Zoological Mythology Volume Ii Part 4

In the romance of the fox, the fox endeavours to destroy the cat by inducing it to catch the mice that are in the priest's house. In an unpublished Tuscan story,[92] we have, on the contrary, the fox that invites the mouse to the shop of a butcher who has recently killed a pig. The mouse promises to gnaw the wood till the hole is large enough for the fox to pa.s.s through it; the fox eats till it is able to pa.s.s, and then goes away; the mouse eats and fattens so much that it can no longer pa.s.s; the cat then comes and eats it.

In the thirty-fourth story of the second book of _Afana.s.sieff_, the cat occurs again, as in India, in connection with the sparrow, but not to eat it; on the contrary, they are friends, and twice deliver the young hero from the witch. This is a form of the Acvinau. In the sixty-seventh story of the sixth book, the two Acvinau return in the shape respectively of a dog and a cat (now enemies one of the other, as the two mythical brothers often show themselves, and now friends for life and death). A young man buys for a hundred roubles a dog with hanging ears, and for another hundred roubles a cat with a golden tail,[93] both of which he nourishes well. With a hundred roubles more, he acquires the ring of a dead princess, from which thirty boys and a hundred and seventy heroes, who perform every kind of marvel, can come forth at the possessor's will. By means of these wonders, the young man is enabled to wed the king's daughter; but as the latter wishes to ruin him, she makes him drunk, steals his ring, and departs into a far distant kingdom. The Tzar then shuts the youth up in prison; the dog and the cat go to recover the lost ring. When they pa.s.s the river, the dog swims and carries the cat upon his back (the blind and the lame, St Christopher and Christ). They come to the place where the princess lives, and enter into her dwelling. They then engage themselves in the service of the cook and the housemaid; the cat, following its natural instinct, gives chase to a mouse, upon which the mouse begs for its life, promising to bring the ring to the cat. The princess sleeps with the ring in her mouth; the mouse puts its tail into her mouth; she spits, the ring comes out, and is taken by the dog and the cat, who deliver the young man, and force the fugitive Tzar's daughter to return to her first abode.

In the following story of _Afana.s.sieff_, when the youngest of the three sisters bears three sons to Ivan Tzarevic, her envious elder sisters make the prince believe that she has brought forth a cat, a dog, and a vulgar child. The three real sons are carried off; the princess is blinded and enclosed with her supposed child in a cask, which is thrown into the sea. The cask, however, comes to sh.o.r.e and opens;[94] the supposit.i.tious son immediately bathes the princess's eyes with hot water, and she recovers her sight, after which he finds her three luminous sons again, who light up whatever is near them with their splendour, and is again united to her husband. In a Russian variation of the same story, the three sons are changed by the witch into three doves; the princess, with her supposed son, is saved from the sea, and takes refuge upon an island, where, perched upon a gold pillar, a wise cat sings ballads and tells stories. The three doves are transformed into handsome youths, whose legs are of silver up to the knee, their chests of gold, their foreheads like the moon, and their sides formed of stars, and recover their father and mother.

Thus far we have seen the cat with white ears, who hunts the hare (or moon), the morning twilight, and the penitent cat who eats mice at the river's side, and which is mythically the same. We have observed that, of the two Acvinau, one represents especially the sun, and the other the moon; the thieving cat, who is the friend of some thieves and the enemy of others (whence the Hungarian and Tuscan superst.i.tion, to the effect that for a good cat to be a skilful thief, it must itself have been stolen; then it is sure to catch mice well), is now the morning twilight, now the moon who gives chase to the mice of the night.

According to the h.e.l.lenic cosmogony, the sun and the moon created the animals; the sun creating the lion, and the moon the cat. In the fifth book of Ovid's _Metamorphoses_, when the G.o.ds fled from the giants, Diana took the form of a cat.[95] In Sicily the cat is sacred to St Martha, and is respected in order not to irritate her: he who kills a cat will be unhappy for seven years. In the ancient German belief, the G.o.ddess Freya was drawn by two cats. At present, the cat and the mouse are sacred to the funereal St Gertrude. In the sixty-second story of the sixth book of _Afana.s.sieff_, we have the chattering cat, which the hero Baldak must kill in the territory of the hostile Sultan (that is, in the wintry night). In the eighth story of the fourth book of the _Pentamerone_, we also find a she-cat that plays the part of the ogre's spy; in the tenth story of the _Pentamerone_, and in the first of the _Novelline di Santo Stefano di Calcinaia_, on the contrary, the cat reveals the witch's treachery to the prince. In the twenty-third story of the fourth book of _Afana.s.sieff_, the cat Katofiei appears as the husband of the fox, who pa.s.ses him off as a burgomaster. United together, they terrify the wolf and the bear,[96]

