Zoological Mythology Volume I Part 16

[420] We find the blind-lame man again in an epigram by Ausonius of Bordeaux, a writer of the fourth century:--

"Insidens caeco graditur pede claudus utroque, Quo caret alteruter, sumit ab alterutro.

Caecus namque pedes claudo gressumque ministrat, At claudus caeco lumina, pro pedibus."

[421] _Afana.s.sieff_, v. 39.

[422] The student who wishes to extend his researches in Slavonic tradition may consult with profit, among others, the following works:--Schwenck, _Mythologie der Slaven_; Ha.n.u.sch, _Slavische Mythologie_; Woycicki, _Polnische Marchen_; Schleicher, _Littauische Marchen_; Wenzig, _Westslavischer Marchenschatz_; Kapper, _Die Gesange der Serben_; Chodzko, _Contes des Paysans et des Patres Slaves_; Teza, _Itre Capelli d'oro del Nonno Satutto_, a Bohemian story; Mickievic, _Canti Popolari Illirici_.

SECTION V.

THE BULL AND THE COW IN THE GERMANICO-SCANDINAVIAN AND FRANCO-CELTIC TRADITIONS.

SUMMARY.

The four bulls, sons of the virgin Gefion.--The bull which comes out of the sea.--The bull progenitor of royal races.--The bull who carries the maiden.--The cow of abundance, Audhumla, nurse and mother of heroes.--The three brothers of Scandinavian and German mythology.--The warrior-cow.--The sacred cow of ogwaldr burned upon the hero's tomb.--The rod-phallos used to strike the cow, as an augury of abundance and fecundity.--The head of the ox used as a hook to catch the sea-serpent.--The Scandinavian cornucopia made of the horns of oxen.--The horn full of honey.--The horn-trumpet.--The daughter that milks.--The hero who eats oxen.--Atli eats the hearts of his sons, believing them to be the hearts of calves.--Hornboge.--To a wicked cow G.o.d gives short horns; to cut off the cow's horns; to take the bull or cow by the horns, three Germanic proverbs.--To dream of eagles announces the vicinity of cows; Scandinavian corresponding legend.--A red cow on a certain bridge announces a battle.--The Germanico-Scandinavian mythical bridge.--The red cow and the black cow yield white milk.--Digression upon mythical proverbs, and the explanation which seems to be the most likely.--To shut the stable after the cow has been stolen.--When the daughter is stolen, shut Peppergate.--He who has lost a cow and gets its tail back again has not much, but he has more than nothing.--To take by the horns.--Even if the cow's tail moves it does not fall.--The tails in the mud.--The virtues of the tail.--The ascent to heaven by means of the tails.--The hero in the sack made of a cow's hide thrown into the sea.--The punishment of the bull.--When the cow places herself upon the eggs, do not expect fowls.--The black cow has crushed him.--The sack of the wolf or of the black beast is his body itself.--The trial between hero and monster to take off their skins; the hero gives cows' skins, but the monster is obliged to give his own.--The cow's hide, when sold, is the beginning of good luck.--The daughter flees from her father, who wishes to seduce her; the story of the slipper again.--The cow can pa.s.s before the hare.--The cow jumped over the moon.--Tarde sed tute.--To take the hare with the chariot.--All those who blow the horn do not hunt hares.--As a blind cow finds a pea.--Marvellous pipkins and amphorae.--The cow that laughs.--The princess who laughs.--The cow that speaks.--The language of animals.--Phallical mysteries.--What the king said in the queen's ear.--Because they have spoken, the husband and wife are separated.--Bulls that speak at Rome.--Women know everything, even how Zeus married Hera.--The mythical laugh is in the sun's ray and in the lightning.--The fishes that laugh; Phallic meaning of the myth.--If the cow-maid must spin, there will be little yarn.--The cows that spin.--The spinning Berta.--Berchta and Holda.--The time is pa.s.sed when Berta spun.--The times of King Pipino.--Berta with the large foot.--Berta with the goose's foot.--St Lucia and St Luke.--Virgins after parturition.--The old husband Pepin, a form of St Joseph.--The wife Berta changed.--The Italian proverbs dare la Berta and dare la Madre d'Orlando.--Continuation of the story of Berta persecuted in the forest.--Orlando and Charlemagne.--The bull-priest and the priest-bull.--The bull in funerals, in pregnancy, and as the food of the hero.--The dwarf and the giant.--A French dwarf explains a myth to us; a Scandinavian explains other myths to us.

I shall here combine under one category the Germanico-Scandinavian and Franco-Celtic traditions, as traditions which, in the Middle Ages especially, had a close and continual correlation of correspondence with each other.

The _Edda_ of Snorri begins with the voyage of Gefion, with the four oxen, her sons (although she is a virgin), yoked to a plough. The king Gylfi concedes to her the right of occupying and possessing as much ground as she can plough in twenty-four hours. When they come to the western sea-board, the four oxen rush forward and drag Gefion with them into the sea, until they arrive at the land of Seelund (Seeland).[423]

In which, it is obvious we have again the Vedic bull with a thousand horns which comes out of the sea, and the bull which carries off the maiden. The bull which comes out of the sea is also found in Irish legends, and in German ones. According to a German legend, of which several variations exist, a shepherd received a dinner every day and a clean s.h.i.+rt every Sunday from a variegated bull that came out of the sea.[424] A bull on the seaside begets, by the sleeping queen, the king Meroveus, the first of the Merovingians; perhaps it is on this account that we find a golden bull's head represented on the tomb of King Childeric. Charles Simrock[425] found a similar legend also in Spain.

The bull which carries the girl, which we have already met with in the Russian stories, occurs again in the Norse tale[426] of "_Katee Wooden Cloak_ (Dasent), endowed with the powers of wish. In its left ear is a cloth (which reminds us of that spun on the cow's horns), which, when spread out, is covered with dainties of all kinds for the dawn-maiden, who has been thrust out of her father's house; but when the step-mother informs her that she cannot rest until she has eaten the dun bull's flesh, the animal, hearing her, engages to deliver her, and offers, if she so wills, to carry her away."

