Zoological Mythology Volume Ii Part 24

In the _Ramaya?am_, the sky is compared to a lake of which the resplendent sun is the golden duck.[454] Ramas (a form of the sun Vish?us), whose speech has the accent of the ha?sas drunk with love,[455] hurls with his divine bow an arrow which penetrates through seven palm-trees, the mountain, and the earth, out of which it afterwards comes, and returns to Ramas in the form of a ha?sas.[456]

Kabandhas, who, when traversing the fire, is released by his monstrous form, is drawn by ha?sas whilst ascending into heaven.[457] Finally, the ha?sas are well known which served as love-messengers between the prince Nalas and the Princess Damayanti in the celebrated episode of the _Mahabharatam_.

In the fourth story of the first book of _Afana.s.sieff_, little Johnny (Ivasco) is upon an oak-tree, which the witch is gnawing, to possess herself of him; three flights of geese-swans pa.s.s one after the other; Johnny begs for their a.s.sistance; the first flight refuse; as also the second; those of the third take Johnny upon their wings and carry him home.[458] In the nineteenth story of the sixth book, the geese-swans a.s.sume, on the contrary, a malignant aspect, carrying the little brother on their wings away from his negligent sister. The story says that these animals have had for a long time the evil reputation of carrying little children off. The geese-swans carry the boy into a fairy's house, where he plays with golden apples. The sister follows upon his track; she inquires at a stove, an apple-tree, and a brook of milk, where the goose-swans have carried the boy to, but learns nothing; at last the malicious little iosz (the sea-urchin) reveals to her the secret. The sister takes her brother and carries him home, having been followed by the geese-swans and having had to hide herself during her flight by the brook, by the apple-tree and then by the stove.

But if geese, ducks, and swans sometimes do evil, or are sometimes diabolical forms a.s.sumed by the witch's deceit, they generally produce good and conduct to good. In a variation of the forty-sixth story of the sixth book of _Afana.s.sieff_, the geese predict the future to Ivan the merchant's son, who, having been to school under the devil, learns there, amongst other things, the language of birds. In the sixtieth story of the sixth book of _Afana.s.sieff_, the swan, a beautiful maiden, helps the unhappy Danilo, whom the prince has ordered to sew a pelisse which must have golden lions for b.u.t.tons and birds from beyond the seas for b.u.t.ton-holes; the same swan performs other miracles for the youth whom she loves. In the forty-sixth story of the fourth book of _Afana.s.sieff_, the old serpent-witch makes the princess become a white duck during the prince's absence. The duck lays three eggs, out of which she has three sons, two handsome, and one ill-favoured, but cunning. The witch kills, during their sleep, the two handsome sons and turns them to ducks; the third escapes by means of his cunning; the white duck, anxious about her sons, flies to the prince's palace and begins to sing--

"Kria, kria, my little sons!

Kria, kria, little pigeons!

The old witch has extinguished you; The old witch, the malignant serpent, The deceitful malignant serpent!

Your own father has carried you off, Your own father, my husband!

She drowned us in the rapid stream, She transformed us into little white ducks, And she herself lives in regal pomp!"

The prince has the duck caught by the wings, and says, "White birch-tree, put thyself behind; beautiful maiden, before." At this magical formula, the tree rises behind him and he finds his beautiful princess before him. He then compels the witch to bring the little children to life again.

