, surprised by the returning husband, and full of indignation, transformed Alektruon into a c.o.c.k, in order that it might learn to be watchful; whence Ausonius--

"Ter clara instantis Eoi Signa canit serus, deprenso Marte, satelles."

According to a Pauranic legend, Indras, the Indian Mars, enamoured of Ahalya, the wife of Gautamas, and accompanied by Candras (the moon), a.s.sumed the form of a k?ikavakas (c.o.c.k or peac.o.c.k), and went to sing at midnight near the dwelling of Ahalya, whilst her husband was absent.

Then, divesting himself of the form of a c.o.c.k (or peac.o.c.k), he left Candras at the door to watch, and united himself with Ahalya (the hen).

Meanwhile Gautamas returns; Candras not having warned the lovers of his approach, the saint turns Ahalya to stone, and scatters over the body of Indras a thousand wombs; which, being submerged in the waters, the pitying G.o.ds subsequently changed into a thousand eyes (sahasrakshas is one of the Hindoo names of Indras and of the peac.o.c.k). According to a variety of this legend,--which is a.n.a.logous to the fable of the Zeus as a quail, the seducer of the sister of Latona, or of Latona herself, changed into a stone and submerged in the waters,--Indras becomes a eunuch, and obtains, as we have already seen, in compensation, two ram's t.e.s.t.i.c.l.es. In the _aitareya Br._, the G.o.d Brahman Pra?apatis becomes a goat or a roebuck (?icyas), in order to lie with his own daughter Aurora. In the thirty-second and thirty-third hymn of the eighth book of the _?igvedas_, the G.o.d Indras and the G.o.d Brahman change places.

Indras is at first beautiful (ciprin); he afterwards becomes a woman (stri hi brahma babhuvitha). In the _Ramaya?am_,[421] Gautamas condemns Indras to become powerless, and Ahalya to remain hidden in the forest, lying in the ashes (bhasmacayini), until Ramas comes to deliver her. The ashy sky, the stony sky, the watery sky, are identical; Ahalya (the evening aurora) in the ashes is the germ of the story of Cinderella, and of the daughter of the King of Dacia, persecuted by her lover, her father himself.

A popular Italian belief, which has been mentioned by Pliny and Columella, says that when it thunders while the hen is sitting on her eggs, they are spoiled. To remedy this evil, Pliny advises to put under the fodder of the eggs an iron nail, or else some earth taken up by a ploughshare. Columella says that many put little branches of laurel and roots of garlic, with iron nails. These are all symbols of the sulphureous thunderbolts (because of their strong smell), and of the thunderbolt conceived of as an iron weapon; the remedy recommended is according to the principle of _similia similibus_, for the same reason as the devil is prayed to in order to keep him away. In Sicily, when a hen is setting on her eggs, they put at the bottom of the nest a nail, which has the property of attracting and absorbing every kind of noise that may be noxious to the chickens. Now it seems interesting to me to find an a.n.a.logous belief in Vedic antiquity. A strophe, where the word _a?da_ may be rendered eggs as well as t.e.s.t.i.c.l.es, which therefore leads us to think of oviparous birds and chickens no less than men, invokes Indras, the thunder-G.o.d, as follows:--"Do not harm us, Indras; do not destroy us; do not take from us our beloved enjoyments; do not break, O great one, O strong one, our eggs (or t.e.s.t.i.c.l.es); do not ruin the fruits of our bowels."[422] Indras can not only become a eunuch himself, but he can make others become eunuchs; thunder makes us astonished, and as we also say, by an a.n.a.logous expression, in Italy, makes us of stucco or turn to stone.

The c.o.c.k and the oviparous hen, as birds which are as egg-yielding symbols of abundance, and which personify the sun, were and are sacred in India and in Persia, where it is considered a sacrilege to kill them. Cicero, in his _Oratio pro Murena_, writes that among the ancients he who ultroneously killed a c.o.c.k did not sin less than he who suffocated his own father. In Du Cange we read that Geoffrey I., Duke of Brittany, whilst he was on a journey to Rome, was slain with a stone by a woman, one of whose hens had been killed by the Duke's sparrowhawk. The same superst.i.tion about hens is still observed in Italy by a great number of housewives.