In the voyage of Gylfi in the _Edda_ of Snorri, we find that the cow Audhumla, the cow of abundance, was the parent of the supreme Scandinavian G.o.d Odin, as it was of the supreme Vedic G.o.d Indras. The cow Audhumla nourishes with her milk Ymir, the first of the giants. She licks the salt mountain of ice (the Esthonian ice-mountain, the twelve gla.s.ses of the Russian princess, through which the young hero Ivan penetrates to kiss her). From the ice which the cow has licked, comes forth, first the hair, then the head, then the whole body, of the hero Buri. (The sun arises little by little from the mountain of the east, warmed, attracted by the cow-aurora, and shows, first a few rays, then his disc, and then himself in all his splendour and strength; and that which the sun does every day he repeats on a larger scale once a year, rising again from the ice of winter through the tepidity of spring.) Of Buri, who is at birth strong, is born Bor, who has, by Bestla, the daughter of the giant Bolthorn, three sons, Odin, Wili, and We (the usual three brothers of the legends), who correspond to the three sons of Mannus in German tradition, that is, Inguis, Istio, and Irminius. The Swedish king Eistein had a great veneration for the cow Sibilia, and used to take her with him to battle, that she might terrify the enemy by her lowing. (The lowing of cows plays an important part in the battles of the Vedic hero Indras. In the _Pancatantram_, as we have noticed, the bellowing of the bull fills the lion with terror.) The Scandinavian king, ogwaldr, was accompanied everywhere by a sacred cow, of which he drank the milk, and with which he desired to be buried. In the _?igvedas_, as we have seen, the hero Indras makes the cow fruitful; and the thunderbolt of the G.o.d, penetrating the cloud, takes the form of a phallos. Afterwards, as a symbol of the rod-phallos, the branch or rod of the tree palacas was adopted, with which the cow was struck to make it fruitful; such a magic rod is used in Germany to this day, where it is in many parts the custom to strike the cow, in the belief that it will render her fruitful.[427]

It is with the head of the most beautiful of the giant Hymir's oxen fastened to his hook that, in Snorri's _Edda_, the G.o.d Thor goes to fish up the immense serpent of Midgard from the bottom of the sea, and destroys it upon the sea-sh.o.r.e. (This myth, if I am not mistaken, has the following meaning:--The head of the solar, or lunar, bull is devoured by the monster of night; this same head, tossed about, draws up, towards morning as sun, and towards evening as moon, upon the sh.o.r.e of the sea of night, that is to say, on the eastern mountain, the monster-serpent: thus Hanumant, in the _Ramaya?am_, pa.s.ses over to the opposite sh.o.r.e of the sea, crossing the body of the marine monster, which he causes to burst; thus Indras kills Ahis the serpent upon the mountain).

Nor is there the cow of abundance only. Scandinavian tradition, in the short poem on the dwarf Allwis, offers us the cornucopia in the cup formed of the defence of oxen (_i.e._, with their horns), in which the G.o.d Thor drinks hydromel. Thus Sigurd offers to Brunhilt a horn full of mead to drink. And this horn, moreover, besides serving as a cornucopia, becomes as a golden horn the war-trumpet of Odin (the Giallarhorn).

The Scandinavian hero then, it appears also, has his relations.h.i.+p with cows, though his life has far more of a warlike character than a pastoral one; he therefore accuses Loki, and in so doing fills him with shame, with having pa.s.sed eight winters underground occupied in milking the cows like a woman. (It is known that the Hindoo word _duhitar_, whence Tochter, means she who milks). The Scandinavian hero, instead of milking cows, eats bulls. We find more than once in the _Eddas_ the heroes occupied in roasting oxen. Atli, the husband of Gudrun, boasts of having killed some oxen and having eaten them with her. Gudrun, the Scandinavian Medea, gives Atli the hearts of his two sons to eat, a.s.suring him that they are calves' hearts. The G.o.d Thor, disguised as the G.o.ddess Freya, drinks three barrels of mead, and eats a whole bull, when he sets out on the enterprise of recovering his marvellous hammer.

The bull's or cow's horn, moreover, not only supplies mead to the hero, nor is it only used to call his friends to his aid and to throw down the enemy; it also forms the hero's bow, which therefore, in the _Vilkina Saga_,[428] also takes the name of Hornboge, and, as such, a.s.sists the greatest hero, Thidrek or Ditrich, and is the parent of the celebrated hero Sigurd (Sifrit, or Siegfried). And, in conclusion, the horns are considered such an important weapon of the cow and bull, that a proverb, which is at once Slavonic, German, and Italian, says, "To a wicked cow, G.o.d gives short horns" (that it may do no harm, or rather, because it wears them away by use); to cut off the cow's horns means, in a German proverb, to surmount a difficulty; and to take the bull or cow by the horns, is to disarm them.[429]

In the Greenland poem on Atli, in the _Edda_ of Somund, Hogni says, that when many cattle are killed much blood is seen, and that when one dreams of eagles, oxen are not far distant. In the _Edda_ of Snorri, whilst Odin, Loki, and Honir are cooking an ox under a tree, an eagle on its summit prevents the meat from being cooked, till the heroes consent to give him part of it. The heroes consent, but the eagle carries off no less than the two thighs and the two shoulders of the ox. The eagle has in the _Edda_ the same demoniacal and infernal character that is in other traditions ascribed to the crow, the funereal stork, and the vulture: it searches for oxen; and therefore to dream of eagles is an intimation that an ox is near, in the same way as they say the presence of a vulture is a sign of the proximity of a corpse.

A German legend, cited by Kuhn and Schwartz,[430] makes a battle begin "as soon as a red cow is led over a certain bridge." We remember the Russian story of the girl who, by means of the magical towel of her brother, makes a bridge arise over the river, over which the monster-serpent, in the form of a handsome young man, crosses to take her; how the brother is sacrificed in the battle which he is obliged to fight against the monster, who disarms him by fraud; and how the battle between the hero and the monster begins when the maiden, pa.s.sing the bridge, abandons the hero, her brother, who falls and sheds his blood in the unequal struggle. I have already remarked that in the popular belief the b.l.o.o.d.y sun of evening forebodes war, and the red cow of German tradition represents no other than this sky. As to the bridge, an interesting note of Kuhn and Schwartz[431] seems to confirm the hypothesis which I have already hinted at in connection with the Slavonic story, _i.e._, that it represents the milky way; from this note, too, in which a resemblance is noticed between the bridge of the red cow, which determines the beginning of a battle, and the Scandinavian celestial Bifrost (as perhaps there is between it and even the Persian bridge Cinvant itself), I gather that in Frisia the milky way is called Kau-pat (or Kuh-pfad, cow's-path). That is to say, it is supposed that the red cow of evening pa.s.ses during the night along the milky way, scattering her milk over it; whence perhaps is derived the German proverb, "Even red cows yield white milk,"[432]--like that other which we have already seen current in India, and met with again in Turanian tradition, and which exists as a German, Slavonic, and Italian proverb, "Even the black cow yields white milk"--(the black night which produces the alba or white dawn of morning, and we might add, the silver moon and the milky way).

Since it seems to me, therefore, as I trust it also does to the reader, that the maiden who crosses the bridge in the Slavonic stories is, without doubt, the same as the red cow which does the like in German legend, and if I have not been mistaken in identifying the maiden who travels with her brother to the kingdom of the dead with the evening aurora and the dying sun, I shall here adduce a few other German proverbs, which may also be said to be universal in European tradition, relating to the cow, all pointing to a similar conclusion.

