Zoological Mythology Volume Ii Part 15

Virgil and Dante ascribe women's faces to the Harpies--

"Ali hanno late e colli e visi umani Pie con artigli e pennuto il gran ventre."

Rutilius[326] says that their claws are glutinous--

"Quae pede glutineo, quod tetigere trahunt."

Others give them vultures' bodies, bears' ears, arms and feet of men, and the white b.r.e.a.s.t.s of women. Servius, speaking of the name they bear of _canes Jovis_, notes that this epithet was given them because they are the Furies in person, "Unde etiam epulas apud Virgilium abripiunt, quod Furiarum est." Ministers of the vengeance of Zeus, they contaminate the harvests of the king-seer Phineus, inspired by Apollo, whom some consider to be a form of Prometheus, the revealer of the secret of Zeus to mankind, and others, the blinder of his own sons.

The bird of prey, the evening solar bird, becomes a strix, or witch, during the night. We have already noticed the popular belief that the cat, at seven years of age, becomes a witch. An ancient superst.i.tion given by Aldrovandi also recognises witches in cats, and adds that, in this form, they suck the blood of children. The same is done by the witches of popular stories,[327] and by the striges. During the night they suck the blood of children; that is to say, the night takes away the colour, the red, the blood of the sun. Ovid, in the sixth book of the _Fasti_, represents the maleficent striges as follows:

"Nocte volant, puerosque petunt nutricis egentes, Et vitiant cunis corpora rapta suis.

Carpere dic.u.n.tur lactentia viscera rostris, Et plenum poto sanguine guttur habent."

Festus derives the word strix _a stringendo_, from the received opinion that they strangle children. The striges, in the book of the _Fasti_, previously quoted, attack the child Proca, who is only five days old--

"Pectoraque exhorbent avidis infantia linguis."

The nurse invokes the help of Crane, the friend of Ja.n.u.s, who has the faculty of hunting good and evil away from the doorsteps of houses.

Crane hunts the witches away with a magical rod, and cures the child thus--

"Protinus arbutea postes ter in ordine tangit Fronde ter arbutea limina fronde notat.

Spargit aquis aditus, et aquae medicamen habebant, Extaque de porca cruda bimestre tenet."

The usual conjurings are added, and the incident ends thus--

"Post illud, nec aves cunas viola.s.se feruntur, Et rediit puero qui fuit ante color."

Quintus Serenus, when the _strix atra_ presses the child, recommends as an amulet, garlic, of which we have seen that the strong odour puts the monstrous lion to flight.

The same maleficent and demoniacal nature is shared in by the bats and the vampires, which I recognise in the "two winged ones entreated not to suck" of a Vedic hymn.[328]

Of a.n.a.logous nature were the Stymphalian birds, which obscure the sun's rays with their wings, use their feathers as darts, devour men and lions, and are formidable on account of their claws--

"Unguibus Arcadiae volucres Stymphala colentes" (_Lucretius_);

which Herakles, and afterwards the Argonauts, by the advice of the wise Phineos, put to flight with the noise of a musical instrument, and by striking their shields and spears against each other. The bird of Seleucia which Galenus describes as "of an insatiable appet.i.te, malignant, astute, a devourer of locusts," also has the same diabolical nature. If our identification of the locust with the moon be accepted, to kill the locust, its shadow alone sufficed. But inasmuch as the locusts are considered destroyers of corn, the birds of Seleucia, which come to devour them, are held to be beneficent, and the ministers of Zeus.

The gryphes are represented as of double nature, now propitious, now malignant. Solinus calls them, "Alites ferocissimae et ultra rabiem saevientes." Ktesias declares that India possesses gold in mountains inhabited by griffins, quadrupeds, as large as wolves, which have the legs and claws of a lion, red feathers on their b.r.e.a.s.t.s and in their other parts, eyes of fire and golden nests. For the sake of the gold, the Arimaspi, one-eyed men, fight with the griffins. As the latter have long ears, they easily hear the robbers of the gold; and if they capture them, they invariably kill them. In h.e.l.lenic antiquity, the griffins were sacred to Nemesis, the G.o.ddess of vengeance, and were represented in sepulchres in the act of pressing down a bull's head; but they were far more celebrated as sacred to the golden sun, Apollo, whose chariot they drew (the hippogriff, which, in mediaeval chevaleresque poems, carries the hero, is their exact equivalent).

And as Apollo is the prophetical and divining deity, whose oracle, when consulted, delivers itself in enigmas, the word _griffin_, too, meant enigma, logogriph being an enigmatical speech, and griffonnage an entangled, confused, and embarra.s.sing handwriting.

