Chapter VI: Book IV: of the treatise is devoted to the consideration of serpents (2)

Referring back to the "300 Animals," the natural history that was considered good enough for the people living in the year of grace 1786, we find, after the account of the Dart, "so called from his flying like an arrow from the tops of trees and hedges upon men, by which means he stings and wounds them to death," the following description:--"The Cockatrice is called the king of serpents, not from his bigness--for he is much inferior in this respect to many serpents--but because of his majestic pace, for he does not creep upon the ground, like other serpents, but goes half upright, for which cause all other serpents avoid him; and it seems nature designed him that pre-eminence, by the crown or coronet upon his head. Writers differ concerning the production of this animal. Some are of opinion that it is brought forth of a cock's egg sat upon by a snake or toad, and so becomes a cockatrice. It is said to be half a foot in length, the hinder part like a serpent, the fore part like a cock. Others are of opinion that the cock that lays the egg sits upon and hatches it himself. These monsters are bred in Africa and some parts of the world." In England it would appear, so far as we have observed the matter, that the hens have entirely usurped the egg-laying department, and we are therefore spared the mortification of finding that our hoped-for chick has assumed the less welcome form of a cockatrice, for we shall see that the advent of a cockatrice is no laughing matter. The book goes on to tell us that authors differ about the bigness of it, for some say it is a span in compass and half a foot long, while others, with a truer sense of the marvellous, realise more fully that bulk is a potent element in all such matters, and at once make it four feet long. Its poison is so strong that there is no cure for it, and the air is in such a degree affected by its presence that no creature can live near it. It kills, we are assured, not only by its touch, but even the sight of the cockatrice, like that of the basilisk, is death. We read, for instance, in "Romeo and Juliet" of "the death-darting eye of cockatrice;" and again in "King Richard III."--"A cockatrice hast thou hatched to the world whose unavoided eye is murtherous;" while in "Twelfth Night" we find the passage, "This will so fright them both, that they will kill one another by the look, like cockatrices." After this we can scarcely wonder at a certain vagueness of description, as those who never saw the animal have full licence of description, while those, less fortunate, who have had an opportunity of studying from the life have forfeited their own in doing so. The only hope of getting an idea of it would be the discovery of a dead specimen, for we read that "as all other serpents are afraid of the sight and hissing of a cockatrice, so is the cockatrice itself very fearful of a weasel, which after it has eaten rue will set upon and destroy the cockatrice. Besides this little creature, it is said there is no other animal in the world able to contend with it." We can well imagine the indignant astonishment of the cockatrice, after being for years the monarch of all it surveyed, when the gallant little weasel, strong in the triple armour which makes a quarrel just, and duly fortified by the internal application of rue, charges boldly home and takes him, _monstrorum rex_, by the throat. At the time that our authorised version of the Old Testament was made there was a sufficient belief in the creature to make the translation of some Hebrew word seem correctly rendered by the word cockatrice, for we read in the book of Isaiah that one sign of the millennial peace shall be that the child shall put his hand, unharmed, upon the den of the cockatrice; and a little farther on we find the passage, "For out of the serpent's root shall come forth a cockatrice, and his fruit shall be a fiery flying serpent." In the fifty-ninth chapter the workers of iniquity are described as hatching the cockatrice egg, and amongst the judgments pronounced upon the impenitent Jews by the prophet Jeremiah we find the verse, "Behold, I will send serpents, cockatrices, amongst you, which will not be charmed, and they shall bite you." The heraldic cockatrice is represented as having the head and legs of a cock, a scaly and serpent-like body, and the wings of a dragon.

Guillim[8] in his "Heraldry" says that "the Cockatrice is called in Latin Regulus, for that he seemeth to be a little King among Serpents: not in regard of his Quantity, but in respect of the Infection of his pestiferous and poisonous Aspect wherewith he poisoneth the Air. Not unlike those devillish Witches that do work the Destruction of silly Infants, as also of the Cattel of such their Neighbours whose prosperous Estate is to them a most grievous Eye-sore. Of such Virgil in his Bucolicks makes mention, saying, I know not what wicked Eye hath bewitched my tender Lambs." The belief in the evil eye has been almost universal, and may be found in tribes the most remote from each other either in distance or in time. If it were not that Guillim is so ostentatiously loyal, and, like all heralds, a zealous upholder of rank and state, one might suspect him almost of a touch of bitter sarcasm in ascribing royal rank to the cockatrice, not from his magnanimity, not from his noble bearing, not from his beauty, but from the power of inflicting injuries that he so especially displays. When we consider what sort of a sovereign politically, socially, and every way the second Charles was, Guillim's dedication of his book to him errs somewhat, perhaps, on the side of fulsome and sickening adulation:--"To the most August Charles the Second, King of Great Britain, France, and Ireland, Defender of the Faith, &c. Dread Sovereign, Here is a Firmament of Stars that shine not without your Benign Beam; you are the Sun of our Hemisphere that sets a splendour on the Nobility: For as they are Jewels and Ornaments to your Crown, so they derive their lustre and value from thence. From your Breast, as from a Fountain, the young Plants of honour are cherisht and nurst up. Your vertuous Atcheivements are their Warrant and Example, and your Bounty the Guerdon of their Merit. And as all the Roman Emperors after Julius Cæsar, were desirous to be called Imperatores and Cæsares after him, so shall all succeeding Princes in this our Albion (in emulation of your Vertues) be ambitious to bear your Name to Posterity."

