CHAPTER IV.

"... Totum jam sol emerserat orbem:Et gravis ætherio venit ab axe fragor.Ter tonuit sine nube Deus, tria fulgura misit.Credite dicenti: mira sed acta loquor.A media cœlum regione dehiscere cœpit:Submisere oculos cum duce turba suo.Ecce levi scutum versatum leniter auraDecidit: a populo clamor ad astra venit."

Under this aspect the tortoise becomes the dark moon, in opposition to the luminous one, the slow moon, in opposition to the jumping one. Being slow or tardigrade,in the myths the tortoise is the moon, but the winter one; and sometimes it becomes also now the cloud, now the earth, now even the darkness (as such it appears demoniacal in a German legend, where two devils who have assumed the forms of monstrous tortoises, prevent the foundations of the cathedral church of Merseburg from being laid; the tortoises are exorcised, and their bodies slain, in memory of which circumstance it is said that the cups of these tortoises are preserved, hung up in the church; in the fourteenth fargard of theVendidad, too, the tortoises are, as demoniacal, to be killed). We have seen in the first chapter of the first book, the hare-moon passed over and crushed by the cow's waggon, suggesting to us the cloud (as the moon, now a bridge, now an island of the sky, as sea), which passes over the moon, but he perhaps, again, of the eclipse of the moon by the means of the earth, which is also called a cow in Sanskṛit. In Sanskṛit, the earth, which comes out of waters—an island[510](as the moon and the cloud)—is also called by the name of kûrmas,i.e., a tortoise (properly thecurved, the humped, the eminent, the prominent; mantharas is a name given to the tortoise, and Mantharâ is the name of the humpbacked woman who causes the ruin of Râmas in theRâmâyaṇam). Hence we also have in the West, besides the fables of the leaping hare (the moon) and the cow, of the leaping locust (the moon) and the ant, the apologue of the hare and the tortoise who run together; the hare, relying on its swiftness, falls asleep and loses, while the tortoise by steady perseverance wins the race.

We have already seen the tortoise in the Hindoo legends as the rival of the eagle or the Vishṇuitic bird Garuḍas. The two are now identified and now fight against each other (we must remember that it was by the advice of Kaçyapas that the bird Garuḍas ravished the ambrosia from the serpents). In Greece, the proverb of the tortoise which vanquishes the eagle, was already diffused; now it is the eagle which carries the tortoise into the air, or rather makes it fly, now it is, on the other hand, the tortoise which defies the eagle to arrive first. It is interesting to compare with this the Siamese apologue published by A. Bastian in theOrient und Occident, of evidently Hindoo origin. The bird Khruth, no doubt a limited and particular form of Garuḍas, wishes to eat a tortoise (here perhaps the moon) which lies upon the shore of a lake. The tortoise consents to be eaten, under the condition that the Khruth accepts a challenge to a trial of speed, and arrives soonest on the other side of the lake, the bird to go through the air, and the tortoise through the water. The bird Khruth accepts the wager;then the tortoise calls together millions and millions of tortoises, and places them all in such a way that they surround the lake, each distant a few steps from the water. Then it gives the signal to the bird to commence the race. The Khruth rises into the air, and flees to the opposite bank; wherever he essays to alight, he finds the tortoise has been there before him. (This myth represents, perhaps, the relation of the sun to the lunations).

SUMMARY.

The mâṇḍukâs or frogs as clouds in theṚigvedas.—Bhekas.—The frog announces the summer; thecanta-ranaannounces Christ.—The serpent, the hero, and the frog.—The frog and the ox.—Dionysos and the frogs.—Indras and the frogs.—The dumb frogs.—Proserpina and the frog.—Rana cum gryllo.—The frog finds the sultan's ring.—The frog and the rook.—The frog as the serpent's daughter.—The demoniacal frog.—The yellow and the green frog.—The beautiful maiden as a frog.—The demoniacal toad.—The sacred toad.—The beautiful maiden as a toad.—The toad in Tuscany, in Sicily, and in Germany.—The handsome youth as a toad.—Women who gave birth to toads.—The venomous and the alexipharmic toad.—Kröte and Schildkröte.—The toad swallows the dew.—The stone of the frog.—The horned lizard.—Eidechse, hagedisse.—Apollo as sauroktanos.—The lizard on St Agnes's Day.—The little lizards must not be killed in Sicily, being intercessors before the Lord.—The amphisbhæna.—Thelacerta viridis.—Thecouleuvreas a good fairy.

