Chapter M: S. Reinach’s opinion that in Totemism is to be found the secret of (5)

Several _savants_ have thought that the dog is scorned by Moslems because he was revered by Mazdeans; that he suffered indignity at the hands of the new believers as a protest against the excess of honour he had received from the old. This theory, though ingenious, does not seem to be borne out by facts. The comparisons of the qualities of the good dervish and the dog, which is a sort of vade mecum of dervishes everywhere, was almost certainly suggested by the “Eight Characteristics” of the dog in the Avesta. It is singular that the dog gets far better treatment in the Moslem comparisons than in the Mazdean. “The dog is always hungry: so is it with the faithful; he sleeps but little by night: so is it with those plunged in divine Love; if he die, he leaves no heritage: so is it with ascetics; he forsakes not his master even if driven away: so is it with adepts; he is content with few temporal goods: so is it with the pursuers of temperance; if he is expelled from one place he seeks another: so is it with the humble; if he is chastised and dismissed and then called back he obeys: so is it with the modest; if he sees food he remains standing afar: so is it with those who are consecrated to poverty; if he go on a journey he carries no refreshment for the way: so is it with those who have renounced the world.” Some of these “Characteristics” are flung back in irony at the dervishes by those who bitterly deride them, as the friars in the ages of Faith were derided in Europe—without its making the least difference to their popularity—but the homily itself is quite serious and meant for edification. Hasan Basri, who died in 728 A.D., was the author or adapter. Its wide diffusion is due to the accuracy with which it depicts the wandering mystic, whether he be called a dervish or a Fakeer, or, in the Western translation of Fakeer, a “Poverello” of St. Francis.

A certain rich man apologised to a Dervish because his servants, without his knowledge, had often driven him away: the holy man showed, he said, great patience and humility in coming back after such ill-treatment. The dervish replied that it was no merit but only one of the “traits of the dog,” which returns however often it is driven off. The worst enemies to the dervish have ever been the Ulemas, for whom he is a kind of dangerous lunatic strongly tinged with heresy. Among his unconventional ideas was sure to penetrate, more or less, the neoplatonist or Sufic view of animals. Wherever transcendental meditations on the union of the created with the Creator begin to prevail, men’s minds take the direction of admitting a more intimate relation of all living things with God. We might be sure that the dervishes would follow this psychological law even if we could not prove it. To prove it, however, we need go no further than the great prayer, one of the noblest of human prayers, which is used by many of the Dervish orders. There we read: “Thy science is everlasting and knows even the numbers of the breaths of Thy creatures: Thou seest and hearest the movements of all Thy creatures; thou hearest even the footsteps of the ant when in the dark night she walks on black stones; even the birds of the air praise Thee in their nests; the wild beasts of the desert adore Thee; the most secret as well as the most exposed thoughts of Thy servants Thou knowest....”

In the same way, it was natural that the Dervishes should be supposed to have the power attributed to all holy (or harmless) men over the kings of the desert and forest. It could not be otherwise. Bishop Heber heard of two Indian Yogis who lived in different parts of a jungle infested by tigers in perfect safety; indeed, it was reported that one of these ascetics had a nightly visit from a tiger, who licked his hands and was fondled by him. This is a Hindu jungle story, but it would be just as credible if it were told of a Dervish. Of the credibility of the first part of it, and probably of the last also, there is not a single wandering ascetic of any sort who would entertain a doubt. Some years ago a Moslem recluse deliberately put his arm into the cage of Moti, the tiger in the Lahore Zoological Gardens. The tiger lacerated the arm, and the poor man died in the hospital after some days’ suffering, during which he showed perfect serenity. He had made a mistake; the tiger, brought up as a cub by British officers and deprived of his liberty, was not endowed with the power of discrimination possessed by a king of the wild. This, I hope, the Fakeer reflected, but it is more likely that he deemed that cruel clutch a sign of his own unworthiness and accepted death meekly, hoping not for reward but for pardon.

One would like to know more of a book which Mr. Charles M. Doughty found a certain reputed saint “poring and half weeping over,” the argument of which was “God’s creatures the beasts,” while its purpose was to show that every beast yields life-worship unto God. Even if this Damascus saint was not very saintly (as the author of “Arabia Deserta” hints), yet it is interesting to note that this subject should have appeared to a would-be new Messiah the most important he could choose for his Gospel.

A Persian poet, Azz’ Eddin Elmocadessi, advises man to learn from the birds,

“Virtues that may gild thy name;
And their faults if thou wouldst scan,
Know thy failings are the same.”

The recognition in animals of most human qualities in a distinct though it may be a limited form underlies all Eastern animal-lore and gives it a force and a reality even when it deals with extravagant fancies. There is a broad difference between the power of feeling _for_ animals and the power of feeling _with_ them. The same difference moulds the sentiments of man to man: nine men in ten can feel for their fellow-humans, but scarcely one man in ten can feel with them. They even know it, and they say ungrammatically, “I feel the greatest sympathy _for_ so and so.” An instance of true _mitempfindung_, of insight into the very soul of a creature, exists in an Arabian poem by Lebid, who was one of the most interesting figures of the period in which the destinies of the Arab race were cast. He was the glory of the Arabs, not only on account of his faultless verse, but also because of his noble character. It is told of him that whenever an east wind blew, he provided a feast for the poor. Himself a pre-Islamic theist, he hailed the Prophet as the inspired enunciator of the creed he had held imperfectly and in private. All his poems were composed in the “Ignorance”; on being asked for a poem after his conversion at ninety years of age, he copied out a chapter of the Koran, and said, “God has given me this in exchange for poesy.” I do not think this meant that he despised the poet’s art, but that now, when he could no longer exercise it, he had what was still more precious.

