CHAPTER IX

A Greek mistake—Nature vindicated—Cicadas provided for—A difficult feat—Perseverance rewarded—Cicadas in story—Dear to Apollo—Men before the Muses—Plato and Socrates—Athenian views—A mausoleum for pets—The Greek ploughman—Apollo’s judgment—Hercules’ bad taste—Modern survivals—A beneficent insect—Elementary education in Tuscany.

THE Greeks thought that the life of the cicadas was all joy, but modern research has been successful in removing the reproach of inconsistency from the general scheme of creation. All is in order, as it now appears: the cicada’s case has been considered, and a very handsome wasp provided for it. At least, I think it is handsome. It is large and strong, I know, as is necessary for the part it has to perform, but I cannot quite remember the colours it flies under; an expression which, though metaphorical, may be pardoned, since flags have much to do with such dramas as that now to be described. For as the joyous, sun-loving creature sits in its accustomed place, chirupping forth those shrill yet musical notes which I, at least, have never wearied of, the destroyer is at hand, and settling on its broad back, curves its abdomen beneath that of the poor blithe singer, and in a moment has done its work. As the sting enters, the happy note that has been sounding regularly for the last hour, perhaps, is changed to a discordant scream of pain,and with a spasmodic spring or flutter—the last, or near the last, that it will ever make—the cicada, with the wasp still clinging to it, falls to the ground. This is awkward for the wasp, who doubtless considers herself aggrieved in the matter, since the cicada is so bulky that, powerful as she is, she can neither lift it from the ground in flight, nor is she prepared to drag it all the way to her burrow. What, then, is she to do, or of what use to her is the prize she has obtained with such adroitness? But she has her plan, and though the captious behaviour of the cicada has, for the moment, a little deranged it, it is not permanently frustrated. Slowly, but with firm insistence, she drags her victim to the tree on which a moment before it was so happily seated, and then exerting all her force, begins to mount the trunk with it. Often she has to pause and rest, often it seems as though the task would be beyond her, but she continues the laborious ascent, sometimes for upwards of an hour, until at last a height has been reached at which it is possible for her to put her great project into execution. This is no other than to fly down obliquely, with her victim clasped in her arms, to the pleasant little sarcophagus which she has previously prepared for it, for though flight upwards, or in a straight line, with such a burden, is out of the question, her strength is equal to this. It is necessary, however, that she should balance the body nicely, and make a fair and uninterrupted start, in order not to be overweighted and again fall. Her enterprise is “full of poise and difficult weight,” and cannot be successfully carried out in face of the rude struggles of a tiresome obstructive not “in tune with theinfinite.” These struggles, however, have now ceased; the cicada is in a comatose condition, and, having adjusted it properly, and assumed the requisite attitude and position, our wasp—whose scientific name, by the way, isSphecius speciosus—launches herself, with “the white man’s burden” she has “taken up,” from her coign of vantage, and reaches home with it in safety. How high she has previously ascended the tree I cannot say, since my informant does not, but it would be interesting to ascertain both this and the average distance which she has to fly to her nest, and to compare the one with the other. Unless the latter is very much greater than the former—and as the journey is constantly downwards it cannot, one would think, be very far—then we must see in the wasp’s choice of a toilsome ascent up a perpendicular tree-trunk, in preference to a horizontal journey along the ground, a triumph of instinct over intelligence, and it is, indeed, quite possible that, having always been accustomed to fly back with her prize, which perhaps was not always so heavy, she should go through as much labour to enable her to do this as, differently directed, would attain the end for which it is employed.

A WASP BEARING OFF A CICADA.

After the wasp has killed the cicada, they both fall to the ground. Strong as the wasp is it is not easy for her to carry such a heavy insect to her nest. But she has her plan. Slowly but persistently she drags her victim to a tree-trunk and up it, though it may take her an hour to reach the requisite height. Then she sails off for her nest on an inclined plane, with wings extended, and her victim clasped in her arms.

The burrow of this wasp consists, we are told, “of a gently sloping entrance, extending for about six inches, when, ordinarily, a turn is made at right angles, and the excavation is continued for six or eight inches farther, ending in a globular cell an inch and a half in diameter. Frequently a number of branches leave the main burrow at about the same point, each terminating in a round cell.”[32]In each of these cells either one or two cicadas aredeposited, and it would seem that when there are two, only one of these is provided with an egg, so that some of the wasp-larvæ have double rations. As the femalespeciosus(her arguments, I think, would need to be specious to make one in love with a scheme in which she plays such a part) is very much larger than the male, it seems more than probable that the female eggs are laid in the chambers which contain two cicadæ, and the male ones in those which accommodate a single one only. If so, then these solitary wasps must have the same control over the sex of the eggs laid by them as the queen bee has. The social ones, should this be the case, no doubt have, too, but as the former must have preceded the latter, it would appear that this power has not been developed to meet the needs of a complex state of society—as has been generally supposed—but in accordance with much more simple conditions. The fact, however, if it be one, has not yet been demonstrated.

