CHAPTER IV.

"Little cow of God,Fly to the sky,God will give you bread."[335]

In Piedmont the same beetle is called the chicken of St Michael, and children say to it—

"Chicken of St Michael,Put on your wings and fly to heaven."[336]

In Tuscany it is called lucía,[337]and children cry out to it—

"Lucía, lucíaMetti l'ali e vola via."

(Put out your wings and fly away.) The red beetle with black spots is also called St Nicholas (Santu Nicola), or even little dove (palumedda). When one of their teeth falls, children expect a gift from the beetle; they hide the tooth in a hole, and then invoke the little animal;[338]returning to the place, they usually find a coin there, deposited by their father or mother. The red beetle, the ladycow of the English (coccinella septempunctata), has several names in Germany, which have been collected by Mannhardt in his German Mythology; among others, we find those of little bird of God, little horse of God, little cock of Mary, little cock of gold, little animal of heaven, little bird of the sun, little cock of the sun, little calf of the sun, little sun, little cow of women (it is therefore also invoked for milk and butter), and little cock of women. German maidens, in fact, in Upland, send it to their lovers as a messenger of love, with the following verses:—

"Jungfrau Marias,Schlüsselmagd,Flieg nach Osten,Flieg nach Westen,Flieg dahin wo mein Liebster wohnt."[339]

The ladycow shows the Swedish maidens their bridal gloves; Swiss children interrogate it (in the same way as the cuckoo is interrogated) to know how many years they will live.[340]

The worship which is given to the red beetle isanalogous to that reserved for the firefly (cicindela); the firefly, however, like the German Feuerkäfer, which German children, in spring, strike in a hole and carry home[341]the luminous glowworm that hides in hedges, like the wren, called also in Italianforasiepe, pierce-hedge, round which glowworm the stupid monkeys of thePańćatantramsit in winter to warm themselves), is not treated so well. In Tuscany the poor firefly, which appears in late spring (in Germany it appears somewhat later, whence its name of Johanniswürmchen), is menaced with a flogging, and children sing to it after catching it:—

"Lucciola, lucciola, vien da me,Ti darò un pan del re,[342]Con dell' ova affritellate,Carne secca e bastonate."

(Firefly, firefly, come to me; I will give you a king's loaf of bread, with fried eggs, bacon, and a flogging.) It is said in Tuscany that the firefly gives light to the wheat when the corn begins to grow in the ear; when it has grown, the firefly disappears.[343]Children are accustomed to catch the firefly and put it under a glass, hoping in the morning they will find a coin instead of the firefly. In Sicily, the firefly is called the little candle of the shepherd (cannilicchia di picuraru; the shepherd, or celestial pastor, the sun; the moon giveslight to the sun and shows him the way to traverse from autumn to spring, from evening to day), and is sought for and carried home to secure good luck. And inasmuch as the firefly shines by night, it is more probable that it represented the moon than the sun in popular mythical beliefs. The firefly disappears as soon as the ears are ripe,i.e., with the summer; we have already seen that the winter, or cold season of the year (like the night or cold season of the day) is under the especial influence of the moon. The red beetle must flee when summer comes, in order not to be burnt; the firefly, the glowworm, or worm of fire, is flogged, and the summer sun triumphs.

I suppose that the same mythical nature belongs to the butterfly (perhaps the black little butterfly with red spots), which is called in Sicily the little bird of good news (occidduzzu bona nova), or little pig of St Anthony (purcidduzzu di S. Antoni), and which is believed to bring good luck when it enters a house. It is entreated to come into the house, which is then immediately shut, so that the good luck may not go out. When the insect is in the house, they sing to it:—

"In your mouth, milk and honey;In my house, health and wealth."[344]

The butterfly was in antiquity both a phallical symbol (and therefore Eros held it in his hand) and a funereal one, with promises of resurrection and transformation; the souls of the departed were represented in the forms of butterflies carried towards Elysium by a dolphin. The butterfly was also often represented upon the seven strings of the lyre, and upon a burning torch. It dies to be bornagain. The phases of the moon seem to correspond in the sky to the zoological transformations of the butterfly.