The passage in question is one of several which show Lebid’s surprisingly close acquaintance with the ways and thoughts of wild animals. It is one of those elaborate similes which were the pride of Arabian poets, who often preferred to take comparisons already in use than to invent new ones. Wherever literature became a living entertainment, something of this kind happened: witness the borrowings from the Classics by the poets of the Renaissance; people liked to recognise familiar ideas in a new dress. Lebid’s similes have been turned and re-turned by other poets, but none approached the art and truth he infused into them. I am indebted to Sir Charles Lyall for the following version, which is not included in his volume of splendid translations of early Arabian poetry. The subject of the passage is the grief of a wild cow that has lost her calf:—

“Flat-nosed is she—she has lost her calf and ceases not to roam
About the marge of the sand meadows and cry
For her youngling, just weaned, white, whose limbs have been torn
By the ash-grey hunting wolves who lack not for food.
They came upon it while she knew not, and dealt her a deadly woe:
—Verily, Death, when it shoots, misses not the mark!
The night came upon her, as the dripping rain of the steady shower
Poured on and its continuous flow soaked the leafage through and
through.
She took refuge in the hollow trunk of a tree with lofty branches
standing apart
On the skirts of the sandhills where the fine sand sloped her way.
The steady rain poured down, and the flood reached the ridge of her
back,
In a night when thick darkness hid away all the stars;
And she shone in the face of the mirk with a white, glimmering light
Like a pearl born in a sea-shell, that has dropped from its string.
Until, when the darkness was folded away and morning dawned,
She stood, her legs slipping in the muddy earth.
She wandered distracted about all the pools of So’âid
For seven nights twinned with seven whole long days,
Until she lost all hope, and her udders shrunk—
The udders that had not failed in all the days of the suckling and
weaning,
Then she heard the sound of men and it filled her heart with fear,
Of men from a hidden place; and men, she knew, were her bane.
She rushed blindly along, now thinking the chase before,
And now behind her: each was a place of dread.
Until, when the archers lost hope, they let loose on her
Trained hounds with hanging ears, each with a stiff leather collar
on its neck;
They beset her and she turned to meet them with her horns
Like to spears of Semhar in their sharpness and their length.
To thrust them away: for she knew well, if she drove them not off,
That the fated day of her death among the fates of beasts had come;
And among them, Kesâb was thrust through and slain and rolled in blood
lay there,
And Sukhâm was left in the place where he made his onset.”

There the description breaks off. In spite of the haunting cry of the cow of Lucretius, in spite of the immortal tears of Shakespeare’s “poor sequester’d stag”—no vision of a desperate animal in all literature seems to me so charged with every element of pathos and dramatic intensity as this cow of Lebid. How fine is the altogether unforeseen close, which leaves us wondering, breathless: Will she escape? Will no revengeful arrow reach her? Will the archers do as Om Piet did to the wildebeest?—

“A wildebeest cow and calf were pursued by Om Piet with three
hunting-dogs. The Boer hunter tells the tale: ‘The old cow laid
the first dog low; the calf is now tired. The second dog comes
up to seize it; the cow strikes him down. Now the third dog
tries to bite the little one, who can run no more, but the cow
treats him so that there’s nothing to be done but to shoot him.
Then Om Piet stands face to face with the wildebeest, who snorts
but does not fly. Now though I come to shoot a wildebeest yet
can I not kill a beast that has so bravely fought and will not
run away; so Om Piet takes off his hat, and says, “Good-day to
you, old wildebeest. You are a good and strong old wildebeest.”
And we dine off springbuck that night at the farm.’”[7]

Footnote 7:

“A Breath from the Veldt,” by Guille Millais, 2nd edition, 1899.

I ought to explain that, like the “cow” of Om Piet, Lebid’s “cow” is an antelope—the _Antilope defassa_—of which a good specimen may be seen in the Natural History Museum at South Kensington. The old Boer’s hunting yarn brings an unexpected confirmation of the Arabian poet’s testimony to its courage and maternal love.

Since the chase began, down to the blind brutality of the battue (which wiped it out) chivalry has been a trait of the genuine sportsman. In the golden legend of hunter’s generosity should be inscribed for ever the tale—the true tale as I believe it to be—of the Moslem prince Sebectighin, who rose from slave-birth to the greatest of Persian thrones—and more honour to him, notwithstanding the slur which Firdusi, stung by Mahmoud’s want of appreciation, cast, in a foolish moment, on his father’s origin. Sebectighin was a horseman in the service of the Sultan and as a preparation for greater things he found a vent for his pent-up energies in the chase. One day he remarked a deer with her little fawn peacefully grazing in a glade of the forest. He galloped to the spot, and in less than a second he had seized the fawn, which, after binding its legs, he placed across his saddle-bows. Thus he started to go home, but looking back, he saw the mother following, with every mark of grief. Sebectighin’s heart was touched; he loosened the fawn and restored it to its dam. And in the night he had a vision in his dreams of One who said to him, “The kindness and compassion which thou hast this day shown to a distressed animal has been approved of in the presence of God; therefore in the records of Providence the kingdom of Ghusni is marked as a reward against thy name. Let not greatness destroy thy virtue, but continue thy benevolence to man.”

