Zoological Mythology Volume Ii Part 1

Zoological Mythology.

Volume II.

by Angelo de Gubernatis.

First Part.

THE ANIMALS OF THE EARTH.

CHAPTER V.

THE HOG, THE WILD BOAR, AND THE HEDGEHOG.

SUMMARY.

The hog as a hero disguise.--The disguises of the hero and of the heroine.--Ghosha, the leprous maiden.--The moon in the well.--Apala cured by Indras.--Apala has the dress of a hog.--G.o.dha, the persecuted maiden in a hog's dress.--The hogs eat the apples in the maiden's stead.--The meretricious Circe and the hogs.--Porcus and upodaras.--The wild boar G.o.d in India and in Persia.--Tydus, the wild boar.--The wild boar of Erymanthos.--The wild boar of Meleagros.--The Vedic monster wild boar.--The dog and the pig.--Puloman, the wild boar, burned.--The hog in the fire.--The hog cheats the wolf.--The astute hedgehog.--The hedgehog, the wild boar, and the hog are presages of water.--The porcupine and its quills; the comb and the dense forest.--The ears and the heart of the wild boar.--The wild boar and the hog at Christmas.--The devil a wild boar.--The heroes killed by the wild boar.--The tusk of the wild boar now life-giving, now deadly; the dead man's tooth.--The hero asleep; the hero becomes a eunuch; the lettuce-eunuch eaten by Adonis, prior to his being killed by the wild boar.

The hog, as well as the wild boar, is another disguise of the solar hero in the night--another of the forms very often a.s.sumed by the sun, as a mythical hero, in the darkness or clouds. He adopts this form in order sometimes to hide himself from his persecutors, sometimes to exterminate them, and sometimes on account of a divine or demoniacal malediction. This form is sometimes a dark and demoniacal guise a.s.sumed by the hero; on which account the poem of _Hyndla_, in the _Edda_ calls the hog a hero's animal. Often, however, it represents the demon himself. When the solar hero enters the domain of evening, the form he had of a handsome youth or splendid prince disappears; but he himself, as a general rule, does not die along with it; he only pa.s.ses into another, an uglier, and a monstrous form. The black bull, the black horse, the grey horse, the hump-backed horse, the a.s.s, and the goat, are all forms of the same disguise with which we are already acquainted. The thousand-bellied Indras, who has lost his t.e.s.t.i.c.l.es; Ar?unas, who disguises himself as a eunuch; Indras, Vish?us, Zeus, Achilleus, Odin, Thor, Helgi, and many other mythical heroes, who disguise themselves as women; and the numerous beautiful heroines who, in mythology and tradition, disguise themselves as bearded men, are all ancient forms under which was represented the pa.s.sage of either the sun or the aurora of evening into the darkness, cloud, ocean, forest, grotto, or h.e.l.l of night. The hero lamed, blinded, bound, drowned, or buried in a wood, can be understood when referred respectively to the sun which is thrown down the mountain-side, which is lost in the darkness, which is held fast by the fetters of the darkness, which plunges into the ocean of night, or which hides itself from our sight in the nocturnal forest. The illumined and illuminating sun, when it ceases to shine in the dark night, becomes devoid of sight, devoid of intelligence, and stupid. The handsome solar hero becomes ugly when, with the night, his splendour ceases; the strong, red, healthy, solar hero, who pales and grows dark in the night, becomes ill. We still say in Italy that the sun is ill when we see it lose its brightness, and, as it were, grow pale.

