Zoological Mythology Volume Ii Part 26

CHAPTER I.

FISHES, AND PARTICULARLY THE PIKE, THE SACRED FISH OR FISH OF ST PETER, THE CARP, THE MELWEL, THE HERRING, THE EEL, THE LITTLE GOLDFISH, THE SEA-URCHIN, THE LITTLE PERCH, THE BREAM, THE DOLPHIN, AND THE WHALE.

SUMMARY.

Why Indras, the fearless hero, flees after having defeated the serpent; the fish causes the death of the fearless hero.--cakravataras and the fisher.--The stone and the fish.--Adrika, Girika, the mother of fishes.--The matsyas as a nation.--caradvat.--Pradyumnas.--Guhas.--The fishes laugh.--The fish guards the white haoma.--The water of the fish drunk by the cook.--The devil steals the fishes.--The dwarf Andvarri and the pike as the guardian of gold and of a ring.--The goldfish and the pike.--The dwarf Vish?us as a little goldfish.--The legend of the Deluge.--Vish?us as a horned fish draws the s.h.i.+p of Ma.n.u.s; the sea-urchin or hedgehog of the Ganges, the little destroyer.--The dolphin with the horned bull draws the chariot or vessel of the Acvinau.--The little turbulent perch.--The thorns of the sea-urchin compared to a hundred oars.--The whale as a bridge or island; the whale devours a fleet.--The pike.--The bream.--The phallical fishes; the phallos and the simpleton.--Why fishes are eaten in Lent, that is, spring; and on Friday, the day of Freya or Venus.--The _poisson d'avril_.--The herring.--The eel.--The bream cleans the workman.--The phallical and demoniacal eel; _anguilla_ and _anguis_.--The eel and the cane; _ikshus_ and _Iskshvakus_.--Diabolical fishes.--The red mullet.--The bream and the ring.--Cimedia.--The whale vomits out the vessels; the whale as an island.--The little perch finds the ring and draws the casket by the help of the dolphins.--The war of the little perch with the other fishes.--The eel pout.--The perch.--The sturgeon.--The little perch is the fox of fishes.--The words _matsyas_, _matto_, _mad_, _matt_, _mattas_, _madidus_.--The drunken pike.--The three fishes.--cakuntala, the pearl and the fish.--The genera _cyprinus_ and _perca_; _lucius_, _lucioperca sandra_; the lunar horn.--The dolphin.--The carp.--The fish _Zeus Chalkeus_, the fish _faber_, the fish of St Peter; the fish of St Christopher; the equivoque of _crista_ and _christus_ again in conjunction with the legend of St Christopher.

The G.o.d Indras, in the _?igvedas_, after having killed the monster, flees in terror across the ninety-nine navigable rivers; the pluvial G.o.d, after having lightened, thunder-stricken and thundered, is terrified by his own work; the Vedic poet asks him what he has seen, but the G.o.d pa.s.ses on and answers not; killing the monster, he has unchained the waters; the pluvial G.o.d has wounded himself while wounding his enemy; the monster's shadow or his own shadow pursues him; the waters increase and threaten to drown him. The G.o.d Indras fears the very waters he has caused to flow. The G.o.d Indras was condemned to remain hidden in the waters (of night and winter) during the period of his malediction, for defiling in adultery the nuptial bed of Ahalya. The G.o.d shut up in the waters, the wet G.o.d, is his most infamous and accursed form.[478] The celestial metamorphosis into a fish is perhaps the vilest trans.m.u.tations of animal, and therefore the most feared; the fish lives especially in order to reproduce itself; to represent, therefore, the decadence of the G.o.d after a phallical crime of his, he is condemned to lie down in the waters. We know that the fisher, in the _cakuntala_, lives at cakravataras (that is, the fall of Indras). We have seen the sister of Latona, and Rambha and Ahalya, after having transgressed, the one with Jupiter and the others with Indras, become stones in the waters. The fish, rendered powerless and stupid, becomes inert and motionless like a stone (sun and moon pa.s.s into sky or cloud). We already find the image of the stone with the honey brought, in the _?igvedas_,[479] into close affinity to that of the fish which lies in shallow water, or of the fish made powerless and deprived of its vital qualities.

The legend of the nymph Adrika (from the word _adris_, which means a stone, a rock, a mountain, or a cloud) presents the same a.n.a.logy between the stone-cloud, that is, the stone in the waters, and the fish. By a divine malediction, Adrika is transformed into a fish, and lives in the Yamuna. Being in these waters, she picks up a leaf upon which had fallen the sperm of King Uparicaras, enamoured of Girika (or of Adrika herself, the two words _adrika_ and _girika_ being equivalent); this leaf had been let fall into the waves of the Yamuna by the bird cyenas, that is, by the hawk. Having fed upon this sperm, the nymph fish is caught by fishermen, and taken to King Uparicaras; the fish is opened, and the nymph resumes her heavenly form; of her a son and a daughter are born, Matsyas the male fish, and Matsya the female one.[480] The male afterwards becomes king of the matsyas or fishes, which some authorities have, in vain, as I think, endeavoured to identify with a historical nation; for it is not enough to find them named as a people in the _Mahabharatam_, to prove their real historical existence, when we know that the whole basis of the _Mahabharatam_ is mythological. Moreover, when we find the Matsyas in the Vedic hymns, it is one more argument from which to infer the mythical nature of the peoples named in the _?igvedas_ in connection with the waters. In another legend of the _Mahabharatam_, the s.e.m.e.n of the penitent caradvat (properly the autumnal or the pluvial one), provoked by the sight of a beautiful nymph, falls upon the wood of an arrow; the wood of the arrow splits in two, and two sons are born of it, who are given to the king; a variety of this legend will be found further on in the Western traditions connected with the story of the fish.[481]