In the _Avesta_ the crow of the c.o.c.k accompanies the flight of the demons, wakens the aurora, and arouses mankind.[423] Even the Christian poet Prudentius, who still sees a solar symbol in the _Christus_, compares him to the c.o.c.k, also called _cristiger_, _cristatus_, _cristeus_,[424] prays to Christ to chase away sleep, to break the fetters of night, to undo the old sin, and to bring the new light, after having said of the c.o.c.k--

"Ferunt vagantes daemones, Laetos tenebris noctium Gallo canente exterritos Sparsim timere et cedere.

... omnes credimus Illo quietis tempore Quo gallus exsultans canit Christum redisse ex inferis."

We have seen in the preceding chapter, the crested lark in connection with St Christopher. In Germany, on the 25th of July, sacred to St James[425] (the saint who empties the bottle, as they say in Piedmont), to St Christopher, and the ancient G.o.d of thunder, Donar, c.o.c.ks were made to dance, and then sacrificed. Donar carries Oerwandil on his shoulders across rivers, as the giant Christopher carries Christ.

There is a superst.i.tion which is widely diffused in Italy, Germany, and Russia, according to which a hen that begins to crow like a c.o.c.k is of the worst omen; and it is the universal persuasion that it ought to be killed immediately, in order not to die before it. As the same belief exists in Persia, the discussion of Sadder with regard to it is interesting, to prove that the hen which crows like a c.o.c.k must not be killed, because, if it become a c.o.c.k, that means that it will be able to kill the demon, (therefore at Persian tombs they were accustomed to set a c.o.c.k free). Having regard to the superst.i.tious Eastern and European beliefs, the worthy Professor Spiegel will now find, I hope, the following pa.s.sage, which appeared rather obscure to him, a little clearer:--"Qui religione sinceri sunt ludificationes expertes, quando percipiunt ex gallina vociferationem galli non debent illam gallinam interficere ominis causa, quia eam interficiendi jus nullum habent....

Nam in Persia si gallina fit gallus, ipsa infaustum diabolum franget. Si autem alium gallum adhibueris in auxilium, ut c.u.m gallina consortium habeat, non erit incommodum ut tunc ille diabolus sit interfectus."

According to a Sicilian proverb, the hen that crows like a c.o.c.k must neither be sold nor given away, but eaten by its mistress.[426]

In the forty-fifth story of the fifth book of _Afana.s.sieff_, the c.o.c.ks crow, and the devil's smoke disappears. In the fortieth story of the same book, the c.o.c.k crows, and the devil disappears from the kingdom in which he made every man and every thing turn to stone. The son of a peasant, staying to pray all through the night with lighted candles, alone escapes from the devil's evil works; after three nights of similar penitence, all the men who were turned to stone come to life again, and the young and pious peasant espouses the king's beautiful daughter.

In the thirtieth story of the fifth book of _Afana.s.sieff_, when the c.o.c.k begins to crow, the old man becomes of a sudden at once rigid and silent. Here, perhaps, there is an allusion to the old sun of evening, and to the c.o.c.k's crowing in the evening. The c.o.c.k of night, therefore, a.s.sumes sometimes a diabolical form. In the twenty-second story of the fifth book of _Afana.s.sieff_, the devil becomes a c.o.c.k in order to eat the corn into which the young man who was first turned into a gold ring, has been at length transformed. But this c.o.c.k of night, being demoniacal, although his crest (the sun) is always red, is of a black colour. The c.o.c.k is red in the morning and in the evening; in the night it is black, with its red crest turned now to the east, now to the west; it is upon the little feet of a hen,[427]

that the little movable enchanted Russian hut stands, which the young heroes and young heroines on a journey meet with in the forest, and cause to turn in the direction they came from.

