Zoological Mythology; or, The Legends of Animals, Volume 1 (of 2)

In Greek and Latin authors[500] we find frequent examples of the sacrifice of a bull a short time before the death of the hero by whom it was ordered, in which it was noticed as a very sinister omen that the entrails were missing, and particularly the heart or the liver. Having observed that the monster's heart is the solar hero, or the sun itself, we can easily understand how, in the sacrifice of a bull, this heart must be wanting when the hero approaches his end. In the mythical bull sacrificed at evening, the hero's heart is not to be found; the monster has eaten his intestines, of which, according to the legend, he is particularly greedy.

But the bull does not always let himself be sacrificed patiently; he often flees in order not to be killed. We have seen in the Russian stories how the bull, which his owner intends to sacrifice, flees into the forest, with the lamb (the bull and the lamb are two equivalent forms of the morning and evening solar hero) and the other domestic animals. The proverb of Theokritos, "Even the bull goes into the forest,"[501] can have no other origin than in the two analogous myths of the moon which wanders through the forest of night, and of the sun who hides himself in the same forest, when he sees the preparations made for the sacrifice; the sun in the night becomes the moon.

I have said that the bull, when sacrificed, often, on account of his being devoid of intestines, forebodes unlucky occurrences to the hero; the solar bull of the evening is without strength, he has no heroic entrails. But after he has been to pasture freely in the forest, after having exercised his powers in battle with the wolves of night, after having, by his bellowing (in the darkness, in the thundering cloud), filled all the animals with terror, the bull is found again and led towards his dwelling of the morning, full of light, like a sacrificed hero; heroic entrails are found in him; from the black bull who is sacrificed towards morning, from the forest, from the bull of night, come forth the heart, the liver, the life and strength, the sun, the hero-sun; and the human hero, observing his sacrifice, considers it a good omen. We can thus understand the narrative of Ammianus Marcellinus: "Decimus (taurus) diffractis vinculis, lapsus ægre reductus est, et mactatus ominosa signa monstravit."[502] Whilst he is hidden in the forest, the solar bull is black, but often (i.e., in all the nights illumined by the moon), giving up his place to the moon, he appears in the form of a white bull or cow, who guides the hero lost in the darkness. Thoas is called the king of the Tauroi (or bulls) in the Iphigenia in Tauris of Euripides, because he has wings on his feet. The cow Iô flees without stopping in the Prometheus of Æschylos. Euripides[503] says that she gave birth to the king of the Kadmœans. Here, therefore, we find once more the intimate relation between Iô and Eurôpê, the sister of Kadmos, which I noticed above. Kadmos, the brother of Eurôpê, unites himself with Iô. But Iô is a cow, and we find a cow, a travelling cow, marked with a white spot in the shape of a full moon (the moon itself, or Iô), in the legend of Kadmos in Bœotia, according to Pausanias,[504] and to Ovid,[505] who sings—

This is the good fairy, or good old man, who shows the way to the heroes in popular tales; it is the cow which succours the maiden persecuted by her step-mother, the puppet which spins, sews, and weaves for the maiden aurora. For just as we have seen that the wooden girl is the aurora herself, which at morn comes out of, and at even re-enters, the forest of night,[507] as is clearly shown by the myths of Urvaçî and of Daphne, so in like manner the moon comes out of and re-enters the nocturnal forest, transforming herself from a tree to a cow, and from a cow to a tree, wooden girl, or puppet. Some myths relating to the aurora are also applicable to the moon, on account of the resemblance of the phenomena (the lunar and solar bulls also are interchangeable), as they both come out of the nocturnal gloom, both drop dewy humours, and both run after the sun, of which the aurora is the deliverer in the morning, and the moon the protectress, guide, hostess, and good advising fairy, who teaches him the secret by which to avoid the ambuscades of the monster. Hêraklês passes the sea upon the neck of the cow-moon; but instead of the cow, we also find in the mythical sky of Hêraklês the golden cup, which is the same thing. From the cow-moon comes forth the horn of abundance; from the cornucopia to the cup the passage is easy. It is said that Hêraklês, approaching the oxen of Geryon, the West, felt himself burned by the sun's rays, and shot arrows at him (in the same way as Indras in the Ṛigvedas breaks a wheel of the car of Sûryas, the sun). The sun admires the courage and strength of the hero, and lends him his golden cup, upon which Hêraklês passes the sea. This being accomplished, Hêraklês restores the cup to the sun, and finds the oxen.

The bull which carries the hero and heroine, in the Russian story, arises again in another form, if its essential part (now the intestines, now the bones, now the ashes) is preserved. The cow which helps the maiden becomes, as we have already seen, an apple-tree, and helps her again in this form. We find the same myth transformed in Greece. In Cœlius, quoted by Aldrovandi,[508] we read, "Cum rustici quidam Herculi Alexicaco bovem essent immolaturi, isque rupto fune profugisset (the bull destined to the sacrifice repairs to the forest of night), nec esset quod sacrificaretur, malum arreptum suppositis quatuor ramis crurum vice, deinde additis alteris duobus ceu cornuum loco, bovem utcumque fuisse imitatos, idque ridiculum simulacrum pro victima sacrificasse Herculi." This account is confirmed by the facts recorded by Julius Pollux,[509] that the apple-tree was sacrificed to Hêraklês. The moon, on account of its circular form, assumed, besides the figure of a pea, a pumpkin and a cabbage, also that of a golden apple. As it contains honey, the sweet apple represents well the ambrosial moon. Moreover, in the same way as we have seen the pea which fell on the ground become a tree, and rise to heaven, so the apple became an apple-tree, the tree of golden apples found in the Western garden of the Hesperides.