the cat climbing up a tree. In the aesopian fables, on the contrary, the cat and the fox dispute as to which is the superior animal; the cat makes the dog catch the fox, whilst it itself climbs up a tree. In the third story of the second book of _Afana.s.sieff_, the cat a.s.sociates with the c.o.c.k in the search for the bark of trees; it delivers its comrade three times from the fox that had run off with it; the third time, the cat not only liberates the c.o.c.k, but also eats the four young foxes. In the thirtieth story of the fourth book, the cat Catonaievic, the son of Cato (this name is derived from the equivoque between the words _catus_ and _caton_; in French, besides _chat_, we have _chaton_, _chatonique_, &c.), delivers the c.o.c.k twice from the fox, but the third time the fox eats the poor bird. In a Russian variety of this story, the cat kills the five little foxes and then the fox, after having sung as follows:--

"The cat walks upon its feet In red boots; It wears a sword by its side, And a stick by its thigh; It wishes to kill the fox, And to make its soul perish."[97]

In another variety, the cat and the lamb go to deliver the c.o.c.k from the fox. The latter has seven daughters. The cat and the lamb allure them by songs to come out, and they kill them one after the other, wounding them in their foreheads; they then kill the fox itself, and so deliver the c.o.c.k. In the romance of the fox, the cat is the hangman, and ties the fox to the gibbet.

In the third story of the first book, the witch's cat, grateful to the good girl who has given her some ham to eat, teaches her how to escape, and gives her the usual towel which, when thrown on the ground, makes a river appear, and the usual comb which, in like manner, causes an impenetrable forest to arise before the witch who runs after the girl to devour her.

We have already seen the Vedic moon who sews the wedding-robe with a thread that does not break. In the Russian story we have already remarked how the little puppet, to oblige the good maiden, makes a s.h.i.+rt destined for the Tzar, which is so fine that no one else can make the like. In the celebrated tale of the witty Madame d'Aulnoy, _La Chatte Blanche_, we have the white cat Blanchette, veiled in black, who inhabits the enchanted palace, rides upon a monkey, speaks, and gives to the young prince, who rides upon a wooden horse (the forest of night), inside an acorn, the most beautiful little dog that ever existed in the world, that he may take it to the king his father--a little dog, "plus beau que la canicule" (evidently the sun itself, which comes out of the golden egg or acorn), which can pa.s.s through a ring (the disc of the sun), and then a marvellously painted cloth, which is so fine that it can pa.s.s through the eye of a small needle, and is enclosed in a grain of millet, although of the length of "quatre cents aunes" (the eye of the needle, the acorn, the grain of millet, and the ring are equivalent forms to represent the solar disc). This wonderful cat finally herself becomes a beautiful maiden, "Parut comme le soleil qui a ete quelque temps enveloppe dans une nue; ses cheveux blonds etaient epars sur ses epaules; ils tombaient par grosses boucles jusqu'a ses pieds. Sa tete etait ceinte de fleurs, sa robe, d'une legere gaze blanche, doublee de taffetas couleur de rose." The white cat of night, the white moon, resigns her place in the morning to the rosy aurora; the two phenomena that succeed each other appear to be metamorphoses of the same being.

The white cat, with its attendant cats, before becoming a beautiful maiden, invites the prince to a.s.sist in a battle which he engages in with the mice. To this we can compare the aesopian fable of the young man who, in love with a cat, beseeches Venus to transform her into a woman.

Venus gratifies him; the youth marries her; but when the bride is in bed (_i.e._, in the night, when the evening aurora again gives up its place to the moon, or when it meets with the grey mice of night), a mouse pa.s.ses by, and the woman, who still retains her feline nature, runs after it.