In the 117th hymn of the first book of the _?igvedas_, the Acvinau cure the leprous daughter of Kakshivant, Ghosha, who is growing old without a husband in her father's house, and find her a husband; the Acvinau deliver the aurora from the darkness of night, and marry her.[1]

In the eightieth hymn of the eighth book of the _?igvedas_, the same myth occurs again with relation to Indras, and in a more complete form. We have already remarked, in the first book of the _?igvedas_, the maiden Apala who descends from the mountain to draw water, and draws up the somas (ambrosia, or else the moon, whence, as it seems to me, the origin of the double Italian proverb, "Pescare, or mostrare la luna nel pozzo," to fish up, or show the moon in the well, which was afterwards corrupted to indicate one who says, or narrates, what is untrue or impossible), and takes it to Indras, the well-known drinker of ambrosia (here identified with the moon, or somas). Indras, contented with the maiden, consents, as she is ugly and deformed, to pa.s.s over the three heavenly stations, that is, to pa.s.s over his father's head, her vast breast and her bosom.[2] In the last strophe of the hymn quoted above, Indras makes a luminous robe, a skin of the sun, for Apala, who has been thrice purified, by the wheel, by the chariot itself, and by the rudder of Indras's chariot.[3] And the same myth occurs once more in a clearer and more complete form in a legend of the _B?ihaddevata_. Apala beseeches Indras, loved by her, to make for her a beautiful and perfect (faultless, unimpeachable) skin.

Indras, hearing her voice, pa.s.ses over her with wheel, chariot, and rudder; by three efforts, he takes off her ugly skin. Apala then appears in a beautiful one. In the skin thus stript off there was a bristle (calyaka?); above, it had a hirsute appearance; below, it resembled the skin of a lizard.[4] The bristle or thorn upon the skin of Apala is naturally suggestive of the hedgehog, the porcupine, the wild boar, and the bristly hog. The aurora, as the Vedic hymn sings, shines only at the sight of her husband; thus Apala, of the ugly or the hog's skin, and Ghosha, the leprous maiden, become splendid and healthy by the grace of their husband. Thus Cinderella, or she who has a dress of the colour of ashes, or of a grey or dark colour, like the sky of night (in Russian stories Cinderella is called Cernushka, which means little black one, as well as little dirty one), appears exceedingly beautiful only when she finds herself in the prince's ball-room, or in church, in candlelight, and near the prince: the aurora is beautiful only when the sun is near.

In the twenty-eighth story of the sixth book of _Afana.s.sieff_, the maiden persecuted by her father and would-be seducer, who wishes to marry her, because he thinks her as beautiful as her mother (the evening aurora is as beautiful as the morning aurora), covers herself with a hog's skin, which she takes off only when she marries a young prince.[5] In another story of White Russia,[6] we have, instead, the son of a king persecuted by his father, who is constrained to quit his father's house with a cloak made of a pig's skin. In an unpublished story of the Monferrato, the contents of which Dr Ferraro has communicated to me, the girl persecuted by her step-mother is condemned to eat in one night an interminable number of apples; by means of two hog's bristles, she calls up a whole legion of pigs, who eat the apples in her stead.

As to the rudder of Indras's chariot in the lower bosom of Apala, it would seem to me to have a phallic signification. Indras may have cured Apala by marrying her, as the Acvinau, by means of a husband, cured the leprous Ghosha, who was growing old in her father's house.

In the tenth story of the _Pentamerone_, the king of Roccaforte marries an old woman, believing he is espousing a young one. He throws her out of the window, but she is arrested in her fall by a tree, to which she clings; the fairies pa.s.s by, and make her young again, as well as beautiful and rich, and tie up her hair with a golden ribbon.

The aged sister of the old woman who has grown young again (the night) goes to the barber, thinking that the same result may be attained simply by having her skin removed, and is flayed alive. For the myth of the two sisters, night and aurora, the black maiden and she who disguises herself in black, in grey, or the colour of ashes, consult also the _Pentamerone_, ii. 2. According to the Italian belief, the hog is dedicated to St Anthony, and a St Anthony is also celebrated as the protector of weddings, like the Scandinavian Thor, to whom the hog is sacred. The hog symbolises fat; and therefore, in the sixteenth Esthonian story, the hog is eaten at weddings.