The moon, besides the form of a horned cow, also assumed, in the popular Âryan belief, that of a tart, of a cake, either on account of its circular shape, or of the ambrosial honey supposed to be contained by the moon, because of the dew or rain which it spreads on the ground. The cake has in Slavonic tradition the same importance as the pea, kidney-bean, or cabbage. The bull or cow of the fool, bartered for a pea, is perhaps the same as the sun or aurora of evening, bartered during the night for the moon, or else meeting the moon. The funereal pea or kidney-bean, the vegetable which serves as provision for the journey in the kingdom of the dead, and which brings the hero riches, is perhaps only the moon, which the solar hero finds on the way during the night, and which he receives in exchange for his cow's hide. When the hero possesses this pea, he is assured of every kind of good fortune, and can enter or ascend into the luminous sky, as well as come out of the gloomy hell, into which the monster has drawn him. A similar virtue is attributed to the cake, which we find in Indo-European funeral customs instead of the vegetable of the dead.

After this we can understand what Plutarch tells us in the Life of Lucullus concerning the Cyziceni, of whom he writes, that, pressed by siege, they offered up to Proserpine (the moon in hell) a cow of black paste, not being able to offer up one of flesh; and he adds, that the sacrifice was agreeable to the goddess. Thus, in the thirty-sixth fable of Æsop, we read of an invalid who promises to the gods that he will sacrifice a hundred oxen to them in the event of a cure; when cured, as he does not possess a hundred oxen of flesh, he makes a hundred of paste, and burns them upon the hearth. But, according to Æsop, the gods were not satisfied, and endeavoured to play off a joke upon him; an attempt, which, however, did not succeed, inasmuch as the cunning man used it to his own profit; for the solar hero in the night, not being really a fool, merely feigns to be one.

But, to return to the cow-moon: we must complete the explanation of another myth, that of the excrement of the cow considered as purifying. The moon, as the aurora, yields ambrosia; it is considered to be a cow; the urine of this cow is ambrosia or holy water; he who drinks this water purifies himself, as the ambrosia which rains from the lunar ray and the aurora cleans the paths of the sky, purifies and makes clear (dîrghaya ćakshase) the paths of the sky which the shadows of night darken and contaminate. The same virtue is attributed, moreover, to cow's dung, a conception also derived from the cow, and given to the moon as well as to the morning aurora. These two cows are conceived as making the earth fruitful by means of their ambrosial excrements; these excrements, being also luminous, both those of the moon and those of the aurora are considered as purifiers. The ashes of these cows (which their friend the heroine preserves) are not only ashes, but golden powder or golden flour (the golden cake occurs again in that flour or powder of gold which the witch demands from the hero in Russian stories), which, mixed with excrement, brings good fortune to the cunning and robber hero. The ashes of the sacrificed pregnant cow (i.e., the cow which dies after having given birth to a calf) were religiously preserved by the Romans in the temple of Vesta, with bean-stalks (which are used to fatten the earth sown with corn), as a means of expiation. Ovid[510] mentions this rite:—

The ashes of a cow are preserved both as a symbol of resurrection and as a means of purification. As to the excrements of the cow, they are still used to form the so-called eau de millefleurs, recommended by several pharmacopœias as a remedy for cachexy.[511]