When the sun enters into the night, it finds in the starry heavens an enchanted palace, where either there is not a living soul to be found, or where only the cat-moon moves about. Hence, in my opinion, the origin of the expression that we make use of in Italy to indicate an empty house--"Non vi era neanche un gatto" (there was not even a cat there). The cat is considered the familiar genie of the house. The enchanted palace is always situated either at the summit of a mountain, or in a gloomy forest (like the moon). This palace is the dwelling either of a good fairy, or a good magician, or of a witch, or a serpent-demon, or at least cats. The visit to the house of the cats is the subject of a story which I have heard told, with few variations, in Piedmont and in Tuscany.[98]

We have hitherto seen only the luminous or white cat, the cat-moon and twilight, under a generally benignant aspect. But when the night is without a moon, we have only the black cat in the dense gloom. This black cat then a.s.sumes a demoniacal character.

In the Monferrato it is believed that all the cats that wander about the roofs in the month of February are not really cats, but witches, which one must shoot. For this reason, black cats are kept away from the cradles of children. The same superst.i.tion exists in Germany.[99]

In Tuscany, it is believed that when a man desires death, the devil pa.s.ses before his bed in the form of any animal except the lamb, but especially in that of a he-goat, a c.o.c.k, a hen, or a cat. In the German superst.i.tion,[100] the black cat that places itself upon the bed of a sick man announces his approaching death; if it is seen upon a grave, it signifies that the departed is in the devil's power. If one dreams of a black cat at Christmas, it is an omen of some alarming illness during the following year. Aldrovandi, speaking of Stefano Cardano, narrates that, being old and seriously ill, or rather dying, a cat appeared unexpectedly before him, emitted a loud cry, and disappeared. The same Aldrovandi tells us of a cat which scratched the breast of a woman, who, recognising in it a supernatural being, died after the lapse of a few days. In Hungary it is believed that the cat generally becomes a witch from the age of seven years to that of twelve, and that witches ride upon tom-cats, especially black ones; it is, moreover, believed that to deliver the cat from the witch, it is necessary to make upon its skin an incision in the form of a cross.

The cat in the bag of proverbs has probably a diabolical allusion. In the tenth story of the _Pentamerone_, when the King of Roccaforte, thinking that he is marrying a beautiful maiden, finds that, on the contrary, he has espoused a hideous veiled old hag (the night), he says, "Questo e peo nce vole a chi accatta la gatta dinto lo sacco."

In Sicily, when the Rosary is recited for navigators, the mewing of the cat presages a tedious voyage.[101] When the witches in _Macbeth_ prepare their evil enchantments against the king, the first witch commences with the words--

"Thrice the brinded cat hath mewed."

In a German belief noticed by Professor Rochholtz, two cats that fight against each other are to a sick man an omen of approaching death. These two cats are probably another form of the children's game in Piedmont and Tuscany, called the game of souls, in which the devil and the angel come to dispute for the soul. Of the two cats, one is probably benignant and the other malignant; they represent perhaps night and twilight. An Irish legend tells us of a combat between cats, in which all the combatants perished, leaving only their tails upon the battlefield. (A similar tradition also exists in Piedmont, but is there, if I am not mistaken, referred to wolves.) Two cats that fight for a mouse, and allow it to escape, are also mentioned in Hindoo tradition.[102]

In the 105th hymn of the first book of the _?igvedas_, and in the thirty-third of the tenth book, a poet says to Indras, "The thought rends me, thy praiser, as mice tear their tails by gnawing at them."[103] But according to another interpretation, instead of "tails," we should read "threads;" in this case, the mice that rend the threads would refer to the fable of the mouse that delivers from the net now the elephant, and now the lion (of which fable I shall endeavour to prove the Vedic antiquity in the next chapter).

The twelfth story of the third book of the _Pancatantram_ is of great mythological interest. From the beak of a hawk (in another Hindoo legend, from two cats that are disputing for it) a mouse takes refuge in the hands of a penitent, whilst he is bathing in the river. The penitent transforms the mouse into a beautiful maiden, and wishes to marry her to the sun; the maiden declines--he is too hot. The penitent next wishes to marry her to the cloud which defeats the sun; the maiden declares it is too dark and cold. He then proposes to give her to the wind which defeats the cloud (in the white _Ya?urvedas_, the mouse is sacred to the G.o.d Rudras, the wind that howls and lightens in the cloud); the maiden refuses--it is too changeful. The penitent now proposes that she should wed the mountain, against which the wind cannot prevail, but the girl says it is too hard; and finally the penitent asks if she would be willing to part with her affections to the mouse, who alone can make a hole in the mountain; the maiden is satisfied with this last proposal, and is again transformed into a female mouse, in order to be able to wed the male mouse. In this beautiful myth (which is a variation of the other one which we have already mentioned of the cat-maiden that, though transfigured, still retains its instinct as a huntress of mice), the whole revolution of the twenty-four hours of the day is described. The mouse of night appears first; the twilight tries to make it its prey; the night becomes the aurora; the sun presents itself for her husband; the sun is covered by the cloud, and the cloud is scattered by the wind; meanwhile the evening aurora, the girl, appears upon the mountain; the mouse of night again appears, and with her the maiden is confounded.