[8] The reader must notice the near approach to similarity of name
in the Frenchman Guillaume, author of "Le Bestiare Divin," and in
the Englishman Guillim, the writer on heraldry, and at the same time
make due discrimination. They are men of widely different periods,
and approach our subject from wholly different directions.

The Basilisk, to whom also was given the title of king of the serpents, was another of the stern, very stern realities of our forefathers, though, like the cockatrice, it has fallen a victim to the march of intellect. Its royal rank was bestowed upon it not from its pestiferous qualities, but from the crest or coronet it wears, or rather wore, as the species may now be considered extinct. Like the monstrous kraken of the Norway seas and the classic harpy or minotaur, down to the sheeted spectre that clanked its chains last century in churchyard or corridor, it has failed to make good its claims to our credence; and even the great sea-serpent, that from time to time appears in the columns of the newspapers when Parliament is not sitting, will have to appear very visibly elsewhere as well, or the scepticism of the nineteenth century will disestablish it. The basilisk was by some old writers described as a huge lizard, but in later times it became a crested serpent. Exact accuracy on this point was impossible, as, like the cockatrice, the glance of its eye was death. Pliny says, "We come now to the basiliske, whom all other serpents do flie from and are afraid of; albeit he killith them with his very breath and smell that passeth from him: yea, and by report, if he do but set his eye on a man it is enough to take away his life." Readers of Shakespeare will recall the passage in King Henry VI., "Come, basilisk, and kill the innocent gazer with thy sight;" and again where the Lady Anne exclaims to Richard III., with reference to her eyes, "Would that they were basilisk's, to strike thee dead." Beaumont and Fletcher, too, in their "Woman Hater," speaks of "The basilisk's death-doing eye." Dryden avails himself of the same old belief, and makes Clytus say to Alexander, "Nay, frown not so; you cannot look me dead;" and in another old poem, King's "Art of Love," we find the lines, "Like a boar plunging his tusk in mastiff's gore, or basilisk, when roused, whose breath, teeth, sting, and eyeballs all are death." The only way to kill the basilisk was held to be to cause it to gaze on its own image in a mirror, when its glance would be as fatal to itself as it had hitherto been to others. To effect this, however, evidently presents many practical difficulties, and he must have been a bold man who ventured on so perilous an errand, where the least nervousness or mismanagement of the mirror would be literally fatal in bringing the basilisk to a proper state of reflection.

The basilisk is mentioned by most of the old writers, by Dioscorides, by Galen, Pliny, Solinus, Ælian, Ætius, Avicen, Ardoynus, Grevinus, and many others. Aristotle makes no mention of it. Scaliger gravely describes one that was found in Rome in the days of Leo IV., while Sigonius and others are so far from denying the possibility of such a beast that they have duly set forth various kinds or sub-species. Pliny, for instance, describes a thing he calls the Catoblepas, while Ætius gives details of another called Dryinus, each being only modifications of the basilisk idea. Where, of course, the whole thing was purely a figment of the imagination, the multiplication of species presents no difficulty at all, and it really makes little difference whether all the peculiarities and properties be focussed on one creature, or whether they be divided by a three or a four, and due distribution of them made to a like number of slightly varying monsters. There is no doubt but that if Baron Munchausen had turned his attention to this branch of natural history, we should have had many more species to record, and some of them probably still more wonderful than any at present described. The very indefiniteness of the descriptions gives them an added charm and affords full scope for romancing. Familiarity is undoubtedly likely to lead to contempt, and probably if the Zoological Society of London are ever able to add a basilisk to their fine collection of reptiles it will be a very disappointing feature.

The Phoenix had what we may be allowed to call a literary existence amongst the Greeks and Romans, but scarcely became a visible creation of the artist until the mythic fowl was accepted by the early Christians as a type of the resurrection of the body--an association of ideas that afterwards rendered its use very common, and Tertullian, amongst other early writers, thus refers to its symbolic use. According to a tale narrated to Herodotus on his visit to Heliopolis, the phoenix visited that place once every 500 years, bringing with it the body of its predecessor, and burning it with myrrh in the sanctuary of the Sun-god; but the version on which the Christian moral and application is based is somewhat different. It is founded on the old belief that the phoenix, when it arrived at the age of 1461 years, committed itself to the flames that burst, at the fanning of its wings, from the funeral pyre that it had itself constructed of costly spices, and that from its ashes a new phoenix arose to life. This belief, which appears to us so absurd, was for hundreds of years as accepted a fact as any other point in natural history. The home of the phoenix was said to be at that delightfully vague address, somewhere in Arabia.

In Hoole's translation of the "Orlando Furioso" of Ariosto we have both the mystic bird and its very indefinite home thus referred to:--

"Arabia, named the Happy, now he gains;
Incense and myrrh perfume her grateful plains;
The Virgin Phoenix there in seek of rest,
Selects from all the world her balmy nest."

We get the same idea again in Fletcher's poem of "The Purple Island":--

"So that love bird in fruitful Arabie,
When now her strength and waning life decays,
Upon some airy rock or mountain high,
In spicy bed (fix'd by near Phoebus' rays),
Herself and all her crooked age consumes.
Straight from her ashes and those rich perfumes,
A new-born phoenix flies, and widow'd place resumes."

