Zoological Mythology Volume Ii Part 3

[57] Cfr. also the sixth of the third book.--In the second story of the third book of the _Pentamerone_, the sister herself cuts off her own hands, of which her brother, who wishes to marry her, is enamoured.--Cfr. the _Mediaeval Legends of Santa Uliva_, annotated by Professor Alessandro d'Ancona, Pisa, Nistri, 1863; and the _Figlia del Re di Dacia_, ill.u.s.trated by Professor Alessandro Wesselofski, Pisa, Nistri, 1866, besides the thirty-first of the stories of the Brothers Grimm.

[58] The thirty-third of the collection of Karadzik, quoted by Professor Wesselofsky in his introduction to the story of the _Figlia del Re di Dacia_.

[59] Cfr. my little essay on the _Albero di Natale_.

[60] _King Richard II._, act. i. scene 2.

[61] cruta? tac chasur iva vadhrimat ya hira?yahastam acvinav adattam; _?igv._ i. 116, 13.--Hira?yahastam acvina rara?a putra? nara vadhrimatya adattam; i. 117, 24.--The dog in connection with a man's hand is mentioned in the Latin works of Petrarch, when speaking of Vespasian, who considered as a good omen the incident of a dog bringing a man's hand into the refectory.

[62] Sadyo ?angham ayasim vicpalayai dhane hite sartave praty adhattam; str. 15.

[63] It is perhaps for this reason that the Hungarians give to their dogs names of rivers, as being runners; but it is also said that they do so from their belief that a dog which bears the name of a river or piece of water never goes mad, especially if he be a white dog, inasmuch as the Hungarians consider the red dog and the black or spotted one as diabolical shapes. In Tuscany, when a Christian's tooth is taken out, it must be hidden carefully, that the dogs may not find it and eat it; here dog and devil are a.s.similated.

[64] Scylla laves her groin in a fountain, the waters of which the enchantress Circe has corrupted, upon which monstrous dogs appear in her body, whence Ovid--

"Scylla venit mediaque tenus descenderat alvo, c.u.m sua fdari latrantibus inguina monstris Aspicit, ac primo non credens corporis illas Esse sui partes, refugitque, abiitque timetque Ora proterva canum."

[65] Haec lucem accipiunt ab Joinville in Hist. S. Ludovici, dum fdera inter Imp. Joannem Vatatzem et Comanorum Principem inita recenset, eaque firmata ebibito alterius invicem sanguine, hacque adhibita ceremonia, quam sic enarrat: "Et ancore firent-ils autre chose. Car ils firent pa.s.ser un chien entre nos gens et eux, et decouperent tout le chien a leurs espees, disans que ainsy fussent-ils decoupez s'ils failloient l'un a l'autre."--Cfr. in Du Cange the expression "cerebrare canem."

[66] In a fable of Abstemius, a shepherd's dog eats one of the sheep every day, instead of watching over the flock. The shepherd kills him, saying, that he prefers the wolf, a declared enemy, to the dog, a false friend. This uncertainty and confusion between the dog and the wolf explains the double nature of the dog; to prove which I shall refer to two unpublished Italian stories: the first, which I heard from the mouth of a peasant-woman of Fucecchio, shows the b.i.t.c.h in the capacity of the monster's spy; the second was narrated a few years ago by a Piedmontese bandit to a peasant-woman who had shown hospitality to him, at Capellanuova, near Cavour in Piedmont. The first story is called _The King of the a.s.sa.s.sins_, and is as follows:--

There was once a widow with three daughters who worked as seamstresses.

