Fictitious & Symbolic Creatures in Art Part 19

There are several other fict.i.tious creatures, which, if we may believe certain old writers, excited the minds of our credulous wonder-loving forefathers. Of these little need be said, as they rarely, if ever, appear in modern works on heraldry, and may therefore be cla.s.sed as extinct monsters.

Lamia or Emipusa

[Ill.u.s.tration: Lamia. From old Bestiary.]

A curious creature of the imagination is the lamia, of which we are told many fict.i.tious stories. It is said to be "the swiftest of all four-footed creatures, that it is very treacherous and cruel to men. It is stated to be bred in Lybia, and sometimes devours its own young." It is represented in an ancient "Bestiaria" as having the head and b.r.e.a.s.t.s of a woman, and the body of a four-footed animal with flowing tail, the hind feet having divided hoofs. It is "thought to be the creature mentioned in Isaiah x.x.xiv., called in Hebrew _Lilith_, as also the same which is mentioned in Lamentations iv."

In Dr. Brewer's "Dictionary of Phrase and Fable," LAMIA is "a female phantom whose name was used by the Greeks and Romans as a bugbear to children, from the cla.s.sic fable of a Lybian Queen beloved by Jupiter, but robbed of her children by Juno; and in consequence she vowed vengeance against all children, whom she delighted to entice and murder." They are again described as spectres of Africa, who attracted strangers and then devoured them. In the story of "Machates and Philemon," a young man is represented as marrying an Empusa, who sucks his blood at night. Goethe borrowed his ballad of the "Bride of Corinth" from this tale.

Beyond casual mention this mythical creature does not appear in heraldry.

Baphomet

A fict.i.tious creature having two heads, male and female, the rest of the body female; said to be used as an idol or symbol by the Templars in their mysterious rites. The word is a corruption of Mahomet. Though mentioned in old works it does not now appear in British heraldry.

Apres

A fict.i.tious animal resembling a bull, with a short tail like that of a bear. It is the sinister supporter of the arms of the Company of Muscovy Merchants.

Stelliones

The supporters of the Ironmongers' Company of London are two lizards.

Bossewell describes beasts of similar shape--"Stelliones" as he terms them, evidently in allusion to steel. He says, "Stellio is a beaste like a lysard, having on his back spotts like starres."[28]

Stellione-serpent, a serpent with the head of a weasel, borne by the name of Baume.

Fict.i.tious Creatures of the Sea

INTRODUCTORY NOTES

"_The sea, that is A world of waters heaped up on high, Rolling like mountains in wild wilderness, Horrible, hideous, roaring with hoa.r.s.e cry!_"

SPENSER.

"_I can call spirits from the vasty deep._"

SHAKESPEARE.

Mariners in all ages, p.r.o.ne to superst.i.tious fears, have peopled the great deep with beings of the most dreadful kind, all the more wonderful and indescribable because of the mysterious and unknown regions in the sea depths which they were supposed to inhabit. Cla.s.sic mythology in its wealth of imagery allotted a whole hierarchy of greater and lesser divinities to the government of the watery element, whose capricious ruling of the waves man altogether failed to comprehend. Their fancied terrors, begot in calms and storms, in darkness and in fogs, midst dangers of the most appalling kind, a.s.sumed those monstrous and fantastic shapes which their own fears created. The active forces of nature in unusual forms impressed them as the result of supernatural agency, or the "meddling of the G.o.ds," whose favours and protection the mariner, by prayers and supplications, endeavoured to propitiate; and whilst tremblingly he skirts the horizon's edge in timid ventures, new dangers impel him to promises of greater gifts to a.s.suage the wrathful mood of his angry G.o.d or some other equally powerful or more spiteful.

The national G.o.d of the Philistines was represented with the face and hands of a man and the tail of a fish. It was but natural that a seafaring people should adopt a G.o.d of that form.

"Dagon his name; sea-monster, upward man And downward fish: yet had his temple high Reared in Azotus, dreaded through the coast Of Palestine, in Gath and Ascalon, And Accaron and Gaza's frontier bounds."

_Paradise Lost_, Book i. 462.

In the leviathan and behemoth of Scripture are darkly indicated monsters of the great deep. Scandinavian mythology, like that of all bold maritime peoples in old times, is rife with legends of certain great monsters of the sea. The kraken or sea-serpent of popular legend is a myth not yet laid to rest; there is still a lingering belief in the existence of the mermaid.

"With a comb and a gla.s.s in her hand, her hand, her hand, With a comb and a gla.s.s in her hand."

Popular sea-song.

Chief amongst the Grecian sea-divinities stands _Poseidon_, or _Neptune_ as he was called by the Romans, the potent "ruler of the seas." He usually dwelt, not in Olympus, but at the bottom of the sea, in a magnificent golden palace in the neighbourhood of aegae. He is always represented with a trident, sometimes with a rudder--special symbols of his power over the sea. Accompanied by his wife, fair Amphitrite, he was frequently pictured in royal state in his chariot, drawn through the billows by wild sea-horses, attended by "Triton blowing loud his wreathed horn," Proteus, "the G.o.dlike shepherd of the sea," and other followers--dolphins leaping the waves and showing their high arched backs in wild gambolings.

_Nereus_ and his fifty daughters, the _Nereides_, who dwelt in caves and grottos of the ocean--beneficent sea-nymphs,--win the hearts of the sailors, now by their merry sports and dances, now by their timely a.s.sistance in the hour of danger. Whilst Nereus and his lovely daughters represent the sea under its calm and pleasant aspect, Thaumas, Phorcys, Ceto present it as the world of wonders, under its more terrible conditions. The storm winds and all the terrors and dangers of the deep were typified under various strange and peculiar forms. Not the least dreaded were the _Sirens_, fatal sisters, who "spread o'er the silver waves their golden hair," basked near sunlit rocks, and lured all men to their ruin by their enchanting voices, save only the crafty Ulysses.