These two extracts speak respectively of the virgin and widowed phoenix. The latter idea can scarcely be correct; widowhood implies the loss of a mate, and the phoenix, we are told, is unique and alone in the world. Pliny and Ovid use the masculine pronoun. The former writer's account of him, her, or it will be found in the second chapter of his tenth book, and runs as follows:--"It is reported that never man was knowne to see him feeding; that in Arabie hee is held a sacred bird, dedicated unto the Sunne; that he liveth six hundred years, and when he groweth old and begins to decay, he builds himselfe a nest with the twigs and branches of the cannell or cinnamon and frankincense trees; and when he hath filled it with all sort of sweet aromiticall spices, yieldeth up his life thereupon. He saith, moreover, that of his bones and marrow there breedeth at first, as it were, a little worme, which afterwards proveth to bee a pretie bird. And the first thing that this young phoenix doth is to performe the obsequies of the former phoenix late deceased; to translate and carie away his whole nest into the citie of the Sunne, near Panchæ, and to bestow it there full devoutly upon the altar."

It was one of the venerable jokes of our fathers that a man hearing that a goose would live one hundred years, determined to buy one and see whether this really was so; but this simple plan does not seem to have occurred to any of the ancients, for while Herodotus affirms that the phoenix lives five hundred years, Pliny as plumply and roundly asserts as a matter beyond doubt or contradiction that it is six hundred. Another authority, more precise, though perhaps not more accurate, brings it, we see, to just one thousand four hundred and sixty one, the odd unit giving a delightful appearance of extreme accuracy and precision that seems to challenge one to gainsay it if he dare.

In Ovid the fable is given with the fullest detail. The following lines from Dryden's translation let us into the secret of how the whole thing is managed. "Our special correspondent" could hardly be more precise:--

"All these receive their birth from other things,
But from himself the phoenix only springs;
Self-born, begotten by the parent flame
In which he burn'd, another and the same;
Who not by corn or herbs his life sustains,
But the sweet essence Amomum he drains;
And watches the rich gums Arabia bears,
While yet in tender dews they drop their tears.
He (his five centuries of life fulfill'd)
His nest of oaken boughs begins to build,
On trembling tops of palms:[9] and first he draws
The plan with his broad bill and crooked claws,
Nature's artificers: on this the pile
Is formed and rises round: then with the spoil
Of Cassia, Cynamon, and stems of Nard
(For softness strewed beneath) his funeral bed is reared.
Funeral and bridal both: and all around
The borders with corruptless myrrh are crowned.
On this incumbent, till ethereal flame;
First catches then consumes the costly frame;
Consumes him, too, as on the pile he lies:
He lived on odours, and on odours dies.
An infant phoenix from the former springs,
His father's heir, and from his tender wings
Shakes off his parent dust, his method he pursues,
And the same lease of life on the same terms renews.
When grown to manhood he begins his reign,
And with stiff pinions can his flight sustain;
He lightens of his load the tree that bore
His father's royal sepulchre before,
And his own cradle: this with pious care
Placed on his back, he cuts the buxom air,
Seeks the Sun's city, and his sacred church,
And decently lays down his burden in the porch."

[9] Appendix D.

The phoenix was a good deal employed during the Middle Ages, like the griffin, salamander, and other mythical creatures, as a badge or heraldic device, one of the most interesting illustrations being its use by Jane Seymour. Queen Elizabeth then adopted it, and thereby gave the court poets a grand opportunity of yielding her that highly spiced flattery that was so much to her liking. Sylvester, in his "Corona Dedicatoria," a poem written at a slightly later period, thus introduces the title:--

"As when the Arabian (only) bird doth burne
Her aged body in sweet flames to death,
Out of her cinders a new bird hath breath,
In whom the beauties of the first return;
From spicy ashes of the sacred urne
Of our dead phoenix (deere Elizabeth)
A new true phoenix lively flourisheth."

Shakespeare frequently employs the ideas associated with the mythical bird in his writings, and seems to have thoroughly mastered all that could be said on the subject. Some half-dozen passages may readily be quoted as illustrations of this. In "As you Like It," for example, we find the line, "She could not love me, were man as rare as phoenix;" and the idea of its unique character is again brought out in "Cymbeline," in the passage, "If she be furnished with a mind so rare, she is alone the Arabian bird." The destruction of the bird on its own funeral pile and the resurrection of its successor therefrom is several times referred to. In 1 Henry VI. we read, "But from their ashes shall be reared a phoenix that shall make all France afeared;" and in 3 Henry VI., "My ashes, as the phoenix, may bring forth a bird that will revenge upon you all;" while as a final example we may quote the line in Henry VIII., "But as, when the bird of wonder dies, the maiden phoenix, her ashes new create another heir."

Richardson ascribes an age of one thousand years to the phoenix, and adds a detail that many of the older writers seem to have missed; according to him the bird has fifty orifices in his bill, and when he has built his funeral pyre he treats the world to a melodious ditty through this novel wind instrument, flaps his wings with an energy that soon sets fire to the pile, and so perishes. There seems a hint of this vocal and instrumental performance in "Paradise and the Peri" where the poet Moore refers to

"The enchanted pile of that lonely bird,
Who sings at the last his own death lay,
And in music and perfume dies away."