They sit upon a terrace; a handsome lord pa.s.ses and marries the eldest; he takes her to his castle in the middle of a wood, after having told her that he is the chief of the a.s.sa.s.sins. He gives her a she-puppy and says, "This will be your companion; if you treat her well, it is as if you treated me well." Taking her into the palace, he shows her all the rooms, and gives her all the keys; of four rooms, however, which he indicates, there are two which she must not enter; if she does so, evil will befall her. The chief of the a.s.sa.s.sins spends one day at home and then three away. During his absence she maltreats the puppy, and gives her scarcely anything to eat; then she lets herself be overcome by curiosity, and goes to see what there is in the two rooms, followed by the puppy. She sees in one room heads of dead people, and in the other tongues, ears, &c., hung up. This sight fills her with terror. The chief of the a.s.sa.s.sins returns and asks the b.i.t.c.h whether she has been well treated; she makes signs to the contrary, and informs her master that his wife has been in the forbidden rooms. He cuts off her head, and goes to find the second sister, whom he induces to come to him by under invitation to visit his wife; she undergoes the same miserable fate.

Then he goes to take the third sister, and tells her who he is; she answers, "It is better thus, for I shall no longer be afraid of thieves." She gives the b.i.t.c.h soup, caresses her, and makes herself loved by her; the king of the a.s.sa.s.sins is contented, and the puppy leads a happy life. After a month, while he is out and the puppy amusing itself in the garden, she enters the two rooms, finds her two sisters, and goes into the other rooms, where there are ointments to fasten on limbs that have been cut off, and ointments to bring the dead to life.

Having resuscitated her sisters, and given them food, she hides them in two great jars, furnished with breathing holes, and asks her husband to take them as a present to her mother, warning him not to look into the jars, as she will see him. He takes them, and when he tries to look in, he hears, as he had been forewarned, not one voice, but two whispering from within them, "My love, I see you." Terrified at this, he gives up the two jars at once to the mother. Meanwhile his wife has killed the b.i.t.c.h in boiling oil; she then brings all the dead men and women to life, amongst whom there is Carlino, the son of a king of France, who marries her. Upon the return of the king of the a.s.sa.s.sins he perceives the treachery, and vows revenge; going to Paris, he has a golden pillar constructed in which a man can be concealed without any aperture being visible, and bribes an old woman of the palace to lay on the prince's pillow a leaf of paper which will put him and all his servants to sleep as soon as he reclines on it. Shutting himself up in the pillar, he has it carried before the palace; the queen wishes to possess it, and insists upon having it at the foot of her bed. Night comes; the prince puts his head upon the leaf, and he and his servants are at once thrown into a deep sleep. The a.s.sa.s.sin steps out of the pillar, threatens to put the princess to death, and goes into the kitchen to fill a copper with oil, in which to boil her. Meanwhile she calls her husband to help her, but in vain; she rings the bell, but no one answers; the king of the a.s.sa.s.sins returns and drags her out of bed; she catches hold of the prince's head, and thus draws it off the paper; the prince and his servants awake, and the enchanter is burnt alive.

The second story is called _The Magician of the Seven Heads_, and was narrated to me by the peasant-woman in the following terms:--

An old man and woman have two children, Giacomo and Carolina. Giacomo looks after three sheep. A hunter pa.s.ses and asks for them; Giacomo gives them, and receives in reward three dogs, Throttle-iron, Run-like-the-wind, and Pa.s.s-everywhere, besides a whistle. The father refuses to keep Giacomo at home; he goes away with his three dogs, of which the first carries bread, the second viands, and the third wine.

He comes to a magician's palace and is well received. Bringing his sister, the magician falls in love with her and wishes to marry her; but to this end the brother must be weakened by the abstraction of his dogs. His sister feigns illness and asks for flour; the miller demands a dog for the flour, and Giacomo yields it for love of his sister; in a similar manner the other two dogs are wheedled away from him. The magician tries to strangle Giacomo, but the latter blows his whistle, and the dogs appear and kill the magician and the sister. Giacomo goes away with the three dogs, and comes to a city which is in mourning because the king's daughter is to be devoured by the seven-headed magician. Giacomo, by means of the three dogs, kills the monster; the grateful princess puts the hem of her robe round Throttle-iron's neck and promises to marry Giacomo. The latter, who is in mourning for his sister, asks for a year and a day; but before going he cuts the seven tongues of the magician off and takes them with him. The maiden returns to the palace. The chimney-sweeper forces her to recognise him as her deliverer; the king, her father, consents to his marrying her; the princess, however, stipulates to be allowed to wait for a year and a day, which is accorded. At the expiration of the appointed time, Giacomo returns, and hears that the princess is going to be married.