To the ninety-nine or hundred cities of cambaras (the clouds) destroyed by Indras, correspond the ninety-nine rivers which Indras crosses. In the _Vish?u P._,[482] a fish receives the hero Pradyumnas (an appellation of the G.o.d of love), thrown into the sea by cambaras, and enables him to recover and wed Mayadevi.

King Guhas (the hidden one? the dark one?) the king of the black Nishadas, the king of cringaveras (in which we have already recognised the moon), who, during the night, receives Ramas on the banks of the Ganges, hospitably entertains him, offering him beverages, meat, and fishes.[483]

In the _cukasaptati_, and in the _Tuti-Name_, the fishes laugh at the prudery of an adulterous servant-girl; we have already shown, in the first chapter of the first book, the phallical signification of the fish that laughs.

In the _Khorda Avesta_, we find a fish with acute eyesight (Karo-macyo, the posterior Khar-mahi), which guards the white haoma, that is, the ambrosia (with which sperm was also identified).

In the _Pseudo-Callisthenes_, Alexander, having arrived at the luminous fountain which scatters perfumes, asks his cook for something to eat; the cook prepares to wash the fish in the refulgent water; the fish returns to life, and disappears from his sight; but the cook drinks some of the water of the fish, and gives some to Alexander's daughter Une, who becomes, by the curse of Alexander himself, a nered or marine nymph, whilst he fastens a stone to the cook's neck, and orders him to be thrown to the bottom of the sea. It is unnecessary for me to demonstrate the a.n.a.logy between this legend and the myth of Indras, or to insist upon the phallical meaning of the myth.

We already know that phallical images and demoniacal ones sometimes correspond; hence, in the ninth Esthonian story, the devil steals the fishes from the fishermen; hence, in the _Eddas_, the brigand Loki now a.s.sumes the form of a salmon, and now catches the pike, into which the dwarf Andvarri has transformed himself. The pike is the guardian of gold and of a ring which is taken from him; the fish enters into the stone, and predicts that gold will be the cause of the death of the two brothers. The ambrosial rain which comes out of the cloud, and the ambrosial dew, are the water in which the fish is washed, and the ambrosial dew is the water or seed of the fish; the fair-haired and silvery moon in the ocean of night is the little gold fish, and the little silver fish which announces the rainy season, the autumn, the deluge. Out of the cloudy, nocturnal, or wintry ocean, comes forth the sun, the pearl lost in the sea, which the gold or silver fish brings out.

The little goldfish of our aquariums, the _cyprinus chrysoparius_, the _cyprinus auratus_, the _cyprinus soph.o.r.e_ (the Hindoo _capharas_, in the feminine _caphari_), and the luminous pike, like the moon, can expand and contract. We are already acquainted with the sea-monster which, in the _Ramaya?am_ (like the siren fish), allures from the sea the shadow of Hanumant, and can make itself now small, now large; we have seen the dwarf Andvarri of the _Eddas_, who hides himself in the form of a pike; we are familiar with the G.o.d Vish?us or Haris, who, from being a dwarf, becomes a giant (Haris means fair-haired or golden, and refers now to the sun, now to the moon); Vish?us, in his incarnation as a fish, first takes the form of the little golden fish, the caphari; and, in this form, the G.o.d Vish?us is especially identified with the moon, the ruler of the rainy season. As the moon (which we have already seen as a little learned puppet) grows by quarters, and from being exceedingly small, becomes large, so, in the Hindoo legend of the Deluge, narrated in the Vedic commentaries, in the _Mahabharatam_, and in the Pauranic legends, the G.o.d Vish?us or Haris begins by being an exceedingly small fish, a caphari, which beseeches the penitent Ma.n.u.s to be taken out of the great river, the Ganges, where it is afraid of being devoured by the aquatic monsters.