Among the Afghan ballads collected by James Darmesteter, of which it has been aptly said that they give an admirable idea of Homer in a state of becoming, there is one composed in a gentler mood than the songs of war and carnage which has a gazelle for heroine and the Prophet as _Deus ex machina_. As there is no translation of it into English I have attempted the following version:—

“The Son of Abu Jail he set a snare for a gazelle,
Without a thought along she sped, and in the snare she fell.

‘O woe is me!’ she weeping cried, ‘that I to look forgot!
Fain would I live for my dear babes, but hope, alas! is not.’

Then to the Merciful she made this short and fervent prayer:
‘I left two little fawns at home; Lord, keep them in Thy care!’

The son of Abu Jail he came, in haste and glee he ran,
‘Ah, now I’ve got you in my net, and who to save you can?’

He grasped her by her tender throat, his fearsome sword did draw,
When lo! the Lord held back his hand! The Prophet’s self he saw!

‘The world was saved for love of thee, save for thy pity’s sake!’
So breathed the trembling doe, and then the holy Prophet spake:

‘Abu, my friend, this doe let go, and hark to my appeal;
She has two tender fawns at home who pangs of hunger feel,

‘Let her go back one hour to them, no longer will she stay,
And when she comes, O heartless man, then mayest thou have thy way!

But if, by chance, she should not come, then by my faith will I
Be unto thee a bonded slave until the day I die.’

Then Abu the gazelle let go; to her dear young she went,
‘Quick, children, take my breast,’ she said, ‘my life is almost spent;

‘The Master of the Universe for me a pledge I gave,
But I must swift return and then no man my life can save.’

Then said the little ones to her, ‘Mother, we dare not eat;
Go swiftly back, redeem the pledge, fast as can fly thy feet.’

One hour had scarce run fully out when, panting, she was there;
Now, Abu, son of Abu, thou mayest take her life or spare!

Said Abu, ‘In the Prophet’s name, depart, I set you free ...
But thou, our Helper, at God’s throne, do thou remember me!’

So have I told, as long ago my father used to tell,
How Pagan Abu Moslem turned and saved his soul from hell.”

This brief sketch will suffice to show that if the Moslem is not humane to animals it is his own fault, as I think it is his own fault if he is not humane to man. Teaching humanity to animals must always imply the teaching of humanity to men. This was perfectly understood well by all these Oriental tellers of beast-stories: they would all have endorsed the saying of one of my Lombard peasant-women (dear, good soul!), “Chi non è buono per le bestie, non è buono per i Cristiani”; _Cristiano_ meaning, in Italian popular speech, a human being. Under the most varied forms, in fiction which while the world lasts, can never lose its freshness, the law of kindness is brought home. Perhaps the most beautiful of all humane legends is one preserved in a poem by Abu Mohammed ben Yusuf, Sheikh Nizan-eddin, known to Europeans as Nizami. This Persian poet, who died sixty-three years before Dante was born, may have taken the legend from some collection of Christ-lore, some uncanonical book impossible now to trace; it is unlikely that he invented it. As Jesus walks with His disciples through the market-place at evening, He comes upon a crowd which is giving vent to every expression of abhorrence at the sight of a poor dead dog lying in the gutter. When they have all had their say, and have pointed in disgust to his blear eyes, foul ears, bare ribs, torn hide, “which will not even yield a decent shoe-string,” Jesus says, “How beautifully white his teeth are!” No story of the Saviour outside the Gospels is so worthy to have been in them.

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XII

THE FRIEND OF THE CREATURE

IN Hindu mythology Gunádhya attracts a whole forestful of beasts by reciting his poems to them. The power of Apollo and of Orpheus in taming beasts depended on a far less surprising _modus operandi_; like the greater part of myths, this one was not spun from the thin air of imagination. Music has a real influence on animals; in spite of theories to the contrary, it is probable that the sweet flute-playing of the snake-charmer—his “sweet charming” in Biblical phrase—is no mere piece of theatrical business, but a veritable aid in obtaining the desired results. I myself could once attract fieldmice by playing on the violin, and only lately, on the road near our house at Salò, I noticed that a goat manifested signs of wishing to stop before a grind-organ; its master pulled the string by which it was led, but it tugged at it so persistently that, at last, he stopped, and the goat, turning round its head, listened with evident attention. Independently of the pleasure music may give to animals, it excites their curiosity, a faculty which is extremely alive in them, as may be seen by the way in which small birds are attracted by the pretty antics of the little Italian owl; they cannot resist going near to have a better view, and so they rush to their doom upon the limed sticks.