I have noticed above the myth of Hêraklês, in which, having passed the sea upon the golden cup, he finds the oxen upon the shore. These oxen are thus described by Theokritos, in the myth of King Augeias, as the child of the sun. The sun, says Theokritos, granted to his son the honour of being richer than all other men in herds. All these herds are healthy, and multiply without limit, always becoming better. Among the bulls, three hundred have white legs (like the alba of morning), two hundred are red (like the sun's rays), with curved horns. These bulls are to be used for purposes of reproduction; besides them there are twelve sacred to the sun, which shine like swans. One of them is superior to all the rest in size, and is called a star, or Phaethôn (the luminous, an epithet given to Hêlios, the sun, in the Odyssey, the guider of the chariot of the sun, who, after finishing his diurnal course, is unable to rein in the horses, and is precipitated with the chariot into the water, in order that the burning horses may not set fire to the world. Instead of solar oxen, which draw the chariot, and fall, at evening, into the nocturnal marsh, we find in this myth the chariot drawn by horses overturned into the waves; but the Phaethôn, the very luminous and excellent ox, as represented by Theokritos, justifies our identification of the two mythical episodes of the ox and of the horse which falls into the water). The bull Phaethôn of Theokritos sees Hêraklês, and, taking him for a lion, rushes upon him and endeavours to wound him with his horns. The sun, as a golden-haired hero, is a very strong lion (Hêraklês, Samson); as a golden-horned hero, he is a very strong bull; enclosed in the cloud, they roar and bellow. The two images of the sun-lion and of the sun-bull are now in harmony and now in discordance, and fight with one another. In the Râmâyaṇam we found the two brother-heroes Râmas and Lakshmaṇas, an epic form of the two Açvinâu, represented respectively as a bull and a lion. In the Hellenic fables we frequently find the lion and the bull together, and afterwards in discordance, as happens in the legend of the two brother-heroes. In Æsop and in Avianus, the bull (perhaps the moon) fleeing from the lion (i.e., from the sun in its monstrous evening or autumnal form of a lion), enters the hiding-place of the goat (the moon in the grotto of night), and is insulted and provoked by it. In another Æsopian fable, on the contrary, it is the lion who fears the horns of the bull, and induces him to part with them, in order that the bull may become his prey.[512] In yet another Æsopian fable taken from Syntipa, the bull kills the lion, while asleep, with his horns. In Phædrus, the wild boar with his tusks, the bull with his horns, and the ass with kicks, put an end to the old and infirm lion. In Phædrus's fable of the ox and the ass drawing together, the ox falls inert upon the ground when he loses his horns. Aristoteles, in the third book on the Parts of Animals, censures the Momos of Æsop, who laughs at the bull because he has his horns on his forehead instead of on his arms, showing that if the bull had his horns on any other part of his body, they would be a useless weight, and would impede his other functions without aiding him in anything. The ox and the lion were also painted together in Christian churches.[513]

To continue the legend of the solar hero and the oxen, we find again in Hêraklês, as employed among the herds in the service of King Augeias, the sun, the usual hostler-hero; he is not only to guard the herds well, but in one day to cleanse them thoroughly, and make them shine. Defrauded of the price by Augeias, he kills him, and ravages all his country. In the same way, in Homer, Apollo guards, for a stipulated price, the herds of King Laomedon upon Mount Ida, and is cheated of his reward. In the same way, Hermes takes the herds of King Admetos to pasture; he leads them to browse near the herds of Apollo, from whom he steals a hundred bulls and twelve cows, preventing the dogs from barking (as Hêraklês does when he leads away Geryon's oxen). This Hermes, this god Mercury, god of merchants, this merchant and robber, is the same as the skilful and cunning thief of the stories who carries off horses, draught oxen, caskets, and ear-rings from the king; he is the hero-thief; but a shade distinguishes him from the monster brigand or Vedic demoniacal Paṇis; the hero who hides himself and the monster that hides things both do a furtive action. When Hermes leads away the herds stolen from the solar god, the sun, he also takes care to fasten branches of trees to their tails, which, by sweeping the road, shall destroy the track of the bulls and cows that have been led away. The shepherd Battos plays the spy, although, as the price of his silence, Hermes has promised him a white cow (the moon, and perhaps Battos himself, the spy, is the moon). Hermes tests him, by disguising himself and promising him a bull and a cow if he speaks. Battos speaks, and Hermes punishes him by transforming him into a stone:—

This god Mercury, who steals the bulls from Apollo (as Hêraklês leads away the oxen of Geryon), is the divine form of the thief. His demoniacal form, is—Cacus, the son of Vulcan (as the Vedic Vṛitras is the son of Tvashṭar), who vomits fire; a giant who envelops himself in darkness, in Virgil; three-headed (like the Vedic monster), in Propertius;[515] who inhabits in the Aventine forest a cavern full of human bones (like the monster of fairy tales); who thunders (flammas ore sonante vomit), who fights with rocks and trunks of trees, in Ovid[516] (like the heroes in the Hindoo, Slavonic, German, and Homeric tradition); who steals the cows from Hêraklês, and hides their footprints by dragging them backwards into the cavern, in Livy; who also tells us that the cows in the cavern low, wishing for the bulls from whom they are separated (as in the Vedic hymns). The hero, hearing them, finds the cavern, overturns with a great noise the rock which five pair of oxen yoked together could scarcely have moved (like the Marutas who break the rock, like Indras who splits the crag open), and with the three-knotted club (trinodis) kills the monster and frees the cows. The solar hero who at evening leads away oxen or cows, or who at morning steals them from the stable, is a skilful robber who has acted meritoriously, and marries, in reward, the princess aurora; the cloudy or gloomy monster who steals the solar cows to shut them up in the cavern, whence he then throws out smoke and flames, is an infamous criminal. The divine thief steals almost out of playfulness, either to show his craftiness or to prove his valour; the demoniacal thief steals because of his malevolent character, and instinct to devour what he steals, as does the fabled worm of the river Indus (the Vedic Sindhus, or heavenly ocean), who draws into the abyss and devours the thirsty oxen who go to drink.[517]