He sends Throttle-iron to strike the chimney-sweeper (the black man, the Saracen, the Turk, the gipsy, the monster) with his tail, in order that his collar may be remarked; he then presents himself as the real deliverer of the princess, and demands that the magician's heads be brought; as the tongues are wanting, the trick is discovered. The young couple are married, and the chimney-sweeper is burnt.

[67] Cfr. the _Biblioteca delle Tradizioni Popolari Siciliane_, edited by Gius. Pitre, ii. canto 811.

[68] In Richardus Dinothus, quoted by Aldrovandi.

[69] From a letter of my friend Pitre.

[70] _De Quadrup. Dig. Viv._ ii.

[71] Cfr. Du Cange, _s. v._ "canem ferre." The ignominy connected with this punishment has perhaps a phallic signification, the dog and the phallos appear in connection with each other in an unpublished legend maliciously narrated at Santo Stefano di Calcinaia, near Florence, and which a.s.serts that woman was not born of a man, but of a dog. Adam was asleep; the dog carried off one of his ribs; Adam ran after the dog to recover it, but brought back nothing save the dog's tail, which came away in his hand. The tail of the a.s.s, horse, or pig, which is left in the peasant's hand in other burlesque traditions, besides serving as an indication, as the most visible part, to find the lost or fallen animal again, or to return into itself, may perhaps have a meaning a.n.a.logous to that of the tail of Adam's dog.--I hope the reader will pardon me these frequent repugnant allusions to indecent images; but being obliged to go back to an epoch in which idealism was still in its cradle, while physical life was in all its plenitude of vigour, images were taken in preference from the things of a more sensible nature, and which made a deeper and more abiding impression. It is well known that in the production of the Vedic fire by means of the friction of two sticks, the male and the female are alluded to, so that the grandiose and splendid poetical myth of Prometheus had its origin in the lowest of similitudes.

CHAPTER VII.

THE CAT, THE WEASEL, THE MOUSE, THE MOLE, THE SNAIL, THE ICHNEUMON, THE SCORPION, THE ANT, THE LOCUST, AND THE GRa.s.sHOPPER.

SUMMARY.

Mar?aras, margaras, m?igas, m?igaris, m?igara?as.--Nakulas.--Mush.--Vamras, vamri, vapri, valmikam, _formica_.--The serpent and the ants.--Indras as an ant; the serpent eaten by the ants.--Vamras drinking, a.s.sisted by the Acvinau.--The grateful ant; the hermit-dwarfs.--Ants' milk.--Ants' legs.--The ant dies when its wings grow; the ants and the treasure.--The ants separate the grains.--The locust and the ant; carabhas as the moon.--Gra.s.shopper and ant.--Avere il grillo, aver la luna; indovinala, grillo.--Wedding between ant and gra.s.shopper.--Locusts destroyed by fire.--Hippomurmekes.--The Indian locust that guards honey again.--The scorpion, and its poison absorbed.--The ichneumon, enemy of the serpent.--The weasel.--Galanthis.--The cat with ears of b.u.t.ter.--The cat as a judge.--The lynx.--The penitent cat.--The beneficent cat.--The cat with a golden tail.--Cat and dog as friends; the dog carries the cat; they find the lost ring again.--The new-born son changed for a cat.--The cat that sings and tells tales.--The cat created by the moon; Diana as a cat.--The sacred cat.--The funereal and diabolical cat.--Cat and fox.--The cat hangman.--_Le chat botte_.--_Chatte blanche;_ the cat that spins and weaves.--The cat becomes a girl.--The enchanted palace of the cats.--The cats of February; the black cat; the cat dreamed-of.--The cat becomes a witch at seven years of age.--The cat in the sack.--The mewing of the cat.--The cats dispute for souls.--Battle of cats.--The mice that bite their tails or that gnaw the threads of the net.--The mouse in the honey.--The mouse that becomes a maiden; the mouse and the mountain.--The mouse that becomes a tiger.--The souls of the dead pa.s.s into mice; funereal and diabolical mice; superst.i.tions relating to this belief.--The mouse that releases the lion and the elephant from the trap.--Ganecas crushes the mouse; Apollo Smyntheus.--When the cat's away the mice can dance.--The mouse plays blind-man's-buff with the bear.--The grateful mouse.--The mouse that foresees the future.--Mouse and sparrow, first friends and then enemies.--The batrachomyomachia.--The mouse, the tooth, and the coin.--Hira?yakas; the squirrel.--The monster mole; the mole as a gravedigger; the blind mole.--The snail in the popular song; the snail and the serpent; the snail as a funereal animal.