The _Hitopadecas_ contains an interesting variety of the same myth.

The mouse falls from the vulture's beak, and is received by a wise man, who changes it into a cat, then, to save it from the dog, into a dog, and finally into a tiger. When the mouse is become a tiger, it thinks of killing the wise man, who, reading its thoughts, transforms it again into a mouse. Here we find described the same circle of daily celestial phenomena. The succession of these phenomena sometimes causes transformations in the myths.

The well-known proverb of the mountain that gives birth to the mouse, refers to the myth contained in the story of the _Pancatantram_. We already know that the solar hero enters in the evening with the solar horse into the mountain and becomes stone, and that all the heavens a.s.sume the colour of this mountain. From the mountain come forth the mice of night, the shadows of night, to which the cat-moon and the cat-twilight give chase; the thieving propensities of the mice display themselves in the night. In German superst.i.tion the souls of the dead a.s.sume the forms of mice, and when the head of a house dies, it is said that even the mice of the house abandon it.[104] In general, every apparition of mice is considered a funereal presage; it is on this account that the funereal St Gertrude was represented surrounded by mice. The first witch in _Macbeth_, when she wishes to persecute the merchant who is sailing towards Aleppo, and s.h.i.+pwreck him, that she may avenge herself upon his wife, who had refused to give her some chestnuts, threatens to become like a rat without a tail. In the _Historia Sarmatiae_, quoted by Aldrovandi, the uncles of King Popelus II., whom, with his wife for accomplice, he murders in secret, and throws into the lake, become mice, and gnaw the king and queen to death. The same death is said to have been the doom of Miccislaus, the son of the Duke Conrad of Poland, for having wrongfully appropriated the property of widows and orphans; and of Otto, Archbishop of Mainz, for having burned the granary during a famine. Mice are said to have presaged at Rome the first civil war, by gnawing the gold in the temple; and it was, moreover, alleged that a female mouse had given birth in a trap to five male mice, of which she had devoured two. Other prodigies, in which mice were implicated, are mentioned as having taken place at Rome, even in the times of Cato, who was accustomed to make them the b.u.t.t of his indignant scorn. To a person who told him, for instance, how the mice had gnawed the boots, he answered that this was no miracle; it would have been a miracle if the boots (_caligae_) had eaten the mice.

The mouse in the fable is sometimes in connection with the elephant and the lion, whom it sometimes insults and despises (as in the _Tuti-Name_),[105] and sometimes comes to help and deliver from their fetters. The meaning of the myth is evident: the elephant and the lion represent here the sun in the darkness; in the evening the mouse of night leaps upon the two heroic animals, which are then old or infirm; in the morning the sun is delivered out of the fetters of the night, and it is supposed that it was the mouse which gnawed the ropes and set at liberty now the elephant, as in the _Pancatantram_, now the lion, as in the aesopian fable.

The Hindoo G.o.d Ga?ecas, the G.o.d of poets, eloquence, and wisdom, is represented with an elephant's head, and his foot crus.h.i.+ng a mouse.

Thus, among the Greeks, Apollo Smintheus, so called because he had shot the mice that stole the yearly provisions from Krinos, the priest of Apollo himself, was represented with a mouse under him. As the Christian Virgin crushes the serpent of night under her foot, so does the pagan sun-G.o.d crush under his feet the mouse of night.

When the cat's away, the mice may play; the shadows of night dance when the moon is absent.