In the ninth story of the second book of the _Pentamerone_, a queen gives orders to kill the c.o.c.ks in the town, so that the crowing may cease, because as long as the c.o.c.ks crow, she will, by a witch's enchantment, be unable to recognise and embrace her son. The witch herself evidently a.s.sumes here the form of the diabolical c.o.c.k that crows in the night.[428]

In the first story of the fourth book of the _Pentamerone_, the old Minec' Aniello feeds a c.o.c.k well, but being afterwards in want of money, sells it to two magicians, who, when walking back, say to each other that the c.o.c.k is precious for the stone that it contains, which, enclosed in a ring, will enable one to obtain all that he wishes (the _lapillus alectorius_, which is said to be as large as a bean, to be like crystal, to be good for pregnant women, and for inspiring courage; it is alleged that the hero Milon owed all his strength to it). Minec' Aniello hears this, steals the c.o.c.k, kills it, takes the stone, and by its means becomes young again, in a beautiful palace of gold and silver. When the magicians defraud him of this stone, enclosed in a ring, the young man becomes old again, and goes to seek his lost ring in the kingdom of the deep hole (de Pertuso cupo) inhabited by the rat; the rats gnaw the finger of the magician who has the ring; Minec' Aniello recovers his ring, and changes the two magicians into a.s.ses; he rides upon one a.s.s, and then throws it down the mountains; the other a.s.s is loaded with lard, and sent in grat.i.tude to the rats. Here the c.o.c.k appears as a nocturnal animal; the stone which, when enclosed in a ring, performs miracles, is the sun which comes out when invoked by the c.o.c.k of night. According to the Sicilian belief, when one dreams of brood-hens with chickens in uninhabited and deserted houses, it is a sign that there are treasures hidden in these houses, and one must go to dig them up.

In the first of the Esthonian stories, the c.o.c.k that crows is a spy over the old woman.[429] In the third Esthonian story, a woman gives her husband three eggs of a black hen to eat in order to obtain three dwarf heroes. In the twenty-second Esthonian story, the shepherds that watch over the son of the persecuted king, seeing the knowingness of the boy, recognise the truth of the proverb that "the egg is more cunning than the hen." In the ninth Esthonian story, a young man, after having made a compact with the devil, cheats him, giving him the blood of a c.o.c.k instead of his own. In the fourth Esthonian story, when three strokes are given with a golden rod upon a rock, a large golden c.o.c.k comes out and perches upon the top of it; it beats its wings and crows; at each crowing a marvel comes out of the stone, a tablecloth that spreads itself and a porringer that fills itself. In the twenty-fourth Esthonian story, an old fairy gives to the queen a little basket with a bird's egg inside; the queen must hatch it for three months, like a pearl, in her bosom; first a little living doll will be born, which, when warmed in a basket covered with wool, will become a real girl; at the same time that the doll becomes a real girl, the queen will give birth to a beautiful male child. Linda, the wife of Kalew, in Finnish mythology, is also born of the egg of a woodc.o.c.k or a heathc.o.c.k.

In Hungry (where a dyed tin c.o.c.k is placed upon the top of high buildings to indicate the direction of the wind--this is the English and Italian weatherc.o.c.k; we have all heard of the c.o.c.k of the tower of St Mark at Venice which makes the hours strike), it is believed that, to appease the devil, one must sacrifice a black c.o.c.k to him. The red c.o.c.k, on the contrary, signifies fire.[430]

In the Monferrato it is believed that a black hen split open alive in the middle, and placed where one feels the pain of the _mal di punta_, will take away the disease and the pain, on condition that when this strange plaster is taken off, the feathers be burned in the house.

The c.o.c.k or fowl which, in the festive customs of Ess.e.x and of Norfolk (of which traces are preserved in the striking of the porringer by a man blindfolded at the feast of Mid-Lent in several parts of France and in Piedmont), a man blind-folded wins, if he succeeds in striking it upon the shoulders of another man (or else sometimes shut up in a porringer at the height of twelve or fourteen feet from the ground, at which projectiles are thrown[431]) is a personification of the funereal c.o.c.k out of which, when struck, the daily fire is made to come. The sacrifice of a c.o.c.k was a custom in India, Greece, and Germany.