The monster of the clouds who whistles and thunders only terrifies; the god who whistles and thunders in the cloud, on the other hand, is par excellence a celestial musician; his musical instrument, the thunder, astonishes us by its marvels,[518] and makes stones and plants tremble, that is, makes stones and plants move, especially celestial ones (i.e., cloud-mountains and cloud-trees); it draws after it the wild animals (of the heavenly forest), tames and subdues them. The bellowing bull terrifies the lion himself. We, therefore, also read in Nonnos,[519] that Dionysos gives a bull in reward to Æagros, who has won in the competition of song and of the lyre, whilst he reserves a hirsute he-goat for him who loses; on this account we find on the capitals of columns in old Milanese churches, calves and bulls represented as playing on the lyre.[520] It is a variation of the myth of the ass and the lyre, which has the same meaning. The bull and the ass, for the same reason, are found represented together, because they bellow and bray (like Christian Corybantes) near the cradle of the new-born god, in order to hide, by their noise, his birth from the old king or deity who is to be dethroned.[521] The conch of Bhîmas, the elephant-horn of Orlando, the Greek war-bugle tauraia, by means of which armies were moved, derived their character and their name from the mythical bull, the thundering god. The voice of the bull is compared in Euripides to the voice of Zeus;[522] the music which pleases the heroes is certainly not the air of the Casta diva; it is the braying of the ass,[523] the roar of the lion, the bellowing of the bull, who occupies the first place in the heavens, and has occupied us so long, because the supreme god took his form, after having carried off Eurôpê. Zeus left on the earth his divine form, and the more generally preferred heroic form of a bull took him up to heaven:—

We thus, after a long pilgrimage in the fields of tradition, return to the Vedic bull Indras, from whom we started, and to his female form, which, having a human nature, became a cow, and being a cow, assumed a divine shape:—

CHAPTER II.

THE HORSE.

SUMMARY.

The horse, favourite animal of the solar hero.—Attributes of the Vedic solar hero.—Animals which draw the Vedic gods.—The Açvinâu sons of a mare.—The mule, the ass, and the horse in relation to each other.—The hero's horse, prior to being noble and handsome, is vile and ill-favoured; proofs.—The teeth of the horse.—The figs that make tails grow.—The excrement of the horse.—Three colours of the heroic horse.—Pluto's horses abhor the light.—Pêgasos an imperfect horse.—The black horse generally demoniacal.—The hippomanes.—The monster that makes horses perspire and grow lean; the fire in stables.—To dream of black horses.—The horse of the third brother is small, humpbacked, and lame.—The hero transforms himself into a horse.—The grey horse differs from the black one.—The red horse frees the hero.—The three steps, the three races, the three leaps, the three castles, the three days, the three brothers, and the three horses correspond to each other.—Two horsemen change the hero's bad horse into a heroic steed.—The horse's ears; the hero in the horse's ears.—The horse's head blesses the good maiden, and devours the wicked one.—The black horseman, the white horseman, and the red one.—The horse-monster that devastates the field surprised by the hero, and destroyed by fire, in the Ṛigvedas.—The Dioscuri washing the sweat off their horses.—Salt on the horse's back.—The hero-horse covered by the waters.—The Açvinâu and Agnis give a good horse to the hero who has a bad one.—The three steps of Vishṇus are made by the horses of Indras.—Vishṇus as horse.—Indras and the Açvinâu find the bride on horseback.—Râmas as horse.—Dadhyańć and his ambrosial horse's head, which discomfits the hostile monsters.—The bones of the horse.—The exchange of heads.—The two brother horses Pêgasos and Chrüsaor in opposition to one another.—Castor and Pollux.—Discussion upon the nature of the Açvinâu.—The two brothers at discord; Sundas and Upasundas.—Nakulas and Vasudevas.—Râmas and Lakshmaṇas.—The brothers who resemble each other; Bâlin and Sugrîvas; the brother betrays his brother and steals his wife.—Kereçâçpa and Urvâksha.—Piran and Pilsem.—The sky a mountain of stone; heroes, heroines, and horses of stone.—The brother seducer in the Tuti-Name.—Sunlight and moonlight, two brothers.—The minister's son and the king's son.—Horse and cat.—The two brothers on a journey; one becomes a king, the other spits gold; the candle of one of the two brothers lights of its own accord, and he therefore obtains the kingdom; the other brother's treasure.—Digression concerning the interpretation of the myth.—Agamêdês and Trophonios; Piedmontese story of the skilful thief.—The two brothers who resemble each other; mistaken one for the other by the wife of one of them; the brother sleeps with his sister-in-law without touching her; the legend of the pilgrim who comes from Rome; the head fastened on again.—The horse led away out of hell.—The solar horse destined for sacrifice carried off by Kapilas; that is, the solar horse escapes, like the solar bull, from the sacrifice.—The stallion destined for the sacrifice touched, and the horse's fat smelted by Kâuçalyâ as an augury of fruitfulness.—The horse's head as the mouth of hell.—The robber of the horse and of the treasure.—The horns of the stag, the horns or mane of the horse, and the hair of the hero, which catch and fasten themselves to the trees of the forest.—The thief now protects thieves, and now protects men from thieves.—The Miles gloriosus; hero, horse, and tree, united together, discomfit the enemies.—The heroic horse.—The tail of Indras's horse, and the Hindoo war-horse.—The war-horses of Rustem, of Alexander, of Bellerophon, and of Cæsar; the winged horse.—The horse goes through water and fire.—The horse and the apple.—The chains of the heroic horse, and the difficulty of riding him.—The horse that speaks; the horse-spy.—The chariot that speaks.—The solar horse bound that it may not come back again.—The hero who flees in the shape of a horse, and the horse sold with the bridle; transformations of the horse.—The sun without a horse and without a bridle.—The horses of the sun, arrested or wounded, precipitate the solar hero into the waters.—The eternal hunter.—Etaças, Phaethôn, Hippolytos.—The horse that delivers the hero.—The neighing of Indras's horse; the horse of Darius which neighs at the sight of the sun on account of the smell of a mare.—Number of the solar horses.—The hero born of a mare.—The mare's egg.—The hare born of a mare devours the mare.—Spanish mares made pregnant by the wind.—Horses sons of the wind.—The hero Açvatthâman neighs immediately after birth.—The horses that weep; mythical signification of these tears.—Vedic riddle and play of words upon the letter r, and the root varsh relative to the horse.—The foam from the horse's mouth destroys enemies and cures the cough.—The Açvinâu, the Dioscuri, Asklêpios and his two sons as physicians.—Caballus.—Ambrosia from the hoof of the Vedic horse.—Hippokrênê; the horse's hoof in relation with water.—Exchanges between moon and sun and between bull and horse.—Horses sacred to the gods and to saints.—Holy horsemen who help the heroes mercede pacta.

