Zoological Mythology Volume Ii Part 25

[461] In a Scandinavian and Italian variety of this story, instead of the goose we have the eagle and eaglets; the goose returns, in the first story of the fifth book of the _Pentamerone_, to do the same duty as in the Russian story, but with some more vulgar and less decent incidents.

[462] The image of the legs which, when they move, make flowers grow up, is very ancient; students of Hindoo literature will remember the pushpi?yau carato ?anghe of the _aitareya Br._, in the story of cuna?cepas.

[463] The ninth of the _Novelline di Santo Stefano di Calcinaia_ is an interesting variety of this; the beautiful maiden who feeds the geese is disguised in an old woman's skin; the geese, who see her naked, cry out: "Coc, la bella padrona ch 'i' ho," until the prince, by means of a noiseless file, makes the cook enter the room and carry the old woman's skin away while she sleeps, and then weds her.--The following unpublished story, communicated to me by Signor Greco from Cosenza in Calabria, is a variation of that of the _Pentamerone_:--

Seven princes have a very beautiful sister. An emperor decides upon marrying her, but upon the condition that if he does not find her to his taste, he will decapitate her seven brothers. They set out altogether, and the mother-in-law with her daughter follow them. On the way, the sun is hot, and the elder brother cries out, "Solabella, defend me from the heat, for you must please the king." The step-mother advises her to take off her necklaces and to put them on her half-sister. The second brother next complains of the heat, and the step-mother advises her to take off her gold apparel and to put it on her half-sister. By such means the step-mother at last succeeds in making her naked; they come to the sea, and the step-mother pushes her in; she is taken by a siren, who holds her by her foot with a golden chain. The princes arrive with the ugly sister; the king weds the ugly wife and cuts off the heads of the seven brothers. When the maiden is wandering about in the sea, she asks the king's ducks for news of her brothers; the ducks answer that they have been executed. She weeps; the tears become pearls and the ducks feed upon them. This marvel comes to the ears of the king, who follows the ducks and asks the girl why she shuns the society of men; to which she answers: "Alas! how can I, who am fastened by a golden chain?" and then relates everything.

Having recognised his bride, the king gives her this advice: she must ask how, after the siren's death, she would be able to free herself; and then he departs. Next day, Solabella tells the king that the siren will not die, because she lives in a little bird, enclosed in a silver cage which is shut up in a marble case, and seven iron ones, of which she has the keys, and that if the siren died, a horseman, a white horse, and a long sword would be necessary to cut the chain. The king brings her a certain water, which he advises her to give the siren to drink; she will then fall asleep, and the girl will be able to take the keys and kill the little bird. When it is killed, the white horse plunges into the sea, and the sword cuts the chain. Then the king takes his beautiful bride to his palace, and the old step-mother is burned in a shirt of pitch; the seven brothers are rubbed with an ointment which brings them to life again, each exclaiming, "Oh! what a beautiful dream I have had!"

[464] The old ogress of the ninth story of the fifth book of the _Pentamerone_, who keeps three beautiful maidens shut up in three citron-trees, and who feeds the a.s.ses which kick the swans upon the banks of the river, is a variety of the same myth.

[465] Instead of geese, swans were also solemnly eaten; a popular mediaeval German song in Latin offers the lamentation of the roasted swan; cfr. Uhland's _Schriften_, iii. 71, 158.--In the _Pancatantram_, we have the swan sacrificed by the owl. In order to allure the swan, the funereal owl, who wishes to kill it, invites it into a grove of lotus-flowers, only, however, to decoy it subsequently into a dark cavern, where the swan is killed by some travelling merchants, who believe it to be an owl.

[466] In the _Eddas_, when the hero Sigurd expires, the geese bewail his death.

[467] Cfr. also, with regard to this subject, the twenty-fourth Esthonian story of the princess born in the egg, of whom her brother, born in a more normal manner of the queen, becomes enamoured.

CHAPTER XI.

THE PARROT.

SUMMARY.