I am sorry to be unable to concur entirely in the opinion of the illustrious Professor Max Müller, when, in translating a hymn of theṚigvedas, in hisHistory of Ancient Sanskṛit Literature, he remarks, "The 103d hymn, in the seventh Maṇḍalam, which is called a panegyric of the frogs, is clearly a satire on the priests." It is possible that at a later period, in deriding a brâhmanic school similar to that of the mâṇḍûkâs, a satirical sense wouldhave been ascribed to this hymn, but it does not seem to me that the intention of the author of the Vedic hymn was such. Professor Max Müller has shown well in his History how the Vedic hymns have suffered in the hands of the Brâhmans, by means of their arbitrary interpretations; the interesting story of the hypothetical god Kas is a very convincing proof of it; it is, therefore, possible, and even probable, that attempts were made to use this Vedic hymn as an arrow for satire; but if I am not mistaken, no trace of a satirical meaning can be found in the hymn itself. Above all, I must observe that the Anukramaṇikâ of theṚigvedasproperly calls the hymn only parǵanyastutis, or hymn in honour of Parǵanyas, the hymn of the tempest; secondly, it scarcely seems possible that a satirical hymn, intended to caricature the priests, should be inserted in the seventh book, which is attributed to Vasishṭas, the most religious of all the legendary Brâhmans, and he who, for the glory of Brâhmanism and the rights of the sacerdotal caste, maintained such a protracted and disastrous war against Viçvâmitras, the champion of the warrior race; hence, if a satirical hymn against priests had been found in the third book of theṚigvedas, ascribed to the wise Viçvâmitras, I should not have thought it so strange, whilst it would be misplaced in the hymns said to be written by Vasishṭas. To me it seems rather that, when speaking of frogs, the hymn does not allude to the frogs of the earth, but to the clouds, the cloud-frogs, attracted by the pluvial moon, whilst the tempest is at its height. We know that in theṚigvedas, the wives of the gods weave hymns in honour of the lightning and thundering god Indras, who has killed the monster serpent which kept back the waters of the heavenly cloud; we have also, in the first chapter of the first book, heard the cows lowing and exulting joyfullybefore their deliverer Indras, who lets his seed drop in the midst of them as soon as they are released from the cave where they were imprisoned. In the seventh book, the hymns 101 and 102 are sung in honour of Indras as Parǵanyas; the hymn 103 is also sung in his honour, but by the clouds of the sky themselves, by the celestial frogs, inasmuch as the frog which croaks, when transported into the sky, is nought else then the thundering cloud; in fact, in Sanskṛit the wordbhekas, which means frog, has also the meaning of cloud. We have seen that the cuckoo who sings in spring, and admonishes the tillers of the soil to begin their work, personifies the thunder in the sky: the frog has the same office; it, like the thunder, announces the approaching tempest. And because, when the first claps of thunder are heard, it is the summer which announces its coming, so the frog that croaks and the frog that sings served specially to announce the summer. I remember that, a few years ago, there still existed at Turin, among children, the custom of sounding in the Holy Week (in order to greet the approaching festival of the resurrection of Christ, who died amongst flashes of lightning and peals of thunder) a wooden instrument, which emitted a sharp squeak resembling the croaking of a frog, and which was therefore calledcanta-rana(the frog sings). It was also the custom on Easter Eve to strike all the doors violently with sticks, as if to reproduce under another form the sound of thecanta-rana. According to Pliny, the frogs die in winter, and are born again in spring; when the frogs ask for a king, and obtain, in the Greek fable[511]a serpent, and in the Russianfable of Kriloff a heron, the serpent and the heron symbolise the autumnal and wintry seasons. Indras, Zeus, and Christ are born and born again amid the noise of musical instruments, shields, arms, winds and thunder, among the lowing of cows, the bleating of goats, the braying of asses, and the croaking of frogs, called by Aristophanesphilôdon genos. In the 103d hymn of the seventh book of theṚigvedas, one maṇḍûkas (frog or cloud) lows like a cow (gomâyus); another like a goat (aǵamâyus); one is pṛiçnis, or variegated; another haritas, or fair-haired, golden, red (the cloud born by the lightning and the violence of the wind), and, as a frog, green or grey; the maṇḍûkas or frog being transported into the sky, or identified, as a ǵomâyus, with the cow, it is no wonder that, in the fable, the frog has the presumption of thinking it can inflate itself to the size of an ox; but when the little cloud has become a large one, it ends by bursting, and so does the frog in his attempt to distend himself and become as large as the ox. (In the eighteenth Esthonian story, we find a monster who has a body like that of an ox, and feet like those of a frog.) When Indras and Zeus have accomplished their work in the celestial cloud, when the cloud has passed away and dispersed, when the frogs are drunk with water, they cease their croaking; thus, in theFrogsof Aristophanes, when Dionüsos (nüseios Dios) has passed the Stygian marsh, they stop croaking; whilst Zeus, on the other hand, floods the earth with water, they (Dios pheugontes ombron) retire into the depths of the waters to dance in chorus (as the ap-sarâs). On the other hand, before the pluvial god satisfies their desires, before it rains, they croak incessantly; the thunder always makes itself heard before the rain, and at the outbreak of the tempest; hence, in theṚigvedasitself, Indus (the moon), as abringer of rain (or the rain itself), is implored to run and plead with Indras, the pluvial god, to satisfy the desire of the frog.[512]Here, therefore, it is especially Indus who satisfies the frogs' desire for rain. Indus, as the moon, brings or announces the somas, or the rain; the frog, croaking, announces or brings the rain; and at this point the frog, which we have seen identified at first with the cloud, is also identified with the pluvial moon. Another characteristic of the frog made this identification all the more natural, and that was, its green colour (harit). By the wordharit(which, as we, several times, have remarked, means yellow and green in Sanskṛit) not only the moon, but the green parrot was designated, and also the frog. The identification having been effected, the Greeks could then relate fables concerning the frog of the Island of Seriphos (batrachos ek Seriphou), which was dumb; so in the Lives of St Regulus and St Benno, we read that when these two saints, as they preached the Christian faith, were annoyed by the croaking of the frogs, they ordered the frogs to be silent, and they became dumb for ever. In truth, the frogs are silent (and even die, according to Pliny) in winter, which is under the especial dominion of the silent moon; the frog and the moon are exchanged one for the other. InOvid, the metamorphosis of the frog is made to enter into the lunar myth, that is, into the myth of Proserpina; it was the form of the frog which certain peasants of Lycia assumed who dirtied the water of which Ceres and Proserpina wished to drink; their croaking (coax) is the punishment to which the goddesses condemned them, because in those waters they had emitted a vile sound fromtheir mouths.[513]Another proof of the identity of the frog with the moon is the Latin proverb, "Rana cum gryllo," which afterwards served to represent two opposite things, but which, in fact, are the same, on account of their shrill voice, their way of hopping, and their common mythical connection with the leaping moon. We are reminded of the moon and the cloud in the war waged between the frogs and the mice, who are mutually destroying each other until the falcon comes with impartiality to annihilate both. We are, moreover, reminded of the little goldfish, the fair-haired moon, and the pike, in the frog which, in theTuti-Name, finds the sultan's ring, which had fallen into the river, for the young hero, in gratitude to him for having saved it from the serpent who was about to devour it; it is said that both the frog and the serpent were two fairies who, freed from their curse, united themselves to protect the young hero (the new sun). In the twenty-third Mongol story, the golden frog (the moon) is dancing; the rook (the night) carries it off to eat it; the frog recommends it to wash it in water; the rook is taken in, and the frog, like the jorsh of Russian stories, succeeds in escaping; this frog is said to be the daughter of the prince of the dragons, who watches over the pearl. As the daughter of a serpent, the golden frog (the moon), when it is darkened, itself appears as a diabolical serpent or pythoness, and is more like a toad than a frog; then it becomes, according to Sadder, a meritorious service to kill the frogs: "Ranas si interfecerit aliquis quicunque fortis eorum adversarius, ejus quidem merita propterea erunt mille et ducenta. Aquam eximat eamque removeat et locum siccum faciatet tum eas necabit a capite ad calcem. Hinc Diaboli damnum percipientes maximum flebunt et ploratum edent copiosissimum."

In the second Calmuc story of Siddhikür, two dragons who keep back the river which irrigates the earth and makes it fruitful, and who eat a man every year, assume the form of frogs (one yellow and the other green), and speak to one another of the way in which they can be killed. The king's son understands their language, and kills them, helped by a poor friend of his, with whom he enriches himself, but only to encounter (like the two mythical brothers) the most dangerous adventures afterwards.

But the diabolical form of a frog is sometimes assumed by the beautiful maiden (or else by the handsome youth) as the effect of a malediction or an enchantment. Thus it is in the interesting twenty-third story of the second book ofAfanassieff. There is a Tzar who has three sons; each son must shoot an arrow; where the arrow falls, each brother will find his predestined wife. The two eldest brothers marry in this way two beautiful women; the arrow of the youngest brother Ivan, however, is taken up by a frog, whom he is obliged to marry. The Tzar wishes to see which of the three brides makes the handsomest present to her husband. All three give their husbands a shirt, but that of the frog is the most beautiful; for whilst Ivan sleeps (that is, in the night), she casts her skin, becomes the beautiful Helen (generally the aurora, but here, it would seem, the same transformed into the good fairy moon), and orders her attendants to prepare the finest shirt possible; she then again becomes a frog. The Tzar (a truly patriarchal Tzar) then wishes to see which of his three daughters-in-law bakes bread best; the first two brides know not what to do, and send secretly to see what the frog does; the frog, who sees all,understands the trick, and bakes the bread badly on purpose; afterwards, when she is alone and Ivan asleep, she again becomes the beautiful Helen, and orders her attendants to bake a loaf such as those which her father ate only on feast-days. The loaf of the frog is pronounced the best. Lastly, the Tzar wishes to see which of his daughters-in-law dances best. Ivan is sorrowful, thinking that his bride is a frog; but Helen consoles him, sending him to the ball, where she will join him; Ivan rejoices to think that his wife has the gift of speech, and goes to the ball; the frog takes her robes off, becomes the beautiful Helen once more, dresses herself splendidly, comes to the ball, and all exclaim as they pass by her (as to the Homeric Helen), "How beautiful!" They first sit down to table to eat; Helen takes bones in one hand, and water in the other; her sisters-in-law do the same. Then the ball begins. Helen throws water from one hand, and groves and fountains spring up; and bones (we remember a similar virtue in the bones of the cow) from the other, from which birds flutter upward (the same is narrated in a story I heard in Piedmont when a child). Meanwhile, Ivan runs home to burn the frog's skin. Helen returns home, can no longer become a frog, and is sorrowful; she goes with Ivan to bed, and awakening at morn, says to him, "Ivan Tzarević, thou hast not been patient enough; I would have been thine; now, as God wills it, Farewell! Seek me in the twenty-seventh earth, in the thirtieth kingdom" (i.e., in my opinion, in hell, in the night into which the moon and the aurora descend, and whence the moon comes out again and renews itself after twenty-seven days; the Russian story is evidently a variety of the fable of Cupid and Psyche).[514]She then disappears. Ivan goesto seek his bride at the dwelling of the frog's mother, who is a witch; he takes from her the spindle which spins gold, throws part of it before him, and the rest behind. Helen appears once more, and the pair flee away upon the carpet which flies by itself. Here the helped aurora and the helping moon are assimilated.