They are as follows:--"Shutting the stable after the cow has been stolen." "He who has lost a cow, and recovers her tail, has not much, but he has more than nothing." "A cow's tail might reach heaven, if it were only a long one."[434] "A cow does not know what her tail is worth till she loses it." "To take the cow by her tail." "The black cow has crushed him, or has got upon him." "A cow cannot overtake a hare." "The cow has outrun the hare." "Not all who sound the horn hunt the hare." "When the cows laugh." "As a blind cow can find a pea." "He must be carried about in an old cow's hide." "If the cow-maid spins, there will be little yarn." "The cow will learn to spin first."[435]

Meditating upon all these German proverbs, it is, it appears to me, not difficult to recognise in them a reminiscence of ancient myths with which we are already acquainted. When we reflect that almost every proverb has pa.s.sed into contradictory forms and varieties, and as in these varieties we may trace the elements of the history of a great number of strange proverbs, it does not seem rash to affirm that the said history generally had, in like manner, its origin in a myth.

Not to wander from the subject in hand, that the same proverb is attributed to different animals, not only by different nations, but in the oral traditions of the same people, I must refer the reader to what I have remarked in the preface to this volume concerning the contradiction which exists between certain superst.i.tious beliefs. The contradiction between many proverbs, as also between many superst.i.tions, compared with each other, can only be reconciled by referring both back to the battle-field of mythology, where an inconceivable number of myths arise, and can only arise, out of contradictions; that is, out of contrasted aspects which celestial phenomena present, even to the same observer, still more so to different observers. The comparative history of mythical proverbs is yet to be written, and perhaps it is not yet possible to write it according to rigorous scientific method in all its completeness. A preliminary study of the details is necessary to understand a proverb as well as a popular custom, a superst.i.tious belief, a legend, or a myth; and this study will demand some labour; for one proverb, completely ill.u.s.trated, may involve the development of an entire epical history. I shall not presume here to solve the enigma of the above-quoted German proverbs, but only to indicate what seems to me to be the way of arriving at their most probable solution. In the study of a proverb, it is necessary to lay great stress upon its intonation. Upon the different tones in which an ancient proverb was originally p.r.o.nounced, and afterwards repeated, pa.s.sing from tongue to tongue, and from people to people, depends a great part of the alteration in the meaning even of the most interesting of the proverbs, which are a patrimony we owe in common to Aryan tradition. A proverb, for instance, began by being a simple affirmation, the simple expression of a natural mythical image; with the lapse of time the expression remained, and the myth was forgotten; the expression then appeared to refer to a strange thing, and was accompanied, when p.r.o.nounced, with a doubtful mark of interrogation; it was now adopted in the denial of an impossible thing, and became an instrument for satire. Thus many proverbs which have become satirical, must have been originally nothing more than mythical affirmative phrases.

"To shut the stable after the cow has been stolen." In England, instead of the cow, we have in the proverb a girl: "When your daughter is stolen, shut Peppergate" (the name of a little gate of the city of Chester, which it is said the mayor ordered to be shut when his daughter had been carried off). The proverb is now used to stir up a laugh at the expense of those who are at pains to guard their property after it has been robbed; but it perhaps had not always the same meaning. We are already familiar in Hindoo tradition with the hero who delivers the beautiful maiden out of the enclosure, and have seen how she is scarcely free, when she is led away by iniquitous brothers or companions, after shutting up the legitimate proprietor of the cow or maiden in the cave whence the cow or girl came forth; how the ravis.h.i.+ng brothers shut the door of the stable or cavern, after having carried off the maiden. The hero imprisoned in the stable, the hero shut up in the darkness of night, often a.s.sumed in mythology the form of a fool. Hence from the idea of shutting the gate of the stable upon the hero, by the ravishers of his cow, the transition seems natural, in my opinion, to the hero lost in the cavern, to the hero become foolish, to the peasant who shuts the door of the stable when the cow has been robbed, or to the mayor of Chester, who, being shut up in the town, shuts the Peppergate, through which the girl who had been carried off pa.s.sed.

"He who has lost a cow and recovers its tail has not much, but he has more than nothing." This proverb also appears to me to have a mythical meaning. I have already remarked that the tail, the heel, the feet, that is to say, the lower or hinder extremities, betray the mythical animal; which we shall see more convincingly when we come to examine the legends which refer to the wolf, the fox, and the serpent. It is the footprint which, in all the European traditions, betrays the beautiful maiden in her flight; and when the brigand Cacus carried off the oxen of Hercules, the hero, to recover them, searches for their footprints. But in order that these may not be recognised, the cunning brigand, instead of leading the oxen by their heads, takes them by their tails,[436] and makes them walk backwards. Hence, to take by the tail, means to take hold of the wrong way, and it is applied to the a.s.s as well as the cow. It is said in Germany that a cow once fell into a ditch from which none of the bystanders dared to extricate it.

The peasant to whom the cow belonged came up, and, according to some, took it fearlessly by the horns, while, according to others, he dragged it out by its tail, whence can be explained the double proverb to take by the horns, _i.e._, to take by the right side, and to take by the tail, or, as we have said, to take by the wrong. But the peasant could only take his cow out by the horns, or by the tail, according to the way in which it had fallen in; that is, if it had fallen down head foremost, it could only be dragged out by the tail, and if, on the contrary, it had fallen in tail foremost, he could only extricate it by laying hold of its horns. The cow-aurora is taken by surprise and devoured by the wolf, bear, wild-boar, or serpent of night, who takes her by the shoulders (it is on this account that, in the Russian story, we have seen the bull recommend the fugitive hero, accompanied by his sister, to keep his face turned in the direction whence the pursuing monster might be expected to come up). The monster (the shadow, or the cloud) clutches the cow by her tail and devours her, or drags her into his cave. The hero, in order to deliver his cow out of the cave, can take her by the horns only on condition that he penetrates into the cavern by the same way by which the cow entered, that is, by the monster's mouth; but, as the monster endeavours to surprise the hero from behind, so the hero often wounds the monster from behind, catches hold of him by the tail, and in this way drags him out of the cavern, ditch, or mud--his fallen cow. In a Hindoo fable in the second book of the _Pancatantram_, we have the story of a jackal, who, to satisfy a desire of his wife, follows the bull for whole years together, in the hope that his two hanging t.e.s.t.i.c.l.es might fall some day or another. In a joke of Poggius, and in Lessing,[437]