The Alchemists employed the phoenix as a symbol of their hopes and vocation, and in Paracelsus and other writers many curious details of its association with alchemy may be found.

In the annals of Tacitus we find references to what is termed the phoenix period. According to him the phoenix appeared on five occasions in Egypt--in the reign of Sesostris, B.C. 866; in the reign of Am-Asis B.C. 566; in the reign of Ptolemy Philadelphos, B.C. 266; in the reign of Tiberius, A.D. 34; and in the reign of Constantine, A.D. 334. It will seem from this that the phoenix cycle consisted of periods of about 300 years (another variation from the estimates of Pliny and other writers quoted). The old monastic writers draw ingenious parallels between our Saviour and the phoenix, both sacrificing themselves when their career is over, and both rising again in glory from their temporary resting-place. The fourth of the dates given above is at once the alleged date of one of these appearances of the phoenix and also that of the great sacrifice on Calvary.

Though it seems a tremendous drop from the mythical phoenix of Arabia and its dissolution in fragrant spices to the old Dun Cow in Warwickshire, yet the latter proved herself, if legends may be credited, a foe fully worthy of the prowess of a right knightly arm, and as deserving of our notice as the dragon-slaying of that valiant brother star of chivalry St. George himself. Sir Guy of Warwick takes a high place amongst the famous ancient champions, and Dugdale and other good authorities hold that the stories connected with his name are not wholly apocryphal, though doubtless the monks and other early chroniclers drew the long bow at a venture sometimes. Dugdale, in his "Warwickshire," A.D. 1730, writes--"Of his particular adventures, lest what I say should be suspected for fabulous, I will onely instance that combat betwixt him and the Danish champion, Colebrand, whom some (to magnifie our noble Guy the more) report to have been a giant. The storie whereof, however it may be thought fictitious by some, forasmuch as there be those that make a question whether there was ever really such a man, yet those that are more considerate will neither doubt the one nor the other, inasmuch as it hath been so usual with our ancient Historians, for the encouragement of after ages unto bold attempts, to set forth the exploits of worthy men with the highest encomiums possible; and therefore, should we be for that cause so conceited as to explode it, all history of those times might as well be vilified.[10] And having said thus much to encounter with the prejudicate fancies of some and the wayward opinions of others, I come to the story." We do not ourselves propose to "come to the story," though it is all duly set down in Dugdale; though if the fact of Guy's Danish antagonist being a giant could be fully substantiated, he might perhaps claim a place in our pages. The date of the combat seems to have been the year 929. The exploits of Guy were long held in high favour not only in England but abroad; we find a French version dated 1525, and the British hero is referred to in a Spanish romance which was written almost a hundred years before this. Chaucer evidently knew the story well, for he tells us that

"Men speken of romances of price,
Of Horne Childe and Ippotis,
Of Bevis and Sir Guy;"

while Shakespeare, in "King Henry VIII.," makes one of his characters say, "I am not Samson, nor Sir Guy, nor Colbrand, to mow them down before me."

[10] Appendix E.

In Percie's "Reliques of Antient Poetry" is a long black letter ballad upon the exploits of Guy. It seems unnecessary to quote it _in extenso_, so we pick out a verse here and there, sufficient at least to show how doughty a champion our hero must have been:--

"I slew the gyant Amarant
In battle fiercelye hand to hand:
And doughty Barknard killed I,
A treacherous knight of Pavye land.

Then I to England came againe,
And here with Colbronde fell I fought:
An ugly gyant whom the Danes
Had for their champion hither brought.

I overcame him in the field,
And slewe him soone right valliantlye;
Wherebye this land I did redeeme
From Danish tribute utterlye.

And afterwards I offered upp
The use of weapons solemnlye
At Winchester, whereas I fought,
In sight of manye farr and nye.

But first, near Winsor, I did slaye
A bore of passing might and strength;
Whose like in England never was
For hugenesse both of bredth and length.

Some of his bones in Warwicke yet,
Within the castle there do lye,
One of his shield-bones to this day
Hangs in the citye of Coventrye.

On Dunsmore heath I alsoe slewe
A monstrous wyld and cruell beast,
Called the Dun-Cow of Dunsmore heath,
Which manye people had opprest.

Some of her bones in Warwicke yett
Still for a monument doe lye;
Which unto every lookers viewe
As wondrous strange, they may espye.

A dragon in Northumberland,
I alsoe did in fight destroye,
Which did both man and beast oppresse,
And all the countrye sore annoye.

My body that endured this toyle,
Though now it be consumed to mold;
My statue faire engraven in stone,
In Warwicke still you may behold."