Legends have an inner and an outer meaning; the allegory of Apollo, Lord of Harmony, would have been incomplete had it lacked the beautiful incident of a Nature Peace—partial indeed, but still a fairer triumph to the god than his Olympian honours. For nine years he watched the sheep of Admetus, as Euripides described:—

“Pythean Apollo, master of the lyre,
Who deigned to be a herdsman and among
Thy flocks on hills his hymns celestial sung;
And his delightful melodies to hear
Would spotted lynx and lions fierce draw near;
They came from Othry’s immemorial shade,
By charm of music tame and harmless made;
And the swift, dappled fawns would there resort,
From the tall pine-woods and about him sport.”

When Apollo gave Orpheus his lyre, he gave him his gift “to soothe the savage breast.” In the splendid Pompeian fresco showing a Nature Peace, the bay-crowned, central figure is said to be Orpheus, though its god-like proportions suggest the divinity himself. At any rate, nothing can be finer as the conception of an inspired musician: the whole body _sings_, not only the mouth. A lion and a tiger sit on either side; below, a stag and a wild boar listen attentively, and a little hare capers near the stream. In the upper section there are other wild beasts sporting round an elephant, while oxen play with a tiger; an anticipation of the ox and tiger in Rubens’ “Garden of Eden.”

The power of Orpheus to subdue wild beasts was the reason why the early Christians took him as a type of Christ. Of all the prophecies which were believed to refer to the Messiah none so captivated the popular mind as those which could be interpreted as referring to His recognition by animals. The four Gospels which became the canon of the Church threw no light on the subject, but the gap was filled up by the uncanonical books; one might think that they were written principally for the purpose of dwelling on this theme, so frequently do they return to it. In the first place, they bring upon the scene those dear objects of our childhood’s affection, the ass and the ox of the stable of Bethlehem. Surely many of us cherish the impression that ass and ox rest on most orthodox testimony: an idea which is certainly general in Catholic countries, though, the other day, I heard of a French priest who was heartless enough to declare that they were purely imaginary. “Alas,” as Voltaire said, “people run after truth!” As a matter of fact, it appears evident that the ass and the ox were introduced to fulfil the prophecy of Isaiah: “The ox knoweth his owner and the ass his master’s manger, but Israel knoweth Me not.” But there arose what was thought a difficulty: the apocryphal Gospels, in harmony with the earliest traditions, place the birth of Christ, not in a stable, but in the grotto which is still shown to travellers. To reconcile this with the legend of the ass and ox and also with the narrative of St. Luke, it was supposed that the Holy Family moved from the grotto to a stable a few days after the Child was born. This is a curious case of finding a difficulty where there was none, for it is very likely that the caves near the great Khan of Bethlehem were used as stables. In every primitive country shepherds shelter themselves and their flocks in holes in rocks; I remember the “uncanny” effect of a light flickering in the depths of a Phœnician tomb near Cagliari; it was almost disappointing to hear that it was only a shepherd’s fire.

Thomas, “the Israelite philosopher,” as he called himself, author of the Pseudo-Thomas which is said to date from the second century, appears to have been a Jewish convert belonging to one of the innumerable “heretical” sects of the earliest times. It may be guessed, therefore, that the Pseudo-Thomas was first written in Syriac, though the text we possess is in Greek. It is considered the model on which all the other Gospels of the Infancy were founded, but the Arabic variant contains so much divergent matter as to make it probable that the writer drew on some other early source which has not been preserved. Mohammed was acquainted with this Arabian Gospel, and Mohammedans did not cease to venerate the sycamore-tree at Matarea under which the Arabian evangelist states that the Virgin and Child rested, till it died about a year ago. The Pseudo-Thomas contains some vindictive stories, which were modified or omitted in the other versions: probably they are all to be traced to Elisha and his she-bears: a theory which I offer to those who cannot imagine how they arose. A curious feature in these writings is the scarcity of anything actually original; the most original story to be found in them is that of the clay sparrows, which captivated the East and penetrated into the folk-lore even of remote Iceland. Notwithstanding the fulminations of Councils, the apocryphal Gospels were never suppressed; they enjoyed an enormous popularity during the Middle Ages, and many details derived solely from these condemned books crept into the _Legenda Aurea_ and other strictly orthodox works.

The “Little Child” of Isaiah’s prophecy was the cause of troops of wild beasts being convoked to attend the Infant Christ. Lions acted as guides for the flight into Egypt, and it is mentioned that not only did they respect the Holy Family, but also the asses and oxen which carried their baggage. Besides, the lions, leopards, and other creatures “wagged their tails with great reverence” (though all these animals are not of the dog species, but of the cat, in which wagging the tail signifies the reverse of content).

This is the subject of an old English ballad:—

“And when they came to Egypt’s land,
Amongst those fierce wild beasts,
Mary, she being weary,
Must needs sit down to rest.
‘Come, sit thee down,’ said Jesus,
‘Come, sit thee down by Me,
And thou shall see how these wild beasts
Do come and worship Me.’”