we find the same subject spoken of, of which a variation is given in a German proverb, "Though the cow's tail moves, it does not fall."[438] In the hope of this it is that the wolf, or the fox, runs after the tail of the cow or bull. There is a Piedmontese story which I heard in my infancy, one comic feature of which lingers vividly in the memory: a boy who took the hogs to pasture, cut off their tails and stuck them in the mud, and then made off with the animals. The owner of the hogs, seeing their tails, is under the impression that they have sunk into the mud. He tugs at them, brings away their tails, but cannot fish up their bodies. In a Russian story given by _Afana.s.sieff_,[439] we read that the cunning Little Thomas (Thomka, Fomka) cheats the priest of his horse (in some versions his a.s.s) by cutting off its tail and planting it in the mud of a marsh. He makes the priest believe that his horse has fallen into the marsh; the priest, thinking to pull it out, gives one stiff tug, and falls down on his back with the tail in his hand; upon which Tom persuades him to believe that he has broken it off himself, and to be content with the recovery of so much of the lost animal. In the fifty-seventh Gaelic story of Campbell,[440] a priest endeavours to pull out of the water a drowning sheep, but the tail comes away, and the story-teller adds, "If the tail had not come off, the story would have been longer." And so the owner of the cow, the robber of which has left the tail behind as a consolation, has in reality but little, but yet this little is something; for, just as the slipper left behind her by the fugitive girl, although it is of little value, enables the hero to identify her, so in the tail of his cow the owner has something in hand to set out on its search with, and to recover his lost property; either because the tail of an animal is like its shadow and serves to trace it, as the slipper does the maiden by showing the footstep; or else, because tailless cows are evidently stolen ones. (In the myth of Cacus, in which Hercules traces the stolen oxen by the footprints, and Cacus drags them by their tails, the mythical figure of the slipper and that of the lost tail are perhaps united. It is possible that the tails of the oxen came off in the hands of Cacus when dragging them into the cavern, and that, thrown away by the brigand, and found by Hercules, they may have served him as a guide to recover his oxen. It is also possible that Cacus, pursued by Hercules, had not time to drive the oxen in entirely, but that their tails still protruded and betrayed their whereabouts. Relative to the Latin legend of Cacus, these are simply hypotheses, and I have therefore enclosed them in a parenthesis; but inasmuch as in the above-quoted Russian story, we find the horse's tail cut off by the robber, and as in the chapter on the fox, we shall see the fox who betrays himself by not drawing in his tail, whence the proverb, "Cauda de vulpe testatur," the two hypotheses advanced above are, after all, not so visionary.) In _Pausanias_[441] the hero Aristomenes, who has been thrown into a deep cistern, liberates himself in a marvellous manner by means of an eagle, after a fox had opened a pa.s.sage. The fox's tail has such a bewitching power of attraction, that according to popular tradition, when it is moved the c.o.c.k falls down unable to resist the charm.

According to popular belief, the tail (as well as the nose and mouth) is the most splendid part of the body of an animal. The great monkey Hanumant, with his tail on fire, burns Lanka (in the same way as the burning tails of the foxes of the biblical Samson burn the ripe harvests of the Philistines). The grey, or black, horse of mythology (having devoured the solar white, or red horse) emits fire from his mouth or tail. This black horse being the night, the horse's jaws and tail, which emit fire, represent the luminous heavens of evening and of morning; when, therefore, the tail of his horse (stolen by the robber in the same way as the bull and the cow[442]) remains in the mythical hero's hand, this light-streaming tail is enough to enable him to find the whole animal, _i.e._, the solar hero comes out of his hiding-place (Hanumant comes out of the hinder parts of the marine monster, the dwarf comes out of the wolf's back[443]), the bull-sun finds his cow the aurora again; the prince sun, the princess aurora; the peasant recovers his a.s.s or his cow; Hercules, his oxen; the white horse comes out of the tail of the black horse, who had eaten him, and then, by means of the tail, ascends to heaven;[444] the white bull comes out of the black one; the white, or the red, cow comes out of the black cow; the tail comes out of the body; the hero comes out of the sack, or hide, in which he had been enclosed or sewed up. The sack plays a great part in the tradition of the hidden or persecuted hero; this sack is the night or the cloud, or the winter; the hero shut up in the sack, and thrown into the sea, is the sun. The hero enclosed in the sack and thrown into the sea, and the heroine shut up in a chest (covered, moreover, with a cow's hide, in the myth of Pasiphae) or barrel, and abandoned to the water,[445] are equivalent to each other, and so are the heroes shut up in the well, in the cavern, in the stables, and even in the cow. Inasmuch as the sack in which, according to the proverb quoted above, the delinquent hero is to be sewed, is an old cow's-hide, or else the hide of an old cow, or a dark one (of the night), when this black cow sits on the eggs of the bird of evening, to hatch them, the eggs come to evil; whence I derive the German proverb, "When the cow sits upon the eggs, do not expect fowls."[446]

And when the night was observed to overwhelm the sun and withdraw him from human sight, this other proverb took its origin, "The black cow has crushed him." The black cow does not only crush the hero, but, as the wolf does, shuts him up in her own hide,[447] in her own sack, _i.e._, devours him--to fill the sack is the same as to fill the body, and to empty the sack as to empty the body. In the Piedmontese story of the dwarf child (the Norwegian Schmierbock), whom the wolf[448]

encloses in the sack, the dwarf comes out of the sack while the wolf is emptying his body. Of two Russian stories given by _Afana.s.sieff_, which we shall examine in the chapter on the wolf, one shows us the wolf who puts the peasant in a sack, and the other the wolf who puts the dwarf-hero in his body; and both peasant and dwarf save themselves. The two variations took their origin in the comparison drawn between the body and a sack, which, in mythical speech, are therefore the same thing. The hide of the black bull, black ox, black or grey horse, or black or grey wolf, and the sack which wraps up the hero or the devil, play a great part in popular Indo-European tradition.[449] From the sack of the funeral stork (the night), in a Russian story,[450] come forth two young heroes (the Acvinau), defeaters of their enemies, who spread out the tablecloth of abundance (the aurora), and a horse which drops gold (the sun). The hero shut up in the sack, or the cow's hide, and thrown into the water, escapes from s.h.i.+pwreck in the same way as those navigators of the Chinese sea described in his voyages by Benjamin of Tudela, who, he says, when s.h.i.+pwrecked, escaped being swallowed up by the waves by covering themselves with the whole hide of a cow or an ox; for the eagles, mistaking them for real, flew to the spot and pouncing upon them, drew them ash.o.r.e. The s.h.i.+p with the buffalo's hide is found again in popular stories. This is evidently a reminiscence of mythical derivation (from which was, perhaps, afterwards derived the idea of torture, as in the famous bull of Phalaris, in which many see a symbol of the G.o.d of the waters, the bull's hide in which the tetrarch Acarnides, vanquished by Memnon, was sewed up,[451] in antiquity, and, in the Middle Ages, the ox's hide in which, according to the chronicles, the horrid Duke of Spalato Euroia orders Paulus Chuporus, prefect of the Emperor Sigismond, to be sewed, to revenge himself upon him, because he had, out of contempt, saluted him by bellowing like an ox). Thus with the Celtic hero Brian,[452] the pretended fool, who speculates upon the stupidity of those who are reputed wise. When one of these so-called sages, deceived by him, proposes to throw him into the sea shut up in a sack, he makes another man take his place by means of a witty invention, as Goldoni's liar would say, whilst he himself comes back to the sh.o.r.e with a whole herd of cattle. In the other Celtic, Slavonic, German, and Italian variations of this story, the would-be fool begins his fortune-making, in one version, by putting a few coins into his dead cow's hide, and then selling it at a very high price as a purse which will give out money whenever shaken; and in another, by palming off his a.s.s or horse, persuading the purchaser, by means of an easy deceit, to believe that it yields gold and silver, and thus obtaining a high price for it. With the cow are also connected the two horns, by blowing into which he causes his wife, who feigns death, to rise to life again, which horns he thus prevails on his brothers or companions to buy at a great ransom, who, thinking themselves cunning, and wis.h.i.+ng by means of the horns to speculate upon corpses,[453] begin by killing people, and are ruined.