The origin of the story of the mythical dun cow is lost in obscurity, but in the north-west of Shropshire will be found an eminence known locally as the Staple Hill, and on this a ring of stones of the rude Druidic type seen in various parts of England, and most notably at Avebury, in Wiltshire. This circle is some ninety feet or so in diameter, and legend has it that this enclosure was used by a giant as a cow-pen. This cow was no ordinary creature, but yielded her milk miraculously, filling any vessel that was brought to her. She seems to have deeply resented the act of an old crone in bringing her a sieve thus to fill, construed it into a direct insult to her powers (though one scarcely sees on what ground), broke loose from her enclosure, and wandered into Warwickshire, doing enormous mischief, until her career was cut short by the redoubtable Guy. Bones of the dun cow may be seen in many places, a circumstance that is explained by telling us that on the victory of the knight over the cow he sent its bones far and wide over the district it had ravaged, as tokens of victory and a manifest proof that the monster was no longer to be dreaded. At Warwick a rib is exhibited: this is some seven feet long, and at Coventry there is a gigantic blade-bone some eleven feet round. In some cases these probably are the bones of whales, and in others of the wild bonasus or urus; but it must be distinctly understood that they do not give credibility to the legend, but only, in fact, derive an added glory from being associated with it. In the fine old church of Chesterfield is another gigantic rib some seven feet or more in length and a foot in circumference. This rests on the altar-tomb of a now unknown knight, whose marble effigy is represented clothed in a suit of armour, and local tradition has naturally bestowed on the once nameless warrior the proud title of Guy, Earl of Warwick. Another big rib may be seen in the grand church of St. Mary Redcliff at Bristol. Near it used to be suspended a grimy old picture representing a fierce-looking dun cow, and, though the inference was sufficiently obvious, the sexton, in showing people round, used to boldly affirm that this undoubtedly was one of the ribs of the monster slain by Sir Guy. Both rib and picture may now possibly be removed in deference to more modern ideas, but they certainly were there within a very recent period. A third rib may be seen at Caerleon, once a place of much importance, but now an insignificant little town, and chiefly interesting from its association with the history of the great King Arthur. Caerleon boasts a museum containing a very valuable collection of Roman and old British relics, and here too is the rib in question. It has only recently been removed from the church, and it is, by the way, curious to note the association of these bones with churches in almost every case. In the church of Pennant Melangell, in Montgomeryshire, is another gigantic rib said by some of the natives to be that of a giant, while others affirm that it is one of the ribs of St. Monacella, to whom the church is dedicated. As the bone is over four feet long, her stature must have been something considerable altogether. Another big bone is in the church at Mallwyd, in the same county. In Buckland's "Curiosities of Natural History" it is stated that "the ribs of the dun cow at Warwick and the gigantic rib at St. Mary's, Bristol, are the bones of whales;" and in his interesting account of the whale he mentions that he found whale-bones in all parts of the country, one of them being a large blade-bone hanging from a ceiling in Seven Dials. Assuming, as we probably may, that most if not all of these big bones scattered over the country are those of whales, one is still at a loss to know how or why they got so scattered, and more especially why they were placed in the churches. The legend of the dun cow appears to afford a very convenient popular explanation of them, but one feels that there is a mystery that this account does not dissipate.

The Salamander received its full mythical development during mediæval times, though the older writers refer to it occasionally. We see in the writings of such men as Pliny the first steps taken towards the erection of that fabric of fancy and superstition that in the Middle Ages was reared on so slight a foundation. Pliny asserts that the Salamander is made in the fashion of a lizard and marked with spots like stars; that it is never seen during fair weather, but only in heavy rain; and that it is of so cold a nature that if it do but touch fire it will as effectually quench it as if ice were placed thereon. He, moreover, declares its poisonous nature--a nature that, according to later writers, is so noxious that the mere climbing of the tree by the animal poisons all the fruit, so that all who afterwards eat thereof perish without remedy, and that if one enters a river the stream is effectually poisoned, and all who drink therefrom for an indefinite date thereafter must die. Glanvil, a learned English Cordelier monk who lived in the thirteenth century, goes so far as to declare roundly, as though undoubted and historic fact, that 4000 men of the army of Alexander the Great and 2000 of the beasts of burden were lost through drinking at a stream that had been thus infected. It was in the Middle Ages an article of belief that the salamander was bred and nourished in fire, and we have ourselves been gravely told that if the fires at the ironworks in the Midland Counties were not occasionally extinguished, an uncertain but fearful something would be created in them. When the salamander is represented it is always placed in the midst of flames. We see that the book to which we have already frequently referred as that to which our grandfathers went for instruction puts the poisonous nature of the salamander in the following graphic way:--"A man bit by a salamander should have as many physicians to cure him as the salamander has spots."

The salamander is the well-known device of Francis I. of France, A.D. 1515-1547, the monarch who met our own King Henry VIII. at "the field of the cloth of gold." On this occasion the French Guard had the salamander embroidered on their uniform, and we also find the device freely in the sculpture, wall paintings, and stained glass at Fontainebleau, Chambord, Orleans, in fact in all the palaces of Francis I. The motto adopted with it was _Nutrisco et extinguo_, "I nourish and extinguish," a somewhat contradictory saying based on a somewhat contradictory story, for while we are told on the one hand that the salamander is reared and nourished in flame, we are also told that "he is of so cold a complexion that if he doe but touch the fire he will quench it as presently as if yce were put into it." John, king of Aragon, had, almost a hundred years before, adopted the same device, adding to it the motto, _Durabo_, "I will endure." Asbestos, though really, of course, of a mineral nature, was, from its incombustible property, held in the Middle Ages to be the wool of the salamander. We are told that the Roman emperors had napkins of this material, and that if they became at all soiled they were thrown into the fire, the fierce heat quickly destroying all foreign matter. As the testing flames purified the good while they destroyed the bad, so we presume King Francis intended to hold himself up as a terror to evil-doers and a rewarder of the loyal and faithful. The motto is none the less faulty, however; for while we find the king claiming both functions, it will be noticed in the legend that it is the fire which nourishes and the creature which extinguishes.

