Fictitious & Symbolic Creatures in Art Part 8

_Jelloped_, _jowlopped_, terms used to describe the comb or crest, and gills or wattles, when of a different tincture from the body. _Beaked_ and _membered_, in similar manner, have reference to the beak and legs.

Basilisk, or Amphysian c.o.c.katrice

The amphysian c.o.c.katrice or basilisk in heraldry exactly resembles the c.o.c.katrice, but having an additional head (like that of a dragon) at the end of its tail instead of a barb or sting.

"With complicated monsters' head and tail Scorpion and Asp and Amphisbna dire."

MILTON.

_Amphisbna_, or _Amphista_, is a creature sometimes referred to by old writers as having the dragon's body and wings, the head of a serpent, and the tail ending in a like head. Bossewelle, in "Armorie of Honour," folio 63, enlarging upon this idea, describes "a prodigious serpente called Amphybene, for that he hath a double head, as though one mouth were too little to custe his venyme."

_Earl Howe_ has for supporters _two c.o.c.katrices (amphysian), wings elevated, the tails nowed, and ending in a serpent's head or, combed, wattled and legged gules_.

_Argent, a basilisk, wings endorsed, tail nowed, sable._--_Langley_, Rathorpe Hall, Yorks.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Basilisk or Amphysian c.o.c.katrice, tail nowed.]

_Basilisk_, the king of serpents (Greek, _Basileus_, a king), so called from having on his head a mitre-shaped crest. Old writers give wonderful accounts of the death-dealing power of this strange creature. Pliny says, "all other serpents do flee from and are afraid of it," and tells of the deadly effect of his breath and glittering eye. The Duke of Alva, the scourge of the Netherlands (1566-1575), where he left the eternal memory of his cruelties, had for a device a basilisk drawing out serpents, with the motto: "Tu nomine tantum" ("Thou dost so much by thy name alone"), a fitting emblem for so great a monster!

In allusion to its power of "looking any one dead on whom it fixed its eyes," Dryden makes Clytus say to Alexander, "Nay, frown not so; you cannot look me dead,"

"like a boar Plunging his tusk in mastiff's gore, Or basilisk, when roused, whose breath, Teeth, sting and eyeb.a.l.l.s all are death."

KING, _Art of Love_.

King Henry, when he hears of the death of his uncle Humphry, the good Duke of Gloucester, says to Suffolk:

"come basilisk And kill the innocent gazer with thy sight."

_2 King Henry VI._ Act iii. 2.

Beaumont and Fletcher also speak of "the basilisk's death-dealing eye" in "The Woman Hater."

Its appearance was so dreadful, it was said, that if a mirror was placed so that it could see itself, it would instantly burst asunder with horror and fear.

In Christian Art it is the emblem of _deadly sin_ and _the spirit of evil_. St. Basil the Great uses it as the type of a depraved woman.

The Mythical Serpent

"The most remarkable remembrance," says Dean, "of the power of the paradisaical serpent is displayed in the position which he retains in Tartarus. A cuno-draconictic cerberus guards the gates; serpents are coiled upon the chariot wheels of Proserpine; serpents pave the abyss of torment; and even serpents const.i.tute the caduceus of Mercury, the talisman which he holds in his hand when he conveys the soul to Tartarus.

The image of the serpent is stamped upon every mythological fable connected with the realms of Pluto. Is it not probable that in the universal symbol of heathen idolatry we recognise the universal object of primitive wors.h.i.+p, the serpent of paradise?"

"Speaking of the names of the snake tribe in the great languages," Ruskin says, "in Greek, OPHIS meant the seeing creature, especially one that sees all round it; and DRAKON, one that looks well into a thing or person. In Latin, ANGUIS, was the strangler; SERPENS, the winding creature; COLUBER, the coiling animal. In our own Saxon the SNAKE meant the crawling creature; and ADDER denoted the groveller."

The true serpents comprise the genera without a sternum or breastbone, in which there is no vestige of shoulder, but where the ribs surround a great part of the circ.u.mference of the trunk. To the venomous kind belong the rattlesnake, cobra de capello, spectacled or hooded snake, viper, &c. So the non-venomous, the boa constrictor, anaconda, python, black snake, common snake.

The minute viper, _V. Brashyura_, is celebrated for the intensity of its poison, and is truly one of the most terrible of its genus. The asp of Egypt, or Cleopatra's asp (_Coluber naja_, Lin.), was held in great veneration by the Egyptians; and it is this snake which the jugglers, by pressing on the nape of the neck with the finger, throw into a kind of catalepsy, which renders it stiff, or, as they term it, turns it into a rod.