The death of the duck sometimes makes the fortune of the hero or the heroine, on account of the egg which it produces (the sun in the morning and the moon in the evening). In the fifty-third story of the fifth book of _Afana.s.sieff_, the young hero, by the advice of an unknown young man, goes to seek under the roots of a birch-tree a duck which lays one day (in the morning) a golden egg, and next day (in the evening) a silver one; upon its breast, the following words are written in golden letters:--"He who eats its head will become king; he who eats the heart will spit gold." He carries it to his mother when his father is absent and his mother has an intrigue with another gentleman. The gentleman reads the golden letters and advises the woman to have the duck cooked; but the two sons are before him; and whilst their mother is at ma.s.s, one eats the head and the other the heart of the duck, and meet with the adventures which are related in the chapter on the Horse.[459] The golden egg of the duck causes the death of the witch and the monster in numerous Slavonic stories. In the thirty-third story of the fifth book of _Afana.s.sieff_, a marvellous goose, of the same nature as those that in the Capitol warned the Romans of the ambuscade of the Gauls, discovers the traitors. The wife of a rich merchant asks her husband to procure for her the marvel of marvels. Her husband buys, in the twenty-seventh world and in the thirtieth kingdom (which is the kingdom of the other night-world), from an old man,[460] a goose which, after having been cooked and eaten, all except the bones, rises again alive. The goose performs the same miracle in the merchant's house; on the morrow, when the husband is absent, his wife invites a lover of hers into the house and wishes to cook the goose to welcome him. She says to it, "Come here;" the goose obeys; she commands it to get into the frying-pan, but it refuses. The woman puts it in by force, but remains fastened to the frying-pan;[461] the lover tries to release her, but sticks fast also; the servants come to the rescue, and stick one to the other and all to the frying-pan, until the husband appears, hears his wife's confession, thrashes the lover and releases the woman from the goose.

In the _Pentamerone_, too, geese appear as discoverers of deceits.

Marziella, when she combs her hair, scatters pearls and flower-buds about her; when she walks, lilies and violets grow up under her feet;[462] her brother Ciommo is to conduct her to the king as his wife; but the old aunt changes the bride, putting her own ugly daughter in the place of her beautiful niece. The indignant king sends Ciommo to pasture the geese; he neglects them, but Marziella, who had been carried off by a siren, comes from the bottom of the sea to feed them, "de pasta riale," and to give them "rose-water" to drink. The geese grow fat, and begin to sing near the king's palace--

"Pire, pire, pire; a.s.sai bello e lo sole co la luna; a.s.sai chiu bella e chi coverna a nuie."

The king sends a servant after the geese, and thus discovers everything; he wishes to marry the beautiful maiden, but the siren keeps her tied with a golden chain; the king, with a noiseless file, files with his own hands the chain which keeps the maiden's foot fast, and thereafter marries her.[463] It is a gooseherd who, in the twentieth Esthonian story, releases the beautiful girl from the monster husband, the killer of his wives (a form of Barbebleu).

In the Russian story, the fairy maidens (in German traditions, the Virgin Mary too) sometimes take, in order to cross the waters, the form of geese-swans; thus in the _Eddas_, three Valkyries spin on the sh.o.r.es of the lake, with their swan forms close behind them. "The maidens," sings the poem of Volund, "flew from the south across Morkved, in order that the young Allhvit might be able to accomplish his destiny. The daughters of the South sat down upon the sh.o.r.e to spin the precious cloth. One of them, the most beautiful maiden of the world, was clasped to the white bosom of Egil; Svanhvit, the second, wore swan's feathers; the third embraced the white neck of Volund."[464] To the Bertha of popular German tradition, only the foot of the white goose or of the swan of the Valkyries has remained; hence her name of Foot-of-goose and of _Reine pedauque_, in the same way as the swan's foot alone has remained to the G.o.ddess Freya.

When the form of a duck, a goose, or a swan is destroyed, the young hero or the young heroine alone remain. In a German tradition, quoted by Simrock in his _German Mythology_, we find an enchanted hunter who strikes a wild goose on the flight, and which falls into a bush; he comes up to take it, and instead of it (in the same way as we saw above, the rosebush on which the doves perch) a naked woman rises before him.