First to come was the “lovely lion,” king of all wild beasts, and for our instruction the moral is added: “We’ll choose our virtuous princes of birth and high degree.” Sad rhymes they are, nor, it will be said, is the sense much better; yet, hundreds of years ago in English villages, where, perhaps, only one man knew how to read, this doggerel served the end of the highest poetry: it transported the mind into an ideal region; it threw into the English landscape deserts, lions, a Heavenly Child; it stirred the heart with the romance of the unknown; it whispered to the soul—

“The Now is an atom of sand,
And the Near is a perishing clod;
But Afar is a Faëry Land,
And Beyond is the bosom of God.”

The pseudo-gospel of Matthew relates an incident which refers to a later period in the Holy Childhood. According to this narrative, when Jesus was eight years old He went into the den of a lioness which frightened travellers on the road by the Jordan. The little cubs played round His feet, while the older lions bowed their heads and fawned on Him. The Jews, who saw it from a distance, said that Jesus or His parents must have committed mortal sin for Him to go into the lion’s den. But coming forth, He told them that these lions were better behaved than they; and then He led the wild beasts across the Jordan and commanded them to go their way, hurting no one, neither should any one hurt them till they had returned to their own country. So they bade Him farewell with gentle roars and gestures of respect.

These stories are innocent, and they are even pretty, for all stories of great, strong animals and little children are pretty. But they fail to reveal the slightest apprehension of the deeper significance of a peace between all creatures. Turn from them to the wonderful lines of William Blake:—

“And there the lion’s ruddy eyes
Shall flow with tears of gold,
And pitying the tender cries
And walking round the fold
Saying: Wrath by His meekness,
And by His health sickness,
Are driven away
From our mortal day.

And now beside thee, bleating lamb,
I can lie down and sleep,
Or think on Him who bore thy name,
Graze after thee, and weep;
For, washed in life’s river,
My bright mane for ever
Shall shine like the gold
As I guard o’er the fold.”

No one but Blake would have written this, and few things that he wrote are so characteristic of his genius. The eye of the painter seizes what the mind of the mystic conceives, and the poet surcharges with emotion words which, like the Vedic hymns, infuse thought rather than express it.

A single passage in the New Testament connects Christ with wild animals; in St. Mark’s Gospel we are told that after His baptism in the Jordan Jesus was driven by the Spirit into the wilderness, where “He was with the wild beasts, and the angels ministered unto Him.” In the East the idea of the anchorite who leaves the haunts of men for the haunts of beasts was already fabulously old. In the Western world of the Roman Empire it was a new idea, and perhaps on that account, while it excited the horror of those who were faithful to the former order of things, it awoke an extraordinary enthusiasm among the more ardent votaries of the new faith. It led to the discovery of the inebriation of solitude, the powerful stimulus of a life with wild nature. Many tired brain-workers have recourse to mountain ascents as a restorative, but these can rarely be performed alone, and high mountains with their immense horizons tend to overwhelm rather than to collect the mind. But to wander alone in a forest, day after day, without particular aim, drinking in the pungent odours of growing things, fording the ice-cold streams, meeting no one but a bird or a hare—this will leave a memory as of another existence in some enchanted sphere. We have tasted an ecstasy that cities cannot give. We have tasted it, and we have come back into the crowded places, and it may be well for us that we have come back, for not to all is it given to walk in safety alone with their souls.

_Photo:_ _Anderson._
ST. JEROME EXTRACTING A THORN FROM THE PAW OF A LION.
(_By Hubert van Eyck._)
Naples Museum.]

Of one of the earliest Christian anchorites in Egypt it is related that for fifty years he spoke to no one; he roamed in a state of nature, flying from the monks who attempted to approach him. At last he consented to answer some questions put by a recluse whose extreme piety caused him to be better received than the others. To the question of why he avoided mankind, he replied that those who dwelt with men could not be visited by angels. After saying this, he vanished again into the desert. I have observed that the idea of renouncing the world was not a Western idea, yet, at the point where it touches madness, it had already penetrated into the West—we know where to find its tragic record:—

“Ego vitam agam sub altis Phrygiae columinibus,
Ubi cerva silvicultrix, ubi aper nemorivagus?”

The _point of madness_ would have been reached more often but for the charity of the stag and the wild boar and the lion and the buffalo, who felt a sort of compassion for the harmless, weak human creatures that came among them, and who were ready to give that response which is the sustaining ichor of life.

The same causes produce the same effects—man may offer surprises but never men. Wherever there are solitaries there are friendships between the recluse and the wild beast. All sorts of stories of lions and other animals that were on friendly terms with the monks of the desert have come down to us in the legends of the Saints. The well-known legend of how St. Jerome relieved a lion of a thorn which was giving him great pain, and how the lion became tame, was really told of another saint, but Jerome, if he did not figure in a lion story, is the authority for one: in his life of Paul the Hermit he relates that when that holy man died, two lions came out of the desert to dig his grave; they uttered a loud wail over his body and knelt down to crave a blessing from his surviving companion—none other than the great St. Anthony. He also says that Paul had subsisted for many years on food brought to him by birds, and when he had a visitor the birds brought double rations.