Ma.n.u.s receives the little fish in the vase of water in which he performs his ablutions (a Hindoo proverb says that the caphari is agitated from petulance in water an inch deep, whilst the rohitas, a kind of carp, does not become proud even in bottomless depths[484]); in one night (evidently in its character as the moon) the fish grows so much that it can no longer remain in the vase; Ma.n.u.s carries it into a pool, afterwards into the Ganges; finally, the fish increases so much in size that Ma.n.u.s, recognising Vish?us in it, is obliged to give it entire liberty in the sea. Then the grateful fish announces that in seven days the waters will inundate the world, and all the wicked will perish; he orders him (as the biblical G.o.d does Noah) to build a s.h.i.+p: "Thou shalt enter into it," says Vish?us to him, "with seven sages, a couple of every kind of animal, and the seeds of every plant. Thou shalt wait in it the end of the night of Brahman; and when the vessel is agitated by the waves, thou shalt attach it by a long serpent to the horn of an enormous fish, which will come near thee, and will guide thee over the waves of the abyss." On the appointed day, the waters of the sea came up over the surface of the earth; the fish made its appearance to draw the s.h.i.+p in order to save Ma.n.u.s. The s.h.i.+p stopped upon the horn, that is, upon the peak of a mountain. Now this little goldfish, in which Vish?us is incarnate, when it becomes horned to draw the s.h.i.+p of Ma.n.u.s, a.s.similates itself to another interesting sea animal, the sea-urchin or hedgehog of the Ganges, (ci?c.u.maras, which is also one of the names of the dwarf Vish?us (we have already seen Vish?us as a wild-boar), and which means properly the little destroyer. The eighteenth strophe of the precious 116th hymn of the first book of the _?igvedas_, shows us the ci?c.u.maras or sea-urchin, which, together with another horned animal, the bull (we have already seen the moon as a horned bull) draws the chariot of the Acvinau, full of riches;[485] we know that the chariot of the Acvinau is often a vessel. ci?c.u.maras also means in Sansk?it the dolphin;[486]

and the dolphins and the fish called jorsh (the little perch), with its little horns, thorns, and thin shape, sharpened at one end like a pole ending in a point, called in Russian stories the turbulent one (kropacishko), are in relation with each other, as they draw the casket away; the jorsh takes the place of the "little destroyer," of the ci?c.u.maras, of the sea-urchin, concerning which there is a very interesting Sicilian verse, which compares the stings of the sea-urchin to a hundred oars, with which it must row, carrying its little invokers; after having caught it, Sicilian children scatter a little salt over it, and sing--

"Vocami, vocami, centu rimi, Vocami, vocami, centu rimi."

(Row for me, row for me, hundred oars). Then it moves, and the children are delighted. In the Russian little poem, _Kaniok Garbunok_, of Jershoff, already mentioned by us in the chapter on the Horse, Ivan must seek, for the sultan, a ring shut up in a casket which has fallen into the sea (the evening or the autumnal sun). Ivan upon his crook-backed horse arrives in the middle of the sea, where there is a whale which cannot move because it has swallowed a fleet, that is to say, the solar vessel. The part played here by the whale is the same as that of the sea-monster who swallows Hanumant in the _Ramaya?am_, to vomit him out again, as in the case of the biblical Jonah (the night devours the sun, or carries it into its body). Hanumant enters into the fish by its mouth, and comes out at its tail; however, in the narrative given of it in the fifty-sixth canto of the fifth book by Hanumant himself, he says that the sea-monster having shut its mouth, he came out of it by the right ear. When the night is with the moon, instead of swallowing the hero, the bull-moon or fish-moon carries him or serves as a bridge for him. In Russian fairy tales the brown pike (which, on account of its colour, is called the chaste widow)[487] is now a form a.s.sumed by the devil in order to eat the young hero, who has become a little perch,[488] and now an enormous fish with great teeth, which slaughters the little fishes.[489] Now, instead, it serves as a bridge for Ivan Tzarevic, who is seeking for the egg of the duck which is inside the hare under the oak-tree in the midst of the sea;[490] now it is caught in the fountain (as the moon, soma, in the well) by the foolish and lazy Emilius, and because Emilius saves its life, it makes him rich by performing several miracles for him, such as that of the barrels full of water, of the trees of the forest, of the waggons or the stoves which move off by themselves, and finally that of the cask thrown into the sea, into which Emilius is shut with the beautiful daughter of the Tzar, and which comes to sh.o.r.e and breaks open.[491] Now the phallical pike with the golden fins[492] is caught, washed, quartered, and roasted; the dirty water is thrown away and drunk by the cow (in _Afana.s.sieff_) or by the mare (in _Erlenwein_); a portion of the fish is eaten by the black slave, whilst she is carrying it to table, the rest by the queen; hence three young heroes, considered as brothers, are born at the same time to the cow (or mare), to the black maiden, and to the queen. Now the pike (as in the satirical fable of Kriloff) draws the car in company with the crab and the heron; and here, it would appear, these two animals are rather stupid than intelligent, inasmuch as, whilst the pike draws the car into the water, the crab draws it back on the earth and the heron essays to mount with it into the air. Here we have the usual correspondence between the phallical figure and that of the simpleton.