The custom of eating a goose in England on St Michael's Day, is referred by tradition to the times of Queen Elizabeth, who, on St Michael's Day, received the news of the defeat of the Invincible Armada, when she had just eaten a goose. But inasmuch as, according to Baron von Reinsberg-Duringsfield, the custom of eating a goose on St Michael's Day dates from the times of Edward IV., we must admit that Queen Elizabeth conformed to a popular custom which already existed in England.[465] St Michael's goose announces the winter like the halcyon. It is eaten as an augury of the termination of the rainy and wintry season, inasmuch as when the aquatic bird, the halcyon, the goose, the duck, or the swan, finds no more water, when the sea of night, or the snow of winter dries up, when the aquatic bird is wounded, or is eaten, or dies, the golden egg is found, the sun comes out, the aurora returns, the winter appears again, the young hero and the beautiful maiden come forth. When the hero or heroine becomes an aquatic bird,[466] when he becomes a swan, is drawn by a swan, or rides upon it, it means that he is traversing the sea of death, and that he is returning to the kingdom of the San Graal.

When he comes on the swan to meet the beautiful maiden, no one must ask him whence he came. The swan awaits him and will draw him once more under its magic power, and into its gloomy kingdom, as soon as this kingdom is remembered by the living. The imagination of the Celtic and Germanic nations has, in a cycle of numerous and fascinating legends, invested with solemn mystery this myth, to which the inspired and cla.s.sical music of Richard Wagner has, in Lohengrin, imparted a new attractive magic. Lohengrin, the _recens natus_, the hero born of himself, arrives in a boat drawn by a swan, into which a sorceress has transformed Elsa's young brother: he comes to deliver the Princess Elsa, and is about to marry her, but he does not forget that as long as he remains with her, so much the longer will the torment of her brother endure, so much the longer will he suffer in the shape of a swan; woe to him if any one asks who he is, whence he came, or what that swan is, for he would then be obliged to remember that the swan waits for him to deliver it. Lohengrin must either renounce his love for Elsa, or betray his cavalier's faith to the swan, of whose mysterious nature he is cognisant; he bids a funereal farewell to Elsa, reunites her with her young brother, and mournfully disappears on the gloomy waters, over whose moonlit depths he had come. This is the legend of the two brothers, raised to its utmost poetic and ideal power by Northern genius. The sun and the moon appear in turns before the dawn and the spring. They are separated, and one delivers the other in the legends inspired by the good genie of man, as in others inspired by his evil genie, one persecutes and deceives the other. We have, even in the Vedic hymns, the Acvinau, the divine twins, identified now with the twilights, now with the sun and the moon, drawn by swans; Lohengrin is the sun; Elsa's brother is the moon. When the evening aurora, when the autumnal earth, loses the sun, it finds the moon; when the morning aurora or the vernal earth loses the moon, the sun takes its place; the lovers change places. One swan causes the birth of the other, carries the other, dies for the other, like one dove for the other, and as the Dioskuroi lay down their lives for each other. And, in truth, the legend of the Dioskuroi is, in some points, in marvellous accordance with the Northern legends of the rider of the swan. Zeus becomes a swan and unites himself with Leda, wife of Tyndareos, and generates by her the sun and the moon, Poludeukes and Helen; according to Homer Helen alone is Zeus's daughter, and Poludeukes and Kastor are sons of Tyndareos; according to Herodotos, Helen, on the contrary, is the daughter of Tyndareos, and this is in accordance with Euripides, who tells us that the Dioskuroi are sons of Zeus. In the _Heroides_ of Ovid, where the primitive tradition has already been altered, Leda, after having united herself to the swan Zeus, gives birth to two eggs; Helen comes out of one, Kastor and Poludeukes out of the other. Evidently _tot capita tot sententiae_; but these contradictions, far from excluding the myth of the sun, the moon, and the aurora (or of the spring) confirm it. It is always difficult to determine the paternity of a child who is born in an irregular manner, and the birth of Helen and her two brothers was certainly extraordinary.