Haris and harit; harayas and hari; green and yellow called by a common name.--The moon as a green tree and as a green parrot; the parrot and the tree a.s.similated.--The wise moon and the wise parrot; the phallical moon and the phallical parrot, in numerous love stories.--The G.o.d of love mounted on the parrot--The parrot and the wolf pasture together.

The myth of the parrot originated in the East, and developed itself almost exclusively among the Oriental nations.

I mentioned in the chapter on the a.s.s, that the words _haris_ and _harit_ signify green no less than fair-haired, and hence gave rise to the epic myth of the monsters with parrot's faces, or drawn by parrots.

The solar horses are called harayas; hari are the two horses of Indras; Haris is a name of Indras himself, but especially of the G.o.d Vish?us; but there are more fair-haired figures in the sky then these; the golden thunderbolt which shoots through the cloud, and the golden moon, the traveller of the night, are such. Moreover, because green and yellow are called by this common name, all these fair ones, and the moon in particular, a.s.sumed the form, now of a green tree, now of a green parrot. A very interesting Vedic strophe offers us an evident proof of this. The solar horses (or the sun himself, Haris) say that they have imparted the colour haris to the parrots, to the pheasants (or peac.o.c.ks.[468] Benfey and the Petropolitan Dictionary, however, explain _ropa?aka_ by drossel or thrush), and to the trees, which are therefore called harayas. As the trees are green, so are the parrots generally green (sometimes also yellow and red, whence the appellation haris is always applicable to them).[469] The moon, on account of its colour, is now a tree (a green one), now an apple-tree with golden branches and apples, now a parrot (golden or green, and luminous). The moon in the night is the wise fairy who knows all, and can teach all. In the introduction to the _Mahabharatam_, the name cukas or parrot is given to the son of K?ish?as, _i.e._, of the black one, who reads (as moon) the _Mahabharatam_ to the monsters. In the chapter on the a.s.s, we saw the a.s.s and the monster of the _Ramaya?am_ with parrots' faces. But inasmuch as the a.s.s is a phallical symbol, the parrot is also ridden by the Hindoo G.o.d Kamas, or the G.o.d of love (hence also called cukavahas). The moon (masculine in India) has already been mentioned, in the first chapter of the first book, as a symbol of the phallos; in the same way as the thunderbolt pierces the cloud, the moon pierces the gloom of the night, penetrates and reveals the secrets of the night. Therefore, the parrot being identified with the night in the _cukasaptati_, and in other books of Hindoo stories, we see the parrot often appearing in love-stories, and revealing amorous secrets.

Some of the stories concerning the parrot pa.s.sed into the West; no doubt, by means of literary transmission, that is to say, of the mediaeval Arabic and Latin versions of the Hindoo stories.[470]

Some of the Hindoo beliefs concerning the parrot had already pa.s.sed into ancient Greece, and aelianos shows himself to be very well acquainted with the sacred worship which the Brahmans of India professed for it.

Oppianos, moreover, tells us of a superst.i.tion which confirms what we have said concerning the essentially lunar character of the mythical parrot; he says that the parrot and the wolf pasture together, because the wolves love this green bird; this is the same as saying that the gloomy night loves the moon. One of the Hindoo epithets applied to the moon, moreover, is ra?anikaras, or he who makes the night.

FOOTNOTES:

[468] The parrot is sung of by Statius in connection with the same birds in the second book of the _Sylvae_--

"Lux volucrum plagae, regnator Eoae Quam non gemmata volucri Junonia cauda Vinceret, aspectu gelidi non phasidis ales."

[469] A pathetic elegy in Sansk?it distiches, of a Buddhist character, of which I do not now remember the source, presents us the cukas, or parrot, who wishes to die when the tree ac.o.kas, which has always been his refuge, is dried up.