Thus, in the Piedmontese dialect, the phallos and the stupid man is called _merlu_ (blackbird). From the word _merlo_ (Lat. _merula_) was derived the name of the fish called _merluccio_ or _merluzzo_ (_gadus merlucius_, the melwel or haddock), called _asellus_ by the Latins and _onos_ by the Greeks. The a.s.s is a well-known phallical symbol, and Bacchus being also a phallical G.o.d, we read in Pliny, "Asellorum duo genera, Callariae minores, et Bacchi, qui non nisi in alto (in the deep) capiuntur." The Italian name _baccala_, given to the cod-fish, seems to me to be derived from the union of the two names Bacchus and Callaria. In the Piedmontese dialect, a stupid man is also called by the name of _baccala_. There is also a fish called _merula_, of which the ancients describe the extraordinary salacity, by indulging which it literally consumes itself away and perishes.[493] In Italy we find the following phallical proverbs: "The blackbird has pa.s.sed the Po,"

and "The blackbird has pa.s.sed the river;" to denote a woman or a man exhausted, to impotence. The ancients wrote of the fish called _chrusofrus_ by the Greeks, and _aurata_ by the Latins, that it would let itself be taken in children's and women's hands, and (according to Athenaios) it was sacred to Aphrodite. Aphrodite, Venus, G.o.ddess of love, especially, represented in myths the aurora and the spring (hence in Lent and on Friday, the day of Freya, _dies Veneris_, we eat fishes); therefore the _gemini pisces_, the two fishes joined in one, were sacred to her, and the joke of the _poisson d'Avril_, as I have already mentioned in the first chapter of the first book, is a jest of phallical origin, which should be abandoned.[494] Aphrodite and Eros, pursued by Typhon, transformed themselves into fishes and plunged into the Euphrates. The h.e.l.lenic Eros was also represented riding (instead of the phallical b.u.t.terfly) on a dolphin; according to other accounts, he rides upon a swan with dolphins before him. In an epigram of the _Anthologia Graeca_, the dolphin, moreover, carries a weary nightingale. In several parts of Alsace, on the evening of St Andrew's Day, girls eat herrings to dream during the night of the husband who is to quench their thirst.[495] The fish _julis_ of Pliny, or Julia, is called _donzella_ (damsel) in Italian, and _menchia di re_ (king's phallos) at Naples and in Venetia, and other fishes also take their name from the organs of generation.[496] The phallos is called _u pesce_ at Naples, and, in Italian, _nuovo pesce_ (a new fish) signifies a stupid man. An essentially phallical character, moreover, is possessed by the eel, which, according to Agatharchides, quoted by Hippolitus Salvia.n.u.s, the B?otians crowned as a victim and sacrificed solemnly to the G.o.ds, which, according to Herodotos, the Egyptians venerated as a divine fish, and which Athenaios pompously calls the Helen of dinners. The eel became proverbial; the Italian proverbial expressions, "To take the eel," "To hold the eel by its tail," "When the eel has taken the hook it must go where it is drawn," are all equivocal. The Germans also have a proverb concerning the eel, which reminds us of the story of the cook who steals the fish from Alexander, and, together with Alexander's daughter, drinks its water.[497] The phallos discovers secrets, and therefore, in a German legend,[498] the faculty of seeing everything which is under the water is ascribed to a woman who had eaten an eel (a variety of the story of the fish that laughs, which, in the ninth story of the third book of _Afana.s.sieff_, enriches whoever possesses it, and the fish _silurus_ (the bream), so called from the Greek words _sillo_ and _oura_, because it shakes its tail, which, in the fifty-eighth story of the sixth book of _Afana.s.sieff_, cleans the workman who had fallen into the mud, and makes the princess laugh who had never laughed before).

In the eighteenth story of Santo Stefano di Calcinaia, a fisherman catches an eel with two tails and two heads, which is so large that he has to be a.s.sisted in carrying it. The eel speaks, and commands that its two tails be planted in the garden, that its intestines be given to the b.i.t.c.h, and its two heads to the fisherman's wife. Two swords are born of the tails in the garden (in the Hindoo legend we saw two sons born of the wood of caradvat's arrow), two dogs are born of the intestines to the b.i.t.c.h, and two beautiful young men of the heads to the wife (the two Acvinau, drawn, as we have seen in the Vedic hymn, by the sea-urchin). In the chapter on the Dove, we saw the two young lovers, when pursued, take the form of doves. In the fourteenth Sicilian story of Signora Gonzenbach, the young man and the maiden pursued by the witch transform themselves first into church and sacristan, then into garden and gardener, then into rose and rosebush, and finally into fountain and eel. In the first volume of the _Cabinet des Fees_, the fairy Aiguillette is taken in the form of an eel. In the fourth of the stories of Santo Stefano di Calcinaia, the beautiful maiden is asked by the servant-maid of the priest (that is, by the servant-maid of the black man, by the black woman or the night), who went to wash clothes at the fountain, to come down from the tree. The maiden descends, is thrown into the fountain and devoured by an enormous eel. The fishermen catch the eel and take it to the prince; the witch has it killed and thrown into a cane-brake.

The eel is then transformed into a large and beautiful cane, which is also carried to the prince, who, cutting it gently with a penknife, makes his beautiful girl come out (this legend is a variety of that of the wooden girl).[499] This form of a diabolical eel has a close relations.h.i.+p with the monster-serpent; the _anguilla_ reminds one of the _anguis_; hence, in the ninth story of the first book of the _Pentamerone_, instead of the eel as a f?cundator, as in the eighteenth Tuscan story, we find the fish called _draco marinus_ (in Italian, _trascina_), of which it is curious to read, what Volaterra.n.u.s writes, that--"Si manu dextra adripias eum contumacem renitentemque experieris, si laeva subsequentem,"--as if he meant to imply that the left hand is the hand of the devil. Thus Oppianos describes the wedding of the muraina eel (the _murana_) with the serpent (the viper according to aelianos and Pliny). Other fishes have a.s.sumed an essentially diabolical character, such as the fish called _alopex_ (Lat. _vulpes_, _vulpecula_), of which aelianos relates that it swallows the hook and then vomits it out with its own intestines; the _rana piscatrix_, also called the marine devil; the _trugon_ (Lat.