I have said above, that the sack in which the hero is generally enclosed is the same as the chest in which the heroine is usually shut up on account of her beauty, that is to say, in which the beautiful heroine hides her splendour, or in which the red cow, the evening aurora with the sun, loses herself. The fourteenth Scottish story of Mr J. F. Campbell's contains the following narrative:--A king, whose first wife (the morning aurora) is dead, engages to marry the woman whom the dead queen's dresses will fit, and finds no one who can wear them except his own daughter (the evening aurora). She makes her father give her gold and silver dresses and shoes (that is, she takes from her father, the sun, the splendour of the morning aurora); she shuts herself up with them in a chest, and lets herself be thrown into the sea. The chest drifts about on the waves, and comes at last to the sh.o.r.e; the beautiful maiden enters the service of a young king; she shows herself in church with her splendid robes; the young king, who does not recognise his servant-maid in this beautiful princess, becomes enamoured of her, and hastens to overtake her; she flees and loses her golden slipper; the king finds it, and to discover her, has it measured on every foot; many maidens cut off their toes to make the slipper go on, but a bird divulges the deceit; the young king marries the beautiful maiden who came out of the wooden chest. Here we have again, not only the heroine who escapes, but the walking heroine; this heroine is the aurora, and the aurora is often a cow. Another swift cow pa.s.ses in the proverb before the hare (the leaping moon), in the fable of the ant and the gra.s.shopper, of which the former represents the cloud or the night, or Indras or the aurora in the cloud of night, or the earth,[454] and the latter, the leaping one, the moon; the ant pa.s.ses the gra.s.shopper in the race, not because it walks faster, but because the two runners must necessarily meet, and therefore the one must pa.s.s the other. The English infantile rhyme, "Hey! diddle, diddle, the cat and the fiddle, the cow jumped over the moon," refers to the myth of the cow which jumps over the hare. The observation of celestial phenomena being afterwards neglected, and it being forgotten that the running ant or cow meant the cloud, or the sun, or the aurora, or the earth, and the jumping hare or gra.s.shopper the moon, only a regular and parallel race, on the terrestrial soil, between cow and hare, or ant and gra.s.shopper, was seen; and from the myth of the two animals which meet and pa.s.s each other in the sky, was derived, according to the different characters of nations or eras, a double proverb--one deriding the slow and rash animal which presumes to try and overtake the swift one in the race, the other serving as an example to prove the truth of the sentence, "Tarde sed tute," which, in Italian, is "Chi va piano va sano e va lontano" (he who goes slowly, goes well and far). The first proverb has for its parent the Greek one, "to hunt the hare with an ox," which, in Italian, is "pigliar la lepre col carro" (to take the hare with a car);[455]

referring to cases where means disproportionate to the end are made use of. When the hare and the cow meet, if the cow is obliged to stop the hare, she crushes it, as we have seen above that she crushes the bird's eggs instead of hatching them. The idea, moreover, of the ox hunting the hare arose naturally out of the idea of the ox or cow overtaking and pa.s.sing beyond the hare. To these proverbs can perhaps be joined the next German one:--"All who blow the horn do not hunt hares," which is now directed against those who think by an easy method, such as blowing a horn, to accomplish a difficult enterprise, such as hunting a hare; in the same way as in Germany it is said, that all thunder-clouds do not give rain, and the cow must do more than low in order to have much milk, or the cow that lows most is not the one that yields most milk.[456] In fact, a cow which lows much is unwell, neither while it is lowing can it eat and make milk; so he who fatigues himself with blowing the horn is not able, at the same time, to run after the hare; as in the Italian proverb, "Il can che abbaia non morde" (the dog that barks does not bite), for the simple reason that whilst he opens his mouth to bark, he cannot shut it to bite. The hen that clucks, on the other hand, is the one that lays the egg, because the act of clucking with the mouth does not interfere with the operation of egg-laying; there is no incompatibility of offices.

The German proverb, "As a blind cow finds a pea," is now used to indicate an impossibility; and yet in the myth the blind cow (or the night) really finds the pea, kidney-bean, or bean (the moon), which are the same thing to all intents and purposes. The night is sacred to the dead; for the dead are as eaten vegetables--kidney-beans, vetches, peas, and cabbages--lunar symbols of resurrection and abundance. In the ninth story of the fourth book of _Afana.s.sieff_, the daughter of the old man and woman eats beans; a bean falls upon the ground, and grows up to the sky; upon this bean the old man (the sun) climbs up to heaven and sees everything. In the numerous stories in which the young hero sells a cow or cow's hide, we almost always find a pipkin full of kidney-beans, which he induces people to think can cook themselves, the hero having first cooked them, and then placed them upon the fire covered with ashes (the darkness); the pipkin is also the moon. The stories of the pipkin belonging to the house-mother in the _Mahabharatam_, which the G.o.d K?ish?as, having been hospitably entertained by her, refills with beans, and of the lord who, in an unpublished Piedmontese legend, disguised as a poor old man, throws pebbles into the kettle of the pious widow, which, as soon as thrown in, become kidney-beans, involve the same myth. In the same way I think the kidney-bean is evidently intended by the fruit of fruits, which, according to the _Mahabharatam_, the merciful man receives in exchange for the little black cow (_k?ish?adhenuka_) given to the priest.[457] In the English fairy tale of "Jack and the Bean-stalk,"

Jack barters his cow for some beans; his mother (the blind cow) scatters the beans; one of them takes root, and grows up to the sky.[458] By means of the black cow, of the funereal or blind cow, of the cow-aurora, which becomes black or blind during the night, the hero finds the bean or the pea of abundance (the moon), by means of which he sees again in the morning and becomes rich.

We have seen a sack, instead of the hide of a black cow, used to signify the night; in like manner, after or instead of this same cow's hide (which the hero goes to sell), as well as the pea or bean, we have the pipkin--the poor hero finds the moon. The Slavonic story of the potter who becomes rich, and that of the brother believed to be stupid, who sells at a high price his pipkin, which makes the beans boil without a fire, are varieties of the same subject. In a Russian story in _Afana.s.sieff_,[459] the amphora takes the place of the pipkin that makes its owner rich. The poor brother draws it out of the water; from the broken amphora comes a duck, which lays one day golden eggs, and the next silver ones--the sun and the moon (at morning the aurora hatches the golden day, at evening the silver night).