[470] Such as, for instance, the following unpublished story, communicated to me by Dr Ferraro, which is related in the Monferrato, and of which I have also heard, in my childhood, a variation at Turin:--A king, going to the wars, and fearing that another king, who is his rival, will profit by his absence to seduce his wife, places by her side one of his friends transformed into a parrot; this friend warns her to remain faithful every time that the rival king sends to tempt the queen by means of a cunning old woman. The queen pays attention to the parrot's advice, and remains faithful till the husband's return. This is, in a few words, the contents of the seventy Hindoo tales of the parrot, of which the _Tuti-Name_ is a Persian version.--In the story which I heard at Turin, the wife is, on the contrary, unfaithful and covers the parrot's cage that it may not see; she then fries some fishes in the guest's honour; the parrot thinks that it is raining. The fish and the rain remind us of the myth of the phallical and pluvial cuckoo.

CHAPTER XII.

THE PEAc.o.c.k.

SUMMARY.

The starry sky and the rayed sun.--The peac.o.c.k becomes a crow; the crow becomes a peac.o.c.k.--Peac.o.c.k and swan; the dove and the peac.o.c.k.--The kokilas and the peac.o.c.k.--Indras now a peac.o.c.k, now a cuckoo.--The peac.o.c.k's feather.--Indras's horses have peac.o.c.k's feathers and peac.o.c.k's tails.--Skandas rides upon the peac.o.c.k.--Argus becomes a peac.o.c.k.--The peac.o.c.k as the _avis Junonia_; Jove is the bird of Juno.

We end our mythical journey in the kingdom of winged animals with the bird of all the colours.

The serene and starry sky and the shining sun are peac.o.c.ks. The calm, azure heavens, bespangled with a thousand stars, a thousand brilliant eyes, and the sun rich with the colours of the rainbow, offer the appearance of a peac.o.c.k in all the splendour of its eye-besprinkled feathers. When the sky or the thousand-rayed sun (sahasrancus) is hidden in the clouds, or veiled by the autumnal waters, it again resembles the peac.o.c.k, which, in the dark part of the year, like a great number of vividly-coloured birds, sheds its beautiful plumage, and becomes dark and unadorned; the crow which had put the peac.o.c.k's feathers on then returns to caw amongst the funereal crows. In winter the peac.o.c.k-crow has nothing remaining to it except its disagreeable and shrill cry, not dissimilar to that of the crows. It is commonly said of the peac.o.c.k that it has an angel's feathers, a devil's voice, and a thief's walk. The crow-peac.o.c.k is proverbial.[471]

The peac.o.c.k hides itself when it becomes ugly; so does the sky, and so does the sun when the autumnal clouds cover it; but in the summer clouds the thunder rumbles, and thunder made upon the primeval races of men the impression of an irresistible, much-loved, and wished-for music, resembling the song of the melodious kokilas (the cuckoo), or of the waterc.o.c.k (the heron, the halcyon, the duck, or the swan).[472]