But in popular stories the hero and heroine assume by witchcraft, instead of the form of a dark frog, that of a toad, and sometimes that of a horned lizard,[515]whence the verse of Mehun—

"Boteraulx et couleuvres, visions de deables."

Inasmuch as the toad is a form proper to the demon, it is feared and hunted; inasmuch as, on the contrary, it is considered as a diabolical form imposed by force upon a divine or princely being, it is respected and venerated as a sacred animal. In Tuscany it is considered by the peasants a sacrilege to kill a toad. A low Tuscan song heard by me at Santo Stefano di Calcinaia records the transformation of the beautiful maiden into a toad; the mother toad speaks to her daughter to console her, inspiring her with the hope of being soon married to the king's son—

"Botta, gragna,[516]Il figlio del re che poco ti amaSe non t'ama, t'amerà,Quando per isposa lui t'avrà."

(Wretched toad! the king's son, who little loves thee, if he love thee not, will love thee when he has thee for his wife.) The prince weds the toad, which is immediately transformed into a beautiful maiden. With regard to the superstitions concerning the toad current in Sicily, it is interesting to note what my friend Giuseppe Pitrè writes to me—"The toad brings fortune; he who is not fortunate must provide himself with a toad and feed it in his house[517]upon bread and wine, a consecrated nourishment, inasmuch as it is alleged toads are either 'lords' or 'women from without,' or 'uncomprehended genii,' or 'powerful fairies,' who have fallen under some malediction. Hence they are not killed, nor even molested, lest when offended they should come at night to spit water upon the offender's eyes which neverheal, not even if he recommend himself to the regard of Santa Lucia." Hence the poet Meli, in hisFata Galanti, writes that he prevented a peasant from killing a toad—

"Jeu ch'avia 'ntisu da li miei maggiuriChe li buffi 'un si divinu ammazzari,Fici in modu chi l'ira e lu rancuriA ddu viddanu cci fici passari."

As a recompense for having saved its life, the toad soon afterwards appears to him in the shape of a very beautiful woman, and promises to assist him all the days of his life—

"Oh picciotti furtunatu!Eu ti prutiggirò d'ora nn' avanti,Jeu su' dda buffa, chi tu, gratu e umanuSarvasti antura da l'impiu viddanu."

In Piedmont, I have heard a popular story[518]relatedin which the toad is, on the other hand, the diabolical form assumed by a handsome youth; in Aldrovandi,several things are narrated of women who gave birth to toads.[519]

From the double and contradictory aspect in which the toad was regarded, popular medicine, although believing that the humour which the toad, when provoked, ejects from behind, is fatal, and that the toad not only poisoned men, but even all the plants over which it passed, still recommends the wearing of dried toads under the armpits as amulets against plague and poison. The same alexipharmic virtue was also ascribed to the stone called and believed to be toad's-stone (or bufonite), which was said to change colour when its wearer was poisoned. The bufonite was supposed to be taken out of a toad's head, but science has demonstrated that the bufonite, sold by quacks is made of the tooth of a fossil fish.[520]Out of the toad, the dark animal of the night, the gloom or winter, the solar pearl comes; thus popular German stories regard theSchild-kröte(or toad with the shield) as sacred, on account of the pearl supposed to be contained in its head. In Hungary it is said that the toad swallows the dew in the dry season; it is believed, moreover, that the frog, like the serpent, vomits forth, in spring, a precious stone called the stone of the serpent or the stone of the frog. According to what Count Geza Kuun writes to me, in the testament of a citizen of Kaisa three golden rings are mentioned, one of which contained a "frog's stone."

I have observed above that the toad's place is sometimes taken in popular tales by the horned lizard; the lizard also represents the demoniacal shape, the shape of a witch. On this subject there was an interesting discussionby Karl Simrock upon the wordEidechse(the lizard in German), derived from the ancient formHagedissewhich is the same asHexeor witch. It is as a witch that the lizard is killed, in the Greek myth, by Apollines, whence its name ofsauroktanos.[521]But, inasmuch as the lizards appear in spring and announce the fine season, they are considered (according to Porphyrios) sacred to the sun, and therefore of good augury. A Bolognese proverb says, "Sant' Agnes, la luserta cor pr' al paes," to indicate that the season is beginning to improve, inasmuch as with the appearance of the lizards on the Day of St Agnes, which is in the beginning of March, spring begins to make itself felt. In Sicily it is believed that the little lizards called San Giuvanni must not be killed, because they are in the presence of the Lord in heaven, and light the little lamp to the Lord (as we have already seen the firefly give light to the grain). And when they are killed, in order that they may not curse one, one must say to the tail which is shaking, that it was not the real killer, but the dog of St Matthew who committed the crime,

"Nun fu' ieu, nun fu' ieu:Fu lu cani di San Matteu."

They are believed to be powerful intercessors before the Lord, for which reason Sicilian children warm them intheir bosoms, and feed them on crumbs of bread soaked in water.

But an especially sacred character is ascribed to thelacerta viridis(It.ramarro; Sicilian,vanuzzu, a diminutive of Giovanni) and to theamphisbhœna, of which the ancients believed that it had two heads (like the Hindoo ahîraṇis), its tail being taken for one. Theamphisbhœnais still held sacred and revered in India.[522]The green lizard of popular superstition is partly solar and partly lunar; the firefly and the quail, as summer animals, are sacred to the sun; as watchers by night, to the moon. Thus the green lizard, as a summer animal which hunts away the serpent of winter, appears particularly in relation with the sun; but inasmuch as there is also the serpent of night, the green lizard or greenramarrotakes the place of the crab-moon, that is, it wakens the young solar hero who sleeps in the night, and wakens the sleeping man lest the serpent should bite him. The moon of winter wakens the sun of spring, the moon of night wakens the sun of day; the moon-lizard, like the moon crab, hunts the serpent or black monster away. In Piedmont, Tuscany, and Sicily, the green lizard is believed to be the friend of mankind; indeed, it is calledguarda omuin Sicily, where it is believed to cure fromincantations, perhaps on account of the yellow cross which the people think they can see upon its head. At Santo Stefano of Calcinaia it is said that the green lizard hisses in the ears of Christians like a Christian when the serpent approaches a man; they even relate several cases of shepherds or peasants who, being asleep, were saved by the green lizard passing over them (Aldrovandi speaks of a similar superstition). It is, moreover, believed that the green lizard, if caught and put in a vase full of oil, will produce the oil of aramarro, which is said to be good against wounds and poisons. In theContes Merveilleux de Porchat, a fairy protects the poor Laric and brings fortune to him in the shape of a gratefulcouleuvre, which he, in winter, found frozen and warmed in his bosom. Thecouleuvremakes radiant coins fall to Laric from the beaks of certain partridges, enables him to find whatever he is in need of, and puts a golden chain round the neck of his wife. Thus the myths of the golden (or green) fish, the golden (or green) frog and the golden (or green) lizard, correspond to each other in the beautiful myth of the good moon-fairy, who protects the solar hero or heroine in the nights both of the day and the year.