_pastinaca_, It. _bruco_), which, according to Oppianos, kills men with its dart (fame reports that Ulysses was killed with the bone of a _trugon_) and dries up trees (although it is strange that to cure one's self from such a fatal wound, as it was supposed by the ancients to be venomous, Dioscoris only recommends a decoction of sage). The sea-scorpion (whose wounds, according to the ancients, were cured by means of the _trigla_, the red mullet--Lat. _mullus_--sacred according to Athenaios and Apollodorus to Artemis, or to Diana Trivia, the moon; Plutarch writes that it was sacred to Diana as a hunting fish, because it kills the marine hare, noxious to man; but we have seen that the mythical hare is the moon itself), the bream, or _silurus_, _glanis_, or _piscis barbatus_, which, in Hungary, according to Mannhardt (Manardus, quoted in the sixteenth century by Ippolito Salviano), had the reputation of attacking men, so much so, that it is said that one of these fishes, which are, in fact, very voracious, was once found with a man's hand, covered with rings, in its intestines. But these rings in the fish's body (like the gem called cimedia,[500] which, according to the popular belief, is found in the brain of a great number of fishes) recall us to the interrupted poem of Jershoff, to the little perch, the dolphins, the whale, and the ring fallen into the water and found again by the fish, which is perhaps the most interesting subject of legends in the mythical cycle of the fishes, and, if I may say so, their epic exploit.

Ivan, therefore, has come with his hump-backed little horse into the midst of the sea near the whale which has swallowed a fleet;[501] upon the whale a forest has grown; women go to seek for mushrooms in its moustaches. Ivan communicates his wish, and the whale calls all the fishes together, but no one can give information except one little fish, the little jorsh, or little perch, which, however, is at the time engaged in chasing one of its adversaries. The whale sends amba.s.sadors to the jorsh, which unwillingly desists for an instant from the fight, in order to search for the casket; it finds it, but is not strong enough to lift it up. The numerous army of the herrings come and try, but in vain; at last two dolphins come and raise the casket. Ivan receives the wished-for ring; the whale's malediction comes to an end; it vomits the fleet forth again, and is once more able to move about, whilst the little perch returns to pursue its enemies. This war of the little perch with its adversaries has had in popular Russian tradition its Herodotuses and its Homers, who have celebrated its praises both in prose and verse. Afana.s.sieff gives in the third book of his stories, from a ma.n.u.script of the last century, the description of the judgment of the little perch (jorsh) before the tribunal of the fishes. The bream (lecc) accuses the little jorsh, the wicked warrior (as the sea-urchin is the little destroyer; the confounding of the sea-urchin with the little perch is all the easier in Russian legends, inasmuch as the former is called josz, and the latter jorsh), who has wounded all the other fishes with its rough bristles, and compelled them to forsake the Lake of Rastoff. The jorsh defends itself by saying that it is strong in virtue of its inherent vigour; that it is not a brigand, but a good subject, who is known everywhere, highly prized and cooked by great lords, who eat it with satisfaction. The bream appeals to the testimony of other fishes, who give witness against the little perch, who thereupon complains that the other fishes, in their overweening importance, wish, by means of the tribunals, to ruin him and his companions, taking advantage of their smallness. The judges call the perch, the eel-pout, and the herring to give witness. The perch sends the eel-pout, and the eel-pout excuses itself for not appearing, pleading that its belly is fat, and it cannot move; that its eyes are small, and its vision imperfect; that its lips are thick, and it does not know how to speak before persons of distinction. The herring gives witness in favour of the bream, and against the little perch. Among the witnesses against the jorsh, the sturgeon also appears; it maligns the jorsh, alleging that when he attempts to eat it he must spit more out than he can swallow, and complains that when it was one day going by the Volga to Lake Rastoff, the little perch called him his brother and deceived him, saying, in order to induce him to retire from the lake, that he had once also been a fish of such size that his tail resembled the sail of a s.h.i.+p, and that he had become so small after having entered Lake Rastoff. The sturgeon goes on to say that he was afraid, but remained in the river, where his sons and companions died of hunger, and he himself was reduced to the last extremities. He adduces, moreover, another grave accusation against the jorsh, who had made him go in front, in order that he might fall into the fishermen's hands, cunningly hinting that the elder brothers should go before the younger ones. The sturgeon confesses that he gave way to this graceful flattery, and entered into a weir made to catch fish, which he found to be similar to the gates of great lords' houses--large when one goes in, and small when one goes out; he fell into the net, in which the jorsh saw him, and cried out, deriding him, "Suffer for the love of Christ." The deposition of the sturgeon makes a great impression upon the minds of the judges, who give orders to inflict the knout upon the little jorsh, to impale it in the great heat, as a punishment for its cheating; the sentence is sealed by the crayfish with one of his claws. But the jorsh, who has heard the sentence, declares it to be unjust, spits in the eyes of the judges, jumps into the briar brake, and disappears from the sight of the fishes, who remain lost in shame and mortification.