As soon as the hermit appears in Europe his four-footed friends appear with him. For instance, there was the holy Karileff who tamed a buffalo. Karileff was a man of noble lineage who took up his abode with two companions in a clearing in the woods on the Marne, where he was soon surrounded by all sorts of wild things. Amongst these was a buffalo, one of the most intractable of beasts in its wild state, but this buffalo became perfectly tame, and it was a charming sight to see the aged saint stroking it softly between its horns. Now it happened that the king, who was Childebert, son of Clovis, came to know that there was a buffalo in the neighbourhood, and forthwith he ordered a grand hunt. The buffalo, seeing itself lost, fled to the hut of its holy protector, and when the huntsmen approached they found the monk standing in front of the animal. The king was furious, and swore that Karileff and his brethren should leave the place for ever; then he turned to go, but his horse would not move one step. This filled him with what was more likely panic fear than compunction; he lost no time in asking the saint for his blessing, and he presented him with the whole domain, in which an abbey was built and ultimately a town, the present Saint-Calais. On another occasion the same Childebert was hunting a hare, which took refuge under the habit of St. Marculphe; the king’s huntsman rudely expostulated, and the monk surrendered the hare, but, lo and behold! the dogs would not continue the pursuit and the huntsman fell off his horse!

A vein of more subtle sensibility runs through the story of St. Columba, who, not long before his death, ordered a stork to be picked up and tended when it dropped exhausted on the Western shore of Iona. After three days, he said, the stork would depart, “for she comes from the land where I was born and thither would she return.” In fact, on the third day, the stork, rested and refreshed, spread out its wings and sailed away straight towards the saint’s beloved Ireland. When Columba was really dying the old white horse of the convent came and laid its head on his shoulder with an air of such profound melancholy that it seemed nigh to weeping. A brother wished to drive it away, but the saint said No; God had revealed to the horse what was hidden from man, and it was come to bid him goodbye.

Evidently there is only a slight element of the marvellous in these legends and none at all in others, such as the story of Walaric, who fed little birds and told the monks not to approach or frighten his “little friends” while they picked up the crumbs. To the same order belong several well-authenticated stories of the Venerable Joseph of Anchieta, apostle of Brazil. He protected the parrots that alighted on a ship by which he was travelling from the merciless sailors who would have caught and killed them. Whilst descending a river he would have saved a monkey which some fishermen shot at with their arrows, but he was not in time; the other monkeys gathered round their slain comrade with signs of mourning: “Come near,” said the holy man, “and weep in peace for that one of you who is no more.” Presently, fearing not to be able longer to restrain the cruelty of the men, he bade them depart with God’s blessing.

Here is no marvel; only sympathy which is sometimes the greatest of marvels. It needed the mind of a Shakespeare to probe just this secret recess of feeling for animals:—

“—— What dost thou strike at, Marcus, with thy knife?
—— At that I have killed, my Lord, a fly.
—— Out on thee, murderer, thou killest my heart;
Mine eyes are cloyed with view of tyranny;
A deed of death done on the innocent,
Becomes not Titus’ brother; get thee gone,
I see thou art not for my company.
—— Alas! my Lord, I have but killed a fly.
—— But how if that fly had a father and mother?
How would he hang his slender gilded wings
And buz lamented doings in the air?
Poor harmless fly!
That with his pretty buzzing melody
Came here to make us merry, and thou hast killed him.”

If St. Bernard saw a hare pursued by dogs or birds threatened by a hawk he could not resist making the sign of the cross, and his benediction always brought safety. It is to this saint that we owe the exquisite saying, “If mercy were a sin I think I could not keep myself from committing it.”

_Photo:_ _Hanfslängl._
ST. EUSTACE AND THE STAG.
(_By Vittore Pisano._)
National Gallery.]

Apart from the rest, stands one saint who brought the wild to the neighbourhood of a bustling, trafficking little Italian town of the thirteenth century and peopled it with creatures which, whether of fancy or of fact, will live for ever. How St. Francis tamed the “wolf of Agobio” is the most famous if not altogether the most credible of the animal stories related of him. That wolf was a quadruped without morals; not only had he eaten kids but also men. All attempts to kill him failed, and the townsfolk were afraid of venturing outside the walls even in broad daylight. One day St. Francis, against the advice of all, went out to have a serious talk with the wolf. He soon found him and, “Brother Wolf,” he said, “you have eaten not only animals but men made in the image of God, and certainly you deserve the gallows; nevertheless, I wish to make peace between you and these people, brother Wolf, so that you may offend them no more, and neither they nor their dogs shall attack you.” The wolf seemed to agree, but the saint wished to have a distinct proof of his solemn engagement to fulfil his part in the peace, whereupon the wolf stood up on his hind legs and laid his paw on the saint’s hand. Francis then promised that the wolf should be properly fed for the rest of his days, “for well I know,” he said kindly, “that all your evil deeds were caused by hunger”—upon which text several sermons might be preached, for truly many a sinner may be reformed by a good dinner and by nothing else. The contract was kept on both sides, and the wolf lived happily for some years—“notricato cortesemente dalla gente”—at the end of which he died of old age, sincerely mourned by all the inhabitants.

