Curiosities of Olden Times Part 9

The mother of mortals in herself doth combine The charms of an Adam, and graces all Divine.

Her tint his surpa.s.ses, her brow is more fair, Her eye twinkles brighter, more l.u.s.trous her hair; Far sweeter her utterance, her chin is quite smooth, Dream of Beauty incarnate, a lover and a love!

Our own Milton has done poor Eve justice in lines which need no quotation.

Pygmalion, says the cla.s.sic story, which is really a Phnician myth of creation, made a woman of marble or ivory, and Aphrodite, in answer to his prayers, endowed the statue with life. We do not believe it. No woman was ever marble. She may seem hard and cold, but she only requires a st.u.r.dy male voice to bid her

Descend, be stone no more!

to show that the marble appearance was put on, and that she is, and ever was, genuine palpitating flesh and blood.

"Often does Pygmalion apply his hands to the work. One while he addresses it in soft terms, at another he brings it presents that are agreeable to maidens, as sh.e.l.ls, and smooth pebbles, and little birds, and flowers of a thousand hues, and lilies, and painted b.a.l.l.s, and tears of the Heliades, that have distilled from the trees. He decks her limbs, too, with clothing, and puts a long necklace on her neck. Smooth pendants hang from her ears, and bows from her breast. All things are becoming to her."--Ovid, _Metam._ x. 254-266.

There is something tender and kindly in this myth; it represents woman as man would have her, pure as the ivory, modestly arrayed, simple, and delighted with small trifles, birds, and pebbles, and flowers--a thing of beauty and a joy for ever. But Hesiod gives a widely different account of the creation of woman. According to him, she was sent in mockery by Zeus to be a scourge to man:--

The Sire who rules the earth and sways the pole Had spoken; laughter fill'd his secret soul: He bade the crippled G.o.d his hest obey, And mould with tempering water plastic clay; With human nerve and human voice invest The limbs elastic, and the breathing breast; Fair as the blooming G.o.ddesses above, A virgin's likeness with the looks of love.

He bade Minerva teach the skill that sheds A thousand colours in the gliding threads; He call'd the magic of love's golden queen To breathe around a witchery of mien, And eager pa.s.sion's never-sated flame, And cares of dress that prey upon the frame; Bade Hermes last endue, with craft refined Of treacherous manners, and a shameless mind.

Hesiod, _Erga_, 61-79.

If such was the Greek theory of the creation of woman, it speaks ill for the Greek men; for woman is ever what man makes her. If he chooses her to be giddy and light and crafty, giddy, light, and crafty will she become; but if he demands of her to be what G.o.d made her, modest, and thrifty, and tender, such she will ever prove. This our grand old Northern forefathers knew, and they made her creation a sacred matter, and fashioned her from a n.o.bler stock than man. He was of the ash, she of the elm; they called the first woman Embla, or Emla, which means a laborious female--from the root _amr_, _aml_, _ambl_, signifying "work." "One day as the sons of Bor were walking along the sea-beach, they found two stems of wood, out of which they shaped a man and a woman. The first, Odin, infused into them life and spirit; the second, Vili, endowed them with reason and the power of motion; the third, Ve, gave them speech and features, hearing and vision."

This reminds one of the ancient Iranian myth of Ahoura Mazda creating the first pair, Meschia and Meschiane, from the Beivas tree. But the Scandinavians also spoke of three primeval mothers: Edda (great-grandmother), Amma (grandmother), and Mother, from whom sprang the three cla.s.ses of thrall, churl, and earl. It is noticeable that these primeval women are represented as good housewives in the venerable Rigsmal, which describes the wanderings of the G.o.d Heimdal, under the name of Rig. The deity comes to the hut of Edda, and at once--

From the ashes she took a loaf, Heavy and thick, with bran mixed; More beside she laid upon the board; There is set a bowl of broth on the table; There is a calf boiled, and cates the best.

Then he goes to the house of Amma, the wife of Afi.