Other beetles—the green beetle and the cockchafer—have also extraordinary virtues in fairy tales. In the fifth story of the third book of thePentamerone, the cockchafer (scarafone; in Toscana, it is called also indovirello) can play on the guitar, saves the hero, Nardiello, and makes the princess laugh that had never laughed before. In the fifty-eighth story of the sixth book ofAfanassieff, the green beetle cleans the hero who had fallen into the marsh, and makes the princess laugh who had never laughed before (the beetle, which appears in spring, like the phallical cuckoo, releases the sun from the marsh of winter).

SUMMARY.

The bees and the Açvinâu.—Madhumakshas.—Indras, Kṛishṇas, and Vishṇus as Mâdhavas.—The bees and Madhuhan.—Beowulf.—The god of thunder and the bees.—Vishṇus as a bee.—Theocymum nigrum.—The bees as nurses.—Melissai.—Selênê as Melissa.—Souls as bees.—The bees born in the bull's dead body.—The bee according to Finnish mythology.—The bees descended from paradise as part of the mind of God.—Bee's-wax causes light.—The Bienenstock.—The madhumati kaçâ.—The bees as winds.—Apis and avis.—The mother of the bees.—The young hero as a bee.—The fairy moon as a gnat.—The fly's palace.—The flies bartered for good cattle.—Intelligence of the bee.—The wasp as a judge.—The fly, the gnat, and the mosquito.—The louse and the flea.—The ant and the fly.—The ant and the cicada.—The cicadæ and the muses.—Tithon as a cicada.—The sparrow and the cicada.—The cicada and the cuckoo.

I find the bee in the Vedic mythology, where the Açvinâu "carry to the bees the sweet honey,"[345]where the horses of the Açvinâu, compared to "ambrosial swans, innocent, with golden wings, which waken with the dawn, swim in the water, and enjoy themselves, cheerful," are invoked to come, "like the fly of honey,"i.e., the bee, "to the juices."[346]The gods Indras, Kṛishṇas, and Vishṇus, on account of their name Mâdhavas (that is, born of madhus, belonging to or in connection with it), were also compared in India to bees; the bee, as making and carrying honey (madhukaras), is especially the moon; as sucking it, it is especially the sun. The name of bhramaras or wanderer given in India to the bee, is as applicable to the sun as to the moon. In theMahâbhâratam[347]it is said that the bees kill the destroyer of honey (madhuhan). In the chapter on the bear, we saw how the bear was killed by the bees (cfr. the name Beowulf, explained as the wolf of bees), and how in India it personified Vishṇus. Now it is not uninteresting to learn how Madhuhan, originally the destroyer of the madhu, became a name of Kṛishṇas or Vishṇus in theMahâbhâratamand in theBhâgavata P.; of madhu (honey) was made a demon, killed by the god (sun and moon, sun and cloud, are rivals; the solar bear destroys the beehive of the moon and the clouds).[348]Vishṇus (as Haris, the sun and the moon) is sometimes represented as a bee upon a lotus-leaf, and Kṛishṇas with an azure bee on his forehead. When the Hindoos take honey out of a hive with a rod, they always hold in one hand the plant toolsy (ocymum nigrum), sacred to Kṛishṇas (properly the black one), because one of the girls beloved of Kṛishṇas was transformed into it.[349]

In the legend of Ibrâhîm Ibn Edhem, in theTuti-Name[350]we read of a bee that carries crumbs of bread away from the king's table to take them to a blind sparrow. Melíai and Mélissai, or bees, were the names of the nymphs who nursed Zeus; the priestesses of the nurse-goddess Dêmêtêr were also called Mélissai.

According to Porphyrios[351]the moon (Selênê) was also called a bee (Melissa). Selênê was represented drawn by two white horses or two cows; the horn of these cows seems to correspond to the sting of the bee. The souls of the dead were supposed to come down from the moon upon the earth in the forms of bees. Porphyrios adds that, as the moon is the culminating point of the constellation of the bull (as a bull herself), it is believed that bees are born in the bull's carcase. Hence the name ofbougeneisgiven by the ancients to bees. Dionysos (the moon), after having been torn to pieces in the form of a bull, was born again, according to those who were initiated in the Dionysian mysteries, in the form of a bee; hence the name of Bougenês also given to Dionysos, according to Plutarch. Three hundred golden bees were represented, in conjunction with a bull's head, in the tomb of Childeric, the king of the Franks. Sometimes, instead of the lunar bull we findthe solar lion; and the lion in connection with bees occurred in the mysteries of Mithras (and in the legend of Samson).