All snakes, says the celebrated naturalist Waterton, take a motion from left to right or _vice versa_--but never up and down--the whole extent of the body being in contact with the ground, saving the head, which is somewhat elevated. This is equally observable both on land and in water.

Thus, when we see a snake represented in an up-and-down att.i.tude, we know at once that the artist is to blame.

Another misconception exploded by Waterton is the common and accepted notion that a snake can fascinate to their destruction and render powerless by a dead set of its eye the creatures it makes its prey. Snakes have no such power. The eyes, which are very beautiful, do not move, and they have no eyelids; they have been placed by nature under a scale similar in composition to the scales of the body, and when the snake casts it slough, this scale comes away with it, and is replaced by a new one on a new skin.

_Noli me tangere_--do not touch me with intent to harm me--is, continues Waterton, a most suitable motto for a snake, which towards man never acts on the offensive (except perhaps only the larger species which may be in waiting for a meal, when any creature, from a bull to a mouse, may be acceptable). But when roused into action by the fear of sudden danger, 'tis then that, in self-defence a snake will punish the intruder by a p.r.i.c.k (not a laceration) from the poison-fang, fatal or not, according to its size and virulence.

A writer in the _Daily Telegraph_ of July 23, 1883, giving an account of the new reptile house in the Zoological Gardens, Regent's Park, dwells upon the surpa.s.sing beauty of a python that had just cast its skin, "a very miracle of reptilian loveliness. Watch it breathing; it is as gentle as a child, and the beautiful lamia head rests like a crowning jewel upon the softly heaving coils. Let danger threaten, however, and lightning is hardly quicker than the dart of those vengeful convolutions. The gleaming length rustles proudly into menace, and instead of the voluptuous lazy thing of a moment ago, the python, with all its terrors complete, erects itself defiantly, thrilling, so it seems, with eager pa.s.sion in every scale, and measuring in the air, with threatening head, the circle within which is death. Once let those recurved fangs strike home, and there is no poison in them, all hope is gone to the victim. Coil after coil is rapidly thrown round the struggling object, and then with slow but relentless pressure life is throttled out of every limb. No wonder that the world has always held the serpent in awe, and that nations should have wors.h.i.+pped, and still wors.h.i.+p, this emblem of destruction and death. It is fate itself, swift as disaster, deliberate as retribution, incomprehensible as destiny." It would be tedious to recapitulate the mult.i.tude of myths through which the "dire worm" has come to our times, dignified and made awful by the honours and fears of the past. A volume could hardly exhaust the snake-lore scattered up and down in the pages of history and fable.

"The python in the Zoological Gardens, however," adds the same writer, "though it may stand as the modern reality of the old-world fable of a gigantic snake that challenged the strength of the G.o.ds to overcome it, presents to us only one side of snake nature. It possesses a surprising beauty and prodigious strength; but it is not venomous. Probably the more subtle and fearful apprehensions of men originated really from the smaller and deadlier kinds, and were then by superst.i.tion, poetry and heraldry extended to the larger. The little basilisk, crowned king of the vipers; the horned 'cerastes dire,' a few inches in length; the tiny aspic, fatal as lightning and as swift; and the fabled c.o.c.katrice, that a man might hold in his hand, first made the serpent legend terrible; their venom was afterwards transferred, and not unnaturally, to the larger species. It was the small minute worms, that carried in their fangs such rapid and ruthless death, which first struck fear into the minds of the ancients, and invested the snake with the mysterious and horrid attributes whereunto antiquity from China to Egypt hastened to pay honours."

Cadmus and his wife Harmonia were by Zeus converted into serpents and removed to Elysium. aesculapius, son of Apollo, G.o.d of medicine, a.s.sumed the form of a serpent when he appeared at Rome during a pestilence; therefore he is always represented with his staff entwined with a serpent, symbol of healing. Similarly represented was Hippocrates, a famous physician of Cos; who delivered Athens from a dreadful pestilence, in the beginning of the Peloponnesian War, and was publicly rewarded with a golden crown, and the privileges of a citizen. Therefore it is that the G.o.ddess of health bears in her hand a serpent.

The caduceus of Mercury was a rod adorned with wings, having a male and female serpent twisted about it, each kissing the other. With this in his hands, it was said, the herald of the G.o.ds could give sleep to whomsoever he chose; wherefore Milton, in "Paradise Lost," styles it "his opiate rod."

"With his caduceus Hermes led From the dark regions of the imprisoned dead; Or drove in silent shoals the lingering train To night's dull sh.o.r.e and Pluto's dreary reign."