SUMMARY.

The feet and the tail; the serpent is the favourite form of the demon; the devil is betrayed by his tail.—The serpent and the waters; the dragon as the keeper back of the waters, and as the guardian of the treasures; the devil evoked from the waters.—The otter.—The chief enterprise of Indras is the killing of the serpent.—The names of the Vedic serpent;arbudaandreptilis.—Description of the Vedic serpent.—The wives of the demons and the wives of the gods; Indras wounds the wife of the demon in theyonis, and the demon himself in the eggs; the serpent's death consists in the broken egg; broken eggs, skins, vases, boxes, and testicles.—The god as a serpent; the python.—Gods and demons, birds and serpents dispute the possession of the ambrosia.—The phallical Anantas of cosmogony; the twophalloi.—Nâgalatâ; the game of the serpents, nâgas, nâgapadas, nâgapaças.—The caduceus.—Kaçyapas Praǵâpatis, father of the birds and of the serpents.—Kumbhakarnas.—The hero dies as soon as he touches the serpent.—The funereal rope of Yamas is a serpent; the collar of Hêphaistos.—The serpents carry Sîtâ on their heads.—The city of Bhogavatî.—The hero becomes an aquatic monster in consequence of a curse.—The serpent released from the fire.—The wisdom of the serpent passes into the hero.—The three-headed serpent.—The serpent sacred in India and in Germany.—The stone of the serpent.—The serpent and the tree.—The tree and the phallos.—The cypress.—The tree, the maiden, and the serpent at the fountain.—The tree of the cross.—The serpent is wholly diabolical in Persian tradition.—The serpent is a mythical animal, both physically and morally amphibious.—The hero, the frog, and the serpent.—The grateful serpent.—Dialogue betweentwo little serpents in a variety of the legend of Lear.—The serpent burnt.—Serpents and worms.—The serpent as the beautiful maiden's husband.—The heads of the serpent.—The serpent of the Black Sea.—The serpent-fairy gives eyes back to the blind woman.—The avenging serpent.—When the serpent is asleep.—The serpent in the garden of the Hesperides.—The serpent-wizard.—The serpent's kiss.—The serpent that whistles.—The wings of the serpent wet; the Vedic myth once more.

The mythical animal with which I conclude the study of traditional zoology is perhaps the most popular of the whole series. The omniform demon makes the god or hero who falls under his power assume the most diverse zoological forms, the power of transforming into which he holds in possession, of which he holds the secret; but he almost always reserves for himself as his most favourite and privileged form that of the serpent. The devil, says the popular proverb, is known by his tail; and to show that women know more than the devil, it adds that they also know where the devil secretes his tail, or where he keeps his poison, for his poison and power to harm are in his tail. A devil without a tail would not be a real devil; it is his tail which betrays him; and this tail is the serpent's tail.[523]In the forty-fifth story of the fifth book ofAfanassieff, the devil-serpent comes every night to visit the young widow in the form of her deceased husband, eats with her and sleeps with her till morning; she grows thinner every night, like a candle before the fire; but her mother counsels her to let a spoon drop when she is sitting at table, that, in lifting it, she may scrutinise the guest's feet; instead of his feet, she only sees his tail. Then the widow goes to the church to bepurified.[524]In theEddas, too, the serpent Lokis, who has taken the form of a horse, betrays himself by his feet.

The serpent-devil appears in special connection with the infernal waters (darkness of night and of winter, and cloudy sky), which conceal treasures, the pearl, the solar hero or heroine with the waters of youth and life. The serpent-devil draws to himself every beautiful thing, now to swallow them, now to preserve and guard them like a miser. The dragon became the symbol of the keeper back of the waters, of the guardian of the treasures, who devours or attracts to himself everything that shines. In Du Cange, the name ofdracusis given to "species dæmonum qui circa Rhodanum fluvium in Provincia visuntur forma hominis, et in cavernis mansionem habent." In ancient Latin manuscript comments given by the same Du Cange, the devil is called by the name ofhydrosor aquatic serpent. Hincmarus Remensis believes that the devil is evoked from the waters,[525]and according to St Augustine, it was from the waters and from the illusions created in the water by demons that Numa derived his inspirations.[526]Hence the custom, sofrequent in German and Slavonic countries,[527]of blessing the water to chase the monsters away from it; hence, also, the custom which I have observed in several parts of Russia, where the children, before they bathe in the rivers, and as soon as they put their feet in the water, make profound inclinations and the sign of the cross; hence, according to Du Cange, the god of the waters, Neptunus, in the Middle Ages, becomes under the name ofAquatiquus, a personification of the devil;[528]hence, also, the otter (enüdris) assumes a diabolical character in theEdda, where the Ases take its skin off and fill it with the gold taken from the dwarf-pike Andvarri, and in the sixth story of the first book ofAfanassieff, where it destroys the beasts of the menagerie of a Tzar, and finally drags the third son of the Tzar Ivan under an enormous white stone (the snowy winter) in the lower world, where there are palaces of gold and silver and three beautiful girls, sisters of the monster otter, who sleeps in the sea, and snores so that he pushes the waves to a distance of seven versts, until Ivan, after having drunk the water of strength, cuts the monster's head off at a blow, after which it falls into the sea.

But to proceed in the order which we have hitherto generally followed, let us examine before all the tradition of the aquatic monster, the dragon or serpent, in Hindoo mythology.

The most important of the heroic undertakings accomplished by the Vedic god Indras is, as already remarked, that of killing the monster; and the enterprise of Indras against the monster is the theme of all the great popular Indo-Persian, Græco-Latin, Turko-Slavonic, Franco-Germanic, and Franco-Celtic epic poems, as also of the greatest number of the popular stories which are the real epic material of the new epopees. Indras, Vishṇus, Ahura-Mazda, Feridun, Apollo, Hêraklês, Kadmos, Jason, Odin, Sigurd, and several other gods and heroes, are celebrated for the undertaking of killing the serpent. Now, in the Vedic hymns the black monster (kṛishṇas), the growing monster (râuhin),[529]the full-grown monster (piprus), the monster coverer (vṛitras), the monster that dries up (çushṇas), the monster that keeps back (namućis), generally appears with the name and shape of a serpent, or if it has not always the form of a serpent, it is assimilated to it, and certainly inclines to become so from its office of a constrictor, its black colour, and other characteristics which it possesses in common with the serpent (Ahis).[530]