If any one decline to believe in the wolf of Gubbio, why, he must be left to his invincible ignorance. But there are other tales in the _Fioretti_ and in the _Legenda Aurea_ which are nowise hard to believe. What more likely than that Francis, on meeting a youth who had wood-doves to sell, looked at the birds “con l’occhio pietoso,” and begged the youth not to give them into the cruel hands that would kill them? The young man, “inspired by God,” gave the doves to the saint, who held them against his breast, saying, “Oh, my sisters, innocent doves, why did you let yourselves be caught? Now will I save you from death and make nests for you, so that you may increase and multiply according to the commandment of our Creator.” Schopenhauer mentions, with emphatic approval, the Indian merchant at the fair of Astrachan who, when he has a turn of good luck, goes to the market-place and buys birds, which he sets at liberty. The holy Francis not only set his doves free, but thought about their future, a refinement of benevolence which might “almost have persuaded” the humane though crusty old philosopher to put on the Franciscan habit.

(At this point I chance to see from my window a kitten in the act of annoying a rather large snake. It is a coiled-up snake; probably an Itongo. It requires a good five minutes to induce the kitten to abandon its quarry and to convey the snake to a safe place under the myrtles. This being done, I resume my pen.)

I have remarked that in some respects the Saint of Assisi stands apart from the other saints who took notice of animals. It was a common thing, for instance, for saints to preach to creatures, but there is an individual note in the sermon of Francis to the birds which is not found elsewhere. The reason why St. Anthony preached to the fishes at Rimini was that the “heretics” would not listen to him, and St. Martin addressed the water-fowl who were diving after fish in the Loire because, having compared them to the devil, seeking whom he may devour, he thought it necessary to order them to depart from those waters—which they immediately did, no doubt frightened to death by the apparition of a gesticulating saint and the wild-looking multitude. The motive of Francis was neither pique at not being listened to nor the temptation to show miraculous skill as a bird-scarer; he was moved solely by an effusion of tender sentiment. Birds in great quantities had alighted in a neighbouring field: a beautiful sight which every dweller in the country must have sometimes seen and asked himself, was it a parliament, a garden party, a halt in a journey? “Wait a little for me here upon the road,” said the saint to his companions; “I am going to preach to my sisters the birds.” And so, “_having greeted them as creatures endowed with reason_,” he went on to say: “Birds, my sisters, you ought to give great praise to your Creator, who dressed you with feathers, who gave you wings to fly with, who granted you all the domains of the air, whose solicitude watches over you.” The birds stretched out their necks, fluttered their wings, opened their beaks, and looked at the preacher with attention. When he had done, he passed in the midst of them and touched them with his habit, and not one of them stirred till he gave them leave to fly away.

The saint lifted worms out of the path lest they should be crushed, and during the winter frosts, for fear that the bees should die in the hive, he brought honey to them and the best wines that he could find. Near his cell at Portionuculo there was a fig-tree, and on the fig-tree lived a cicada. One day the Servant of God stretched out his hand and said, “Come to me, my sister Cicada”; and at once the insect flew upon his hand. And he said to it, “Sing, my sister Cicada, and praise thy Lord.” And having received his permission she sang her song. The biographies that were written without the inquisition into facts which we demand, gave a living idea of the man, not a photograph of his skeleton. What mattered if romance were mixed with truth when the total was true? We know St. Francis of Assisi as if he had been our next-door neighbour. It would have needed unbounded genius to invent such a character, and there was nothing to be gained by inventing it. The legends which represent him as one who consistently treated animals as creatures endowed with reason are in discord with orthodox teaching; they skirt dangerously near to heresy. Giordano Bruno was accused of having said that men and animals had the same origin; to hold such an opinion qualified you for the stake. But the Church that canonised Buddha under the name of St. Josephat has had accesses of toleration which must have made angels rejoice.

Some think that Francis was at one time a troubadour, and troubadours had many links with those Manichæan heretics whom Catholics charged with believing in the transmigration of souls. This may interest the curious, but the doctrine of metempsychosis has little to do with the vocation of the Asiatic recluse as a beast-tamer, and St. Francis of Assisi was true brother to that recluse. He was the Fakeer or Dervish of the West. When the inherent mysticism in man’s nature brought the Dervishes into existence soon after Mohammed’s death, in spite of the Prophet’s well-known dislike for religious orders, they justified themselves by quoting the text from the Koran, “Poverty is my pride.” It would serve the Franciscan equally well. The begging friar was an anachronism in the religion of Islam as he is an anachronism in modern society, but what did that matter to him? He thought and he thinks that he will outlive both.

The Abdâl or pre-eminently holy Dervish who lived in the desert with friendly beasts over whom he exercised an extraordinary power, became the centre of a legend, almost of a cult, like his Christian counterpart. There were several Abdâls of high repute during the reigns of the early Ottoman Sultans. Perhaps there was more confidence in their sanctity than in their sanity, for while the Catholic historian finds it inconvenient to admit the hypothesis of madness as accounting for even the strangest conduct of the saints of the desert or their mediæval descendants, a devout Oriental sees no irreverence in recognising the possible affinity between sainthood and mental alienation. In India the holy recluse who tames wild beasts is as much alive to-day as in any former time. Whatever is very old is still a part of the everyday life of the Indian people. Accordingly the native newspapers frequently report that some prince was attacked by a savage beast while out hunting, when, at the nick of time, a venerable saint appeared at whose first word the beast politely relaxed his hold. Those who know India best by no means think that all such stories are invented. Why should they be? Cardinal Massaia (who wore, by the by, the habit of Francis) stated that the lions he met in the desert had very good manners. A few years ago an old lady met a large, well-grown lioness in the streets of Chatres; mistaking it for a large dog, she patted it on the head and it followed her for some time until it was observed by others, when the whole town was seized with panic and barred doors and windows. Even with the provocation of such mistrust the lioness behaved well, and allowed itself to be reconducted to the menagerie from which it had escaped.