I unite in one series several mythical nocturnal animals, which, although really of very different natures, enter into only one order of myths.

They are thieving and hunting animals, and are therefore very aptly placed in the darkness of night (_naktacarin_ is an epithet applied in Sansk?it both to the cat and the thief), in the nocturnal forest, in connection now with Diana the huntress, or the good fairy the moon, and now with the ugly witch; now appearing as the helpers of the hero, and now as his persecutors.

The etymologies of several Hindoo words may be of some interest to the reader, and may with propriety be adduced here. _Mar?aras_, the cat, means the cleanser (as the animal that, in fact, cleans itself).

Referring to the myth, we know already that one of the princ.i.p.al exactions of the witch is that her step-daughter should comb her hair, or else clean the corn, during the night; and that the good fairy, the Madonna, while she too has her hair combed, scatters gems about, spins, and cleans the corn for the good maiden. The witch of night forces the maiden aurora to separate the luminous wheat of evening from the dark tares of night; the moon with its silvery splendour disperses the shades of night. The _mar?aras_, or cleanser of the night, the white cat, is the moon. _Ara?yamar?aras_, or cat of the forest, is the name given to the wild cat, with which the lynx, too, is identified. As a white cat, as the moon, it protects innocent animals; as a black cat, as the dark night, it persecutes them. The cat is a skilful hunter; moreover, it is easy to confound the word _mar?aras_ (the cleanser) with the word _margaras_, the proper meaning of which is hunter, investigator, he who follows the track, the _margas_, or else the enemy of the _m?igas_ (as m?igaris); the road is the clean part of the land, as the margin is the white or clean part of a book. The hunter may be he that goes on the margin or on the track, or else he that hunts and kills the m?igas or forest animal.

The moon (the huntress Diana) is also called in Sansk?it _m?igara?as_, or king of the forest animals; and, as kings are wont, it sometimes defends its subjects and sometimes eats them. The cat-moon eats the grey mice of the night.

_Nakulas_ is the name given in Sansk?it to the ichneumon, the enemy of mice, scorpions, and snakes. The word seems to be derived from the root _nac_, _nak = necare_, whence nakulas would appear to be the destroyer (of nocturnal mice).

The mouse, _mush_, _mushas_, _mushakas_, is the thief, the ravisher, whence also its name rat (_a rapiendo_).

The Hindoo names of the ant are _vamras_ and _vamri_ (besides _pipilakas_). _Vamri_ is connected with _vapa_, _vapram_, _vapri_, ant-hole, and, by metathesis, _valmikam_ (_i.e._, appertaining to ants), which has the same meaning. The Latin _formica_ unites together the two forms _vamri_ and _valmikam_. The roots are _vap_, in the sense of to throw, and _vam_, to erupt or to throw out, as the ants do when they erect little mounds of earth.