The monster killed by Indras, the monster with the horrid voice which Indras strikes upon the head with a thunderbolt, is, like the serpent, deprived of feet, deprived both of hands and shoulders.[531]But the serpent is alsooften explicitly named in theṚigvedasas a monster which keeps back the waters, and which is killed by Indras. The serpent, the first-born of the serpents, was lying in the mountain;[532]he was lying under his mother,[533]he was keeping the waters, his wives, shut up, as a miser his treasure, or a robber the stolen cows;[534]a miser or rich robber[535]resembling a magician, he staid enclosed in a cavern, and kept the waters in it;[536]he lay down and perhaps slept;[537]he lay near the seven torrents;[538]Indras arouses him;[539]in another hymn, however, the serpent, making a loud noise, provokes Indras, and comes against him.[540]When Indras kills the serpent with the thunderbolt, or else crushes it under his foot, or burns it, he opens the torrent of the waters and causes it to flow outtowards the sea; he makes the sun be born, and finds the cows;[541]he destroys the machinations of the sorcerer, generates the sun, the day, and the dawn, removes every enemy to a distance,[542]makes the serpent's trunk fall to the earth, like a tree cut down by axes, or torn up by the roots,[543]and (as in Russian stories the hero, after having cut the monster's head off, throws his trunk into the sea) over the killed monster, now fallen, the waters which make joyful pass;[544]the gods, who have given Indras three hundred oxen to eat (according to another hymn, only one hundred), and three lakes of ambrosia to drink, that he might be able to vanquish Ahis, are joyful at the victory gained by Indras over the serpent, with their wives and with the birds; not only this, but the women, the wives of the gods, compose on this occasion a hymn to Indras.[545]

We have already seen several times in the course of this work how, by killing his monstrous form, the hero or heroine enclosed in this is set at liberty; the waters, or rainy clouds, which are the monster wives of the demons, as long as the monster keeps them in thedarkness, become the radiant wives of the gods when they are released; the same may be said of the aurora, kept in ward by the gloomy or watery monster of night, or of the spring detained in the dreary realm of winter; as long as they are in the power of the black demon, they are black and monstrous, and live with him in the infernal kingdom; when delivered from this kingdom, however, they become beautiful maidens, or princesses of dazzling splendour. When the monster fights with the god or solar hero of the thunderbolt, he arms his women too, and makes use of them as powerful helpers;[546]hence Indras also aims at them and lacerates the black-wombed witches,[547]being afterwards himself condemned to become Sahasrayonis. In popular Âryan tradition, however, it is often the daughter, wife, or sister of the monster that reveals to the hero the way of killing the monster. In Russian stories, one of the ways oftenest recommended to ensure the death of the monster, is to take the egg contained in the duck which is under the tree in the midst of the sea, and crush it upon the monster's forehead, who immediately dies; with the monster's death the two young lovers,—the daughter, wife, or sister of the monster, and the young hero,—marry each other. We have just seen that when Indras has killed the monster serpent, the waters pour out, and the sun appears.In another Vedic hymn we also find the interesting accompaniment of the egg, which reminds us, on the one hand, of the subject of Russian popular stories, and on the other of the belief described by us in the chapter on the Hen, to the effect that the thunderbolt breaks its eggs: Indras, with his strength, breaks the eggs of the monster that dries up the waters, and wins the luminous waters;[548]crushing the eggs, or wounding the testicles of the gloomy monster, he makes the sun come out of them, and thereupon the monster dies.[549]The symbolical representation of the solar year in the form of a serpent biting his tail is equivalent to the myth of the monster-serpent who dies when his eggs are broken, that is, when the light comes out of its tenebrous envelope.

Inasmuch, moreover, as from the monster serpent, the cloud and the darkness, come forth flashes of lightning, thunder-bolts, sunbeams, tongues of fire, even serpents sometimes assume a divine nature in the Vedic hymns. TheVedic god of fire, Agnis, the born of the waters (napâtam apâm), called Ahir-budhnyas, has already been compared to the Greekpüthôn ophis, the python. Agnis is also compared to a serpent with a golden mane,[550]which reminds us of the horned monster that dries up, spoken of in another hymn as killed by Indras.[551]Indras himself is called he who has the strength of the serpent.[552]The Marutas have the serpent's anger;[553]and as the Marutas are resplendent with golden attire and ornaments, so the monsters appear adorned with gold and pearls.[554]In theÂitareya Br.,[555]the serpent Arbudas has even become a ṛishis, a wise poet, as the python becomes the oracle of wisdom in Greece; and the serpents oppose a Vedas of their own (the Sarpavedas) to the Vedâs of the gods. In the sameÂitareya Br.,[556]we have the description of a struggle between the gods and a venomous serpent, whose greedy eye gazes at the somas, of which he desires to be possessed. The gods bandage his eyes; the serpent sings a verse in praise of the somas; the gods, as an antidote, sing several verses, and counteract the effect of the serpent's verse. And the witch (âsurî) of the long tongue (Dîrghaǵihvî) is no doubt a serpent, who in theÂitareya Br.,[557]again, licks the morning libation of the gods, and makes it inebriating. In theRâmâyaṇamit is recorded that the long-tongued witch (Dîrghaǵihvâ), the devourer, is killed by Indras. The struggle between the gods and the serpents for the possession of the ambrosia is the subject of a long episode of the first book of theMahâbhâratam.[558]The serpent loves dampness, water, ambrosia, and rain. When Bhîmas, the son of the wind, is thrown into the waters of the Ganges, he falls into the kingdom of the serpents, who give him the water of strength to drink.[559]In theMahâbhâratam, the mother of the serpents, who have been burned by the sun, invokes the rain to bring them to life again; Indras, to please her, veils the sky with clouds.[560]In theRâmâyaṇam, instead of the serpents, the monkeys are resuscitated by means of the rain. The rains of spring also waken the earth, which is in theÂitareya Br.[561]called by the name of Sarparaǵnî, and was at first, like the serpents, bald, that is, devoid of vegetation; invoking the heavenly cow, it became covered with trees. In the Hindoo cosmogony, which we described in the chapter on the Tortoise, a very interesting account is given of the way the great stick or phallos, the generator of the world, is made to turn round. The serpent Anantas (the infinite) or Vasukis,[562]who makes the mountain revolve, is twined round it;the mountain and the serpent are synonymous;[563]they are two phalloi, which rub each other, and produce the seed (nâgalatâ or climbing serpent, serpent-creeper, is one of the Hindoo names of the phallos; in Piedmont it is said of a man in the venereal act, that he "climbs upon the woman;" and in Sanskṛit nâgas, nâgapadas, nâgapaças, nâgapâçakas, denotes union in the manner of serpents, who apply their bodies to each other in their entire length,[564]in the same way as fire is produced by the friction of two pieces of wood—the araṇî. Anantas, or Vâsukis, and Mandaras, or Kaçapas, and hence Kaçyapas, are identified with one another;) and this is all the more probable as Kaçyapas is also called by the name of Vasukas, and as Kaçyapas himself, in another cosmogonic legend of theMahâbhâratam, appears as having made fruitful two wives, Kadrû, properly the dark one, and Vinatâ,[565]properly the concave, the curved or swollen one(two appellatives by which theyonisappears to be equally represented), from one of which is produced the egg from which serpents are hatched, and especially the nâgâs serpents, with human faces, like the devils, and from the other, that which generates Aruṇas and Garuḍas (a form of the Açvinâu). Whilst, in theMahâbhâratam, the serpent Vasukis rubs itself against the Mandaras and makes it turn round, it keeps blowing wind, smoke, and flames out of its mouth, which form clouds, with the water of which the creator gods are afterwards refreshed. Although this last particular shows the serpents intent upon the welfare of the gods, they hold in Hindoo tradition the same place as Anhṛomainyu, or Ahrimanes, in Persian; whilst one phallos gives birth to luminous phenomena and good beings, the other produces gloomy phenomena and wicked beings.