The myth of the horse is perhaps not so rich in legends as that of the bull and the cow, but certainly no less interesting. As the horseman is the finest type of the hero, so the horse which carries him is in mythology the noblest of animals.

We have already observed that the best of the three brothers, the third, the victorious one, the morning sun, is, in tradition, distinguished from the other brothers by his swiftness; and that the morning dawn or aurora, which is the third sister, the good one, the best of the three sisters, is she who wins the race. It is, therefore, natural that the favourite animal of the hero should be his horse. The two Hindoo Dioscuri, that is, the Açvinâu, the two horsemen, derive their name from the açvas or horse, as being the swift one;[526] and they are very probably identical with the two fair-haired, amiable, splendid, and ardent coursers of Indras, of Savitar (the sun), and proper and worthy to bear heroes,[527] who yoke themselves at a word,[528] are maned, adapted to make fruitful, full of life,[529] having eyes like the sun,[530] made by the Ṛibhavas,[531] who, as they made the cow out of a cow, also made a horse out of the horse,[532] black, with white feet, drawing the chariot with the golden yoke, revealing the beings;[533] the two rapid ones; the two most rapid ones;[534] plunging into the inebriating drink before Indras yokes them;[535] beautiful, by means of which the chariot of the Açvinâu is as swift as thought;[536] who carry Indras, as every day they carry the sun;[537] are the two rays of the sun;[538] who neigh, dropping ambrosia;[539] the very pure horses of the bull Indras, inebriated, who illumine the sky,[540] with manes the colour of a peacock,[541] bridled sixty times (properly six times twice five);[542] beneficent, winged, indefatigable, resolute destroyers (of the enemies).[543] The Âitareya Brâhmanam, when giving the characteristics of the race of each god, whilst it tells us that Agnis, at the marriage of Somas and Sûryâ, is drawn by mules, and the aurora by red cows (or bulls), teaches us that Indras is drawn by horses, and the Açvinâu by asses; the Açvinâu carried off the prize.[544] In the Mahâbhâratam,[545] we find another important circumstance, i.e., the Açvinâu represented as sons of a mare, or of Tvashtrî, wife of the sun Savitar, who took the form of a mare. Therefore we have here the sons of the mare, who may be horses or mules, according as the mare united herself with a horse or with an ass. Here, then, we have already an evident proof of the identification of the heroes Açvinâu with the animals, horses or asses, which draw them. The Ṛigvedas does not as yet know the word açvatara, or mule, but in representing the Açvinâu drawn now by horses and now by asses, it shows us the intermediate character of the real animal that draws the Açvinâu, a grey beast, dark-coloured, and white only in its fore parts. Night is the mule that carries the Açvinâu or twilights, in the same way as, in the above-quoted Âitareya, it carries or awakens Agnis, fire or light. In the Iliad,[546] mules are sung of as being better adapted than oxen to draw the plough.

The hero's horse, like the hero himself, begins by being ugly, deformed, and inept, and ends by becoming beautiful, luminous, heroic, and victorious. The mythical horse of the Hungarians, the horse Tátos, or Tátos lo, when born, is of an ugly aspect, defective and lean; it is therefore said in Hungarian, that "the Tátos comes out of a defective horse." It is, however, always born with teeth,[547] although its chin is sometimes wanting; its bursts out of a black pentagonal egg on an Ash Wednesday, after the hero has carried it for seven summers and seven winters under his arm. In the Mahâbhâratam,[548] the first created horse Uććâiḥçravas, the king of the horses (and therefore the horse of Indras), which is as swift as thought, follows the path of the sun, and is luminous and white, has, however, a black tail, made so by the magic of the serpents, who have covered it with black hairs. This is probably the black ass's or horse's tail which remains upon the ugly or wicked sister's forehead, in the popular European story of the two sisters.[549] It must also be remarked that, as the word Uććâiḥçravas means, properly, him of the high ears, it indicates the ass better than the horse.