According to the Finnish mythology of Tomasson, quoted by Menzel,[352]the bee is implored to fly far away over the moon, over the sun, near to the axis of the constellation of the waggon, into the dwelling of the Creator god, and carry upon its wings and in its mouth health and honey to the good, and wounds of fire and iron to the wicked.

According to a popular belief (which is in accordance with the legend of the Ćerkessians), the bees alone of all animals descended from paradise.[353]Virgil, too, in the fourth book of theGeorgics, celebrates the divinenature of the bee, which is a part of the mind of God, never dies, and alone among animals ascends alive into heaven (in popular Hellenic, Latin, and German tradition, the bee personifies the soul, and this being considered immortal, the bee, too, is supposed to escape death):—

"Esse apibus partem divinæ mentis et haustusÆthereos dixere: Deumque namque ire per omnesTerrasque, tractusque maris cœlumque profundum.Hinc pecudes, armenta, viros, genus omne ferarum,Quemque sibi tenues nascentem arcessere vitas;Scilicet huc reddi deinde ac resoluta referriOmnia; nec morti esse locum; sed viva volareSideris in numerum atque alto succedere cœlo."

The wax of bees, because it produces light, and is, moreover, used in churches,[354]must also have had its part in increasing the divine prestige of bees, and the belief in their immortality, as being those that feed the fire. According to a writing of 1482, cited by Du Cange, the sacred disease orignis sacer(pestilential erysipelas) was cured by wax dissolved in water.

In Germany the death of their master is announced to the bees in the little stick round which the honey is made in the hive. The hive or the Bienenstock, participates in the divine nature of the bees, and calls my attention to the madhumatî kaçâ or madhoh kaçâ of theṚigvedas, and of theAtharvavedas, attributed to the Açvinâu, and destined to soften the sacrificial butter, which is of a nature similar to thecaduceusof Mercury, and to the magical rod, born of all the various elements and of none in particular, daughter of the wind, and sometimes perhapsitself the wind; theanima, the soul (the bee), is a breath, a breeze, a wind (anemos, anilas), which changes its place, but never dies; it collects and scatters honey and perfumes, and passes away, changeful as the American flybird that sucks honey, the continual beating of whose wings resembles the buzzing of a bee; theapisandavisare assimilated. In Du Cange,[355]I find an oration to the mother of the bees, to call back the dispersed ones of her family, conceived thus:—"Adjuro te, Mater aviorum per Deum regem cœlorum et per ilium Redemptorem Filium Dei te adjuro, ut non te altum levare, nec longe volare, sed quam plus cito potest ad arborem venire; ibi te allocas cum omni tua genera, vel cum socia tua, ibi habeo bono vaso parato, ut vos ibi, in Dei nomine, laboretis," &c.

In the twenty-second story of the fifth book ofAfanassieff, a bee transforms itself into a young hero, in order to prove to the old man that he is able to fetch back his son, who has remained three years under the instruction of the devil (the moon enables the old sun to find the young one; it helps the sun to cheat the devil of night). In the same story it is in the form of a gnat that the guardian-fairy perches herself upon the young hero, whom his father has to recognise amongst twelve heroes that bear the greatest resemblance to one another. In the forty-eighth story of the fifth book, the gnat distinguishes, among the twelve maidens that resemble each other extremely, the one whom the young hero loves, that is, the daughter of the priest, whom the devil had taken possession of, because her father had once said to her, "The devil take you." This indicatory gnat occurs in numerous fairy tales, and discharges the office of the fairy moon;this is the guide and messenger of the hero. We have already seen the moon as a hostess. In the thirty-first story of the fourth book ofAfanassieff, we have the fly that entertains in its palace (according to the sixteenth story of the third book, a horse's head) the louse, the flea, the mosquito, the little mouse, the lizard, the fox, the hare, and the wolf, until the bear comes up and crushes with one paw the whole palace of the fly, and all the mythical nocturnal animals that it contains. We have also seen the hero who barters his bull for a vegetable which brings him fortune, and we have seen above the bee that is born of the dead bull. In the seventh story of the third book ofAfanassieff, the third brother, supposed to be foolish, collects, on the contrary, flies and mosquitoes in two sacks, which he suspends upon a lofty oak-tree, where he barters them for good cattle (the moon is the pea of good fortune, the giver of abundance). We know that the moon was represented as the judge of the departed in the kingdom of the dead, and as an omniscient fairy. The industrious bees have a singular reputation for superior intelligence.[356]In the thirteenth fable of the third book ofPhædrus, proof of the same wisdom is given by the wasp, who sits in the tribunal as a conscientious judge between the drones and the working bees in regard to the honey which the bees had collected and stored up on a lofty oak-tree, and to which the drones had pretensions.