Among the productions of the phallical and serpentine genie of darkness are the clouds. In theRâmâyaṇam,[566]the monster Kumbhakarṇas sleeps for sixth months; no number of drums, trumpets, nor any noise is able to awaken him; he is struck with hammers, but feels nothing; elephants pass over him, but he does not move: at last the tinkling of the golden ornaments of beautiful women suffice to rouse him. He rises; his arms resemble two great serpents, and his mouth the mouth of hell. He yawns, and that yawn alone sends forth a wind which resembles a rushing wind that shall usher in the end of the world. The aspect of Kumbhakarṇas when he rises is like that of an immense cloud swelled out withrain towards the end of summer; he is horned like a mountain, and bellows like a thunder-cloud. No sooner is he born, than, inasmuch as by the curse of Brahman he can waken but one day in the year (that is in the autumn), he asks for food, and devours buffaloes, wild boars, men and women; he once swallowed even the ten nymphs, or Apsarasas (the clouds that blow over the waters), of the god Indras; he finds that the world is not provided with animals enough to satiate his hunger. When Kumbhakarṇas moves to battle against the monkeys of Râmas, he draws his enemies to himself to devour them, he draws and receives the shock of whole mountains, but is not shaken. Râmas cuts one of his arms off, and the arm cut off (or the serpent, or the cloud cut off, like the stick of fairy tales which beats of itself) continues to massacre the monkeys. Râmas cuts Kumbhakarṇas's other arm off, which supports with its hand the whole trunk of a robust shorea; but arm and trunk continue to slaughter the enemies on their own account.[567]At last Râmas shoots him in the mouth and heart; the monster falls, and crushes as he falls two thousand monkeys under his immense body. Here, therefore, we again see the monster and the serpent in relation with the clouds and waters. To touch the serpent, that is, the rainy season or the night, is for the solar hero or heroine the same as to die. In theMahâbhâratam[568]the girl Pramadvarâ falls dead to the ground, having inadvertently pressed a serpent with her foot on the way; Rurus brings her to life again by renouncing half of his own life. In this legend the year or the day personifies life; summer sacrifices itself to winter, winter to summer, day to night,night to day, the sun to the moon, and the moon to the sun. In the beautiful legend of Savitrî, the wife sacrifices herself and offers herself to Yamas, the god of the dead, in order to be faithful to her husband. In the sameMahâbhâratam,[569]the King Parîkshit falls into the power of Takshakas, the king of the serpents, a form of Yamas the god of the dead (also called Anantas), because he had thrown a dead serpent on the shoulders of a Brâhman. In theRâmâyaṇam,[570]it is said that a man who has, when asleep, fallen into the hands of the god of the dead, Yamas, is bitten by a venomous serpent. The very rope with which Yamas the god of the dead binds men is a serpent. To the rope-serpent of Yamas we must refer the fatal collar with seven serpents and seven pearls (a symbol of the year, half luminous, half gloomy) which Hephaistos gave to Harmonia and Kadmos on the occasion of their wedding. Kadmos and Harmonia become serpents, and are taken into heaven by the gods. The daughters of Kadmos all come to an unhappy end. The collar is afterwards possessed by Erüphilê, for which reason evils befalls Amphiaraos, and subsequently also Alkmeôn. When Sîtâ,[571]in order to escape from the unjust suspicions of her husband and the perverse evil-speakings of the vulgar, wishes to disappear from the sight of men and to descend under ground, the serpents (pannagâs, who go not with feet) carry her upon their heads (as in Christian tradition the Virgin crushes the head of the serpent-seducer), and from the depths of the earth a voice is heard saying: "Difficult to be acquired is the sight of this woman, who resides in the three worlds; staying down here, she is honoured bythe serpents (pûǵyate nâgâiḥ), and, in the world of the mortals, by mankind; nectar of the higher blessed ones, she is the satiator of the immortals." The kingdom of the nâgâs, or the city of Bhogavatî (an equivocal word, which means both furnished with serpents and furnished with riches), is full of treasures, like the hell of Western tradition. This infernal world went definitively under ground when the gods, having fallen, took humbler forms upon the earth and upon the waters of the earth; the lower world became the kingdom of the serpents and of the devils of the Vedic cloudy and gloomy heavens (devils and serpents, which Jewish tradition therefore represents with great justice as fallen angels). The riches of heaven, concealed by the cloudy or gloomy monster of night or winter, passed into the earth; the observation of heavenly phenomena helped this conception. The true mythical treasures are the sun and the moon in their splendour; when they go down they seem to hide themselves underground; the solar hero goes underground, he goes to hell, after having lost all his treasures and all his riches; he undertakes in poverty his infernal journey; when the sun rises from the mountain, it seems to come out from underground; the solar hero returns from his journey through hell, he returns resplendent and wealthy; the infernal demon gives back to him part of the treasures which he possesses, having carried them off from him, or else the young hero recovers them by his valour. But this hell was once the watery, wintry, nocturnal heaven itself, from which now the sun, now the moon emerges; the hero or the god was obscured or eclipsed, and assumed a gloomy form in the sky itself, and, as we have already said,[572]he who destroys, lacerates, or kills this form, does a service to the poor and cursed wandering Jew who wears it. We are reminded of the aquatic monster, in theRâmâyaṇam,[573]by the gandharvas[574]Tumburus, who assumed, under a curse, the form of the monster Virâdhas who carries Sîtâ off from Râmas, with the sole design that Râmas may kill him and deliver him from the malediction, so that he may be able to reascend in happiness to heaven. In a similar manner, Hanumant delivers from her curse the ogress of the lake, the seizer (grâhî) and devourer, who was once a nymph.[575]The body of the old ṛishis Çarabhañgas also gives us the idea of a serpent's body. Çarabhañgas desires to deliver himself from it, as a serpent casts off its old skin. He then enters the fire; the fire burns him; Çarabhañgas, arising from the conflagration, comes forth young, splendid, and as brilliant as fire.[576]In the celebrated episode of Nalas in theMahâbhâratam,[577]the serpent Karkoṭakas, surrounded by the flames, asks Nalas, on the other hand, to deliver him from the flames; the serpent makes himself small in order that Nalas may be able to carry him away; Nalas does so, and the serpent bites him; he thenloses his shape, which passes into that of the serpent. In this new diabolical form Nalas becomes invulnerable and invisible. The diverse action taken by fire in legends can be comprehended by reference to the solar hero, now in the morning, now in the evening, now in spring, now in autumn: in the morning and in the spring the serpent of night enters the flames and becomes a handsome youth again; in the evening and in the autumn the serpent comes out of the flames of the evening aurora, or of the summer, and becomes the moon, after having made the sun disappear, or rendered it invisible or invulnerable. In the forty-seventh story of the sixth bookAfanassieff, a hunter (the hunting solar hero) is about to heat the stove; a serpent is lying in it, and promises, if he will draw it out of the fire, to render him happy, and teach him the language of all animals. He tells the hunter to put the end of his stick into the fire, by which means it will be enabled to make its escape; the hunter complies, but is warned that he will die himself should he reveal that secret to any one.