The companions of Odysseus, transformed by the meretricious enchantress Circe, with the help of poisonous herbs, into filthy hogs, care only to gratify their bodily appet.i.tes, whence Horace, in the second of the first book of the _Epistolae_--

"Sirenum voces, et Circes pocula nosti, Quae si c.u.m sociis stultus cupidusque bibisset Sub domina meretrice fuisset turpis et excors Vixisset canis immundus, vel amica luto Sus."

The hog, as one of the most libidinous of animals, is sacred to Venus; for this reason, according to the Pythagorian doctrines, l.u.s.tful men are transformed into hogs, and the expression "pig" is applied to a man given over to every species of l.u.s.t. In Varro[7] we read:--"Nuptiarum initio, antiqui reges ac sublimes viri in Hetruria in conjuctione nuptiali nova nupta et novus maritus primum porc.u.m immolant; prisci quoque Latini et etiam Graeci in Italia idem fecisse videntur, nam et nostrae mulieres, maximae nutrices naturam, qua fminae sunt, in virginibus appellant porc.u.m, et graece choiron, significantes esse dignum insigni nuptiarum." The rudder of Indras, which pa.s.ses over the upodaras (or lower bosom) of Apala, is ill.u.s.trated by this pa.s.sage in Varro.

As to the wild boar, its character is generally demoniacal; but the reason why the Hindoo G.o.ds were invested with this form was in a great degree due to equivocation in language. The word _vish?us_ means he who penetrates; on account of its sharp tusks, in a Vedic hymn,[8] the wild boar is called vish?us, or the penetrator. Hence, probably, by the same a.n.a.logy, in another hymn, Rudras, the father of the Marutas, the winds, is invoked as a red, hirsute, horrid, celestial wild boar,[9] and the Marutas are invoked when the thunderbolts are seen in the form of wild boars running out from the iron teeth and golden wheels;[10] that is, carried by the chariot of the Marutas, the winds, who also are said to have tongues of fire, and eyes like the sun.[11]

Vish?us himself, in the _?igvedas_, at the instigation of Indras, brings a hundred oxen, the milky gruel, and the destroying wild boar.[12] Therefore Indras himself loves the shape of a wild boar, which, in the _Avesta_, is his _alter ego_. Verethraghnas a.s.sumes the same form. We know that the sun (sometimes the moon), in the form of a ram or he-goat, thrusts and pushes against the cloud, or the darkness, until he pierces it with his golden horns; and so Vish?us, the penetrator, with his sharp golden tusks (thunderbolts, lunar horns, and solar rays), puts forth such great strength in the darkness and the cloud that he bursts through both, and comes forth luminous and victorious. According to the Pauranic traditions, Vish?us, in his third incarnation, when killing the demon Hira?yakshas (or him of the golden eye), drew forth or delivered the earth from the waters (or from the ocean of the damp and gloomy night of the winter).[13]

According to the _Ramaya?am_,[14] Indras took the form of a wild boar immediately after his birth.

The Arcadian wild boar of Mount Erymanthus is familiar to the reader.

Herakles killed it in his third labour, in the same way as Vish?us in the third of his incarnations became a wild boar; Ovid describes him very elegantly in the eighth book of the _Metamorphoses_--

"Sanguine et igne micant oculi, riget horrida cervix; Et setae densis similes hastilibus horrent.

Stantque velut vallum; velut alta hastilia setae, Fervida c.u.m rauco latos stridore per armos Spuma fluit, dentes aequantur dentibus Indis, Fulmen ab ore venit frondes afflatibus ardent."

The wild boar of Meleagros is a variety of this very monster; it is, therefore, not without reason that when Herakles goes to the infernal regions, all the shades flee before him, except those of Meleagros and Medusa. Meleagros and Herakles resemble each other, are identified with each other; as to Medusa, we must not forget that the head of the Gorgon was represented upon the aegis of Zeus, that Gorgon is one of the names given to Pallas, and that the Gorgons, and especially Medusa, are connected with the garden of the Hesperides, where the golden apples grow which Herakles loves.