“The delicate white, elongate egg of the wasp is laid under the middle leg of the cicada, and when it hatches, the larva protrudes its head and begins at once to draw nourishment from between the segments of its victim. The egg hatches in two or three days, and the larva attains full growth in a week, or a little more. It feeds entirely from the outside, and, when full-grown, spins a white silken cocoon (mixed with much earth, however), which is finished at the expiration of two days. It remains in the cocoon, unchanged, through the winter, transforming to pupa only in the following spring, and shortly before the appearance of the true insect. Whenthe adult hatches it gnaws its way out of the cocoon, and so on up through the burrow to the surface of the ground, thus completing its life-round in a full year.”[32]How long, exactly, the life of the cicada lasts after it has entered into hospitable relations with thespeciosusI am unable to say.

Such, then, is the end of the cicada, in spite of the love of Apollo, who, according to the Anacreontic ode, bestowed upon it its shrill song. Thus it dies, though “cherished by the Muses, painless and fleshless, almost equal to the gods.” Whether it be fleshlessspeciosus, in the larval state, best knows (on the latter point there will have been no means of comparison), that it is painless one can only hope. It is something, however, to be so known to fame. Homer himself alludes to the cicada in terms of respect, calling its shrill song “delicate music,” whilst Hesiod tells of “the dark-winged Tettix, when he begins to sing to men of the coming summer; he whose meat and drink is of the refreshing dew, and who all day long and at break of day pours forth his voice.”

There was no end, apparently, to the love of the ancients—especially the Greeks—for the cicadas, or tettiges—for they were known by both names—or to the graceful things they said of them. From poets and philosophers down to ploughmen, all were equally fond of them. “We bless thee, Tettix,” says a poet whose name has been merged in that of one who is now a name only, though a great one—Anacreon, namely—“We bless thee for that seated on the tree-tops, sipping the dew, thou singest royally.... Oh, sweetest of summer prophets! honoured by mortals,thou art cherished by the Muses. Phœbus himself loves thee, and gave thee thy shrill song”; and Plato tells us that “as music soothes the mind and dissipates fatigue, so the ploughman loves and cherishes the cicada for its song.” The Greek ploughman, apparently, was a less gross embodiment than the one of the present day, after twenty-five centuries or so of improvement. To Apollo the cicadas were sacred, because they “everlastingly sang to the sun,”[33]and, for the Muses, they had once supplied their place. “As the story goes,” says Plato, “before the Muses lived the cicadas were men on earth, and so loved song and singing that, to lose no time from it, they left off eating, and so died of that dear delight. But, in death, they became cicadas, and this boon was granted them by the Muses, lately born, that on earth they should eat no more, but only sing until they died again, and that then they should return to the Muses to tell them who, amongst mortals, loved and worshipped them most.” “A lover of music like yourself,” says Socrates in the “Phædrus” of Plato, addressing one ofhisworshippers, “ought surely to have heard this story of the cicadas, how they were once human beings, but died through forgetting to eat. But now, dear to the Muses, they hunger no more, thirst no more, but sing only, from their birth. And in heaven they tell Terpsichore of the dancers, Erato of the lovers, Calliope, eldest of the nine, and Urania, of those whose heart is in philosophy—and thus they whisper to them all.”

So established were these and similar stories that, inGreece, a cicada perched on a harp was often engraved upon gems as the symbol of the Muses, and, were there a musical contest, one had only to settle on the lyre or pipe of the competitor it favoured, for the prize to be instantly adjudged to that one—since Apollo was then held to have spoken. Only in the absence of such indication were other methods of forming a conclusion resorted to. In common with other graceful creatures, cicadas were often kept as pets by the Greeks, and that mausoleums were sometimes raised to these favourites we know from the following epigram of the poetess Anytie—written probably for the friend it celebrates:—“For a grasshopper, a nightingale of the fields, and for an oak-haunting cicada Myro has built one common tomb. There the maiden sits and weeps for three pets, torn from her by unrelenting Hades.”