What is important here is that we have the swan which generates sons in Leda; these sons, who are partly of the nature of the bird, and partly of that of the woman, must a.s.sume a double form, and now become swans like their father, now s.h.i.+ne in their mother's beauty; when, moreover, we think that only one of the brothers was, with Helen, born of the swan, it becomes natural to think of the other brother who may love Helen without being guilty of incest.[467] Before becoming famous by the varied fortunes of Troy, Helen, as a girl, had her adventures; Theseus seduced her and carried her off. The Dioskuroi come to deliver her in the same way as Lohengrin comes upon the swan to deliver Elsa, whilst her seducer is about to effect her ruin. Finally, the adventures of the two Dioskuroi, of whom one sacrifices himself for the other, correspond to the legend of the Schwanritter, the brother, or brother-in-law, who, on account of the swan offers up his own life. Thus India, Greece, and Germany united, in various forms, the figure of the swan with the story of the two brothers, or of the two companions; India created the myth, Greece coloured it, Germany has imbued it with pa.s.sionate energy and pathos.

FOOTNOTES:

[434] The Indian word _kapotas_, which means a dove, also indicates the grey colour of antimony, the colour of the commonest species of doves, and of those which are fed on St Mark's Place at Venice.

[435] civa? kapota is.h.i.+to no astu anaga deva? cakuno g?iheshu; str.

2.--For the fourth strophe, cfr. the chapter which treats of the Owl.

[436] ii. 9.

[437] ii. 239.--Cfr. the chapter on the Eagle.

[438] It appears to me that the same confusion arose between _coluber_ and _columba_ as between _cheludros_, a kind of serpent, and _chelidon_, a swallow. The beautiful maiden upon a tree occurs even in the _Tuti-Name_, i. 178, _seq._

[439] ii. 7, and v. 9

[440] They were related to me at Antignano near Leghorn by the peasant woman Uliva Selvi:--

A gentleman had twelve sons and one daughter, who had, by enchantment, been metamorphosed into an eagle, and was kept in a cage. The father takes the twelve sons to ma.s.s every day; every day he meets an old beggar-woman and gives alms to her; one day, however, he has no money with him, and therefore gives her nothing; the old woman curses him, wis.h.i.+ng that he may never see his sons again. No sooner said than done; the twelve sons become twelve doves and fly away. The despairing father and mother begin to weep; in their despair they forget to feed the eagle. Opposite the gentleman's house the king lived, who becomes enamoured of the eagle as though of a beautiful maiden; he has her stolen and replaced by another eagle. Not far thence there lived a washerwoman who had such a beautiful daughter that she never let her go out except at night. They wash at the fountain surrounded by poplar-trees; at midnight, as they wash, they hear a noise among the poplar-trees, and the maiden is afraid. One night they listen and hear the doves speaking and telling one another the incidents of the day, where they had been and what they had been doing. They then fly into a beautiful garden; the girl follows them; they enter into a beautiful palace, and the washerwoman relates what she has seen to the gentleman, who rejoices, and promises a great reward to the washerwoman if she will show him where his sons go to sleep. Both father and mother go to see; the pigeons speak, and say, "Were our mother to see us ..."; they then fly away. The gentleman then consults an astrologer, who advises him to allure the old witch into his house by the promise of alms, to shut her up in a room, and to compel her by main force to indicate the means of turning the pigeons into youths once more, or else to kill her. The old woman gives a powder which, when scattered on the highest mountain, will make the pigeons return home. The father goes to the mountain, scatters the powder and returns home, where he finds his sons, who are inquiring after the eagle. They go to see it and do not recognise it; they complain to their mother of this. Meanwhile, the young king is always near his eagle as if making love to it; and his mother is displeased at it. The twelve brothers meet a fairy who, for some alms, tells who has their eagle, and that it will soon return home a beautiful maiden. And the eagle becomes a beautiful girl and is married by the king.