The fly, the gnat, and the mosquito, though small, annoy, and sometimes cause the death of, the most terrible animals; the beetle gets upon the eagle to escape the hare; the hare allures the elephant and the lion intothe water;[357]the moon allures the sun into the night and the winter; the moon overcomes the sun, devoid of rays; the sun is deprived of its rays, the hero loses his strength with his hair; the fly alights upon the bald head of the old man, and annoys him in every way; the old man, wishing to strike the fly, only slaps himself. InPhædrus, again, we find the fly quarrelling with the rustic ant; the fly boasts of partaking of the offerings given to the gods, of dwelling amidst the altars, of flying through every temple, of sitting upon the heads of kings, of the kisses of beautiful women, and that without the necessity of submitting to any labour. The ant answers the fly by referring to the certain approach of winter, during which the ant, who had worked hard, has abundant provisions, and lives, whilst the fly dies of cold and starvation. Moreover, the ant says to it in one expressive verse—

"Æstate me lacessis; cum bruma est, siles."

This same discussion is reported, with more semblance oftruth, by other fabulists, as having happened between the shrill and inert cicada and the silent and laborious ant.

In the preceding chapter we saw the musical beetle. We are tempted to figure the bee as a musician, from the form of the bee being sometimes attributed to the Hellenic Muses and Apollo, and the name "bee of Delphi" being given to the Pythoness (as a cloud). But according to Plato, the Muses transformed into cicadæ the men who amused themselves by singing, and were so absorbed in that occupation they forgot to eat and to drink. If this myth be not a satirical invention of Plato's against poets, the bees as Muses, and those who became cicadæ on account of the Muses, should enter into the same mythical family. According to Isidorus, the cicadæ are born of the saliva of the cuckoo; this belief figuratively expresses the passage from spring to the summer season, to the season of the harvest, to the season of abundance, in which, according to a Tuscan proverb among thieves, he is a fool who cannot make his own fortune.[358]According to Hesüchios, the ass was called at Cyprus by the name of a mature cicada (tettix prôinos); the cicada (as the sun) dies, and the ass (as the night or winter) appears. According to Philê,[359]the cicadæ feed upon the eastern dew, perhaps in reminiscence of the Hellenic myth which makes the sun Tithon the lover of the aurora. The sun feeds upon the ambrosia, and is therefore immortal; but he has not the gift of eternal youth; his members dry up; after having sung all through the laborious noisy day, through the laboriousnoisy summer, he expires; for this reason the Hellenic myth represented the aged Tithon as transformed into a cicada.[360]The cicada is born again in spring of the cuckoo's saliva, and in the morning of the dew of the aurora; the two accounts correspond with one another. The cicada of summer appears, and the cuckoo of spring disappears; hence the popular belief that the cicadæ wage war to the death with the cuckoo, attacking it under its wings; hence it is supposed that the cuckoo devours its own nurse; the aurora devours the night, the spring devours the winter.

SUMMARY.

The kokilas, the nightingale of the Hindoo poets.—The heron.—Kokas.—Kapińǵalas.—The partridges.—The Vedas instead of the enchanted ring.—The partridge as a devil.—The heathcock.—The partridge and the peasant.—The pigmies ride on partridges.—Talaus becomes a partridge.—The kapińǵalas as a cuckoo; Indras as a kapińǵalas; Indras as a cuckoo.—Rambhâ becomes a stone.—Zeus as a cuckoo.—The laughing nightingale instead of the cuckoo.—The myth of Tereus.—The whoop, or hoopoe, announces, it divines secrets; the blind whoop and its young ones.—It buries its parents.—The cuckoo and the hawk.—The cuckoo anyapushṭas.—The phallical cuckoo.—The cuckoo as a good omen for matrimony.—The cuckoo is deceitful and a derider.—The cuckoo as the messenger of spring, and as the bringer of summer.—The death of the cuckoo.—Cocu, coucoul, couquiol, cucuault, kokküges.—The cuckoo announces rain; the cuckoo as a funereal bird.—The years of the cuckoo.—The cuckoo, the nightingale, and the ass.—The learned nightingales.—The nightingales predict the future.—The monster as a nightingale.—The wind as a whistler.—The nightingale as the messenger of Zeus.—Paidoletôr.—The phallical nightingale.—The nightingale as the singer of the night.—The nightingale as the messenger of lovers; he now helps them, and now compels them to separate.—The sun dries the nightingale up; a wedding custom.—The swallow; the chicken of the Lord.—The seven swallows of theEdda.—The swallow blinds the witch.—The birds of the Madonna; San Francesco and the swallows.—It is a mortal sin to kill them.—The swallows as guests; sacred birds.—The swallow beautiful only in spring.—The swans and theswallows sing.—The swallows as babblers.—It is a bad omen to dream of swallows.—Chelidôn, thepudendum muliebre.—The sparrow as a phallical bird.—The swallow as a diabolical form.