These and many others of lesser note, Proteus, Glaucus and the rest, make up the discordant influences that govern the watery element.

Many wonderful stories are told by cla.s.sic writers concerning these old myths, and innumerable relics of antique art which embody the conceptions of the times are extant in our museums, by which we may judge to what a large extent such ideas influenced the common life and formed the beliefs of ancient peoples.

It is also worthy of observation to note in what manner the ancients sought to identify the various sea-deities and other mythical creatures with the element they lived in. Each was known by his form or the attributes by which he was accompanied. Modern heraldry repeats many of these old-world myths as new-coined fables, so that for their proper understanding and signification it will be necessary briefly to refer to ancient ideas respecting them. Lakes, rivers and fountains had each their impersonation peculiar to them, which will be found referred to in cla.s.sic story.

Mediaeval legend is equally rife with accounts of wonderful creatures of the sea. The change of one form of superst.i.tion for another alters but little the const.i.tution of the mind to harbour fears, and the imagination will deceive even the wisest and best so long as Nature's laws are misunderstood.

Particular whirlpools, rocks and other dangerous places to navigation, are personated under the forms of monsters of various and awful shapes feared by the mariner, who dreads

"The loud yell of watery wolves to hear."

Scylla and Charybdis are two rocks which lie between Italy and Sicily.

s.h.i.+ps which tried to avoid one were often wrecked on the other. The ancients feigned an interesting legend to account for their existence. It was Circe who changed Scylla into a frightful sea monster, and Jupiter who changed Charybdis into a whirlpool, the noise of which was likened to the loud barking of dogs; and the monster was therefore represented with savage dogs amidst her scaly folds, and loudly baying.

"Far on the right her dogs foul Scylla hides; Charybdis roaring on the left presides, And in her greedy whirlpool sucks the tides, Then spouts them from below; with fury driven The waves mount up, and wash the face of heaven.

But Scylla from her den with open jaws The sinking vessel in her eddy draws Then dashes on the rocks. A human face And virgin bosom hides her tail's disgrace; Her parts obscene below the waves descend, With dogs enclosed, and in a dolphin end."

_aeneid_, Book iii.

Homer gives a vivid description of Ulysses pa.s.sing the rocks and whirlpools:

"Now through the rocks, appall'd with deep dismay, We bend our course, and stem the desperate way; Dire Scylla there a scene of horror forms; And here Charybdis fills the deep with storms.

When the tide rushes from her rumbling caves, The rough rock roars, tumultuous boil the waves; They toss, they foam, a wild confusion raise, Like water bubbling o'er the fiery blaze; Eternal mists obscure the aerial plain, And high across the rocks she spouts the main: When in her gulfs the rus.h.i.+ng sea subsides, She drains the ocean with the refluent tides: The rock rebellows with a thundering sound; Deep, wondrous deep, below appears the ground."

_Odyssey_, Book xii.

The giants and ogres of romance were never so fearfully armed or clothed by the wildest fiction with so terrible an aspect as the cephalopods, the race to which the cuttlefish or octopus belongs. Eminently carnivorous, voracious and fierce; beneath staring eyes are spread eight strong fleshy arms furnished with tenacious suckers, which adhere with unrelenting pertinacity, and the arms are swiftly twined round the struggling prey, which vainly strives to disengage itself from so fearful and so fatal embrace. Cephalopods of enormous size are sometimes found with arms as thick as a man's thigh. Homer refers to its tenacity of grip in a simile.

The cuttlefish appears upon ancient Greek coins of Coressus, in allusion to the wors.h.i.+p of Neptune, a deity much venerated as the protector of this island.

Amongst the veritable inhabitants of the ocean there are few more extraordinary mammals than the sea-unicorn, _Monodon monoceros_, the beaked whale of the Arctic seas, twenty to thirty feet from stern to snout. His length is increased about eight feet by his magnificent spirally twisted tusk of the purest ivory, which in reality is simply the canine tooth growing straight out of the upper jaw. One of the royal treasures of Denmark is the narwhal throne of the Castle of Rosenberg. It is the horn of this "strange fish" which has kept up the belief in the existence of the mythical unicorn.

_Xiphias gladius_, swordfish, is the largest of the th.o.r.n.y fishes, and belongs to the s...o...b..rs or mackerel group. The sawfish, _Pristis antiquorum_, ranks by himself between the rays and sharks. He has the long body of a shark and the underside gill openings of a ray. His saw, like the sword of the Xiphias, is a long flattened bony snout, but is double-edged and serrated. It is well known as a weapon among the Polynesian islanders, and, like the sword of the Xiphias, is frequently found buried in the hulls of ocean-going s.h.i.+ps.

There are two denizens of the deep which bear the name of sea-horse--one the tiny Hippocampus, the other the mighty walrus. The hippocampus of our public aquariums, a bony pipefish some six or eight inches in length, swimming upright, his favourite position in the water, with the general resemblance of his head to that of a horse, is very striking; anch.o.r.ed to the seaweed stems by their tails they dart on their prey with great quickness.

Hippocampus (?pp??, _hippos_, a horse; ??p?, _campe_, a bending), the steed of Neptune, had only the two forelegs of a horse, the hinder quarter being that of a dolphin. The word means "coiling horse."