In the thirty-second story of the fourth book of _Afana.s.sieff_, we find two varieties of this zoological legend.

The turbulent jorsh enters into Lake Rastoff, and possesses himself of it. Called to judgment by the bream, it answers that from the day of St Peter to that of St Elias, the whole lake was on fire; and cites in proof of this a.s.sertion that the roach's eyes are still red from its effects, that the perch's fins are also still red, that the pike became dark coloured, and that the eel-pout is black in consequence.

These fishes, called to give witness, either do not appear, or else deny the truth of these a.s.sertions. The jorsh is arrested and bound, but it begins to rain, and the place of judgment becomes muddy; the jorsh escapes, and, from one rivulet to another, arrives at the river Kama, where the pike and the sturgeon find him, and take him back to be executed.

The jorsh, arrested and brought to judgment, demands permission to take a walk for only one hour in Lake Rastoff; but after the expiration of the appointed time, it neglects to come out of the lake, and annoys the other fishes in every way, stinging and provoking them.

The fishes have recourse for justice to the sturgeon, who sends the pike to look for the jorsh; the little perch is found amongst the stones; it excuses itself by saying that it is Sat.u.r.day, and that there is a festival in his father's house, and advises him to take a const.i.tutional in the meanwhile, and enjoy himself; on the morrow, although it be Sunday, he promises to present himself before the judges (the a.n.a.logy between the actions of the jorsh and those of Reineke Fuchs is very remarkable). Meanwhile, the jorsh makes his companion drunk. The Sansk?it name of the fish, _matsyas_, from the root _mad_, we know to mean drunk and joyous, properly damp (Lat., _madidus_); in Italian, _briaco_ and _folle_ are sometimes equivalent; in the Piedmontese dialect, _bagna_ (wet) and _imbecil_ (idiot) are expressions of the same meaning. Drunkenness is of two forms: there is a drunkenness which makes impotent and stupid; it is a question of quant.i.ty and of quality of beverages, as well as const.i.tution. Thus, there are two kinds of madness; that which makes a man infuriated, to cope with whom the strait-waistcoat is necessary, and that which ends by exhausting all a man's strength in prostration and debility.

Indras, when drunk, becomes a hero; the pike when drunk is a fool (cfr. the Italian _matto_, English _mad_, which means insane, crazy, with the German _matt_, which means cast down, exhausted[502]). When the jorsh has made the pike drunk, it shuts it in a rick of straw, where the inebriated fish is to die. Then the bream comes to take the little perch from among the stones, and to bring him before the judge.

The jorsh demands a judgment of G.o.d. He tells his judges to put him in a net; if he stays in the net, he is wrong; if he comes out, he is right; the jorsh jerks about in the net so much that he gets out. The judge acquits him, and gives him entire liberty in the lake; then the jorsh begins his numerous revenges upon the little fishes, proving his astuteness in continual efforts to ruin them.

As the drunkard and the fool now intensify their strength and now lose it, so they now double and now lose their intelligence. Hence, among mythical fishes we find very wise ones and very stupid ones. The story is very popular of the three fishes of different intelligence, of which the lazy and improvident one allows himself to be caught by the fishermen, whilst his two companions escape; it is found in the first book of the _Pancatantram_. In the fifth book of the _Pancatantram_, a variety occurs: we read of a fish which has the intelligence of a hundred (catabuddhis), of one which has the intelligence of a thousand (Sahasrabuddhis), and of the frog which has the intelligence of one (Ekabuddhis); but that of the two fishes is not intelligence, but presumption; the one intelligence of the frog is better than the hundred and the thousand of the fishes. The frog escapes, but the two fishes fall into the hands of the fishermen.

The little sea-urchin (and the dwarf Vish?us and the dolphin are equivalent to it, the word _ci?c.u.maras_ being equivocal in Sansk?it) in the _?igvedas_ draws the chariot of riches; in the _Eddas_, a dwarf in the form of a pike (in Greek _lukios_, in Latin _lucius_) watches over gold, and guards the ring; in Russian legends, the little jorsh (formidable, like the josz, by its sharp quills), united with the dolphins, draws out of the sea the casket containing the sultan's ring.

The horn of the moon, which appears in the sea of night, belongs now to the bull which carries the fugitive hero, now to the fish caphari, which, having become large, takes in tow the s.h.i.+p of Ma.n.u.s, and saves it from the waters, that it may not be wrecked. Now it is the solar hero or heroine that takes the form of a fish to save himself or herself; now the fish helps the solar hero or heroine in their escape; now the little golden or luminous fish plunges into the sea, or into the river, to seek the pearl or ring for the hero or heroine who had let it fall, the ring without which King Dushyantas cannot recognise his bride cakuntala; now it vomits out from its mouth or its tail that which it has swallowed--the hero, the pearl, the ring (the solar disc).