In the _Ramaya?am_, as we observed in the chapter on the Cuckoo, the peac.o.c.k and the kokilas appear as rivals in singing; although the waterc.o.c.k laughs at the peac.o.c.k for its pretentiousness, this rivalry is no slender proof upon which to admit the mythical ident.i.ty of two rival birds.[473] The Hindoo myth, in fact, shows us the G.o.d Indras (now sky, now sun) as a peac.o.c.k and as a cuckoo (like Zeus). When the sky is blue, serene, and starry, or when the sun shines with its thousand rays, and in the colours of the rainbow, the sahasrakshas, or thousand-eyed Indras, is found as a peac.o.c.k; when the sky or the sun in the cloud thunders and lightens, Indras becomes a kokilas that sings. In the twentieth of the stories of Santo Stefano di Calcinaia, two brothers steal a peac.o.c.k's feather from their younger brother, and kill him (that is, they kill the peac.o.c.k, in the same way as in the Russian story the red little boots are stolen from the little brother, and he is killed). Where the little brother of the peac.o.c.k's feather is killed and buried, a sapling grows up; a stick is made out of the sapling, and out of the stick a pipe, which, when played upon, sings the dirge of the little brother who was killed for a peac.o.c.k's feather. When the luminous sky or the sun is hidden in the clouds, when the luminous feathers of the peac.o.c.k are torn off,[474] when the peac.o.c.k is buried, the tree which is its tomb (the cloud) speaks, at the return of spring, like the cornel-tree of Polidorus in _Virgil_, and the trunk of Pier delle Vigne in Dante's _Inferno_; the tree becomes a cane, a magic flute, a melodious kokilas. Indras-kokilas remembers Indras-peac.o.c.k, Indras whose horses, even in the Vedic hymns, have "peac.o.c.ks' feathers,"[475] and "tail (or phallos) of peac.o.c.ks."[476] We have already seen that the body of Indras was, after intercourse (as sun) with Ahalya in adultery, covered with a thousand wombs (waves or clouds; cfr. the equivoque _sahasradharas_, given to the solar disc, properly because it has a thousand darts that wound), which were already a thousand eyes (stars or sunbeams), whence his names of Sahasrad?ic, Sahasranayanas, Sahasranetras, and Sahasrakshas, which are equivalent. The long refulgent tail of the peac.o.c.k took a phallical form. According to the Petropolitan Dictionary, mayurecvaras (or civas-peac.o.c.k), is the proper name of a lingam or phallos, the well-known emblem of civas, which also calls our attention to Mayurarathas, Mayuraketus, Cikhivahanas, and cikidhva?as, names of Skandas, the G.o.d of war, who is also a phallical G.o.d, like Mars, the lover of Venus, and like the Hindoo Kamadevas, or G.o.d of love, who rides upon the parrot, and which therefore brings us back to the lunar phallical symbol.[477] The sky with the sun, as well as with the moon, is superseded by the sterile sky with the stars of the night or the clouds of autumn; the phallos falls; the impotent sky remains--Indras the eunuch, Indras with a thousand wombs, Indras plunged into the waves of the spotted clouds, Indras a ram, the pluvial or autumnal Indras, Indras lost in the sea of winter, Indras the fish, Indras without rays, without lightning, and without thunder, Indras cursed, he who had been beautiful and resplendent like a crested peac.o.c.k (cikhin), Indras as the peac.o.c.k enemy of the serpent (ahidvish, ahiripus), into which form he returns by the pity of the G.o.ds. According to the _Tuti-Name_, when a woman dreams of a peac.o.c.k, it presages the birth of a handsome son.

The Greeks were also acquainted with the myth of the peac.o.c.k, and amplified it. In the first book of Ovid's _Metamorphoses_, Argus, with the hundred eyes, who sees everything (Panoptes and son of Zeus), by the order of the G.o.ddess Juno, the splendid and proud wife of Jove, to whom the peac.o.c.k is sacred (and therefore called _avis Junonia, ales Junonia_; the peac.o.c.k of Juno is Jove himself, as we have already seen that Jove's cuckoo is himself; Argos the son of Zeus is Zeus himself), whilst two eyes rest (perhaps the sun and the moon), watches with the others (the stars) Io (the daughter of Argus himself, priestess of Juno, identified with Isis the moon, loved by Jove). Mercury, by means of music, puts Argus to sleep, and kills him as he slumbers. The eyes of the dead Argus pa.s.s into the tail of the peac.o.c.k (that is, the dead peac.o.c.k rises again). The peac.o.c.k, which annually loses and renews its various colours and splendours, and is fruitful in progeny, served, like the ph?nix, as a symbol of immortality, and a personification of the fact that the sky is obscured and becomes serene again, that the sun dies and is born again, that the moon rises, is obscured, goes down, is concealed, and rises once more. It is said of Pythagoras that he believed himself to have once been a peac.o.c.k, that the peac.o.c.k's soul pa.s.sed into Euphorbos, that of Euphorbos into Homer, and that of Homer into him. It was also alleged that out of him the soul of the ancient peac.o.c.k pa.s.sed into the poet Ennius, whence Persius--

"Postquam dest.i.tuit esse Maeonides quintus pavone ex Pythagoraeo."