In the _Mahabharatam_, the hole of a serpent is also called by the name of _valmikam_; from this we can explain the fable of the third book of the _Pancatantram_, where we have a serpent fighting against ants. He kills many of them, but their number is so interminable that he is at last forced to succ.u.mb. Thus, in the mythical Vedic heavens, it is in the shape of a vamras or ant that Indras fights victoriously against the old monster that invades the sky.[72] Nay, more, in the _Pancatantram_, the ants sting and bite the serpent and kill it; thus Indras (who, as we have just said, is an ant in the cloud or the night) gives to the ants the avaricious serpent, the son of Agrus, dragging it out of its hiding-place.[73] Indras is therefore a variety of the Captain Formicola of the Tuscan fairy tale. Finally, the _?igvedas_ offers us yet another curious particular. The two Acvinau come to a.s.sist Vamras (or Indras in his form of an ant, _i.e._, they come to a.s.sist the ant) whilst it is drinking (vamra? vipipanam). The ant throws or lifts up little hillocks of earth by biting the ground. The root _vap_, which means to throw, to scatter, has also the sense of to cut, and perhaps to make a hole in.

The convex presupposes the concave; and _vam_ is related to _vap_ (as _somnus_ is related to _hupnos_, to _svapnas_, and to _sopor_). Indras, as an ant, is the wounder, the biter of the serpent. He makes it come out of its den, or vomits it forth (eructat); the two etymological senses are found again in the myth. The weapons with which Indras wounds the serpent are doubtless now the solar rays, and now the thunderbolts.

Indras, in the cloud, drinks the somas. The ant drinks, and the Acvinau, whilst it drinks, come to its help, for no doubt the ant when drinking is in danger of being drowned. And this brings us to the story of the grateful animals, in which the young hero finds an ant about to be drowned.

In the twenty-fourth of the Tuscan fairy tales published by me, when the shepherd's son, by a good advice which he has received, determines to do good to every one he meets, he sees on the path an ant-hill, which is about to be destroyed by water; he then makes a bank round it, and thus saves the ants;[74] in their turn the ants pay back the debt. The king of the land demands of the young man, as a condition of receiving his daughter in marriage, that he should separate and sort the different kinds of grain in a granary; up marches Captain Formicola with his army, and accomplishes the stipulated task. In other varieties of the same story, instead of the embankment, we have the leaf that the hero puts under the ant to float it out of the water contained in the footprint of a horse, which again recalls the lotus-leaf on which the Hindoo deity navigates the ocean. This water in which the ant is drowning was afterwards changed into the proverbial ants' milk,[75] which is now used to express an impossibility, but which, when referred to Indras, to the mythical ant, represents the ambrosial and pluvial moisture. In the sixth Sicilian story of Signora Gonzenbach, the boy Giuseppe, having given crumbs of bread to the hungry ants, receives from the king of the ants the present of an ant's leg, in order that he may use it when required. When he wishes to become an ant, in order to penetrate into the giant's palace, he has only to let the ant's leg fall to the ground, with the words, "I am a Christian, and am becoming an ant," which immediately comes to pa.s.s. In the same story Giuseppe procures sheep, in order to attract the serpent by their smell, and induce it to come out of its lurking-place. Here we evidently return to the Vedic subject of the ant Indras, who tempts the serpent to come out in order to give it to the ants. In the eighth story of the fourth book of the _Pentamerone_, the ant shows the third part of the way to the girl Cianna, who is going to search for the mother of time; on the door of her dwelling Cianna will find a serpent biting its tail (the well-known symbol of the cyclical day or year, and of time, in antiquity), and she is to ask the mother of time, on the ant's part, advice as to how the ants can live a hundred years. The mother of time answers to Cianna that the ants will live a hundred years when they can dispense with flying, inasmuch as "quanno la formica vo morire, mette l'ascelle" (_i.e._, the wings). The ant, grateful for this good advice, shows Cianna and her brothers the place underground where the thieves have deposited their treasure. We also remember the story of the ants who bring grains of barley into the mouth of the royal child Midas, to announce his future wealth. In _Herodotus_ (iii.), and in the twelfth book of the stories of _Tzetza_,[76] I find the curious information that there are in India ants as large as foxes, that keep golden treasures in their holes; the grains of wheat are this gold. The morning and evening heavens are sometimes compared to granaries of gold; the ants separate the grain during the night, carrying it from west to east, and purifying it of all that is unclean, or cleansing the sky of the nocturnal shadows. The work a.s.signed every night by the witch to the maiden aurora of evening is done in one night by the black ants of the sky of night. Sometimes the girl meets on the way the good fairy (the moon), who comes to her help; the maiden, a.s.sisted by the ants, meets the madonna-moon. But the moon is called also the leaper or hopper, a nocturnal locust; the darkness, the cloud and the dark-coloured earth (in lunar eclipses) are at the same time ant-hills and black ants, that pa.s.s over or before the moon; and, therefore, in the race between the ant and the locust, it is said in the fable that the ant won the race. The locust, or _carabhas_, or _calabhas_, is presented to us as an improvident animal in two sentences of the first and fourth books of the _Pancatantram_. The green gra.s.shopper or locust leaps; the fair-haired moon leaps. (I have already noticed in the chapter on the a.s.s how the words _haris_ and _harit_ mean both green and fair, or yellow; in the second canto of the sixth book of the _Ramaya?am_, the monkey carabhas is said to inhabit the mountain Candras or Mount Moon; carabhas, therefore, appears as the moon.) Locust and gra.s.shopper jump (cfr. the Chap. on the hare); hence the ant is not only in connection with the locust, but also with the gra.s.shopper: the Hindoo expression _carabhas_ means both gra.s.shopper (in Sansk?it, also named _varshakari_) and locust. In one of the popular songs of the Monferrato collected by Signor Ferraro, we have the wedding of the gra.s.shopper and the ant; the magpie, the mouse, the ortolan, the crow, and the goldfinch bring to the wedding a little cut straw, a cushion, bread, cheese, and wine. In the popular Tuscan songs published by Giuseppe Tigri, I find the word _grilli_ (gra.s.shoppers) used in the sense of lovers. In Italian, _grillo_ also means caprice, and especially amorous caprice; and _medico grillo_ is applied to a foolish doctor.[77]