In the same way, therefore, as the hero of popular tales before becoming a wise man is generally an ass, the animal ridden by the solar hero, prior to being a real and noble horse, is usually a worthless jade, or a dark-coloured ass. The sun, in the beginning of the night, rides a black horse, and afterwards a grey one, or else an ass or a mule, but in the morning, on the contrary, a white and luminous horse, which has a black tail; or else the dark horse of night has a white head, or white legs, or anterior parts of the body, with golden ears, and the nape of the neck formed of pearls.[550] The monstrous Trojan horse too, of Epeios, a figure which represents the horse of mythology, in Tryphiodôros the Egyptian,[551] has a golden mane, red eyes, and silver teeth.

In the Turkish stories of Siberia,[552] it is upon an iron-coloured horse that the third brother, hated by his father and his two elder brothers, advances against the demon Ker Iutpa. The hero becomes the excrement of a horse, and the horse a crow; the former glues the monster's lower lip to the earth, the latter suspends his upper lip to the sky. In order better to understand this strange myth, we must remember that the name of one of the Valkiries is "Mist," a word which means excrement and fog. The fog, or frost, or rain, or dew, falls to the ground; the solar horse, or the sun, rises in the sky; the monster of night or of clouds is dispersed.

In the thirteenth Esthonian story of Kreutzwald, the third brother comes three times to deliver the princess from the mountain of glass (or ice), where she sleeps. The first time he is dressed the colour of bronze, upon a bronze-coloured horse; the second time dressed in silver, upon a horse the colour of silver; and the third time upon a gold-coloured horse, dressed in gold.

In an unpublished Piedmontese story, the young prince, whose beloved princess has been ravished beyond seas, is borne over the waves by an eagle, which he feeds with his own flesh. Arrived beyond the sea, he hears that the princess is destined to be the wife of the hero who wins the race three times; the first time he appears dressed in black, upon a black horse; the second time dressed in white, upon a white horse; and the third time dressed in red, upon a red horse. Each time he wins the race, and thereafter receives the beautiful princess in marriage.

Thus we see the first horse of the hero is always dark-coloured, like the devil's horse, like the horses of Pluto, which, accustomed to darkness, are terrified by light;[553] it then becomes the grey horse of the giantess, the grey horse which smells the dead hero Sigurd in the Edda. Pêgasos himself, the hieros hippos of Aratos, is born semi-perfect (êmitelês),[554] an expression which reminds me of the equus dimidius of an Alsatian paper of 1336, in Du Cange, by which the mule is meant. The Hindoo Aruṇas, charioteer of the sun (or even the brother of the sun himself, inasmuch as he is the brother of Garuḍas, the solar bird), is said to be born with an imperfect body;[555] he can be luminous and divine only in part. The black horse, on the contrary, has generally an evil and demoniacal nature; the black horse corresponds to the black devil; the colour black itself is, according to popular superstition, the product of bad humours.[556] Every horse, when born, has, according to Maestro Agostino, a piece of black flesh upon its lips, called hippomanes by the Greeks: "La quale carne dici lo vulgo essere molto sospettosa a li maleficii." Maestro Agostino adds, moreover, that the mother refuses to give suck to the colt as long as it carries this piece of flesh upon its lips, and some say that the mother herself eats it. In an idyll of Theokritos, we read that the Hippomanes is born among the Arcadians, and maddens colts and swift mares.[557] In the first chapter we mentioned the Russian damavoi, the demon who, during the night, rides upon cows, oxen, and horses, and makes them perspire. This superstition was already combated in Italy in the sixteenth century by Maestro Agostino;[558] and to it can probably be traced the custom, still observed by many grooms, of leaving a lamp lighted in the stable during the night. The devil, as is well known, is afraid of the light (Agnis is called rakshohan, or monster-killer), and his black horse likewise. It is therefore a sinister omen, according to two verses in Suidas,[559] to dream of black horses, whilst, on the contrary, it is a good omen to dream of white ones. In the Norman legend of the priest Walchelm, a black horse presents itself to him in the first days of January of the year 1091, and tempts him to mount upon its back; scarcely has Walchelm done so, than the black horse sets off for hell.[560] The dead, too, according to the popular belief, often ride upon black or demoniacal horses.[561]

A well-known Russian story in verse, the Kaniok Garbunok, or Little Hump-backed Horse, of Jershoff, commences thus:—An old man has three sons, the youngest of which is the usual Ivan Durák, or Ivan the fool. The old man finds his corn-field devastated every morning; he wishes to find out who the devastator is, and sends his first-born son to watch the first night. The first-born has drunk too much, and falls asleep, and so does the second son, and from the same cause, on the second night. On the third night it is Ivan's turn to watch; he does not fall asleep. At midnight he sees a mare which breathes flames coming. Ivan ties her by a rope, leaps upon her, seizes her by the mane, torments and subdues her, until the mare, to be let free, promises to give Ivan one of her young ones, and carries him to the stable where her three young ones are. She gives Ivan a little hump-backed horse with long ears (the Hindoo Uććâiḥsravas), that flies. By means of this little hump-backed horse, Ivan will make his fortune; when he leads it away, the mare and the two other colts follow it. Ivan's two brothers steal the mare and two colts, and go to sell them to the Sultan. Ivan rejoins them, and the three brothers stay in the Sultan's service as grooms; sometime afterwards, Ivan saves himself from drowning by means of his horse.