In the sixty-first hymn of the first book of the _?igvedas_, the G.o.d, after having eaten and drunk well, kills, with the weapon stolen from the celestial blacksmith Tvash?ar, the monster wild boar, who steals that which is destined for the G.o.ds.[15] In the ninety-ninth hymn of the tenth book of the _?igvedas_, Tritas (the third brother), by the strength which he has received from Indras, kills the monster wild boar.[16] In the _Taittiriya Brahma?am_, we find another very interesting pa.s.sage. The wild boar keeps guard over the treasure of the demons, which is enclosed within seven mountains. Indras, with the sacred herb, succeeds in opening the seven mountains, kills the wild boar, and, in consequence, discovers the treasure.[17] In the fifty-fifth hymn of the seventh book of the _?igvedas_, the hog and the dog lacerate and tear each other to pieces in turns;[18] the dog and the pig are found in strife again in the aesopian fable.

In the _Mahabharatam_,[19] Puloman a.s.sumes the form of a wild boar to carry off the wife of Bh?igus; she prematurely gives birth to Cyavanas, who, to avenge his mother, burns the wild boar to ashes. The thunderbolt tears through the cloud, the sun's ray (or the lunar horn) breaks through the darkness. In the popular Tuscan story, the stupid Pimpi kills the hog, by teasing and tormenting it with the tongs, which he has made red-hot in the fire. In the ninth of the Sicilian stories collected by Laura Gonzenbach, the girl Zafarana, throwing three hog's bristles upon the burning embers, causes the old prince, her husband, to become young and handsome again; it is ever the same lucid myth (a variety of Apala). Thus, in the first Esthonian story, the prince, by eating pork (or in the night forest), acquires the faculty of understanding the language of birds; the hero acquires malice, if he has it not already; he becomes cunning, if he was previously stupid; we therefore also find in a story of _Afana.s.sieff_,[20] the wolf cheated, first by the dog, then by the goat, and finally by the hog, who nearly drowns him. The wolf wishes to eat the hog's little ones; the hog requests him to wait under a bridge, where there is no water, whilst he goes, as he promises, in the meantime to wash the young porkers; the wolf waits, and the hog goes to let off the water, which, as it pa.s.ses under the bridge, puts the wolf's life in danger. Hence the belief noticed by Aristotle, that the hog is a match for the wolf, and the corresponding Greek fables.

This prudence is found carried to the highest degree in the hedgehog.

The Arabs are accustomed to say that the champion of truth must have the courage of the c.o.c.k, the scrutiny of the hen, the heart of the lion, the rush of the wild boar, the cunning of the fox, the prudence of the hedgehog, the swiftness of the wolf, the resignation of the dog, and the complexion of the naguir.[21] A verse attributed to Archilokos says:--

"Poll' oid' alopex, all' echinos en mega,"

which pa.s.sed into the proverb: "One knavery of the hedgehog is worth more than many of the fox." In the _aitarey. Br._,[22] the hedgehog is said to be born of the talon of the rapacious hawk. In the aesopian fables, the wolf comes upon a hedgehog, and congratulates himself upon his good luck; but the hedgehog defends itself. The wolf flatters it and beseeches it to lay down its arms, but it answers that it is imprudent to do so while the danger of fighting remains. Hence the common belief that the wolf is afraid of the hedgehog; hence the proverb, "It is very easy to find the hedgehog, but very difficult to hold it." In a fable of Abstemius, the hedgehog appears as an enemy, not only of the wolf, but also of the serpent; it p.r.i.c.ks the viper which has taken refuge in its den. Then the viper begs it to go out, but it answers, "Let him go out who cannot stay." The hedgehog has the appearance of a little wild boar; and as an enemy of the wolf and of the serpent, it appears to me to combine in one the dwarf Vish?us and the wild boar Vish?us, the exterminator of monsters, who, as we know, almost always a.s.sume, in Hindoo mythology, the form of a wolf or a serpent. And inasmuch as Vish?us, like Indras, is a thundering and rain-giving G.o.d, in his character of sun in the cloud, or nightly and autumnal moon, the hedgehog, too, is believed to presage wind and rain. The wild boar, when dreamed of, is, according to Artemidoros, quoted by Aldrovandi,[23] an omen of tempest and rain deluge. To this, refers also the fable spoken of by aelianos and Pliny concerning the hogs carried off by the pirates, which make the ship sink. The cloud-hogs are evidently represented by this myth.