And yet the gra.s.shopper ought to be the diviner _par excellence_. In Italy, when we propose a riddle, we are accustomed to end it with the words "indovinala, grillo" (guess it, gra.s.shopper); this expression perhaps refers to the supposed fool of the popular story, who almost always ends by showing himself wise. The sun enclosed in the cloud and in the gloom of night is generally the fool, but he is at the same time the fool who, in the kingdom of the dead, sees, hears, and learns everything; and the moon, too, personified as a gra.s.shopper or locust, is the supposed fool who, on the contrary, knows, sees, understands, and teaches everything; from the moon are taken prognostics; hence riddles may be proposed to the capricious moon, or the celestial cricket. In Italian, the expressions "aver la luna" (to have the moon), and "avere il grillo" (to have the gra.s.shopper), are equivalent, and mean to suffer from a nervous attack, or the spleen. I also find the wedding between ant and gra.s.shopper in a very popular, but as yet unpublished Tuscan song. The ant asks the gra.s.shopper whether he desires her for his wife, and recommends him, if he does not, to look after his own affairs, that is, to leave her alone. And then the narrative begins. The gra.s.shopper goes into a field of linen; the ant begs for a thread to make herself ap.r.o.ns and shirts for the wedding; then the gra.s.shopper says he wishes to marry her. The gra.s.shopper goes into a field of vetches; the ant asks for ten vetches, to cook four in a stew, and to put six upon the spit for the wedding-dinner. After the wedding, the gra.s.shopper follows the trade of a greengrocer, then that of an innkeeper; but his affairs succeed so badly, that he first puts his own trousers in p.a.w.n, and then becomes bankrupt, and beats his wife the ant; at last he dies in misery.