There was once a king who had a handsome son, enamoured of a beautiful princess. He is carried off with two servants by the magicians and transformed into a pigeon; the servants undergo the same metamorphosis; one becomes green, one red, and the other greyish violet (pavonazzo). They take him into a beautiful palace where he must stay for seven years. Each has a large basin,--one is of gold, another of silver, and the third of bronze. When they plunge into them, they become three handsome youths. The princess, meanwhile, is dying to know where her lover is gone; she goes to have her hair combed on a terrace; the three pigeons carry away her looking-gla.s.s, then the ribbon of her hair, and then her comb. A great festival occurs in this town, to which the girls of the land go by night; on the way, one of them, near the break of day, turns aside for a few minutes; she sees a golden gate, finds a little gold key on the earth, opens the door and enters into a fine garden. At the end of the path there is a beautiful palace, into which she goes; she finds the three basins of gold, silver, and bronze, and sees the pigeons become young men. Meanwhile the king's daughter falls ill of grief, and is to all appearance dying; the king resolves to have her cured at any cost. The girl who had been in the place relates to the king's daughter all that she has seen; the latter is cured and goes with the girl to the palace; they find it, enter, and see a table laid for three persons; the two girls hide themselves. The prince and the princess meet with one another; but the prince, upon seeing her, is full of despair, saying that her impatience has prolonged the enchantment for seven years more, whilst it had at the time only three more days to run. He becomes a pigeon again; she must stay for seven years upon a tower exposed to all the inclemency of the seasons. Seven years pa.s.s by; the princess has become so ugly that she looks like a beast, with long hair all over her burned skin. The enchantment comes to an end for him after seven years; he goes to look for her; she says, "How much have I suffered for you!" The prince does not recognise her, and leaves her; she is left naked in a dense forest, and goes to seek her father.

Night comes on, and the princess and her servant-maid do not know where to take refuge; they climb up a tree, whence they perceive a light. They walk towards it and find a beautiful little palace; a beautiful lady, a fairy, shows herself, and asks, "Is this you, Caroline?" This was the princess's name. But the fairy can give no news of the prince, and sends her on to another fairy, her sister, with the same result; she then goes to a third fairy, walking a double distance each time. The three fairies were three queens who had been betrayed by the same young prince. The third fairy gives to the princess a magical rod; she must go to the prince and do to him what he did to her--spit in his face, to wit. She is brought in a boat before the young king's palace, and there, following the fairy's instructions, she raises, by means of the rod, a beautiful palace, a palace more beautiful than that of the king, with a beautiful fountain. The young king wishes to go and see it; he sees a beautiful princess and kisses his hand to her, but she shuts the window in his face. He then invites her to dinner, but she refuses. He sends her a magnificent diamond, which she gives to her majordomo, saying that she has many more beautiful. He then sends her a splendid dress, which can be taken in the palm of the hand; she tears it into pieces and gives it to the cook to be used for kitchen purposes. The young king becomes pa.s.sionately enamoured of her, and sends to her his best watch, which she gives also to her majordomo. He falls ill of a dreadful fever and wishes to marry her; he sends his mother. The princess laughs at the prince and refuses to come, saying, "Why does he not come himself?"

His mother begs again that she will come. "Let him come," she answers; and at last she consents to come if they will make from her palace to that of the king a covered way so well and thickly made that not a ray of light can enter, and which she may be able to pa.s.s through with her equipage. Half way, the covering opens, and the sunbeams enter, upon which she disappears. (Cfr. the Indian myth of Urvaci). The king being about to die, his mother returns to the princess, who demands that they bring him to her as if dead, in a bier. The king confesses that he has betrayed four maidens, and that it is on account of the fourth that he is coming to such a miserable end. The princess laughs at him and spits twice in his face; the third time he rises again, they are reconciled and married. (The spitting of the princess, which makes the dead prince rise again, is the dew of the ambrosia, or of spring, which brings the sun to life again.)--Cfr. the stories ii. 5, iv. 8, of the _Pentamerone_, and v. 22 of _Afana.s.sieff_.