Those who try to divest themselves of human nature rarely succeed, and the reason nearest to the surface why, over all the world, the lonely recluse made friends with animals was doubtless his loneliness. On their side, animals have only to be persuaded that men are harmless for them to meet their advances half-way. If this is not always true of wild beasts, it is because (as St. Francis apprehended) unfortunately they are sometimes hungry; but man is not the favourite prey of any wild beast who is in his right mind. Prisoners who tamed mice or sparrows followed the same impulse as saints who tamed lions or buffaloes. How many a prisoner who returned to the fellowship of men must have regretted his mouse or his sparrow! Animals can be such good company. Still, it follows that if their society was sought as a substitute, they were, in a certain sense, vicarious objects of affection. We forget that even in inter-human affections much is vicarious. The sister of charity gives mankind the love which she would have given to her children. The ascetic who will never hear the pattering feet of his boy upon the stairs loves the gazelle, the bird fallen from its nest, the lion cub whose mother has been slain by the hunter. And love, far more than charity (in the modern sense), blesses him that gives as well as him that takes.

But human phenomena are complex, and this explanation of the sympathy between saint and beast does not cover the whole ground. Who can doubt that these men, whose faculties were concentrated on drawing nearer to the Eternal, vaguely surmised that wild living creatures had unperceived channels of communication with spirit, hidden _rapports_ with the Fountain of Life which man has lost or has never possessed? Who can doubt that in the vast cathedral of Nature they were awed by “the mystery which is in the face of brutes”?

Beside the need to love and the need to wonder, some of them knew the need to pity. Here the ground widens, for the heart that feels the pang of the meanest thing that lives does not beat only in the hermit’s cell or under the sackcloth of a saint.

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XIII

VERSIPELLES

THE snake and the tiger are grim realities of Indian life. They mean a great deal—they mean India with its horror and its splendour; above all, with its primary attention given to things which for most Europeans are _nil_ or are kept for Sunday. And Sunday, the day most calm, most bright, has only a little portion of them, only the light not the darkness of the Unknown.

To the despair of the English official, the Hindu, like his forefathers in remotest antiquity, respects the life of tiger and snake. In doing so he is not governed simply by the feeling that makes him look on serenely whilst all sorts of winged and fleet-footed creatures eat up his growing crops—another tolerance which exasperates the Western beholder: in that instance it is, in the main, the rule of live and let live which dictates his forbearance, the persuasion that it is wrong to monopolise the increase of the earth to the uttermost farthing’s-worth. His sentiment towards tiger and snake is of a more profound nature.

The Hindu will not kill a cobra if he can help it, and if one is killed he tries to expiate the offence by honouring it with proper funeral rites. The tiger, like the snake, gives birth to those ancient twins, fear and admiration. The perception of the beautiful is one of the oldest as it is one of the most mysterious of psychological phenomena in man and beast. Why should the sheen of the peacock’s tail attract the peahen? Why should the bower-bird and the lyre-bird construct a lovely pleasance where they may dance? Man perceived the beautiful in fire and wind, in the swift air, the circle of stars, the violent water, the lights of heaven: “being delighted with the beauty of these things, he took them to be gods”—as was said by the writer of the Wisdom of Solomon about two hundred years before Christ. He also perceived the beautiful in the lithe movements of the snake and in the tiger’s symmetry.

As to the sense of fear, how is it that this fear is unaccompanied by repulsion? To this question the more general answer would seem to be that Nature, if regarded as divine, cannot repel. But the snake and tiger are in some special way divine, so that they become still further removed from the range of human criticism. They are manifestations of divinity—a safer description of even the lowest forms of zoolatry than the commoner one which asserts that they are “gods.” Deity, if omnipresent, “must be able to occupy the same space as another body at the same time,” which was said in a different connexion, but it is the true base of all beliefs involving the union of spirit and matter from the lowest to the highest.

The animal which is a divine agent, ought to behave like one. If it causes destruction, such destruction should have the fortuitous appearance of havoc wrought by natural causes. The snake or tiger should not wound with malice prepense, but only in a fine, casual way. This is just what, as a rule, they are observed to do. I have seen many snakes, but I never saw one run after a man, though I have seen men run after snakes. Now and then the Italian peasant is bitten by vipers because he walks in the long grass with naked feet. He treads on the snake or pushes against it, and it bites him. So it is with the Indian peasant. It is much the same in the case of the normal tiger; unless he is disturbed or wounded, he most rarely attacks. But there are abnormal tigers, abnormal beasts of every sort—there is the criminal class of beast. What of him? It might be supposed that primitive man would take such a beast to be an angry or vindictive spirit. By no means. He detects in him a fellow-human. The Indian forestalled Lombroso; the man-eating tiger is a degenerate, really not responsible for his actions, and still less is the god behind him responsible for them.