Then the ant faints away, throws herself upon the bed, and beats her breast for sorrow with her heel (as ants do when they die).[78] The nuptials of the black ant, the gloom of night, with the moon, locust, or gra.s.shopper, take place in the evening; the gra.s.shopper dies, the moon pales, and the black ant, the night, also disappears. In the _Pancatantram_, the locusts are destroyed by fire. In the so-called letter of Alexander the Great to Olympias,[79] I find the ants scared away by means of fire, whilst they are endeavouring to keep horses and heroes at a distance. These extraordinary ants recall to us the hippomurmekes of the Greeks, or ants of horses. The ants, the insects of the forest of night, molest the hero and solar horse that traverse it; the black ants of night are dispersed by the solar fire of the morning: this we can understand all the better when Tzetza, quoted before, speaking of the Indian ants, calls them as large as foxes; when Pliny, in the eleventh book of his History, says they are of the colour of a cat, and the size of Egyptian wolves; and when Solinus tells us that they have the shape of a large dog, with lion's feet, with which they dig gold up. aelianos calls them guardians of gold (ton chruson phulattontes). Evidently the ants have already taken here a monstrous and demoniacal aspect. Several other ancient authors have written concerning these Indian ants, including Herodotus, Strabo, Philostratos, and Lucian. I shall only mention here, as bearing on our subject, that, according to Lucian, it is by night that they dig up the gold, and that, according to Pliny, the ants dig up gold in winter (night and winter are often equivalent in mythology). "The Indians, moreover, steal it during summer, whilst the ants stay hidden in their subterranean lurking-places on account of the vapours; however, tempted forth by the smell, they run out, and often cut the Indians in pieces, although they flee away on very swift camels, they are so rapid, ferocious, and desirous of gold."[80] This monster ant, with lion's claws, which Pliny also describes as horned, approaches very closely to the mythical black scorpion of the clouds and the night, the Vedic _V?iccikas_, which, now a very little bird (iyattika cakuntika), now a very small ichneumon (kushumbhakas, properly the little golden one, perhaps the young morning sun), destroys with its tooth (acmana, properly with the biter), absorbing or taking away the poison, as jars take off the water, _i.e._, the sun's rays dissipate the vapours of the sun enclosed in the cloud or the gloom.[81] Here the ichneumon (viverra ichneumon) appears as the benefactor of the scorpion rather than as its enemy; it takes its poison away, that is, it frees the sun from the sign of Scorpio, from the vapours which envelope it. The ichneumon is in Sansk?it called _nakulas_. In the twelfth story of the first book of the _Pancatantram_, we see it, on the contrary, as the declared enemy of the black serpent, which it kills in its den. But inasmuch as the weasel-ichneumon bites venomous animals, it is itself obliged to deliver itself from the venom it has in consequence imbibed. Therefore, in the _Atharvavedas_, mention is already made of the salutary herb with which the nakulas (which is also the name of one of the two sons of the Acvinau, in the _Mahabharatam_) cures himself of the bite of venomous animals, that is, of serpents, scorpions, and monstrous mice, his enemies. The weasel (mustela), which differs but little from the ichneumon, is almost the same in the myths. The weasel, too, as we learn from the ninth book of Aristotle's _History of Animals_, fights against serpents, after having eaten the famous herb called rue, the smell of which is said to be insupportable to serpents. But, as its Latin name tells us, it is no less skilful as a hunter of mice.[82] The reader is doubtless familiar with the aesopian fable of the weasel which pet.i.tions the man for its liberty for the service which it has rendered him by freeing his house from rats; and with that of Phaedrus, of the old weasel which catches mice in the flour-trough by rolling itself in the flour, so that the mice approach, under the impression that it is a solid ma.s.s. Plautus's parasite reckons upon a good dinner for himself from having met with a weasel carrying away the whole of a mouse except its feet (auspicio hodie optumo exivi foras; mustela murem abstulit praeter pedes); but the expected dinner never appearing, he declares that the presage is false, and p.r.o.nounces the weasel a prophet only of evil, inasmuch as in one and the same day it changes its place ten times. According to the ninth book of Ovid's _Metamorphoses_, the maid Galanthis was changed by the G.o.ddess Lucina (the moon) into a weasel, for having told a lie, announcing the birth of Herakles before it had taken place:--

"Strenuitas antiqua manet, nec terga colorem Amisere suum, forma est diversa priori; Quae, quia mendaci parientem juverat ore, Ore parit."