In the third of Erlenwein's Russian stories, a stallion is born to the Tzar's mare, that had drunk the water in which a certain fish (a pike, in the nineteenth story) had been washed, at the same time as the Tzar's daughter and her maid give birth to two heroes, Ivan Tzarević and Ivan Diević—i.e., John of the Tzar and John of the girl, a form representing the Açvinâu. Ivan Tzarević rides upon the stallion. In the nineteenth story, the son of the mare is called Demetrius of the Tzar (Dmitri Tzarević); hero and horse being identified. In the fifth story of Erlenwein, a Cossack goes into the forest, where he is betrayed into the enemy's hands, who gives orders that he be cut in pieces, put into a sack, and attached to his horse. The horse starts, and carries him to the house of silver and gold, where he is resuscitated. During the following night, an old man and woman, whose guest the Cossack is, drag him, in order to waken him, by the cross which hangs on his neck, and he is thus transformed into a horse of gold and silver. Towards evening, the horse, by the Tzar's order, is killed, and (like the bull and the cow) becomes an apple-tree of silver and gold. The apple-tree is cut down, and becomes a golden duck. The golden duck is the same as the golden horse, or as the hero resuscitated, i.e., the morning sun. The sack and the horse which carry the hero cut in pieces represent the voyage of the sun in the gloom of night, or the voyage of the grey horse, the imperfect horse, the bastard mule, or the ass.

In the Russian tales, moreover, a distinction is made between the grey and the black horse; the grey horse helps the hero in the night very effectively, and the black one, on the contrary, is the herald of death. When, in the ninth story of Erlenwein, the horse of Ivan the merchant's son goes to search for the horses of the princess from beyond the sea, Ivan waits for him upon the shore. If he sees grey horses come forth, it is to be a sign that his own steed is alive; but if, on the other hand, black horses appear, he is to conclude that his own horse is dead. Grey is the colour of sadness, black is the colour of death.

In Afanassieff, we find new interesting data. Ivan the fool watches during the night to surprise the horse which devastates his father's crops, and succeeds in binding it with rods from a linden-tree, after it has smelt the odour of tobacco. Then, by the help of the sister of the hero Nikanore, it acquires the faculty, when running after cows and horses, of turning their tails into gold, as well as their horns or manes, and their flanks into stars. What better image could there be of the starry sky of night, the golden tail of which is the red evening, and the front parts, also of gold, the morning aurora?[562]

In another story,[563] we have Ivan the son of the bitch occupying the place and playing the part of Ivan the son of the mare. Ivan of the bitch, after having delivered the three princesses from the deep cistern, is himself thrown into it. The black horse comes to deliver him, and cannot; the grey horse comes, and cannot either; the red horse comes, and succeeds in dragging the hero out. The black horse represents the dark night, the grey horse the night beginning to clear, and the red horse the roseate morning, which delivers the sun or solar hero.

The third brother Ivan, mounted on a marvellous horse, comes first to the bronze castle, then to the silver one, and lastly to that of gold.[564] This is a variety of the same myth, and represents similarly the solar voyage from evening to morning. The next mythical legend, however, probably alludes rather to the three days of the winter solstice, which the sun takes to return. The hero, Theodore, finds a horse that has been just brought forth, which the wolves have driven towards him; he makes it pasture upon the dew for three dawns (like the Hungarian Tátos, who feeds upon the golden oats in a silver field, that is to say, who, during the silvery night, or else during the white dawn, or the snowy winter, absorbs the dewy humours of the spring, or the morning aurora). The first day, the young horse becomes as high as half a tree; the second, higher than the tree; the third day it is as high as the heavens, and bears the hero Theodore and his wife Anastasia on its back.

Ivan Durák watches three nights at his father's tomb.[565] His father tells him that if at any time of need he calls with a hero's whistle, a wonderful grey horse will appear to help him, whose eyes shoot flames, and from whose nostrils issues smoke. Ivan does so, and is answered; he gets into his right ear, and comes out of the left. By means of this horse, Ivan succeeds in taking down the portrait of the Tzar's daughter three times, though hung high up on the wall of the palace, and thus obtains the beautiful princess to wife.

According to another variety of this story,[566] Ivan, the third and foolish brother, goes with the most worthless jade in the stable into the open air, and calls up the grey horse with a loud shout; he enters into him by one ear, and comes out at the other. Two young horsemen (the Açvinâu) appear to him, and make a horse with golden mane and tail come forth; upon this horse Ivan succeeds in three times kissing, through twelve glasses (the glass mountain of the Esthonian story), the daughter of the Tzar, who therefore becomes his wife. Here, therefore, we find the ugly horse which is made beautiful by the two horsemen, represented by the two ears of the grey horse out of which they come. These two horsemen give the hero a better steed. Be it understood that their own heroic steed (that is, the sun's horse), from being ugly or asinine during the night, became beautiful and noble; in the Küllaros of the Dioscuri, too, we ought probably to recognise a courser that has been transformed from an ass to a heroic horse.