In the fifteenth story of the fifth book of _Afana.s.sieff_, the witch step-mother desires her old husband to lead away his daughter to spin in the forest[106] in a deserted hut. The girl finds a little mouse there, and gives it something to eat. At night the bear comes, and wishes to play with the girl at the game of blind-man's-buff (this very popular game has evidently a mythical origin and meaning; every evening in the sky the sun amuses itself by playing blind-man's-buff; it blinds itself, and runs blind into the night, where it must find again its predestined bride or lost wife, the aurora). The little mouse approaches the maiden, and whispers in her ear, "Maiden, be not afraid; say to him, 'Let us play;' then put out the fire and hide under the stove; I will run and make the little bells ring." (Mice seem to have an especial predilection for the sound of bells. It is well-known how, in the h.e.l.lenic fable, the council of mice resolve, to deliver themselves from the cat, to put a bell round its neck; no one, however, undertakes to perform the arduous enterprise.) The bear thinks he is running after the maiden, and runs, on the contrary, after the mouse, which he cannot catch. The bear tires himself out, and congratulating the maiden, says to her, "Thou art my mistress, maiden, in playing at blind-man's-buff; to-morrow morning I will send you a herd of horses and a chariot of goods." (The morning aurora comes out of the forest, delivers herself from the clutches of the bear, from the witch of the night, and appears drawn by horses upon a chariot full of treasure. The myth is a lucid one.)

In other numerous legends we have the grateful mouse that helps the hero or heroine. In the thirteenth Calmuc story, the mouse, the monkey, and the bear, grateful for having been delivered, from the rogues that tormented them, by the son of the Brahman, come to his help by gnawing and breaking open the chest in which the young man had been enclosed by order of the king; afterwards, with the a.s.sistance of the fishes, they help him to recover a lost talisman.

In the fifty-eighth story of the sixth book of _Afana.s.sieff_,[107] the mouse, the war-horse, and the fish silurus, out of grat.i.tude a.s.sist the honest workman who has fallen into a marsh, and cleanse him; upon seeing which the princess, that has never laughed, laughs, and thereafter marries the workman. (The young morning sun comes out of the marsh or swamp of night; the aurora, who was at first a dark, wicked, and ugly girl, marries the young sun whom the mouse has delivered out of the mud, as it delivered the lion out of the toils.)

In the fifty-seventh story of the sixth book of _Afana.s.sieff_, it is the mouse that warns Ivan Tzarevic to flee from the serpent-witch (the black night) his sister, who is sharpening her teeth to eat him.

In the third story of the first book of _Afana.s.sieff_, the mice help the good maiden, who had given them something to eat, to do what the witch, her step-mother, had commanded.

In the twenty-third story of the fifth book of _Afana.s.sieff_, the mouse and the sparrow appear at first as friends and a.s.sociates. But one day the sparrow, having found a poppy-seed, thinks it so small that he eats it up without offering a share to his partner. The mouse hears of it, and is indignant; he breaks the alliance, and declares war against the sparrow. The latter a.s.sembles all the birds of the air, and the mouse all the animals of the earth, and a sanguinary battle commences. In a Russian variety of the same story, instead of the sparrow, it is the mouse that breaks the compact. They collect together the provisions against winter, but when, towards the end of the season, they are all but finished, the mouse expels the sparrow, and the sparrow goes to complain to the king of the birds. The king of the birds visits the king of the beasts, and sets forth the complaint of the sparrow; the king of the beasts then calls the mouse to account, who defends himself with such humility and cunning, that he ends by convincing his monarch that the sparrow is in the wrong. Then the two kings declare war against each other, and engage in a formidable struggle, attended with terrible bloodshed on both sides, and which ends in the king of the birds being wounded. (The nocturnal or wintry mouse expels the solar bird of evening or of autumn.)

In the _Batrachomyomachia_, attributed to Homer, the royal mouse Psicharpax (properly ravisher of crumbs), the third son of Troxartes (eat-bread), boasts to Phusignathos (he who inflates his cheeks), the lord of the frogs, that he does not fear the man, the point of whose finger (akron daktulon) he has bitten while he was asleep; whilst, on the other hand, he has for his enemies the falcon (which we have already, in the Hindoo story, seen let the mouse fall from its beak) and the cat. The frog, who wishes to entertain the mouse, invites it to get upon his back, to be carried to his royal mansion; at first the mouse is amused with its ride, but when the frog makes it feel the icy water, the poor mouse's heart begins to fail; finally, at the sight of a serpent, the frog forgets its rider and runs away, throwing the mouse head-over-heels into the water to be the prey of the serpent.