Amongst the Athenians the cicadas were looked upon as children of the soil of Attica, and those only who, like them, had been born upon it, were permitted to twist the golden tettix, or bodkin, amidst their flowing locks, thus forming the knot in which they were accustomed to wear them. This privileged bodkin received its name through being surmounted with the head, in gold, of a cicada, or tettix, and the wearers—or bearers—of these insignia—which were strictly forbidden to strangers—were known for this reason as Tettigophori. They were most proud of the distinction, and, indeed, as it showed them to be Athenians, they had a somewhat better right to be than is common in such cases. Yet, amidst all this praise, we meet, here and there, with a dissentient note. Hercules,for instance, feeling inclined to sleep, once, on the banks of the river, opposite where the town of Locris stood, and not being able to, on account of the perpetual singing of the cicadas, took it so seriously that he prayed to the gods to put a stop to their disturbing him. The gods, with whom Hercules was always a favourite, heard his prayer, and cicadas, from that time, ceased to sing opposite Locris, though they swarmed all round about that town. Here it seems just to be hinted that Hercules was not very fond of the cicadas’ song, and Virgil—but he was a Roman—has called it (infandum!) acreakingnote. On the whole, however, when he mentions these insects, he gives us a pleasing picture.

“Sole sub ardenti, resonant arbusta cicadis,”

he sings; a line which seems bathed in sunlight, and makes one see the green lizards too. On the whole I cannot help thinking that Virgil loved the cicadas.

It is interesting to find that in modern Italy, generally, but especially in Tuscany, the old ideas and legends in regard to the cicadas have not yet died out. Still, according to the Tuscan peasant, they were maids—not men—before the Muses, till Apollo, as a mark of his favour, promoted them into insects. Now, however, but little distinction seems to be drawn between cicadas and crickets, or grasshoppers, and, indeed, this was to some extent the case in classical times—the three often figuring together on ancient coins or rings. Amongst all of these—and together they supply a number of species—the greatest favourite with the Tuscan peasant of to-day—as perhapsit was in days long gone by—is a beautiful grey-green grasshopper, which the Americans would call a Katydid, but is, here, the cavalletta. This insect is looked upon as the special patron of children, upon whom it has the power of conferring musical and poetic genius, as well as more general mental endowments. To perform this properly, however, it must enter the room where its little favourite lies asleep, and this it seems often to do. The mother, should she see it, has her own part to play in the matter, which she does by tying the beneficent insect, by a long thread, to the bed-post, and chanting the following verses, with the idea, probably, that “then the charm is firm and good.”

“Cavalletta, good and fair,You bring good fortune everywhere,Then since into this house you’ve come,Oh, bring good fortune to our home,Unto me and everyone,But bring it mostly to my son.Cavalletta, this I pray,Bring, and do not take away.In life you were a lady, fullOf talent, good, and beautiful,Let me pray, as this is true,You’ll give my child some talent too.And when you fly from east to west,May you, in turn, be truly blest,For though an insect form you bear,You’re still a spirit good and fair.”

“Cavalletta, good and fair,

You bring good fortune everywhere,

Then since into this house you’ve come,

Oh, bring good fortune to our home,

Unto me and everyone,

But bring it mostly to my son.

Cavalletta, this I pray,

Bring, and do not take away.

In life you were a lady, full

Of talent, good, and beautiful,

Let me pray, as this is true,

You’ll give my child some talent too.

And when you fly from east to west,

May you, in turn, be truly blest,

For though an insect form you bear,

You’re still a spirit good and fair.”

A LUCK-BRINGING GRASSHOPPER

In Tuscany, if this insect comes into a child’s room whilst asleep, it is the mother’s duty to attach the grasshopper by a thread to the child’s bed to bring good fortune. The grasshopper is shown in the right-hand corner.

As the child grows older, and learns to talk, he is instructed in the truth of the matter, and taught byheart the following verses, which he must repeat whenever he sees a Cavalletta:—

“I am but little, as you see,But yet I may a genius be;And if, when grown, I shall be greatAnd make a name in Church and State,I’ll not forget that one fine day,As I in cradle sleeping lay,A Cavalletta blessed me there,In answer to my mother’s prayer.”[34]

“I am but little, as you see,

But yet I may a genius be;

And if, when grown, I shall be great

And make a name in Church and State,

I’ll not forget that one fine day,

As I in cradle sleeping lay,

A Cavalletta blessed me there,

In answer to my mother’s prayer.”[34]

We are not told what happens to the Cavalletta that has been tied up, after “the charm’s wound up.” The proper thing for the mother to do would certainly be to let it go, but I can’t help thinking that what she really does do is to put her foot on it, under the idea that only that can make the thing quite certain. That would be so like the peasantry—of any country.

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