The porcupine seems to be an intermediate form between the hedgehog and the wild boar. According to the popular belief, the ashes of a dead porcupine are, when scattered on the head, an excellent remedy against baldness, and a hair-restorative. And inasmuch as it is difficult to make the porcupine's quills fall, I read in Aldrovandi,[24] that women "Ad discriminandos capillos, ut illos conservent illaesos, aculeis potius hystric.u.m, quam acubus utuntur."

This information derived from Aldrovandi is interesting, as enabling us to understand a not uncommon circ.u.mstance in Russian stories. The hero and heroine who flee from the monster that pursues them have received from a good magician or a good fairy the gift of a comb, of such a nature that when thrown on the ground it makes a dense thicket or impenetrable forest arise, which arrests the pursuer's progress.[25] This is a reminiscence of the porcupine with the thick-set quills, of the bristly wild boar, of the gloomy night or cloud itself, of the horned moon, which hides the fugitive solar hero and heroine from the sight of the pursuer.

Notwithstanding this, the hog and the wild boar generally play in Indo-European tradition a part resembling that of the scape-goat and of the a.s.s _souffre-douleur_. In the _Pancatantram_, the ears and the heart of the credulous a.s.s, torn by the lion, are eaten. In Babrios, the _role_ of the a.s.s is sustained by the stag (which is often in myths a variation of the foolish hero). In the _Gesta Romanorum_,[26] the wild boar loses, by his silliness, first one ear, then the other, then his tail; at last he is killed, and his heart eaten by the cook. In Germany, it is the custom, as it formerly was in England, to serve up at dinner on Christmas Day an ornamented boar's head, no doubt as a symbol of the gloomy monster of lunar winter killed at the winter solstice, after which the days grow always longer and brighter. For the same reason, the common people in Germany often go to sleep on Christmas Day in the pig-sty, hoping to dream there; this dream is a presage of good luck.

The new sun is born in the sty of the winter hog; even the Christian Redeemer was born in a stable, but instead of the hog it was the a.s.s, its mythical equivalent, that occupied it. For this reason, too, the devil often a.s.sumes in German superst.i.tion the form of a monstrous boar, which the hero kills.[27] The wild boar is also described as an _aversier_ (or demon) in the romance of _Gavin le Loherain_[28]--

"Voies quel aversier, Grant a le dent fors de la gueule un piet Mult fu hardis qui a cop l'atendie."

The author of _Loci Communes_ says that Ferquhar II., king of Scotland, was killed by a wild boar; other writers tell us, on the contrary, that his death was caused by a wolf; but we already know how, in the myth, wolf and wild boar are sometimes equivalent the one to the other.

In the same way as Vish?us changed himself into a wild boar, and the hog was sacred to the Scandinavian Mars, so was the wild boar sacred to the Roman and h.e.l.lenic Mars; and even Mars himself a.s.sumed the shape of a monstrous lunar wild boar in order to kill the young Adonis, beloved of Venus. There is no G.o.d or saint so perfect but has once in his life committed a fault, as there is not a demon so wicked as not to have done good at least once. The adversaries exchange parts. In Servius, it is with a wild boar's tusk that the bark is cut off the tree in which Myrrha, pregnant with Adonis after her incest with her father, shuts herself up (we have above seen, on the contrary, Indras who opens with an herb the hiding-place of the wild boar, in order to kill it). We here have again the incestuous father, the girl in the wooden dress, the forest, the penetrating tusk of the wild boar which bursts through the forest of night, and enables the young hero to come forth, whom he kills in the evening out of jealousy. In the ancient popular belief of Sweden, too, the wild boar kills the sun whilst he is asleep in a cavern and his horses grazing.