We have still to explain the proverbs of the cow that laughs and the cow that spins. The laughing aurora (after having, during the night, acted the princess that never laughs) and the spinning aurora (in relation with the cow, the moon, that spins by means of its horns) are already known to us. The aurora laughs at morn in the sky, at the sight of her husband; thus the princess that never laughs, in a numerous series of Slavonic, German, and Italian stories, laughs when she sees her predestined husband.[460] The proverb of the cow that laughs is connected with that of the cow that speaks; it is perhaps on this account that bulls and cows (and other animals) which speak, and say and do complimentary things among themselves, in an entire cycle of Indo-European stories, which have been learnedly ill.u.s.trated by Professor Benfey, in _Orient und Occident_, under the t.i.tle of "Ein Marchen von der Thiersprachen," always make the man who understands, and indiscreetly listens to their language, laugh. But if the man reveals what the bulls or cows (or other animals) have said to each other, he prepares his own ruin: the language and the inner life of animals must not be divulged to all; if published abroad, the augury is a sinister one. That which makes the princess of the Russian tale laugh, is seeing the courtesy which the animals, like men, show to the man taken out of the mud; that which makes the man who understands the language of animals laugh, is seeing them speak and act to each other exactly as men do in similar private relations. To betray this mystery is to wish for one's death. No one must know what the bull said in secret to the cow, the sun to his mistress, what the king said in the queen's ear. The violator of the mysteries of Venus is guilty of sacrilege, and merits the punishment of death, or at least brings evil down upon his head. Woe to the heroine if the hero hidden in the skin of an animal, on account of some indiscretion, or because she has spoken to her sisters, shows himself naked in his human form; she loses him, and their separation is inevitable.

We are already acquainted with the cloud-cow and the cloud-bull; the cloud thunders, the bull bellows and speaks. The clouds, the Vedic _gna devapatnis_, _gna devis_,[461] that is, the G.o.ddesses, or divine and knowing wives, the fairy G.o.ddesses (women with their presentiments, the women that know more than the devil), are also prophetic cows; these cows, in their character of fairies, speak with a human voice, and so do the cloud-bulls. Hence the Romans could take their auguries from an ox that spoke with a human voice. It has been said that this omen was a sinister one, but it is a mistake. According to Livy, under the consulate of Cn. Domitius and L. Quintius, an ox threw Rome into terror by the words, _Cave tibi, Roma_. These words seem to have a sinister meaning, but they are in reality nothing more than a friendly counsel or admonition, as much as to say, Look to your field occupations, O Rome; the thunder has been heard which announces the summer. Thus, when we read in the fifth book of Pliny's _Natural History_ that whenever an ox was known to have spoken with a man's voice, the Roman Senate was accustomed to meet in the open air--_sub dio_, I only see in this allusion, and in ascribing this practice to the Senate, one way of saying that when thunder is heard (that is to say, when the ox speaks) it is a sign of summer, and we may go out into the country and sleep in the open air. And so, finally, when, according to Eusebius, an ox said, that for the death of Caesar (which, as every one knows, took place on the Ides of March, that is to say, at the beginning of spring) there would be more blades of corn than men, I see a most evident announcement of the approach of summer, in which men or reapers are in fact never too many, and even rare when the harvest is a large one. The ox that with a man's voice heralds the near advent of summer corresponds to the cuckoo, the legend of which we shall reserve for a special chapter. Meanwhile, to confirm still more our identification, we shall cite here the almost proverbial verse of Theocritos: Women know everything, even how Zeus married Hera (or that which the king said in the queen's ear). Zeus, transformed into a cuckoo, flew to the mountain, and alighted on the knees of Hera, who, to protect him from the cold, covered him over with her robes. The cuckoo, or Zeus, disappears soon after having spoken, that is, announced the summer loves of the sun. After St John's Day the cuckoo, who appears in March, is no longer seen; so the ox, soon after it has spoken and betrayed the loves of Zeus, or soon after the cloud has thundered, revealing the secret loves of the sun within the sky covered with clouds, or the confidential speeches and secret caresses of the animals, pays for this indiscretion by his own death. As the aurora is represented in the Vedic hymns by a maiden who does not laugh, and smiles only when she sees her husband,[462] so the lightning that tears the cloud and comes before the thunder is compared to the laughing of an ox or a cow, or else of the man who has seen their loves. As long as the sky only lightens, or merely smiles,[463] there is little harm done. No one can know as yet why the ox or the cow, the hero or heroine, or the third person who is looking on, smiles before the spectator; but when the hero or the heroine speaks, betraying the thought or singular surprise which makes him or her smile, the penalty of the indiscretion is death; the thundering cloud is soon dissolved into rain. Nor will my identification of the cloud that lightens (making a distinction between the lightning and the thunderbolt) with the smiling cow, or ox, or man who, understanding the language of animals, as they speak in low tones, and seeing their most familiar habits, smiles, seem forced when we reflect that our language has preserved the figures of a ray of joy, of a flash of joy, to indicate a smile, of which we say that it s.h.i.+nes, illumines, or lightens. Lightning is the cloud's smile. In the ninth story of the third book of _Afana.s.sieff_, we meet with a fish which laughs in the face of the onlooker (the cloud that lightens, and also the moon that comes out of the ocean of night), and for which, on account of this singular property, the poor man (the sun in the cloud or in the night) obtains an extraordinary sum from a rich lord, even all his riches--_i.e._, the poor man takes the place of the lord; the splendid sun takes the place of the sun hidden in the cloud or in the darkness. In a Hindoo story of _Somadevas_ (i. 5), a fish laughs upon seeing men disguised as women in the king's apartment. In the _Tuti-Name_ (ii. 21), the fishes laugh when they see the prudery of an adulteress. With this is connected the fable of Lafontane, "Le Rieur et les Poissons" (viii. 8). In the legend of Merlin, the magician also laughs because the wife of Julius Caesar lives with twelve heroes disguised as women, and because he himself allowed himself to be taken by Grisandole, a princess disguised as a cavalier.[464]

The fish is a phallic symbol (in the Neapolitan dialect, _pesce_, fish, is the phallos itself). The fish that laughs because it has been the spectator of adultery is the phallos itself _in gaudio Veneris_.

The thunderbolt of Indras is his phallos that breaks the cloud. In Ovid,[465] we have Jupiter, who, by means of riddles, teaches Numa the way of forming the thunderbolt.

"C?de caput, dixit, cui Rex, Parebimus, inquit; C?denda est hortis eruta cepa meis.

Addidit hic, Hominis: Summos, ait ille, capillos.

Postulat hic animam: cui Numa, Piscis, ait.