The serpent, therefore, is not only monstrous and maleficent in Hindoo tradition, but also at once the learned one, and he who imparts learning; it sacrifices itself to let the hero carry away the water of life, the water of strength, the health-giving herb or the treasure; it not only often spares, but it favours the predestined hero; it destroys individuals, but preserves the species; it devours nations, but preserves the regenerative kings; it poisons plants, and throws men into deep sleep, but it gives new strength in its occult domain to the sun, who gives new life to the world every morning and every spring. In the Vedic heavens the serpent is a magician expert in every kind of magic; in the kingdom of the serpents the young lost hero recovers his splendour,wisdom, and victorious power. Hence the worship in India of the serpent, who is revered as a symbol of every species of learning. We have, on a previous occasion, found the horned or crested serpent who personifies, in theṚigvedas, fire or the god Agnis, and by this we must understand the crest or mane of the sun, which comes out of the darkness; thus the god Haris or Vishṇus lies upon a crested serpent or a many-headed serpent. Three-headed serpents or dragons, such as are famous in fairy tales, occur in theHarivaṅças,[578]and correspond to the Vedic monster Triçiras, that is, three-headed. The crest of the serpent is the god Vishṇus himself, as a solar deity who comes out of the serpent's body. Hence the hooded-serpent, called Nalla Pâmba in the Malabar,[579]is especially revered in India. "The sudden appearance of one of these serpents," wrote Lazzaro Papi from India, "is considered to presage some future good or evil. It is the divinity himself in this form, or at least his messenger, and the bringer of rewards or chastisement. Although it is exceedingly venomous, it is neither killed, molested, nor crushed in the house which it enters, but respected, and even caressed and adored by the more superstitious. They give it milk to drink, and the accommodation to which it is accustomed; they construct little huts for it, and prepare receptacles and nests for it under large trees. This reminds me of the ancient inhabitants of Prussia, who nourished several serpents with milk in honour of Patriumpho or Patrimpos, their deity. The family in which one of these serpents takes up its abode esteems itself fortunate and secure frompoverty and other misfortunes; and if some one, as it not seldom happens, is bitten by them and dies, the victim of his own credulity, it is, they say, a punishment of God that has overtaken him for some crime." It is nearly the same belief as that which we found in the preceding chapter concerning the toad and the amphisbhæna. In Hungary, as Count Geza Kunn informs me, some fairies are said to be born with a serpent's skin, and to resume their form after this serpent's skin has been shed. It is said that a precious stone can be found under a serpent's tongue. When the serpents warm themselves in the sun of spring, they blow out the stone (or the sun itself), and subsequently conceal it under the tongue of a still larger serpent, the king of the serpents.

The serpent is supposed to protect and preserve the lost riches, and to guard the soul of the dead hero; hence serpents, like crows amongst birds, are revered in India as embodied souls of the dead. In Germany,[580]the white serpent (that is, the snowy winter), according to the popular legend, gives to whoever eats of it (or who is licked by it in the ears) the gift of understanding the language of birds, and of universal knowledge (it is in the night of Christmas, that is, in the midst of the snow, that those who are predestined to see marvels can comprehend, in the stables, the language of the cattle, and, in the woods, the language of the birds; according to the legend, Charles le Gros, in the night of Christmas, saw heaven and hell open, and was able to recognise his forefathers). Thus in Greece, Melampos, Cassandra, and Tiresias became seers by their contact with theserpent, symbolised at a later period in the python and the pythoness, as the depositaries of all the oracles of wisdom. In Scandinavian mythology, Odin also assumes the form of a serpent (ormr), and the name of Ofnir, in the same way as Zeus becomes a serpent in Greek mythology when he wishes to create Zagreus, the bull-headed, another Zeus or another Dionüsos. In Rochholtz and Simrock, we find indications of the same worship as that given to the serpent in India, where it is regarded as a good domestic genie. Milk is given to certain domestic little snakes to drink; they are put to watch over little children in their cradles, with whom they divide their food; they bring good luck to the children near which they stay; it is therefore considered a fatal sacrilege to kill them. It is fabled, moreover, that a serpent is sometimes born with a child entwined round its neck, and that it and the child are thenceforth inseparable (an image of the year and of the day, half luminous and half tenebrous, inseparable the one from the other). It guards the cattle in the stables, and procures for good and beautiful maidens husbands worthy of them. According to a popular legend, two serpents are found in every house (a male and a female), which only appear when they announce the death of the master and mistress of the house; when these die, the snakes also cease to live. To kill one of these serpents is to kill the head of the family. Under this aspect, as a protector of children, as a giver of husbands to girls, and identified with the head or progenitor of the family, the serpent is again a phallical form. From the gloomy serpent of night, the tenebrous serpent of winter, even the nocturnal and wintry heavens illumined by the moon, and from the white moon, emerges the diurnal sun, the sun of spring, the day and the warm and luminous season. The ogre,dragon, or serpent keeps back the waters in the cloud and the waters in the rivers, occupies the fountains, lies at the roots of the tree which yields honey, of the ambrosial tree, of the tree in the midst of the lake of milk; the tree and the phallos are again identified. The Phrygian Attis, loved by Cybele, is deprived of his phallos, and expires; Cybele transforms him into a pine tree (which is cone-bearing and evergreen, which resists, like the moon, even the rigours of winter), in which the funereal and regeneratory phallos is personified; the cypress (cone-bearing and evergreen), which the three brothers of the fairy tales must watch during the night, and which only the youngest brother succeeds in delivering from the dragon or serpent which carries it away, is also represented in Persian tradition as in the middle of a lake of ambrosia. The serpent steals this tree, as in the Hindoo myth it steals the ambrosia from the gods; it knows well that in it consists the regeneratory strength of the hero, whom the serpent has bitten; sometimes it steals the tree from him, and sometimes guards over it. Out of the golden apple, or out of the orange of the tree guarded by the dragon, in popular tales, the beautiful maiden comes; the dragon keeps her back a second time on the way, making her mount upon a tree, or throwing her into the fountain, near which the beautiful maiden becomes a dark fish or a dark bird (a swallow or a dove), in order to come out again from the fish or the bird in the form of a beautiful girl. The love of the young princess for the young hero, in Russian stories, comes out of the duck's egg taken under the tree, and the death of the serpent-dragon is caused by it. Here the gloomy monster of the night and winter, the monster serpent, appears, in guardianship of the moon, the protectress of marriages, as an ambrosial and evergreen tree, and, likethe cypress, a funereal tree, which is at the same time symbolical of immortality. From the moon of winter and of night, the solar hero of spring and the day, the maiden spring and the maiden aurora come forth. The serpent, like the toad, the frog, the fish, and the bird, now desires the moon of winter and of night for itself, and now presents it to the young hero, whom it protects. The moon appears when the diurnal sun goes down in the west; hence the garden of the Hesperides, as the word denotes, was supposed to be situated in the west; the moon rules the northern heavenly region, the cold season of the year; for this reason Apollodorus placed this same garden of the Hesperides in the north, amongst the Hyperboreans, where the tree of oblivion also grew according to Ælianos. In India, the ambrosial tree, the tree of immortality, the tree of Brahman's paradise, like the moon and Çivas (the god of paradise and of hell, the phallical and destroying god), was also placed in the north, on Mount Merus, the phallical and primeval mountain, near the sea of oblivion, guarded by a dragon; but because the dragon or serpent represents evil oftener than good, because Çivas, the moon, and the cypress, have a double aspect, phallical and funereal, paradisiacal and infernal, because Kaçyapas, the great primitive phallos, created opposite things in the form of a bird and in that of a serpent, two trees are also represented upon Mount Merus, one of good and one of evil, one of life and one of death, which reminds us of the Jewish and Mahometan traditions. The legends concerning the tree of the golden apples or figs, which yields honey or ambrosia, guarded by dragons, in which the life, the fortune, the glory, the strength, and the riches of the hero have their beginning, are numerous among every people of Âryan origin; in India and in Persia, in Russia and in Poland,in Sweden and in Germany, in Greece and in Italy, popular myths, poems, songs, and fairy tales amplify with a great variety of incidents, partly unconscious of their primitive signification, this strange subject of phallical cosmogony.[581]