Notice, moreover, the double character of the tusk of the nocturnal lunar wild boar; in the morning it is a life-giving tusk, which enables the solar hero to be born; in the evening it is a death-dealing one; the wild boar is alive during the night, and the darkness is split open by the white tooth of the living wild boar. The lunar wild boar or hog is sacrificed,--it is killed at morn, in the nuptials of the solar hero. The tooth of this dead wild boar, in the evening, causes the death of the young hero or heroine, or else transforms them into wild beasts. In popular fairy tales the witch, feigning a wish to comb the head of the hero or the heroine, thrusts into his or her head now a large pin, now a dead man's tooth, and thus deprives them of life or human form. This is a reminiscence of the tusk of the cloudy, nocturnal, or wintry wild boar who kills the sun, or metamorphoses him, or puts him to sleep.

To represent the evening sun asleep, a curious particular is offered us in the myth of Adonis. It is well-known that doctors attribute to the lettuce a soporific virtue, not dissimilar to that of the poppy.

Now, it is interesting to read in _Nikandros Kolophonios_, quoted by Aldrovandi, that Adonis was struck by the wild boar after having eaten a lettuce. Ibykos, a Pythagorean poet, calls the lettuce by the name of eunuch, as it is that which puts to sleep, which renders stupid and impotent; Adonis who has eaten the lettuce is therefore taken from Venus by the lunar wild boar, being eunuch and incapable. The solar hero falls asleep in the night, and becomes a eunuch, like the Hindoo Ar?unas, when he is hidden; and otherwise, the sun becomes the moon.

FOOTNOTES:

[1] Cfr. the chapter on the Duck, the Goose, the Swan, and the Dove.

[2] Imani tri?i vishtapa tanindra vi rohaya ciras tatasyorvaram ad idam ma upodare.

[3] Khe rathasya khe 'nasa? khe yugasya catakrato apalam indra trish putvy ak?ino? suryatvacam.

[4]

Sulomam anavadyangi? kuru ma? cakra sutvacam Tasyas tad vacanam crutva pritas tena purandara?

Rathachidre?a tam indra? caka?asya yugasya ca Prakshipya niccakarsha tris tata? sa sutvaca 'bhavat Tasya? tvaci vyapetayam sarvasya? calyako 'bhavat Uttara tv abhavad G.o.dha krikalacas tvag uttama.

_G.o.dha_ seems to signify he who has the form of a hair (_go_, among its other meanings, has that of hair). As an animal, the dictionaries also recognise in the G.o.dha a lizard. But perhaps we may also translate it by toad or frog; we could thus also understand the fable of the frog which aspires to equal the ox. I observe, moreover, to exemplify the ease with which we can pa.s.s from the ox to the frog, and from the frog to the lizard, how in the Russian story of _Afana.s.sieff_, ii. 23, a beautiful princess is hidden in a frog; in Tuscan and Piedmontese stories and in Sicilian superst.i.tions, in a toad. In the stories of the _Pentamerone_, the good fairy is a _lacerta cornuta_ (a horned lizard). Ghosha, too, has for its equivalent in Sansk?it, karka?ac?ingi, which means a horned shrimp. In other varieties the young prince is a he-goat or a dragon.

[5] For the persecuted maiden in connection with the hog or hogs, cfr.

also the _Pentamerone_, iii. 10.

[6] _Afana.s.sieff_, v. 38.