Afi's wife sat plying her rock With outspread arms, busked to weave.

A hood on her head, a sark over her breast, A kerchief round her neck, and studs on her shoulders.

He next enters the hall of Mother.

The housewife looked on her arms, Smoothed her veil, and fastened her sleeves, Her headgear adjusted. A clasp was on her bosom, Her robe was ample, her sark blue; Brighter her brow, fairer her breast, Whiter her neck than purest snowdrift.

She took, did Mother, a figured cloth Of white linen, and the table decked.

She then took cakes of snow-white wheat, On the table them she laid.

She set forth salvers, silver adorned, Full of game, and pork, and roasted birds.

In a can was wine, the cups were costly.

Not a word of disparagement of woman is found in those old cosmic lays.

The st.u.r.dy Northerner knew her value, and he respected her, whilst the frivolous Greek despised her as a toy.

The Provencal troubadours caught the cla.s.sic misappreciation of woman.

Ma.s.sillia was a Greek colony, and Greek manners, tastes, and habits of thought prevailed for long in the south-east of France. The troubadours idolised her, as an idol-puppet, but they knew not how to commend, and by commending develop in her those qualities which lie ready to germinate when called for by man--devotion, self-sacrifice, patience, gentleness, and all those homely yet inestimable treasures, the domestic virtues.

Pierre de Saint Cloud, in the opening of his poem on Renard, has his fling at poor Eve. He says that Adam was possessed of a magic rod, with which he could create animals at pleasure, by striking the earth with it. One day he smote the ground, and there sprang forth the lamb. Eve caught the rod from his hand, and did as he had done; forthwith there bounded forth the wolf, which rent the creation of Adam. He struck, and the domestic fowls came forth. Eve did likewise, and gave being to the fox. He made the cattle, she the tiger; he the dog, she the jackal.

Turning to America, we encounter a host of myths relative to the first mother. The sacred book of the Quiches tells of the G.o.ds Guc.u.matz, Tepu, and Cuz-cah making man of earth, but when the rain came on he dissolved into mud. Then they made man and woman of wood, but the beings so made were too thick-headed to praise and sacrifice, wherefore they destroyed them with a flood; those who escaped up tall trees remain to this day, and are commonly called monkeys. The three G.o.ds having thus failed, consulted the Great White Boar and the Great White Porcupine, and with their a.s.sistance made man and woman of white and red maize. And men show by their headstrong character that the mighty boar had a finger in their creation, and women by their fretfulness indicate the great porcupine as having had the making of them.

The Minnatarees have a story that the first woman was made of such rich and fatty soil that she became a miracle of prolificness; she came out of the earth on the first day of the moon of buffaloes, and ere it waned, she had a child at her breast. Every month she bestowed upon her husband a son or a daughter, and these children were fertile equally with their mother.

This was rather sharp work, and the Great Spirit, seeing that the world would be peopled in no time, at this rate, killed the first parents, and diminished the productiveness of their children.

The Nantic.o.kes relate that their great ancestor was without a wife, and he wandered over the face of the earth in search of one: at last the king of the musk rats offered him his daughter, a.s.suring him that she would make the best wife in the world, as she could keep a house tidy, was very shrewd, and neat in her person. The Nantic.o.ke hesitated to accept the obliging offer, alleging that the wife was so very small, and had four legs. The Micabou of the musk rats now appeared, and undertook to remedy this defect. "Man of the Nantic.o.kes," said the spirit, "rise, take thy bride and lead her to the edge of the lake; bid her dip her feet in water, whilst thou, standing over her, shalt p.r.o.nounce these words:

"For the last time as musk rat, For the first time as woman.

Go in beast, come out human!"