The Persian cosmogony is of a less material character than the Hindoo, but its principle is the same. Ahuramazda and Anhromainyu, who occupy the first place as the creators of the world, are also two males in opposition to one another. From Ahuramazda descends Thrætaona or Feridun, the killer of the serpent (azhi) Dahâka, or Dahak, or Zohak, the three-headed dragon which Anhromainyu created to destroy the beautiful in the world, as the strongest of monsters.[582]In Hindoo tradition we find the bird Garuḍas on the side of the gods, and the Nâgas or serpent on that of the demons; so, in Persian tradition, the bird Simurg is on the side of the gods, and the serpent or sea-monster on that of the demons. It is in the midst of the waters that the hero Kereçâçpa finds the great serpent Çruvara, who devours men and horses, and who ejects a venom as large as a man's thumb. Taking him probably for an island,[583]he has food cookedupon it; the serpent feels the heat, and begins to move; it then throws Kereçâçpa, the courageous Kereçâçpa, over backwards. There seems to be some analogy between this myth of the Yaçna of theAvestaand the story of the fearless hero of the Russian story, who, being asleep in a boat, falls into the river when terrified by the little fish which had jumped upon him. (The serpent appears also as the enemy of fire in theKhorda-Avesta.)[584]The serpent causes the diseases which Thrætaona is requested to cure; it poisons whatever it sees and touches; and, according to theKhorda-Avesta,[585]the wicked are condemned to feed upon poison after death. In theShah-Namethe sun disappears, devoured by a sea-monster or crocodile. In the third adventure of Isfendiar, the hero is almost inebriated by the venomous smoke and the pestilential breath of the dragon which he has victoriously combated; and, after having won, he falls to the ground as if dead; thus Indras, after having defeated the monstrous serpent, flees in terror over the rivers, like a madman attacked by hydrophobia, terrified by the shadow, the smoke, or the water of the dead serpent, because this shadow, which is perhaps his own, and not his enemy's, menaces to submerge him in those poisoned waves, and to transform him into a sea-monster, assimilating him thus to his enemy; inasmuch as the god sends to make man like himself, so also does the demon. In Persia, therefore, the serpent is generally considered as a demoniacal and monstrous animal, the personification of evil. If it is prayed to, it is to conjure it away, to induce it to go far distant, as the Arabs and the Tatars particularly do to expel the devil. The Persian genius hasnot the mobility, the plasticity, and elasticity of the Hindoo; its mythical images are more severe and less multiform; hence the serpent remained in Persian tradition the demoniacal animalpar excellence. In theTuti-Name, on the contrary, which is of Hindoo origin, the serpent has a double aspect. The serpent wishes to eat the frog. (In the fifteenth story of the third book of thePańćatantram, the frogs ride upon the serpent, and leap upon it in delight, like Phædrus's frogs upon King Log, which was sent to them in derision by Jove; the serpent and the rod are assimilated.) The hero saves the frog, upon which the serpent reproves him, because he thus takes its food from it; the hero then cuts off some of his own flesh to give it to the serpent;[586]the serpent protects the hero ever afterwards, and cures with an ointment the king's daughter, who had been bitten by another serpent; the king gives his daughter, on her recovery, to the hero who had satisfied the serpent's hunger. In the tenth story of the third book of thePańćatantram, two little serpents, who talk to each other, both work their own ruin and make the fortune of the hero and of the heroine. A king's son has a serpent in his body without knowingit, and becomes ill; he abandons in despair his father's palace, and goes begging; he is given, in contempt, the second daughter of another king to wife, who had never said amiable things to her father, like her eldest sister (a variation of the legend of Cordelia and Lear); whilst one day the young prince has fallen asleep with his head upon an ant-hill, the little serpent which is in his body puts out its head to breathe a little fresh air, and sees another serpent coming out of the ant-hill;[587]the two little serpents begin to dispute and call each other names; one accuses the other of tormenting the young prince by inhabiting his body, and the accused responds by charging it with hiding two jars full of gold under the ant-hill.[588]Continuing their quarrel, one says how easy it would be to kill the other; a little mustard would suffice to settle the first, and a little hot oil the second (the serpent is killed by being burned; the rich uhlan-serpent of the Russian story is burned in the trunk of an oak-tree, in which it had taken refuge out of fear for the fire and the lightning); the hidden wife listens to everything, delivers her husband from the little serpent in his body, and kills the other serpent to take out the treasure which it keeps hidden.[589]In the fourteenth of the stories of SantoStefano di Calcinaia, the third of the young daughters, in order to save her father from certain death, consents to marry the serpent, who carries her upon his tail to his palace, where he becomes a handsome man called Sor Fiorante, of the red and white stockings. But she must reveal the secret to no one. The maiden (as in the fable of Cupid and Psyche) does not resist the temptation of speaking of it to her sisters, on which her husband disappears; she finds him again after having filled seven flasks with her tears; breaking first a walnut, then a hazel-nut, and finally an almond, of which each contains a magnificent robe, she recovers her husband, and is recognised by him.[590]In a variety of the same story in mylittle collection, a good serpent fairy advises the blind princess, and gives her the hazel-nut, the almond, and the walnut; each of the three gifts contains a marvel; by means of the first marvel the young princess regains one eye from the false wife; by means of the second marvel, the other eye, which the serpent puts in its place;[591]and by means of the third, which is a golden hen with forty-four golden chickens (perhaps forty-four stands for forty times four, or a hundred and sixty, which might represent the luminous and warm days of the year, from the first of April to the end of August), she finds her lost husband again. In an unpublished Sicilian story communicated to me by Dr Ferraro, a serpent presses the neck of King Moharta to avenge a beautiful girl whom the king had forsaken, after having violated her; in order to release himself from the serpent, the king is compelled to marry the beautiful girl whom he had betrayed. In the sixteenth of the Tuscan stories published by me, the three sons of the king go to get the water which jumps and dances, and which is guarded by a dragon who devours as many as approach it; the dragon sleeps from twelve to two o'clock, and sleeps with its eyes open, which signifies, if we interpret twelve o'clock as twelve o'clock of the day, that the dragon is asleep when the sun watches, and if, on the contrary, as twelve o'clock at night, that it sleeps when the moon, compared to the hare which sleeps with its eyes open, shines in the sky.[592]In an ancient Neapolitan vase explainedby Gerhard and Panofka, we find a tree and a fountain, a serpent (the same as that which gnaws at the roots of the tree Yggdrasill in theEddas), three Hesperides, and Hêraklês. One Hesperis is giving the wounded serpent some beverage in a cup, the second is plucking an apple, the third is about to pluck one, and Hêraklês has also an apple in his hand. The myth and the story of the ogre and the three oranges correspond perfectly to one another.[593]The maiden was at first identified with the serpent, as the daughter of the dragon, and as a female serpent; she lays aside her disguise on the approach of the young hero, and recovers all her splendour. In an unpublished story of the Monferrato, communicated to me by Dr Ferraro, a beautiful girl, when plucking up a cabbage (a lunar image), sees under its roots a large room, goes down into it, and finds a serpent there, who promises to make her fortune if she will kiss him and sleep with him; the girl consents. After three months, the serpent begins to assume the legs of a man, then a man's body, and finally the face of a handsome youth, the son of a king, and marries his young deliverer. In popular tradition, we also have the contraryform of the same myth, that is, the beautiful maiden who becomes a serpent again. In a German legend,[594]the young hero hopes to deliver the beautiful maiden by three kisses:[595]the first time he kisses her as a beautiful girl; the second time as a monster, half woman half serpent; the third time he refuses to kiss her, because she has become entirely a serpent.

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