The writings of Pliny abound in strange ideas; some of these he evidently set down without putting the statements to the test, but in many cases he shattered the old beliefs by bringing them to the crucial test of experiment. The story of the extreme frigidity of the salamander's body at once putting out the fiercest fire was a matter that he thus brought to the testing-point, the result being that the unfortunate victim of science was quickly shrivelled up and consumed. Another old statement, equally capable of being brought to the trial, was that if even the foot of a man came in contact with the liquid exuded from the skin of the salamander all his hair would fall off. Perhaps the reason why one statement was tested and not the other was that in the first case any ill consequences that might arise would affect the reptile, while the second would come home more closely to the experimenter himself.

In Breydenbach's travels we find a salamander included amongst the other animals, a position that it probably owed to its association with legend, for we also find in the same old author that the unicorn is frankly accepted as a beast that may be met with by the traveller. The book is interesting, too, as giving the first figure that had then been made of a giraffe, or, as he terms it, seraffa.[11] The existence of the giraffe was long afterwards denied by naturalists, and his seraffa was for a very lengthened period held to be but a myth. Breydenbach was a canon of the cathedral of Mentz, and seems to have been of a somewhat adventurous spirit, for despite all the difficulties of the undertaking--difficulties that in these days of steam-boats, railways, and through bookings we cannot at all realise--we find him visiting Sinai and the Holy Land. His travels were first printed as a folio volume at Mentz in 1486. This was a Latin edition; but two years later we find one in German, and in less than ten years six different editions were called for in Germany, besides others printed in Holland and elsewhere for the benefit of those to whom both Latin and German were unknown tongues. The book is full of quaint woodcuts, and is altogether a treasure-house of history, natural and unnatural.

[11] Representations of the giraffe are to be found in the ancient
monuments of Egypt, the animal being part of the annual tribute
brought by the vassal Ethiopians to the king of Egypt. These
representations were, we need scarcely say, unknown to the
naturalists of the Middle Ages.

The salamander is commonly to be met with in many parts of Europe, but the real and the ideal creature are two very different things--as different as the deer-eyed cows quietly ruminating in their verdant pasturage are to the dun cow that taxed all the heroism of Sir Guy of Warwick, or as old grey Dobbin to Pegasus. The real creature is very similar in form to the newts that are so commonly to be found in ponds, but the salamander of Francis I. is more like a wingless dragon, while some of the mediæval heralds made it a quadruped something like a dog. Such a creature, breathing forth flames, may be seen in the crest of Earl Douglas A.D. 1483.

Shakespearian students will recall how Falstaff rails at Bardolph, calling him the "Knight of the Burning Lamp," "admiral, bearing lantern in the poop," "ball of wildfire," and so forth, all compliments called forth from the effects of strong liquor on the rubicund countenance of Bardolph. He winds up by saying, "Thou hast saved me a thousand marks in links and torches, walking with thee in the night betwixt tavern and tavern, but the sack that thou hast drunk me would have bought me lights as good cheap, at the dearest chandler's in Europe. I have maintained that salamander of yours with fire any time this two and thirty years."

The salamander, like the toad, the slow-worm, or the water newt, is still held to be decidedly uncanny. In our younger days our seeking after such small objects of natural history was always held by wondering rustics as a foolish tempting of Providence, and we have repeatedly been told the most moving stories of the poisonous nature of all such creatures, and especially how newts developed the most alarming properties if interfered with, biting out pieces of the captor's flesh, and then spitting fire into the wound. Prompt amputation or death was the dire alternative offered, though in our own case matters never reached so dread a climax. "Them pisonous effets" were many a time in those by-gone days held in the hand that now guides our pen. The belief in such fatal powers must have a very disquieting influence on the rustics who hold it. When farm animals, as calves or colts, die mysteriously, some one is sure to start the theory that they have been bitten by an effet while drinking; and in view of such a belief even the fetching of a pail of water from the pond that too often supplies the drinking water in country places must appear attended with no little risk. The following graphic and amusing letter from one of the correspondents of the _Field_ newspaper shows how the salamander is still regarded in rural France:--

"Returning homeward a few evenings ago from a country walk in the environs of D----, I discovered in my path a strange-looking reptile, which, after regarding me steadfastly for a few moments, walked slowly to the side of the road, and commenced very deliberately clambering up the wall. Never having seen a similar animal, I was rather doubtful as to its properties; but, reassured by its tranquil demeanour, I put my pocket-handkerchief over it, and it suffered itself to be taken up without resistance, and was thus carried to my domicile. On arriving _chez moi_, I opened the basket to show my captive to the servants, when, to my surprise and consternation, they set up such a screaming and hullabaloo that I thought they would have gone into fits.

"'_Oh! la, la, la, la, la!--Oh! la, la, la, la, la!_' and then a succession of screams in altissimo, which woke up the children and brought out the neighbours to see what could be the matter.

"'_Oh, monsieur a rapporté un sourd!_'

"'_Un sourd!_' cried one.

"'UN SOURD!' echoed another.