In the sixth act of _cakuntala_, the fisherman finds in the stomach of a fish (the _cyprinus dentatus_), the pearl enchased in the ring which King Dushyantas had given to cakuntala, in order to be able to recognise her when they should come together again. The genera _cyprinus_ and _perca_, as the th.o.r.n.y or wounding ones in the order of fishes, have supplied the greatest number of heroes to mythology; the sea-urchin is identified to them on account of its darts; the names _hecht_, _brochet_, _pike_, given to the _lucius_ in Germany, France, and England, express its faculty of stinging, or cleaving with its flat and cutting mouth (the fish _lucioperca sandra_ is an intermediate form between the perch and the pike). The lunar horn, the thunderbolt, the sunbeam, have the same prerogative as these fishes; the dolphin, on account of the two scythe-shaped fins which it has on its anterior extremity, or of its fat and curved dorsal fin, as well as on account of its black and silvery colour, might well serve to represent the two lunar horns and the moon's phases. Thus the pike and the bream, dark or bluish on their backs, are white underneath. The dolphin also has a flat mouth and sharp teeth, like the pike.[503] The lunar horn announces rain; thus the scythe-shaped fin of the dolphin, appearing on the waves of the sea, announces a tempest to navigators, warns them, and saves them from s.h.i.+pwreck; hence, as a ci?c.u.maras, it may, like the sea-urchin, have saved or drawn the chariot, that is, the vessel of the Acvinau, laden with riches. The dolphin which watches over Amphitrite, by order of Poseidon, in the h.e.l.lenic myth, is the same as the dolphin, the spy of the sea, or the moon, the spy of the nocturnal and wintry sky. Inasmuch as the sky of night or winter was compared to the kingdom of the dead, both the dolphin and the moon, according to the h.e.l.lenic belief, carried the souls of the dead.

The _cyprinus_, _par excellence_, the carp (Lat. _carpus_), is celebrated, in connection with gold, in an elegant little Latin poem of Hieronimus Fracastorus. Carpus was the name of a ferryman of the Lake of Garda, who, seeing Saturn fleeing, took him for a robber who was carrying gold away, and endeavoured to despoil him of this gold; then Saturn cursed him and his companions in the following manner:--

"Gens inimica Deum dabitur quod poscitis aurum: Hoc imo sub fonte aurum pascetis avari.

Dixerat: ast illis veniam poscentibus et vox Deficit, et jam se cernunt mutescere et ora In rictum late patulum producta dehisc.u.n.t, In pinnas abiere ma.n.u.s; vestisque rigescit In squamas, caudamque pedes sinuantur in imam; Qui fuerat subita obductus formidine mansit Pallidus ore color, quamquam livoris iniqui Indicium suffusa nigris sunt corpora guttis; Carpus aquas, primus numen qui laesit, in amplas Se primus dedit et fundo se condidit imo."

From the comparisons which we have made hitherto, it is impossible not to admit that the enterprise of the fish who seeks the gold or the pearl, who finds it, or who contains it in himself, is a very ancient aryan tradition. In the Vedic hymns we see now Indras, now the Acvinau, saving the heroes from s.h.i.+pwreck, and bringing riches to mankind; we have also seen the ci?c.u.maras (sea-urchin, dolphin, or Vish?us) draw the chariot of the Acvinau, who are bringing riches. The Greeks called a fish of a strange shape by the name now of Zeus, now of chalkeus (the name given to Hephaistos, or Mulciber, or Vulca.n.u.s, the worker in metals), or blacksmith, whence the name of _Zeus faber_, by which it was known to the Latins. This fish is of a really monstrous shape. Its back is brownish, with yellow stripes; the rest of its body is of a silvery-grey colour; on its sides it has two spots of the deepest black. Its dorsal fin opens like a fan, with rays going out on all sides, and furnished with strong quills, which make this prominence resemble a crest. We remember that the c.o.c.k and the lark were compared to Christ and to Christophoros, on account of their crest; the same happened in the case of the Zeus faber.[504] The Italian legend says that those two black spots (which make the fish's body resemble a forge, whence its name of blacksmith) were caused by the marks left upon it one day by St Christopher, while carrying Christ upon his shoulders across the river. The fish which wears the crest and Christopher are here identified with each other. But this is not all; at Rome, at Genoa, and at Naples, this same fish is called the fish of St Peter, because it is said to be the same fish which was caught by St Peter in the Gospels, in the mouth of which (as a blacksmith or chalkeus, it must have known well how to coin money), by a miracle of Christ's, St Peter found the coin which was to serve for the tribute. Is it probable that the legend of the fish with gold in its mouth, so common in aryan legends, was current in Judea? I do not think so; inasmuch as _petrus_ and the _petra_, upon which Christ makes a bad Graeco-Latin pun, in connection with the fish, is another mythical incident which calls me back to the aryan world, and tears me away from the Semitic world, and from childish faith in the Judaic authenticity of the evangelical story, though without prejudice to my belief in the holiness of the doctrine.