DARWIN, _Loves of the Plants_, ii. 291.

Jupiter Ammon appeared to Olympias in the form of a serpent, and became the father of Alexander the Great:

"When glides a silver serpent, treacherous guest!

And fair Olympia folds him to her breast."

DARWIN, _Economy of Vegetation_, i. 2.

Jupiter Capitolinus in a similar form became the father of Scipio Africa.n.u.s.

In the temple of Athena at Athens, a serpent was kept in a cage and called "The Guardian Spirit of the Temple." This serpent was supposed to be animated by the soul of Ericthonius. It was thus employed by the Greeks and Romans to symbolise a guardian spirit, and not unfrequently the figure of a serpent was depicted on their altars.

Upon the s.h.i.+elds of Greek warriors, on ancient vases, &c., the serpent is often to be seen blazoned.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Greek s.h.i.+eld, from painted vase in the British Museum.]

The serpent monster Python, produced from the mud left on the earth after the deluge of Deucalion, lived in the caves of Mount Parna.s.sus, but was slain by Apollo, who founded the Pythian games in commemoration of his victory. This and many similar solar myths are merely cla.s.sic panegyrics on the conquering power exercised by the genial warmth of spring over the dark gloom of winter.

The serpent in Christian Art figures in Paradise as the tempter of Eve under that form, and is generally placed under the feet of the Virgin, in allusion to the promise made to Eve after the Fall: "The seed of the woman shall bruise the serpent's head." The heart of the serpent being close to the head, renders a severe "bruise" there fatal. The serpent bruised the "heel" of man--_i.e._, being a cause of stumbling, it hurt the foot which tripped against it (Gen. iii. 15).

[Ill.u.s.tration]

The brazen serpent erected by Moses in the wilderness, which gave newness of life to those plague-stricken Israelites who were bitten by the fiery dragons and raised their eyes to this symbol (Numb. xxi. 8), as an emblem of healing, is represented in Christian art as coiled up on a tau cross, a symbol of which our Saviour did not disdain in some degree to admit the propriety when he compared himself to the healing serpent in the wilderness.

The serpent is placed under the feet of St. Cecilia, St. Euphemia, and many other saints, either because they trampled on Satan, or because they miraculously cleared some country of such reptiles. St. Patrick, the patron saint of Ireland, is always represented habited as a bishop, his foot upon a viper, the head transfixed with the lower extremity of his pastoral staff, from his having banished snakes and all venomous reptiles from the soil of Ireland. As the symbol of the evil principle, a diminutive specimen of the dragon, guivre, or winged snake was more frequently used, wriggling under foot.

The serpent is emblematical of THE FALL; Satan is called the great serpent (Rev. xii. 9); of WISDOM: "Be ye therefore wise as serpents, and harmless as doves" (Matt. x. 16); of SUBTLETY: "Now the serpent was more subtil than any beast of the field" (Gen. iii. 1); of ETERNITY: a serpent in a circle with its tail in its mouth is the well understood symbol of unending time.

"The serpent figures largely in Byzantine Art as the instrument of the Fall, and one type of the Redemption. The cross planted on the serpent is found sculptured on Mount Athos; and the cross surrounded by the so-called runic knot is only a Scandinavian version of the original Byzantine image--the crushed snake curling round the stem of the avenging cross. The cross, with two scrolls at the foot of it typifying the snake, is another of its modifications, and a very common Byzantine ornament. The ordinary northern crosses, so conspicuous for their interlaced ornaments and grotesque monsters, appear to be purely modifications of this idea."[8]

Boniface, the Anglo-Saxon missionary, in his letter to the Archbishop of Canterbury, inveighs against the luxuries of dress, and declares against those garments that are adorned with very broad studs and images of worms, announcing the coming of Antichrist.

In the wonderfully intricate interlacing of snake-like and draconic forms of celtic art which appear in the marvellously illuminated ma.n.u.scripts executed in Ireland of the sixth and seventh centuries, the great sculptured crosses, as well as in gold and metal work, are seen unmistakable traces of the traditional ideas relating to the early serpent-wors.h.i.+p.

"The serpent," says Mr. Planche, "the most terrible of all reptiles, is of rare occurrence in English heraldry. Under its Italian name of _Bisse_ it occurs in the Roll of Edward III.'s time, 'Monsire William Malbis _d'argent, a une chevron de gules, a trois testes de bys rases gules_'

(_Anglice_, argent, a chevron between three serpents' heads erased gules)."