Risit; et His, inquit, facito mea tela procures, O vir colloquio non abigende meo."

The joke of the April fish (le poisson d'Avril), with which so many of our ladies ingenuously amuse themselves, has a scandalously phallical signification.[466] The fishes of the Zodiac are twins, a male and a female bound together, born of Eros (Amor) and Aphrodite (Venus). In the Adiparvam of the _Mahabharatam_, we read of a fish which devours a man's seed, and a girl who, having eaten it, brings forth a child. The same myth occurs again in the Western popular tales.

The cow that spins still remains to be explained. We have already seen that the cow spins with her horns for the maiden; this cow is, generally, the moon, which spins gold and silver during the night. The aurora is ordered by her step-mother, the night, both to pasture the cow (the moon) and spin. If the cow-maid is to take care of her cow and guard her well, she will be able to spin but little; whence the German proverb is right when it says that if the cow-maid must spin there will be little yarn. The good cow-maid prefers to keep her cow well, and pays every regard to it, in order that it may find good pasturage; then the grateful cow (the moon) puts gold and silver upon its horns to spin for the maiden.[467] In the morning the girl appears upon the mountain with the gold and silver yarn, with the gold and silver robes given her by the good fairy or by the good cow.[468]

And when the old woman kills the cow, the girl who keeps its bones and sows them in the garden sees, instead of the cow, an apple-tree with gold and silver apples grow up, by offering one of which to a young prince the maiden obtains a husband, whilst perverse women are beaten by the apple-tree or find themselves opposed by horns. This apple-legend is a variation of the star which falls upon the good maiden's forehead on the mountain, and of the horns, or donkey's tail, which grow out of the forehead of the bad sister who has maltreated the cow or badly combed the Madonna's head. The story of the good maiden and the wicked one, of the beautiful and the ugly one, finishes with the attempt made by the ugly and wicked girl to take the place of the beautiful and good one in her husband's bed, in the same way as, in other stories, a black washerwoman tries to take the place of the beautiful princess; and this conclusion brings us to the interesting story of the spinning Berta, or Queen Bertha, as she is called.

In German mythology we have the luminous Berchta, who spins, in contrast with the dark and wild Holda at the fountain (the washerwoman of fairy tales). The former seems to be (besides the moon as a white woman, in her period of light, the silvery night) the aurora, the spring, or the luminous aspect of the heavens; the latter (besides the moon in her period of darkness, Proserpina or Persephone in h.e.l.l), the dark night, winter, the old witch.[469] The same name is given to the various phenomena of the gloomy sky, in the same way as a contrary name is given to the various phenomena of the luminous heavens. On this account lunar and solar myths, daily and annual myths, enter into the story of Berta or Berchta.

Berta, like the cow of the fairy tales, spins silver and gold.

Therefore, when we say in Italy that the time when Berta spun is past,[470] this expression means, that the golden age, the age in which gold abounded is past. And instead of this expression we also use another in Italy to denote an incident which took place in a very ancient era, at a time very remote from the memory of men; we say, in the times of King Pipino (Pepin). Queen Berta having been the wife of Pepin, it was natural that the times of the husband should correspond to the fabled era of his wife, who was, tradition alleges, mother of Charlemagne, the hero so-named of the legends, of whom it is said, in Turpin's Chronicle, that he had long feet, and his _alter ego_ Orlando (a new and splendid mediaeval form of the twin heroes), rather than of the King Charlemagne of history.

Berta has a large foot, like the G.o.ddess Freya, the German Venus, who has swan's feet. It is this large foot that distinguishes her from other women, and enables her husband to recognise her, in the same way as it is the foot, or footprint (the sun follows the path taken by the aurora), that betrays and discovers the fugitive maiden, who, we have said, is the aurora with the vast chariot (the vast chariot which, if it pa.s.s over the hare, may crush it. Frau Stempe, and Frau Trempe, and the large-footed Bertha, are the same person)--vast, because she occupies a large extent of the heavens when she appears. When standing on the chariot, she seems to have no feet, or a very small, an imperceptible foot; but the chariot on which she stands and which represents her foot is so much the larger; therefore when we leave the chariot out of account, and suppose, on the contrary, that she goes on foot, inasmuch as, when walking, she takes up much room, the swan's, or goose's, or duck's foot given to her in the myth of Freya and the legend of Berta is quite suited to her. And seeing, as we have said, that the foot (the myths almost always speak of one foot alone; even the devil is lame, or has only one foot) and the tail of an animal are often subst.i.tuted for each other in mythology, we can understand how, in a Russian story,[471]

the hero who has fallen into a marsh was able to deliver himself by clutching hold of the tail of a duck. This duck being the aurora, and having a wide spreading tail as well as a large foot, the solar hero, or the sun, can easily, by holding on to her, raise himself out of the swamp of night. There is a German story[472] in which the white woman, or the Berta, is transformed into a duck. In another German legend,[473]

instead of the swan-footed Berta, we have the Virgin Mary (who, as a maiden, represents the virgin aurora, always pure, even after having given birth to the sun; like the Kunti of the _Mahabharatam_, who gives birth to Kar?as, the child of the sun, and yet is still a virgin. On the other hand, when a good old woman, good woman or Madonna, she generally personifies, in the legends, the moon) who, in the shape of a swan, comes to deliver from the prison of the infidels (the Saracens or Turks, here the black demons, or the darkness of night), and carry off by land and by sea, the young hero whom she protects (the aurora delivers the sun from the night).[474] The same luminous Berta also a.s.sumes, in popular German tradition, the form of St Lucia, that is, the saint who, after having been made blind, became the protectress of eyesight. Of the blind or black cow of night is born the luminous cow of morning, the aurora that sees everything herself and makes us see everything. For the same reason that the cow or duck, Berta, is consecrated to St Lucia, whose appearance she a.s.sumes, the bull (the sun) is sacred to St Luke, the festival of whom is on this account celebrated at Charlton, near London, with a horn-fair or exhibition of horns, generally ornamented and perfumed.