The spirit's directions were obeyed to the letter. The Nantic.o.ke took his glossy little maiden musk rat by the paw, led her to the border of the lake, and whilst she dipped her feet in the water, he used the appointed formulary; thereupon a change took place in the little animal. Her body was observed to a.s.sume the posture of a human being, gradually erecting itself, as a sapling, which, having been bent to earth, resumes its upright position. When the little creature became erect, the skin began to fall from the head and neck, and gradually unveiling the body, exhibited the maiden, beautiful as a flowery meadow, or the blue summer sky, or the north lit up with the flush of the dancing lights, or the rainbow which follows the fertilising shower. Her hand was scarce larger than a hazel-leaf, and her foot not longer than that of the ringdove. Her arm was so slight that it seemed as though the breeze must break it. The Nantic.o.ke gazed with delight on his beauteous bride, and his gratification was enhanced when he saw her stature increase to the proportions of a human being.

Other American Indian tribes a.s.sert that the Great Spirit, moved with compa.s.sion for man, who wasted in solitude on earth, sent a heavenly spirit to be his companion, and the mother of his children. And I believe they are about right. But the Kickapoos tell a very different tale.

There was a time throughout the great world, say they, when neither on land nor in the water was there a woman to be found. Of vain things there were plenty--there were the turkey, and the blue jay, the wood duck, and the wakon bird; and noisy, chattering creatures there were plenty--there were the jackdaw, the magpie, and the rook; and gadabouts there were plenty--there were the squirrel, the starling, and the mouse; but of women, vain, noisy, chattering, gadabout women, there were none. It was quite a still world to what it is now, and it was a peaceable world, too.

Men were in plenty, made of clay, and sun-dried, and they were then so happy, oh, so happy! Wars were none then, quarrels were none. The Kickapoos ate their deer's flesh with the Potowatomies, hunted the otter with the Osages, and the beaver with the Hurons. Then the great fathers of Kickapoos scratched the backs of the savage Iroquois, and the truculent Iroquois returned the compliment. Tribes which now seek one another's scalps then sat smiling benevolently in each other's faces, smoking the never-laid-aside calumet of peace.

These first men were not quite like the men now, for they had tails. Very handsome tails they were, covered with long silky hair; very convenient were these appendages in a country where flies were numerous and troublesome, tails being more sudden in their movements than hands, and more conveniently situated for whisking off the flies which alight on the back. It was a pleasant sight to see the ancestral men leisurely smoking, and waving their flexible tails at the doors of their wigwams in the golden autumn evenings, and within were no squalling children, no wrangling wives. The men doted on their tails, and they painted and adorned them; they platted the hair into beautiful tresses, and wove bright beads and sh.e.l.ls and wampum with the hair. They attached bows and streamers of coloured ribbons to the extremities of their tails, and when men ran and pursued the elk or the moose, there was a flutter of colour behind them, and a tinkle of precious ornaments.

But the red men got proud; they were so happy, all went so well with them, that they forgot the Great Spirit. They no more offered the fattest and choicest of their game upon the memahoppa, or altar-stone, nor danced in his praise who dispersed the rains to cleanse the earth, and his lightnings to cool and purify the air. Wherefore he sent his chief Manitou to humble men by robbing them of what they most valued, and bestowing upon them a scourge and affliction adequate to their offence. The spirit obeyed his Master, and, coming on earth, reached the ground in the land of the Kickapoos. He looked about him, and soon ascertained that the red men valued their tails above every other possession. Summoning together all the Indians, he acquainted them with the will of the Wahconda, and demanded the instant sacrifice of the cherished member. It is impossible to describe the sorrow and compunction which filled their bosoms when they found that the forfeit for their oblivion of the Great Spirit was to be that beautiful and beloved appendage. Tail after tail was laid upon the block and amputated.

The mission of the spirit was, in part, performed. He now took the severed tails and converted them into vain, chattering, and frisky women. Upon these objects the Kickapoos at once lavished their admiration; they loaded them as before with beads, and wampum, and paint, and decorated them with tinkling ornaments and coloured ribbons. Yet the women had lost one essential quality which as tails they had possessed. The caudal appendage had brushed off man the worrying insects which sought to sting or suck his blood, whereas the new article was itself provided with a sharp sting, called by us a tongue; and far from brushing annoyances off man, it became an instrument for acc.u.mulating them upon his back and shoulders. Pleasant and soothing to the primeval Kickapoo was the wagging to and fro of the member stroking and fanning his back, but the new one became a scourge to lacerate.