Finally, the siren, or mermaid, who had a woman's face, and ended now as a bird, now as a fish; and who, according to Greek grammarians, had the form of a sparrow in its upper parts and of a woman in the lower, seems to be a lunar rather than a solar animal. The sirens allure navigators in particular, and fly after the ship of the cunning Odysseus, who stuffs his ears; for which reason they throw themselves in despair into the sea. The sirens are fairies like Circe; hence Horace[329] names them together--

"Sirenum voces et Circes pocula nosti."

Pliny, who believed that they existed in India, attributed to them the faculty of lulling men to sleep by their songs, in order to tear them to pieces afterwards; they calmed the winds of the sea by their voices, they knew and could reveal every secret (like the fairy or Madonna moon). Some say that the sirens were born of the blood of Acheloos, defeated by Herakles; others, of Acheloos and one of the Muses; others, again, narrate that they were once girls, and that Aphrodite transformed them into sirens because they wished to remain virgins. In the sixteenth Esthonian story, the beautiful maiden of the waters, daughter of the mother of the waters, falls in love with a young hero with whom she stays six days of the week; the seventh day, Thursday, she leaves him, to go and plunge into the water, forbidding the youth to come and see her: the young man is unable to repress his curiosity, surprises the maiden when bathing, and discovers that she is a woman in her upper and a fish in her lower parts--

"Desinit in piscem mulier formosa superne;"

the maiden of the waters is conscious of being looked at, and disappears sorrowfully from the young man's sight.[330]

FOOTNOTES:

[289] Pra cyena? cyenebhya acupatva--Acakraya yat svadhaya supar?o havyam bharan manave deva?ush?am; _?igv._ iv. 26, 4.--The soma?

cyenabh?ita? is also mentioned in the _?igv._ i. 80, 2, iv. 27, ix.

77, and other pa.s.sages.

[290] catam ma pura ayasir arakshann adha cyeno ?avasa nir adiyam; _?igv._ iv. 27, 1.

[291] Yam te cyenac carum av?ika? padabharad aru?am manam andhasa?--ena vayo vi tary ayur ?ivasa ena ?agara bandhuta; _?igv._ x. 144, 5.

[292] In the _Mahabharatam_ (i. 2383), the ambrosia takes the shape of sperm. A king, far from his wife Girika, thinks of her; the sperm comes from him and falls upon a leaf. A hawk carries the leaf away; another hawk sees it and disputes with it for the possession of the leaf; they fight with one another and the leaf falls into the waters of the Yamuna, where the nymph Adrika (equivalent to Girika), changed by a curse into a fish, sees the leaf, feeds upon the sperm, becomes fruitful, and is delivered; cfr. the chapter on the Fishes.

[293] cyeno 'yopash?ir hanti dasyun; _?igv._ x. 99, 8.--In the Russian stories the hawk and the dog are sometimes the most powerful helpers of the hero.

[294] Gh?ishu? cyenaya k?itvana asu?; _?igv._ x. 144, 3.--Yam supar?a?

paravata? cyenasya putra abharat catacakram; _?igv._ x. 144, 1.

[295] Sa purvya? pavate ya? divas pari cyeno mathayad is.h.i.tas tiro ra?a? sa madhva a yuvate yevi?ana it k?icanor astur manasaha bibhyusha; _?igv._ ix. 77, 2.

[296] iii. 3, 26.

[297] Anta? patat patatry asya par?am; _?igv._ iv. 27, 4.--Cfr. for this mythical episode the texts given by Prof. Kuhn and the relative discussions, _Die Herabkunft d. F. u. d. S._, pp. 138 _seq._ and 180 _seq._

[298] cyeno na bhita?; _?igv._ i. 32, 14.

[299] Anya? divo mataricva ?abharamathnad anyam pari cyeno adre?; _?igv._ i. 93, 6.

[300] a va? cyenaso acvina vahantu--ye apturo divyaso na g?idhrah; _?igv._ i. 118, 4.

[301] G?idhreva v?iksha? nidhimantam acha; _?igv._ ii. 39, 1.

[302] _?igv._ i. 88, 4.--In fact, in the hymn i. 165, 2, the Marutas are explicitly compared to hawks that fly through the air (cyena? iva dhra?ato antarikshe).

[303] Drapsa? samudram abhi ya? ?igati pacyan g?idhrasya cakshasa; _?igv._ x. 123, 8.

[304] i. 1078, _seq._

[305] _Mbh._ i. 1495.

[306] _Ib._ i. 1496, _seq._

[307] _Ramay._ vii. 6.

[308] _Ib._ vii. 7.

[309] _Ib._ vi. 26.

[310] _Mbh._ i. 1337, _seq._