The popular superst.i.tion which makes the weasel bring forth its young by its mouth, probably had its origin in this fable. From the mouth intemperate words are brought forth. Simonides, in Stobeus, quoted already by Aldrovandi,[83] compares wicked women to weasels. The moon that changes the chattering Galanthis into a weasel appears to be the same as the white moon itself transformed into a white weasel, the moon that explores the nocturnal heaven and discovers all its secrets.

Ants, mice, moles (like serpents), love, on the contrary, to stay hidden, and to keep their secrets concealed. The ichneumon, the weasel, and the cat generally come out of their hiding-places, and chase away whoever is concealed, carrying away from the hiding-places whatever they can. They are both themselves thieves, and hunt other thieves.

It is easy now to pa.s.s from the Latin _mustela_ to the Sansk?it cat _mushakaratis_, or _mushikantak?it_.

In the _Pancatantram_, the cat b.u.t.ter-ears (dadhikar?as), or he of the white ears, who feigns to repent of his crimes, is called upon to act as judge in a dispute pending between the sparrow, kapin?alas and the hare Quick-walker (sighragas), who had taken up his quarters in the dwelling of the absent sparrow. b.u.t.ter-ears solves the question by feigning deafness, and requesting the two disputants to come nearer, to confide their arguments in his ears; the hare and the sparrow rely on his good faith, and approach, when the cat clutches and devours them both. In the _Hitopadecas_,[84] we have, instead of the sparrow, the vulture caradgavas, which meets with its death in consequence of having shown hospitality to the cat, "of which it knew neither the disposition nor the strength" (a?natakulacilasya). In the _Tuti-Name_,[85] we have, instead of the cat, the lynx,[86] that wishes to possess itself of the lion's house, which is guarded by the monkey; it terrifies the lion, and drives it to flight. In the _Anvari-Suhaili_,[87] instead of the cat or lynx, we find represented the leopard. In the _Mahabharatam_,[88] we find again the fable of the penitent cat. The cat, by the austerity which it practises on the banks of the Ganges, inspires confidence in the birds, which gather round it to do it honour. After some time, the mice imitate the example of the birds, and put themselves under the cat's protection, that it may defend them. The cat makes its meals upon them every day, by inducing one or two to accompany it to the river, and fattens exceedingly fast, whilst the mice diminish every day. Then a wise mouse determines to follow the cat one day when it goes to the river; the cat eats both the mouse that accompanies it and the spy. Upon this the mice discover the trick, and evacuate altogether the post of danger. The penitent cat is already proverbial in the _Code of Ma.n.u.s_.[89] In the _Reineke Fuchs_ of Goethe,[90] the cat goes to steal in the priest's house, by the wicked advice of the fox, when every one falls upon him--

"Sprang er wuthend entschlossen Zwischen die Schenkel des Pfaffen und biss und kratzte gefahrlich."

The _Roman du Renard_,[91] when the priest is mutilated by the cat, makes his wife exclaim--

"C'en est fait de nos amours!

Je suis veuve sans recours!"

In the same _Roman_, when the cat Tibert, the amba.s.sador of King Lion, arrives at Mantpertuis, where the fox reigns, we read--

"Tibert lui presenta la patte; Il fait le saint, il fait la chatte!

Mais a bon chat, bon rat! Renard aussi le flatte!

Il s'entend a dorer ses paroles de miel!

Si l'un est saint, l'autre est hermite; Si l'un est chatte, l'autre est mite."