Then, before expiring, remembering that the G.o.ds have an avenging eye, it threatens the frogs with the vengeance of the army of the mice. War is prepared. The mice make themselves good boots with the sh.e.l.ls of beans; they cover their cuira.s.ses of bulrushes with the skin of a flayed cat; their s.h.i.+eld is the centre k.n.o.b of the lamps (luchnon to mesomphalon, _i.e._, if I am not mistaken, a fragment of a little lamp of terra-cotta, and, properly speaking, the lower and central part); for a lance they have a needle, and for a helmet a nutsh.e.l.l. The G.o.ds are present at the battle as neutrals,--Pallas having declared her unwillingness to help the mice, because they stole the oil from the lamps burning in her honour, and because they had gnawed her peplum, and being equally indifferent to the frogs, because they had once wakened her when returning from war, and when, being tired and weary, she wished to rest. The battle is fiercely fought, and is about to have an unfavourable result for the frogs, when Zeus takes pity upon them; he lightens and hurls his thunderbolts. At last, seeing that the mice do not desist, the G.o.ds send a host of crabs, who, biting the tails, the hands, and the feet of the mice, force them to flee. This is undoubtedly the representation of a mythical battle. The frogs, as we shall see, are the clouds; the night meets the cloud; the mouse fights with the frog. Zeus, the thunder-G.o.d, to put an end to the struggle, thunders and lightens; at last the retrograde crab makes its appearance; the combatants, frogs and mice, naturally disappear.

The mouse is never conceived otherwise than in connection with the nocturnal darkness, and hence, by extending the myth, in connection also with the darkness of winter, from which light and riches subsequently come forth. In Sicily it is believed that when a child's tooth is taken out, if it be hidden in a hole, the mouse will take it away and bring a coin for the child in compensation. The mouse is dark-coloured, but its teeth and fore-parts are white and luminous.

The mouse Hira?yakas, or the golden one, in the _Pancatantram_, is the black or grey mouse of night. It is the red squirrel that, in an aesopian fable, answers to the query of the fox why it sharpens its teeth when it has nothing to eat, that it does so to be always prepared against its enemies. In the _Edda_, the squirrel runs upon the tree Yggdrasil, and sets the eagle and Nidhogg at discord.

The mole and the snail are of the same nature as the grey mouse. The Hindoo word _akhus_, or the mole (already spoken of as a demon killed by Indras, in the _?igvedas_[108]), properly signifies the excavator.

In the _Reineke Fuchs_ the mole appears as a gravedigger, as the animal that heaves the earth up, and makes ditches underground; it is, in fact, the most skilful of gravediggers, and its black colour and supposed blindness are in perfect accordance with the funereal character a.s.signed to it by mythology. In an apologue of Laurentius, the a.s.s complains to the mole of having no horns, and the monkey of having a short tail; the mole answers them--

"Quid potestis hanc meam Miseram intuentes ccitatem, haec conqueri?"

According to the h.e.l.lenic myth, Phineus became a mole because he had, following the advice of his second wife, Idaia, allowed his two sons by his first wife, Cleopatra, to be blinded, and also because he had revealed the secret thoughts of Zeus.[109]

In Du Cange I find that even in the Middle Ages it was the custom on Christmas Eve for children to meet with poles, having straw wrapped round the ends, which they set fire to, and to go round the gardens, near the trees, shouting--

"Taupes et mulots Sortez de nos clos Sinon je vous brulerai la barbe et les os."

We find a similar invocation in the seventh story of the second book of the _Pentamerone_. The beautiful girl goes to find maruzze, and threatens the snail to make her mother cut off its horns--

"Iesce, iesce, corna Ca mammata te scorna, Te scorna 'ncoppa l'astreco Che fa lo figlio mascolo."

In Piedmont, to induce the snail to put its horns out, children are accustomed to sing to it--

"Luma.s.sa, luma.s.sora, Tira fora i to corn, Da.s.s no,[110] i vad dal barbe E it tje fa.s.s taie!"

Sicilian children terrify the snail by informing it that their mother is coming to burn its horns with a candle--

"Nesci li corna ch 'a mamma veni E t' adduma lu cannileri."

In Tuscany they threaten the white snail (la marinella), telling it to thrust out its little horns to save itself from kicks and blows--

"Chiocciola marinella, Tira fuori le tue cornella, E se tu non le tirerai Calci e pugni tu buscherai."

In Tuscany it is believed, moreover, that in the month of April the snail makes love with the serpents, and is therefore venomous; hence they sing--

"Chi vuol presto morire Mangi la chiocciola d' aprile."[111]

The snail of popular superst.i.tion is demoniacal; hence it is also invoked by children in Germany by the name of the funereal St Gertrude--