The kokilas or Indian cuckoo is for the Hindoo poets what the nightingale is for ours. The choicest epithets are employed to describe its singing, and the one most frequently applied to it in this reference is that of ravisher of the heart (hṛidayagrahin). While I write, I have not under my eyes, nor can I have, Schlegel's edition of theRâmâyaṇam; but if my memory does not deceive me, in the introduction, the poet Vâlmîkis makes the first çlokas, when he hears the lamentation of a kokilas whose beloved companion has been killed. In the edition of Gorresio, instead of the kokilas, we have the krâuńćas, which is the heron according to Gorresio, and the bustard (Brachvogel) according to the Petropolitan Dictionary. Kokas, a synonym of kokilas, is also mentioned in a Vedic hymn.[361]The Hindoo commentator explains it as ćakravâkas, which must be the equivalent of heron, although the dictionaries interpret it particularly as theanas casarca. In the forty-second and forty-third hymns of theṚigvedas, a bird occurs which partakes of the nature of both the cuckoo and the heron, or bustard. Here the bird "proclaims the future, predicts, launches its voice as the boatman his boat:" it is invoked "that it be of good augury," that "the hawk may not strike it," nor "the vulture," nor "the archer armed with darts;" in order that, "having called towards the funereal western region, it may speak propitiously with good-omened words," that it may "shout to the eastern side of the houses, propitious, with good-omened words."[362]In this prophetic bird, explained by theBṛihaddevatâas kapińǵalas, the Petropolitan Dictionary recognises the heathcock (Haselhuhn), of which tittiris or partridge is also a rendering. A Hindoo brahmanic tradition transforms into partridges the scholars of Vâiçampayanas to peck at the Vedas of Yâǵnavalkyas. The scholars of Vâiçampayanas are the compilers of theTâittiriya-Veda, or Veda of the partridges, or else black Veda. The Vedas sometimes occupies in Eastern tradition the place of the enchanted ring. In Western tradition, the devil, or black monster, becomes a cock in order to peck at the pearl or ring of the young hero who has become wise. In St Jerome's and St Augustine's writings, we also read that the devil often assumes the form of a partridge.[363]The Indian tittiris occurs again in the Russian tieteriev (the heathcock). In a story of the second book ofAfanassieff, the Tzar gives to a peasant a golden heathcock for a dish of kissél, made of a grain of oats found in a dunghill (a variety of the well-known fable of the chicken and the pearl). The heathcock finds the grain. In another story of the fifth book ofAfanassieff, a heathcock sits upon the oak-tree that is to carry the peasant-hero into heaven; it falls down, struck by the bullet of a gun that goes off of itself, because a spark, coming out of the tree, fell upon the powder of the gun and made the charge explode. The partridge and the peasant often occur in connectionwith each other in popular traditions. The shoes that the peasant took for partridges are proverbial. Odoricus Forojuliensis speaks in hisItinerariumof a man at Trebizonde who conducted four thousand partridges; as he walked on the ground, the partridges flew through the air; when he stopped to sleep, the partridges also came down. According to theOrnithologus, the pigmies, in the war against the cranes, rode upon partridges. An extraordinary degree of intelligence and prophetic virtue is ascribed to these birds. Aldrovandi asserts, in his Ornithology, that tame partridges cry out loudly when poison is being prepared in the house. The partridge was also calleddædalain antiquity, both because of its intelligence, and because of the fable in which Talaus, the nephew of Dædalus, the inventor of rhyme, thrown from the citadel of Athênê, by the envoy of Dædalus, was changed into a partridge by the pitying gods.