"'UN S-O-U-R-D!!!' cried they all in chorus; and then followed a succession of shrieks.

"When they calmed down into a mild sample of hysterics, they began to explain that I had brought home the most venomous animal in creation.

"'_Oh! le vilaín bête!_' cried Phyllis.

"'_Oh! le méchant!_' chimed in Abigail; 'he kills everybody that comes near him; I have known fifty people die of his bite, and no remedy in the world can save them. As soon as they are bitten they _gonflent_, _gonflent_, and keep on swelling till they burst, and are dead in a quarter of an hour.'

"Here I transferred my curiosity from the basket to a glass jar, and put a saucer on the top to keep it safe.

"'_O Monsieur!_ don't leave him so; if he puts himself in a rage, nothing can hold him. He has got such force that he can jump up to the ceiling; and wherever he fastens himself he sticks like death.'

"'Ah! it's all true,' cried my landlady, joining the circle of gapers; '_Oh! la la! Ça me fait peur; ça me fait tr-r-r-r-embler!_'

"'Once I saw a man in a haycart try to kill one, and the _bête_ jumped right off the ground at a bound and fastened itself on the man's face, when he stood on the haycart, and nothing could detach it till the man fell dead.'

"'_Ah! c'est bien vrai_,' cried Abigail; 'they ought to have fetched a mirror and held it up to the _bête_, and then it would have left the man and jumped at its _image_.'

"The end of all this commotion was that, while I went to inquire of a scientific friend whether there was any truth in these tissue of _bêtises_, the whole household was in an uproar, _tout en émoi_, and they sent for a _commissionnaire_, and an ostler with a spade and mattock, and threw out my poor _bête_ into the road and foully murdered it, chopping it into a dozen pieces by the light of a stable lantern; and then they declared that they could sleep in peace!--_les miserables!_

"But there were sundry misgivings as to my fate, and, as with the Apostle, 'they looked when I should have swollen or fallen down dead suddenly;' and next morning the maids came stealthily and peeped into my room to see whether I was alive or dead, and were not a little surprised that I was not even _gonflé_, or any the worse for my _rencontre_ with a _sourd_.

"And so it turned out that my poor little _bête_ that had caused such a disturbance was nothing more nor less than a salamander--a poor, inoffensive, harmless reptile, declared on competent authority to be noways venomous, but whose unfortunate appearance and somewhat Satanic livery have exposed it to obloquy and persecution."

As the French word _sourd_ primarily means one who is deaf, we get a curious parallelism of ideas between the salamander deaf to all sense of pity, and insensible to all but its own fell purpose, and the old idea of the deafness of the poisonous adder. "Deaf as an adder" is a common country saying, and the passage in the Psalms of David where we read that "the deaf adder stoppeth her ears, and will not heed the voice of the charmer, charm he never so wisely," naturally rises to one's mind. The deafness, it will be noted, is no mere lack of the hearing faculty, but a wilful turning away from gentle influence. It was an old belief that when the asp heard the voice of the serpent-charmer it stopped its ears by burying one of them in the sand and coiling its folds over the other.

In turning over the quaint pages of the "Bestiary" of De Thaun we find allusion made to a creature that is evidently the salamander again, though we cannot quite make out the reference to King Solomon. Like all such books written in the Middle Ages, everything is introduced to point some moral or religious truth, though it may at first seem difficult for our readers to realise what possible connection there can be between the dreaded "sourd" and any spiritual instruction. The reference is as follows:--"Ylio is a little beast made like a lizard. Of it says Solomon that in a king's house it ought to be and to frequent, to give an example. It is of such nature that if it come by chance where there shall be burning fire it will immediately extinguish it. The beast is so cold and of such a quality that fire will not be able to burn where it shall enter, nor will trouble happen in the place where it shall be. A beast of such quality signifies such men as was Ananias, as was Azarias, and as was Misael, who served God fairly: these three issued from the fire praising God. He who has faith only will never have hurt from fire."[12]

[12] Appendix F.

Like the salamander, the Griffin was to our forefathers no mere creature of the imagination. Ctesias describes them in all sober earnestness as "birds with four feet, of the size of a wolf, and having the legs and claws of a lion. Their feathers are red on the breast and black on the rest of the body." Glanvil says of them, "The claws of a griffin are so large and ample that he can seize an armed man as easily by the body as a hawk a little bird. In like manner he can carry off a horse or an ox, or any other beast in his flight." The creature is, if anything, still more terrible when met with in the description given by Sir John Mandeville:--"Thai have the body upward as an egle, and benethe as a lyoun, but a griffonne hath the body more gret, and is more strong than eight lyouns, and more grete and strongere than an hundred egles such as we have among us. For he hath his talouns so large and so longe and grete upon his fete as though thei weren homes of grete oxen, so that men maken cuppes of them to drinken of." Oriental writers, who appear to have an especial delight in the marvellous, go even beyond this, and the creature becomes with them the roc, the terrible creature we read of, for example, in the wonderful adventures of "Sindbad the Sailor." Milton introduces the creature very finely in his noble poem, as for instance:--

"As when a gryphon through the wilderness
With wingèd course o'er hill and moory dale
Pursues the Arimaspian, who by stealth
Has from his watchful custody purloin'd
The guarded gold: so eagerly the fiend
O'er bog, or steep, through strait, rough, dense, or rare,
With head, hands, wings, or feet, pursues his way,
And swims, or sinks, or wades, or creeps, or flies."