[441] It is said of the widowed turtle-dove that it will never drink again in any fountain of limpid water for fear of reviving the image of its lost companion by seeing its own in the water. The Christians pretend that the voice of the turtle-dove represents the cry, the sighing, and afterwards, for the resurrection of Christ, the joy of Mary Magdalen. aelianos says that the turtle-dove is sacred not only to the G.o.ddess of love, and to the G.o.ddess of harvests, but also to the funereal Parcae.

[442] In the legend of St Remy it is a dove that carries to the saint the flagon of water with which he must baptize King Clodoveus.

[443]

"Et ille nunc superbus et superfluens Perambulabit omnium cubilia, Ut albulus columbus, aut Adoneus?

Cinaede Romule, haec videbis et feres?"

The chast.i.ty and the proverbial conjugal fidelity attributed to doves is here denied. Catullus had evidently closely observed the habits of these animals, which are sometimes, on the contrary, of a shameless infidelity. I have seen a white dove, who, in the presence of his wife, intent upon hatching her eggs, violated the nuptial bed of a gray dove, at a moment when the jealous husband was eating; the wife accepted the caresses of the husband and of the lover in the same pa.s.sive att.i.tude.

[444] We may also record here another Italian proverb, "To take two doves with one bean." In Italian anatomy a part of the phallos is called a bean (fava). The birds, and especially the thrushes and the doves, according to the popular belief, not only have the faculty of making other birds, but even plants fruitful. The words of Pliny, _Hist. Nat._ xvi. 44, have already been quoted by Prof. Kuhn: "Omnino autem satum nullo modo nascitur, nec nisi per alvum avium redditum, maxime palumbis ac t.u.r.dis."

[445] cvasity apsu ha?so na sidan kratva cetish?ho vicam usharbhut; _?igv._ i. 65, 9.

[446] Bibhatsuna? sayu?am ha?sam ahur apa? divyana? sakhye carantam; x. 124, 9.

[447] Ha?sair iva sakhibhir vavadadbhir acmanmayani nahana vyasyan b?ihaspatir abhi kanikradad ga; x. 67, 3.

[448] Sasvac cid dhi tanva? c.u.mbhamana a ha?saso nilap?ish?ha apaptan; vii. 59, 7.

[449] Cfr. the chapter which treats of the Bee.

[450] vi. 2.

[451] Adhi b?ibu? pa?ina? vars.h.i.+sh?he murdhann asthat uru? kaksho na gangya?; _?igv._ vi. 45, 31.--B?ibu? sahasradatama? suri?

sahasrasatamam; vi. 45, 33.--Cfr. also the 32d strophe.

[452] _?igv._ vi. 46.

[453] The goose is found in connection with robbers in the twenty-third story of the sixth book of _Afana.s.sieff_. Two servants stole a precious pearl from the king; being about to be found out, they give the pearl, by the advice of an old woman, to the grey goose in a piece of bread; the goose is then accused of having stolen the pearl. It is killed, the pearl is found, and the two robbers escape.

[454] v. 55.--In the forty-ninth story of the fifth book of _Afana.s.sieff_, a riddle occurs where the betrothed wife is represented as a duck. A father sends his son to find the wife who is predestined for him, with the following enigmatical order: "Go to Moscow; there there is a lake; in the lake there is a net; if the duck has fallen into the net, take the duck; if not, withdraw the net." The son returns home with the duck--that is to say, with his betrothed wife.

[455] ii. 46.

[456] iv. 11.

[457] iii. 75.

[458] Cfr. _Afana.s.sieff_, vi. 17, and a variety of the vi. 19.

[459] Cfr. an interesting variety of this story in the _Griechische und Albanische Marchen_ of Hahn.

[460] Thus, in a Norwegian story, the dirty cinder-girl carries silver ducks away from the magicians.--In the eighth Esthonian story, the third brother is sent to h.e.l.l for the ducks and geese with golden feathers.