But to return to the point we started from, that is, to the Hindoo kapińǵalas, we must notice that Professor Kuhn,[364]has recognised in it the cuckoo rather than the heathcock. A legend of theBṛihaddevatâinforms us that Indras, desirous of being sung to, and having become kapińǵalas, placed himself at the right hand of the wise man that desired (by the merit of his praises) to rise into heaven; then the wise man having, with the eye of a sage, recognised the god in the bird, sang for psalms those two Vedic hymns of which one begins with the wordkanikradat."[365]The god Indras is found again inthe form of a cuckoo (kokilas) in theRâmâyaṇam,[366]where Indras sends the nymph Rambhâ to seduce the ascetic Viçvâmitras, and in order to increase her attractions, he places himself near her in the form of a cuckoo that sings sweetly. But Viçvâmitras, with the eye of asceticism, perceives that this is a seduction of Indras, and curses the nymph, condemning her to become a stone in the forest for ten thousand years.

In the first chapter of the first book we already saw the cuckoo in connection with the thundering Zeus, and as the indiscreet observer of and agent in celestial loves. In theTuti-Name,[367]instead of the cuckoo, we have the nightingale. The nightingale holds the betrayed king up to ridicule, laughing at him. The king wishes to know what this laugh of the nightingale means, and Gûlfishân explains the enigma to him, not so much because he is able, as is supposed, to understand the language of birds, but because from the tower where he was imprisoned he had been the spectator of the amours of the queen with her secret lover.

In the Greek myth of Tereus we find united several of the birds hitherto named, and the swallow besides; the pheasant takes the place of the partridge, and the whoop or hoopoe that of the cuckoo. Itüs eaten by his father Tereus, without the latter's knowledge, becomes a pheasant; Tereus, who follows Prognê, becomes a whoop; Prognê, who flees from him, is transformed into a swallow; Philomela, the sister of Prognê, whose tongue had been cut out by Zeus to prevent her from speaking, took the form of a nightingale, whence Martial—

"Flet Philomela nefas incesti Tereos, et quæMuta puella fuit, garrula fertur avis."

With regard to the hoopoe, several beliefs are current analogous to those known concerning the cuckoo and the swallow. In several parts of Italy it is called (on account of its crest and appearance in these months) the little cock of March or the little cock of May. It announces the spring. By the ancients, its song before the vines ripened was looked upon as a prediction of a plentiful vintage and good wine. It has the virtue of divining secrets; when it cackles, it announces that foxes are hidden in the grass; when it groans, it is a prognostication of rain; by means of a certain herb, it opens secret places.[368]According to Cardanus, if a man anoints his temples with the blood of a whoop he sees marvellous things in his dreams. Albertus Magnus tells us that when an old whoop becomes blind, its young ones anoint its eyes with the herb that opens shut places, and they recover their sight. This is in perfect conformity with a Hindoo story (a variation of the legend of Lear) narrated by Ælianos, according to which a king of India had several sons; the youngest was maltreated by his brothers, who ended by maltreating and expelling their father. The youngest brother alone remained faithful to his parents, and followed them; but while they were travelling, they died of weariness; the son opened his own head with his sword and buried his parents in it; the sun, moved to pity by this sight, changed the youth into a beautiful bird with a crest. But this crested bird, instead of the whoop, may also be the lark, concerning which the Greeks had also a similar legend.

The cuckoo is the bird of spring; when it appears, the first claps of thunder are heard in the sky, announcing the season of heat. According to Isidorus it is the kite that brings the lazy cuckoo from distant regions. In the time of Pliny, the cuckoo was supposed to be born of the sparrow-hawk, and Albertus Magnus, in the Middle Ages, asserted, "Cuculus quidam componitur ex Columba et Niso sive Sparverio; alius, ex Columba et Asture, mores etiam habet ex utroque compositos." There is nothing falser, zoologically speaking; but inasmuch as the lightning carries the thunder, the mythical hawk may well carry or produce the mythical cuckoo. Moreover, the habits of the cuckoo are very singular, and have not anything in common with those of the falcon and the dove, or indeed any other animal. It is well-known that, among the Hindoo names of the cuckoo we find anyapushṭas and anyabhṛitas, which mean nourished by another (the crow is called anyabhṛit, or nourisher of others, because it nurses the eggs of the cuckoo, which, for the rest, deposits them even in the nests of much smaller animals[369]). From this singular habit of the cuckoo, it was natural to conclude that the male cuckoo united itself in adultery with the strange female bird to which it afterwards confided the eggs, which would thus be bastard eggs of the female itself that sits on them. We have just seen Indras as a cuckoo and as a seducer of Rambhâ; Indras as an adulterer is also very popular in the legend of Ahalyâ, in which the cock (the morning sun) appears, instead, as the indiscreet betrayer of the secret amours of Indras(the hidden sun). In a popular song of Bretagne, the perfidious mother-in-law insinuates to her son the suspicion that his young wife betrays him, saying, "préservez votre nid du coucou."[370]