However, woman retains indications of her origin. She is still beloved as of yore; she is still beautiful, with flowing hair; still adapted to trinketry. Still she is frisky, vivacious, and slappy; and still, as of old, does she ever follow man, dangling after him, hanging at his heels, and never, of her own accord, separating from him.

The Kickapoos, divested of their tails, the legend goes on to relate, were tormented by the mosquitoes, till the Great Spirit, in compa.s.sion for their woes, mercifully withdrew the greater part of their insect tormentors. Overjoyed at their deliverance, the red men supplicated the Wahconda also to remove the other nuisances, the women; but he replied that the women were a necessary evil and must remain.[1]

This is worse treatment than that which the ladies received from Hesiod.

We have all heard of a young and romantic lady who was so enraptured with the ideal of American Indian life as delineated by Fenimore Cooper, that she fled her home, and went to the savages in Canada. We hope she did not fall to the lot of a Kickapoo.

Poor woman! it is pleasanter to believe that she is made from our ribs, which we know come very close to our hearts, and thus to explain the mutual sympathy of man and woman, and thereby to account for that compa.s.sion and tenderness man feels for her, and also for the manner in which she flies to man's side as her true resting-place in peril and doubt. But we have a cosmogony of our own, elucidated from internal convictions, a.s.sisted by all the modern appliances of table-rapping and clairvoyancy. According to our cosmogony, woman is compounded of three articles, sugar, tincture of arnica, and soft soap. Sugar, because of the sweetness which is apparent in most women--alas! that in some it should have acidulated into strong domestic vinegar; arnica, because in woman is to be found that quality of healing and soothing after the bruises and wounds which afflict us men in the great battle of life; and soft soap, for reasons too obvious to need specification.

"FLAGELLUM SALUTIS"

There is a strange old book with the above t.i.tle to be found in the libraries of the curious, so quaint in character as to deserve to be better known. It was composed by Christian Franz Paullini, a German physician, and was published at Frankfort-on-Maine in 1608. It is a treatise on the advantage of the whip for curative purposes in various disorders.

Dr. Paullini, in the first section of his work, directs attention to the consecration of corporal punishment by Scripture and the Church. Did not St. Paul a.s.sert, "Castigo corpus meum et in servitutem redigo"? Does not the bishop in confirmation box the ear of the candidate, in token that he is to be ready to endure suffering and shame as a good Christian soldier?

And look at the saints of the calendar, were they not mighty in flagellation, fervent in rib-whacking?

Shall precious saints and secret ones, Break one another's outward bones?

When savage bears agree with bears, Shall secret ones lug saints by the ears?

asks the Puritan in his metrical version of Psalm lx.x.xiii, and Dr.

Paullini promptly answers: "Certainly, it is good for health of soul and body that they should so act towards one another."

Scorpius atque fabae nostra fuere salus.

Had our learned author been acquainted with the Rabbinical gloss on the account of the Fall of Man, he would, maybe, have hesitated to attribute universal benefit to the application of the rod. For, say the Rabbis, when Adam pleaded that the woman gave him of the tree, and he did eat, he means emphatically that she _gave_ it him palpably. Adam was recalcitrant, Eve _dedit de ligno_; the branch was stout, the arm of the "mother of all living" was muscular, and the first man succ.u.mbed, and "did eat" under compulsion.

There is nothing like the rod, says the doctor; it is a universal specific, it stirs up the stagnating juices, it dissolves the precipitating salts, it purifies the coagulating humours of the body, it clears the brain, purges the belly, circulates the blood, braces the nerves; in short, there is nothing which the rod will not do, when judiciously applied.

Antidotum mortis si verbera dixero, credas!