In the above-quoted Hindoo legend of the _Mahabharatam_, the queen will not sleep with the old blind man, but sends instead her servant-maid. In the _Reali di Francia_, King Pepin is advised by his barons to take a wife, when he is already "far advanced in years" (he is a form of St Joseph). The barons look for a wife, and find, in Hungary, Berta, the daughter of King Philip, "the most beautiful and skilful horsewoman," or Berta with the large foot upon a beautiful and stately horse, which goes along the road bounding, whilst she is always laughing. Berta has a maid called Elizabeth, who resembles her in every respect except her feet. King Pepin is married by proxy to Berta, sends for her, and comes to meet her. Berta when she sees that King Pepin is so ill-favoured, grieves "although forewarned of his old age." When evening comes she takes off her royal robes and gives them to Elizabeth, that she may take her place and sleep with the king.[475] Hence the Italian proverbs, "Dar la Berta" (to give the Berta), and "Pigliar la Berta" (to take the Berta), meaning to deride and to be derided. But instead of to give the Berta, in Italy we also say, "Dar la madre d'Orlando" (to give the mother of Orlando). The _Reali di Francia_ informs us that King Pepin had, by Elizabeth, two perverse b.a.s.t.a.r.ds, Lanfroi and Olderigi, and by Berta, Charlemagne and another Berta, mother of Orlando; but the Italian proverb is perhaps nearer the mythical truth when it recognises the mother of Orlando as herself Pepin's wife, so that Charlemagne and Orlando are brothers; and, in fact, they accomplish several of the undertakings mentioned in the legend of the two brothers. In the so-called Chronicle of Turpin[476] when Orlando dies, Charlemagne says that Orlando was his right arm, and he has no longer anything to do in life without him; but he lives long enough to avenge the death of Orlando; and after this vengeance, the heroic life of Charlemagne comes at once to an end. In the _Chanson de Roland_, too, after the death of his hero, whom he avenges, Charlemagne feels the burden of life, weeps, tears his beard, unable to support this solitude; but in the _Chanson_, as well as in the _Reali di Francia_, Orlando explicitly appears as the nephew of Charlemagne, that is, as the son of his sister Berta. (As the Vedic aurora was now the mother, now the sister of the sun and of the Acvinau, thus Berta may, mythically, be mother or sister of Charlemagne, and yet be always the mother of Orlando).

It would be a never-ending work to collect together all the Germanic, Scandinavian, and Celtic legends which, in one way or another, are connected with the myth of the cow and of the bull. The literature relating to this subject is composed not of one or a hundred, but of thousands of volumes, of which some (such, for instance, as the poem of the _Nibelungen_, and the poems of the _Round Table_) individually contain, in the germ, almost the whole diverse world of fairy tales. I must therefore limit myself to the indication of the more general features, leaving to more diligent investigators the minuter comparisons; and esteeming myself, I repeat, too happy if my brief notices should be found clear enough to spare others the labour of preparing the warp upon which to weave comparisons.

From what we have said thus far, it seems to me that two essential particulars have been made clear:--1st, That the wors.h.i.+p of the bull and the cow was wide-spread, even in northern nations; 2d, That the mythical bull and cow were easily transformed into a hero and heroine.

The sacred character ascribed to the cow and the bull is further evidenced by a Scandinavian song, in which, on the occasion of the nuptials of the animals (the crow and the crane), the calf (perhaps the bull) appears as a priest, and reads a beautiful text.[477] As a symbol of generation, the bull is the best adapted to propitiate the married couple; so the priest in the _Atharvavedas_ teaches the inexperienced husband and wife, by formulas _ad hoc_, the mysteries of Venus. Thus the _jus primae noctis_ was conceded to the Brahman in mediaeval India; and so in the ritual of mediaeval France, we still find indications of the priest _p.r.o.nubus_. The beautiful text that the calf, or bull, recites in the Scandinavian song must be the same which, according to the ceremonial recorded by Villemarque, the priest recited, whilst sprinkling them with incense, to the married couple _sedentes vel jacentes in lectulo suo_.[478] Thus, when the wolf dies (in a German writing of the twelfth century), it is the ox that reads the gospel.[479] Besides marriages and funerals, the bull or ox also appears, finally, as in the Hindoo ceremonial, in pregnancy.

Gargamelle, while she has Gargantua in her womb, eats an excessive quant.i.ty[480] of tripe of fattened oxen. When she feels the pains of child-birth, her husband comforts her with an agricultural proverb of Poitou, "Laissez faire aux quatre beufz de devant;" and she then gives birth to Gargantua, who comes out of her left ear, in the same way as in the Slavonic stories we find the heroes come out of the ears of the horse (or of the a.s.s of night; the luminous solar hero comes out of the ears of the a.s.s, or of the grey or black horse; the twin hors.e.m.e.n come out of the two ears). Rabelais, to explain this extraordinary birth, asks "Minerve ne naquit-elle pas du cerveau par l'aureille de Iupiter?" No sooner is Gargantua born, than he asks with loud cries for something to drink; to give him milk, 17,913 cows are brought, his mother's b.r.e.a.s.t.s not being enough, although each time she is milked she yields "quatorze cens deux pipes neuf potees de laict." This is the giant of popular tradition, whom the gigantic phantasy of Rabelais has coloured in order to make him the b.u.t.t of an immense satire. It is an amplified and humorous rendering in a literary form of the popular Superlatif,[481] whose mythical character is revealed in the curse hurled against him by the old dwarf-fairy, whom he maltreated: "One sun, to accomplish his work, eats eleven entire moons; but this time every moon will eat the work of a sun." The ascending and descending life of the solar hero is thus indicated. Superlatif will become continually smaller, until it seems as though he were about to disappear altogether; but at that very instant the curse comes to an end, and from a dwarf, he grows into a giant again in the arms of his bride.[482] Thus the days become continually shorter and shorter, till the winter solstice, till Christmas. At Christmas the sun is born again, the days lengthen, the dwarf grows tall; the sun, by a double but a.n.a.logous conception of ideas, pa.s.ses once each day and once each year from giant to dwarf, and from dwarf to giant.

And the dwarfs of tradition know and reveal the mythical how and why of their transformations, since, though they are dwarfs and hidden, they see all and learn all. It is from the knowing dwarf Allwis, his diminutive _alter ego_, that the mighty Thor, in the _Edda_, learns the names of the moon, the sun, the clouds, and the winds. The moon, according to Allwis, when it is in the kingdom of h.e.l.l (in the kingdom of death, in the infernal world, when it is Proserpina), is called a wheel that is hurrying on; it then s.h.i.+nes among the dwarfs (_i.e._, in the luminous night, in which the sun hides itself; it becomes an invisible dwarf). The sun among the dwarfs (_i.e._, when it is a dwarf) plays with Dwalin (the mythical stag, probably the horned moon); among the giants (_i.e._, when in the aurora, it becomes a giant again), it is a burning brand; among the G.o.ds (the Ases), it is the light of the world. The cloud, the dwarf Allwis goes on to inform us, is the s.h.i.+p of the winds, the strength of the winds, the helmet (or hat, or hood) which makes its wearer invisible. The wind, again, is the wanderer, the noisy one, the weeper, the bellower, the whistler (no one can resist the cries or the whistling of the hero of fairy tales; the bellowing of the bull makes the lion tremble in his cave). In this learned lesson on Germanico-Scandinavian mythology, given us by the dwarf Allwis, we have a further justification of the transition which we here a.s.sume to have been made from the natural celestial phenomenon to its personification in an animal, and to the personification of the animal in a man: Allwis, who knew all things, has explained the mystery to us.

FOOTNOTES:

[423] _Les Eddas_, traduites de l'ancien idiome Scandinave par Mdlle.

du Puget, 2eme edition, p. 16.