The cuckoo is the sun or solar ray in the darkness, or still oftener the thunderbolt hidden in the cloud. Dâtyuhas is one of the Indian names of the cuckoo, and also of the cloud, out of which alone the cuckoo is said to drink. As a hidden sun, the cuckoo is now an absent husband, a travelling husband, a husband in the forests, and now an adulterer in secret amorous intercourse with the wife of another. In any case, it is often a phallical symbol, and therefore delights in mysteries. Meanwhile, it sits on the sceptre of Hêrê, the protectress of marriages and childbirths, whilst Zeus himself, the thunder-striker, the thunderer, her adulterous brother, is called kokkük or cuckoo, because he had hidden himself in Hêrê's lap in the shape of a cuckoo, in order not to be recognised. Hence the song of the cuckoo was considered a good omen to whoever intended to marry. In the popular song of the Monferrato sung for the Easter eggs, the landlord is cunningly advised that it is time to marry his daughters. In Swedish and Danish songs, the cuckoo carries the wedding-nut to the nuptials. Nor was this because of its reputation as an adulterer, but because it has a phallical meaning, because it loves mysteries, and because it appears only in spring, in the season of loves. For the rest, as an adulterer, it would have been a bad omen for marriages; in theAsinariaof Plautus, indeed, a woman calls her husband cuculus, because he sleeps with other women. The cuckoo is therefore, properly, the deceitful husband, the adulterer,the hidden lover. The cuckoo is the derider; when children play at hide and seek, they are accustomed in Germany and in Italy, as well as in England, to cry outcuckooto him who is to seek them in vain, as is hoped. The Latin wordcucu, with which the pruners of vines who came late were held up to derision, the corresponding Piedmontese motto and gesture, mentioned in the first chapter of this work, and the Italian expressioncuculiarefor to ridicule, show the cuckoo as a cunning animal. It is the first, as is said, of the migratory birds to appear, and the first to disappear. In Germany it is believed that the grapes ripen with difficulty if the cuckoo continues to sing after St John's Day. It is the welcome messenger of spring[371]in the country, where it calls thepeasants to their work. Hesiod says that when the cuckoo sings among the oak-trees, it is time to plough.

But inasmuch as the cuckoo seldom shows itself, inasmuch as it represents essentially the sun hidden in the clouds, and as we know that the sun hidden in the clouds has several contradictory aspects, as a wise hero that penetrates everything, as an intrepid hero that defies every danger, as a betrayed hero, as a deceived husband, a traitor, a monster or a demon, so the cuckoo also has an ungrateful and sinister aspect. The adulterer who visits in secret the wife of another, becomes the absent husband that is travelling, the husband in the forest, whilst his wife entertains guests at home; or else the husband that sleeps whilst his wife is only too watchful; whence the verse of Plautus—

"At etiam cubat cuculus, surge, Amator, i domum,"

and the French wordcocu, and those registered by Du Cange,[372]coucoul,couquiol,cucuault, to express the husband of an adulterous woman. In Aristophanes, inept and inexperienced men are called kokküges. According to Pliny, a cuckoo bound with a hare's skin induces sleep(that is to say, the sun hides itself, the moon appears, and the world falls asleep). When the cuckoo approaches a city, and especially if it enters it, it bodes rain (that is, the sun hidden in clouds brings rain). InPlutarch(Life of Aratos), the cuckoo asks the other birds why they flee from his sight, inasmuch as he is not ferocious; the birds answer that they fear in him the future sparrow-hawk. The cuckoo that placed itself upon the spear of Luitprand, king of the Longobards, was considered by them as a sinister omen, as if the cuckoo were a funereal bird. In Italy we say "the years of the cuckoo," and in Piedmont "as old as a cuckoo," to indicate great age. A mediæval eclogue ascribes to the cuckoo the years of the sun, "Phœbo comes annus in ævum." As no one sees how the cuckoo disappears (the belief that it is killed by the cicadæ not being generally received), it is supposed that it never dies, that it is always the same cuckoo that sings year after year in the same wood. And, inasmuch as it is immortal, it must have seen everything and must know everything. The subalpine people, the Germans and the Slaves, ask the cuckoo how many years they still have to live. The asker judges how many years of life he may count upon from the number of times that the cuckoo sings; in Sanskrit the varsha or pluvial season determines the new year.