If the peac.o.c.k be Zeus, if Zeus be Dyaus, if Dyaus be the luminous and splendid sky, the divine light, which of my readers would disclaim the Pythagorean belief? The dream of being the sons of the divine light, and destined to return to the heavenly fatherland, certainly is much more consoling than the dreary conclusion of modern science, which reduces us, in our origin and final lapse, into unconscious vegetables upon the surface of the earth. The only drawback is, that this same heretical mythology, which often, even in its grossest forms, such as the animal ones, opens up to our incredulous reason a ray of hope in the immortality of the soul, that this mythology which resuscitates and transfigures into new living forms all its dead, does not permit us to believe in an eternity of joy in heaven; heaven, like earth, is in perpetual revolution, and the G.o.ds of Olympus are no more secure on their divine throne than our royal automata that sit upon their earthly ones. The metempsychosis does not end when the soul goes to heaven; on the contrary, it is in heaven that it is fated to undergo the strangest and most diverse transformations; from the heroic form we have seen it pa.s.s into that of a quadruped and a biped. Nor is its curse yet come to an end; the deity or the hero must humble himself yet more, and a.s.sume in the zoological scale the most imperfect of organisms; the animal G.o.d will lose his speech in the form of a stupid fish; he will creep like a serpent or hop grotesquely like a filthy toad.

FOOTNOTES:

[471] Cfr. the chapter on the Crow.

[472] "Wie wir den Hugschapler sogar auf den Pfauen schworen sehen, legten sie die Angelsachsen auf den Schwan ab (R. A. 900), den wir wohl nach den obigen Gesange Ngordhs, S. 343 als den ihm geheiligten Vogel (ales gratissima nautis, Myth. 1074) zu fa.s.sen haben, &c." Simrock, the work quoted before, p. 347.--A Hindoo proverb considers the dove in connection with the peac.o.c.k; it says, "Better a pigeon to-day than a peac.o.c.k to-morrow" (Varamadya kapoto na cvo mayura?). According to the _Ornithologia_ of Aldrovandi, the peac.o.c.ks are the doves' friends, because they keep serpents and all venomous animals at a distance.

[473] The Russian fable of Kriloff presents to us the a.s.s as a judge between the nightingale (the kokilas of Western poets) and the c.o.c.k in a trial of singing; in Sansk?it _cikhin_, or crested, means c.o.c.k and peac.o.c.k; besides mayuras, peac.o.c.k, we have mayuraca?akas, the domestic c.o.c.k. Mayuras is also the name of a Hindoo poet.--In the chapter on the Cuckoo we saw the cuckoo and the nightingale as rivals in singing; the kokilas and the peac.o.c.k are the equivalents of the nightingale and the cuckoo; we have also identified the cuckoo with the swallow, and seen the swallows as rivals of the swans in singing; cfr. the chapter on the Crow.

[474] Hence Aldrovandi writes with reason, that the smoke of the burnt feathers of a peac.o.c.k (that is, of the celestial peac.o.c.k), when taken into the eyes, cures them of their redness.

[475] a mandrair indra haribhir yahi mayuraromabhi?; _?igv._ iii. 45, 1.

[476] a tva rathe hira?yaye hari mayuracepya; viii. 1, 25.--Klearchos relates in Athenaios, that a peac.o.c.k in Leucas loved a maiden so much, that when she died it also immediately expired.

[477] According to the _Pancatantram_ (i. 175), in the very house of civas (the phallical G.o.d), the animals make war against each other; the serpent (the night) wishes to eat the mouse (which seems here to be the grey twilight); the peac.o.c.k (here, perhaps, the moon), wishes to eat the serpent (cfr. the preceding notes; according to aelianos, a certain man who wished to steal from the King of Egypt a peac.o.c.k, supposed to be sacred, found an asp in its stead); the lion (the sun) wishes to eat the peac.o.c.k. (The Hindoo name of mayuraris, or enemy of the peac.o.c.k, given to the chameleon, is remarkable; the animal which changes its colour is the rival of the bird which is of every colour; G.o.ds and demons are equally vicvarupas and kamarupas.)

Third Part.

THE ANIMALS OF THE WATER.