FOOTNOTES:

[478] Indras, as a warlike G.o.d, does not know fear, or rather, he kills fear (the hymn says, "Aher yatara? kam apacya indra h?idi yat te ?aghnuso bhir agacchat"; _?igv._ i. 32, 14), and lets himself be terrified by a trifle, which may be either a nightly shadow (the dark man of fairy tales), or the terror caused to him by some fish (the moon) which leaps upon him in the waters which he himself has set free.--In the twenty-second of the Tuscan stories published by me, the young hero who pa.s.sed through all the dangers of h.e.l.l without being afraid, dies at the sight of his own shadow. (We have also referred to this when treating of the dog and the lion who meet with their death, allured by their own shadow.)--In the forty-sixth story of the fifth book of _Afana.s.sieff_, the merchant's son, who did not know fear, who feared neither darkness nor brigands nor death, is terrified and dies when he falls into the water, because the little perch entered into his bosom whilst he was sleeping in his fis.h.i.+ng-boat.--It is also easy to pa.s.s from the idea of Indras, who inebriates himself in the _soma_ to that of the fish, when we consider that the Hindoo word _matsyas_, the fish, properly means the inebriated, from the root _mad_, to inebriate and to make cheerful.

[479] Acnapinaddham madhu pary apacyam matsya? na dina udani ks.h.i.+yantam; _?igv._ x. 68, 8.

[480] _Mbh._ 2371-2392.

[481] _Mbh._ i. 5078-5086.--In another variety of the same myth, the s.e.m.e.n of the wise Bharadva?as comes out at the sight of a nymph; the sage receives it in a cup, out of which comes Dro?as, the armourer and archer _par excellence_; i. 5103-5106.

[482] v. 27.

[483] _Ramay._ ii. 92.

[484] Cfr. Bohtlingk, _Indische Spruche_, i. 59.

[485] Revad uvaha sacano ratho va? v?ishabhac ca ci?c.u.marac ca yukta.

[486] Our readers will not be astonished at seeing the dolphin, the whale, and the sea-urchin cla.s.sed here with fishes. We are not treating of natural history according to the cla.s.sifications of science, but of the gross cla.s.sifications made by impressionable popular imaginations. Thus, amongst the animals of the water we shall find the serpent described, although it be amphibious, because popular belief makes the dragon watch over the waters.

[487] The pike becomes in spring of an azure or bluish or greenish-blue colour; hence the name of _golubbi_--_per_ (that is, of the azure or bluish fins; in German, the bluish colour is called _echt-grau_--that is, grey of pike; in the nineteenth of the Russian stories of _Erlenwein_, golden fins are ascribed to the pike), which is also given to it in Russia. _Golub_, or brown, violet and azure, is a name given in Russia to the dove; so in Italy we say, that the dove is _pavonazzo_ (properly the colour of the peac.o.c.k, which is generally blue and green). But in Sansk?it, amongst the names of the peac.o.c.k there is that of _haris_, a word which represents both the moon and the sun. By the same a.n.a.logy, the bluish or greenish pike may represent the moon. But another a.n.a.logy, caused by a similar conception, is found again in the word _cyamas_, which means black, azure, and also silvery; whence it serves to represent the _convolvolus argenteus_ (we must remember that the Latin name of the pike is _lucius_; the Greek, _lukios_--that is, the luminous one). The pike takes the colour of the water in which it lives, and the waters are dark, black, azure, greenish, silvery; as being azure, or greenish, or silvery, the pike represents the moon; as being dark, the tenebrific night, the cloud, the wintry season.--In the thirty-second story of the fourth book of _Afana.s.sieff_, the little perch relates that the pike was once luminous (that is, in spring), and that it became black after the conflagration which took place in the Lake of Rastoff from the day of St Peter (June 29) to the day of St Elias (July 20), or in the beginning of summer. As we learn in the _Pseudo-Callisthenes_, near the black stone, which makes black whoever touches it, there are fishes which are cooked in cold water, and not at the fire, I recollect here also that the _Hecht-konig_, or king of pikes, is described as yellow and black-spotted.

[488] _Afana.s.sieff_, v. 22.

[489] _Afana.s.sieff_, i. 2.--Cfr. the eleventh of the _Novelline di Santo Stefano di Calcinaia_; a monstrous fish devours the princess; the fish is said to be a shark (pesce cane); and v. 8 of the _Pentamerone_.

[490] Cfr. _Afana.s.sieff_, ii. 24.

[491] Cfr. _Afana.s.sieff_, v. 55, vi. 32.--It is the same fish which, saved by the girl who is persecuted by her step-mother, comes to her a.s.sistance, separates the wheat from the barley for her (like the Madonna, the purifying moon-fairy, the nightly cleanser of the sky), and gives splendid robes to her, in vi. 29.--In the story v. 54, instead of the pike as a f?cundator we find the bream, which is also called "of the golden fins" (szlatopioravo), of which the colours are the same as those of the pike.

[492] In the nineteenth Russian story of _Erlenwein_, and in a variety of the same in the last book of Afana.s.sieff's stories.--In an unpublished story of the Monferrato, communicated to me by Dr Ferraro, a fisherman catches a large fish which says to him, "Let me go, and you will always be fortunate." The wife of the fisherman opposes this, roasts and eats the fish, from whose bones are born to the fisherman three sons, three horses, and three dogs. Evidently the story has been corrupted.

[493] Cfr. Salvia.n.u.s, _Aquatilium Animalium Historiae_, Romae, 1554.

[494] At Berlin, children sing on the first of April--