The Arimaspians were a one-eyed people of Scythia, who braided their hair with gold and drew their supplies of the precious metal as best they could from the stores guarded by the griffins. The griffin has long been employed as a symbol of watchfulness, courage, and perseverance, on account of this fabled treasure-guarding. But Browne, who, as we have seen, took great delight in vivisecting the vulgar errors of his day and generation, discourses as follows on the matter--"Aristeus affirmed that neer the Arimaspi, or one-eyed nation, griffins defended the mines of gold, but this, as Herodotus delivereth, he wrote from hearsay, and Michovius, who hath expressly written of those parts, plainly affirmeth that there is neither gold nor griffins in that country, nor any such Animall extant, for so doth he conclude, 'Ego vero contra veteres authores, gryphes nec in illa septentrionis nec in alius orbis partibus inveniri affirmarim.'"

Like the dragon, the griffin seems to have been a good sort of fellow to deal with if you only took him the right way, and though a terrible monster to encounter if one had any burglarious intentions, he seems to have served his masters with a singleness of purpose and bull-dog tenacity that were very much to his credit. In Ariosto's "Orlando Furioso" we read of a griffin-steed that flew through the air with its master on its back, and landed him wheresoever he listed.

The griffin was fabled to be the offspring of the union of the lion and the eagle; it has the leonine body and stout claws of one parent, the hooked beak, keen eye, and wings of the other. The form is very often met with in heraldry, past and present, either as a crest or as a supporter to the arms. A very familiar example of their employment in this latter service will be seen in the arms of the city of London. It is also a very common form in Roman and Renaissance painting and sculpture. Gryphius, a celebrated French printer, adopted the creature as his device, and on his decease the following epitaph was written:--

"La grande griffe
Qui tout griffe
A griffé le corps de Gryphe."

Though ordinarily written as griffin or griffon, the alternative rendering gryphon is somewhat more correct, as the word is derived from the Greek _grypos_, or hook-nosed, in evident allusion to its eagle-beak. Shakespeare frequently refers to the creature, but the only instance we need here refer to is where a considerable difference in the spelling of the word might lead some of our readers astray. The passage to which we allude will be found in "The Rape of Lucrece," where she

"Like a white hind under the grype's sharp claws
Pleads in a wilderness, where are no laws."

In the forests of Bohemia, we are told by Burton in his "Miracles of Art and Nature," there is a little beast called the Lomie, "which hath hanging under its neck a bladder always full of scalding water, with which, when she is hunted, she so tortureth the dogs that she thereby easily makes her escape." Elsewhere he tells of four-footed serpents, strange creatures that, unlike many of his wonders--only to be found in Peru or India, or such like distant lands--are to be seen as near home as Poland. The people of Poland, we are told, are "boysterous, rude, and barbarous; nourishing amongst them a kind of four-footed serpent, above three handfuls in length, which they worship as their household gods, tending them with fear and reverence when they call them out to their repasts; and if any mischance do happen to any of their family it is imputed presently to some want of due observations of these ugly creatures."

Vegetable Lambs were another of the wonders of our forefathers. The credulous Sir John Mandeville says that in Cathay a gourd-like fruit is found that when ripe contains "as though it were a lytylle lomb withouten wolle." In the twenty-sixth chapter of his book the lamb-tree is duly figured, and its peculiar fruit development graphically delineated. In many old books of natural history we find representations of some such creature under the names of the Scythian or Tartarian lamb. According to some old writers it was said to be purely an animal, and although rooted to the ground, was held to have so deadly an effect on vegetation in its neighbourhood that it effectually prevented the growth of all herbage within the scope of its baleful influence. So singular a creature naturally provoked attention and curiosity, and in the earlier days of the Royal Society the matter was considered quite worthy of their notice. Naturally, also, the supply endeavoured to keep pace with the demand, and as the belief in mermaids led to their fabrication and exhibition, so also the myth of the Scythian lamb took visible shape. One of these impositions was formerly preserved in the British Museum, not from any belief in it, of course, but as an illustration of the old belief.[13]

[13] Appendix G.

The reference to the mermaid reminds us that the sea no less than the land bore in ancient and mediæval days its full share of wonders. Of the mermaids we shall have occasion to say more presently, as we propose to class together all those forms that are more or less human, and to deal with them separately; but the sculptures of classic antiquity or the fancies of the mediæval herald afford us illustrations of the sea-horse, the sea-lion, and many other quaint imaginings. On an antique seal we once even saw a sea-elephant, a creature having the fore-legs, tusks, trunk, and great flapping ears of the African elephant, yet terminating in the body of a fish, and duly furnished with piscine tail and fins. The combination was of the most outrageous character, and would seem to indicate the limit possible to absurdity in this direction. When the ancient writers would desire to people the vast unknown of air or sea their thoughts naturally turned to those creatures of the land with which they were more familiar; hence the denizens of the air or ocean are not really creations at all, but adaptations, wings or fins being added to horses, lions, and the like according to the new element in which they were to figure. Of these, the sea-horses that draw the chariot of Neptune through the waves and the winged-horse Pegasus are examples that at once occur to one's mind.