We said at the commencement of this chapter that the kokilas is the nightingale of Hindoo poets and its equivalent; and we have just noticed that the cuckoo also represents the phallos. In the chapter on the ass, we saw that the same rôle is sometimes taken by it. These three animals are found in conjunction in the well-known apologue of the cuckoo that disputes for superiority in singing with the nightingale; the ass, supposed to be the best judge in music on account of hislong ears, being called to decide the question, declares for the cuckoo. (In the wonderful fable of Kriloff, instead of the cuckoo, the bird preferred by the ass is the cock; the nightingale is said in it to be the lover and singer of the aurora.) Then the nightingale appeals from the unjust sentence to man, singing melodiously.[373]

A German song of the sixteenth century[374]places the nightingale in opposition to the cuckoo: "it sings, it leaps, it is always gay when the other little birds are silent."

According to Pliny, the nightingales of the young Cæsars, sons of Claudius, spoke Greek and Latin, and meditated every day to learn something new. Thus, theOrnithologusspeaks of two nightingales which, in 1546, at Ratisbon, disputed as to which spoke German best; in one of these discussions of the nightingale, the war between Charles V. and the Protestants was predicted. In the forty-sixth story of the sixth book ofAfanassieff, a nightingale in a cage sings dolorously; the old man who possesses it says to his son Basil, that he would give half his substance to know what the nightingale is predicting by this woful song. The boy, who understands the language of the bird, announces to his parents a prophecy of the nightingale that they will one day serve him. The father is indignant; one day when the boy is asleep, he carries him to a boat and launches it on the sea. The nightingale immediately leaves the house, and flying away, perches upon the boy's shoulder. A shipmaster finds the boy and the nightingale, and takes them; the nightingale predicts tempests and the approach of pirates. At last theyarrive in a city where the royal palace is assailed by three crows, which no one who attempts it succeeds in chasing away; the king promises half the kingdom and his youngest daughter to whoever can expel them, threatening death to whoever essays the enterprise in vain. The boy, advised by the nightingale, presents himself, and tells the king that the crow, his mate, and his young one are there to be judged by him (we have seen a similar legend in the chapter on the dog); they wish to have it determined whether the young crow belongs to his father or to his mother. The king says, "To his father;" then the young crow flies away with his father, while the female crow moves off in another direction. The boy marries the princess, becomes a great lord, obtains half the kingdom, travels, and is one night the guest, without their knowledge, of his own parents, who bring him water to wash himself. Thus the prediction of the nightingale is accomplished. In the popular Russian legend of Ilia Muromietz (Elias of Murom), the monster brigand killed by the hero's dart is called Nightingale (Salavéi). He has placed his nest upon twelve oak-trees, and kills as many as come in his way by simply whistling.[375]In theEddaof Sömund, the dwarf Alwis says of the wind, that it is called wind by men, vagabond by the gods, the noisy one by the powerful, the weeper by the giants, the bellowing traveller by the Alfes, and the whistler in the abode of Hel, that is, in the infernal regions; the Russian demoniacal monster-nightingale would therefore appear to be the wind in the darkness.

The nightingale, like the cuckoo, is called by Sappho, inSuidas, by the name of messenger of Zeus (now themoon, now the wind, now the thunder which announces rain). It also assumes a sinister aspect, under the name of killer of sons (paidoletôr), given it by Euripides. In a popular song of Bretagne,[376]the nightingale laments that the month of May has passed by with its flowers. In another song of Bretagne, the nightingale seems to have the same phallical signification which it has in theTuti-Name. During the night, a wife is agitated on account of the nightingale (the moon); her husband has it caught with a net, and laughs when he has it.[377]The nightingale, as its name shows in the Germanic tongues, is the singer of the night, and a nocturnal bird. Hence Shakspeare, inRomeo and Juliet,[378]names it, in contrast to the lark, the announcer of morning:—

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