Sometimes, instead of the horse, we have only its head. The step-mother persecutes the old man's daughter;[567] the persecuted maiden finds a mare's head, which beseeches her to relieve and cover it; at last it invites her to enter the right ear and come out of the left one. The persecuted girl comes out in the form of an exceedingly beautiful maiden. The step-mother sends her own daughter to try the same means of becoming beautiful; but she maltreats the mare's head, and the mare's head devours her.

There is also a singularly clear allusion to the Açvinâu in the forty-fourth story of the fifth book of Afanassieff, which seems to me to be a full confirmation of these interpretations. When Basiliça, the girl persecuted by her step-mother, approaches the house of the old witch (the baba-jegá), she sees galloping towards the great door of it a black horseman, dressed all in black, upon a black horse, who disappears underground, upon which night begins.[568] When the day begins to appear, Basiliça sees before her a white horseman, dressed all in white, upon a white horse, caparisoned in white. The maiden goes on; when the sun begins to rise, she sees a red horseman, dressed in red, upon a red horse.[569] The myth does not require comment; but it happens to be given to us in the story itself by the witch, who, to appease the curiosity of the girl Basiliça, reveals to her that the black horseman represents the dark night (noć tiómnaja), the white horseman the clear day (dien jasnoi), and the red horseman the little red sun (solnishko krasnoje).

Returning from Slavonic to Asiatic tradition, we meet with the same myths.

Let us begin with the demoniacal horse, or demon of horses. The Ṛigvedas already knows it; the yâtudhanas, or monster, feeds now upon human flesh (like the Bucephalus of the legend of Alexander), now upon horse flesh, and now milk from cows. We have said it seems probable that the custom of keeping a lamp lighted in the stables is a form of exorcism against the demon; the Ṛigvedas, indeed, tells us that Agnis (that is, Fire, with his flame) cuts off the heads of such monsters.[570] But this is not enough; the Ṛigvedas offers us in the same hymn the proof of another identification. We have seen in the last chapter how Rebhas, the invoker, is the third brother, whom his envious and perfidious brothers threw into the well; and we have seen above how Ivan, who is also the third brother, invokes with a sonorous voice the grey horse which is to help him, and how the same Ivan is the one that discovers the monstrous horse which ravages the seed or the crops in his father's field. In the same Vedic hymn where the flame of Agnis beats down the heads of the monster that torments horses, Agnis (that is, fire) is invoked in order that the hero Rebhas may see the monster which devastates with its claws.[571] Rebhas and Bhuǵyus are two names of the hero who falls into the cistern in the Ṛigvedas. We have seen, not long ago, in the Russian story, that Ivan, the third brother, who is thrown down into the cistern, is delivered by the red horse. The Açvinâu, in the Ṛigvedas, deliver Bhuǵyus out of the sea by means of red-winged horses.[572] Here the grey and imperfect horse of night is become a red horse. In the same Vedic hymn, Rebhas, overwhelmed in the waters, is identified with his own horse (Ivan is son of the bitch, or the cow, or the mare), he being compared to a horse hidden by wicked ones.[573] We saw above, in the Russian story, how the two horsemen who come out of the grey horse's ear give to the foolish Ivan, who has an ugly and worthless horse, a handsome hero's palfrey, by means of which he accomplishes the arduous undertakings which entitle him to the hand of the king's daughter. It is remarkable how completely the Vedic myth agrees with this European legend. The Açvinâu have given, for his eternal happiness, a luminous horse to him who has a bad one.[574] In another hymn, the god Agnis gives to his worshipper a pious, truthful, invincible, and very glorious son, who vanquishes heroes, and a swift, victorious, and unconquered horse.[575]

We have seen, moreover, how Ivan, the most popular type of the Russian hero, has always to make three essays before he accomplishes his undertaking upon the wonderful horse which he has obtained from the two horsemen. The Ṛigvedas, which celebrates the famous mythical enterprise of the three steps of Vishṇus, of the great body (bṛihaććharîraḥ),[576] of the very vast step (urukramishṭaḥ),[577] who, in three steps, measured or traversed the whole span of the heavens,[578] betrays in another hymn the secret of Vishṇus's success in this divine enterprise, since it says that when, with the strength of Indras, he made his three steps, he was drawn by the two fair-haired horses of Indras[579] (that is, the two Açvinâu lent him the swift and strong horse which was to bear him on to victory). The three steps of Vishṇus correspond, therefore, to the three stations of Ivan, to the three races of the young hero to win the beautiful princess. Vishṇus also appears in the Râmâyaṇam,[580] in the midst of the sea of liquified butter, attractive to all beings, in the form of a horse's head. Hero and the solar or lunar horse are identified.

Indras is requested to yoke his right and his left (horses), to approach, inebriated, his dear wife.[581] By means of the horse obtained from the two horsemen, the Russian Ivan acquires his wife; in the Ṛigvedas, the two Açvinâu themselves, by means of their rapid chariot, became husbands of the daughter of the sun.[582] The horses of the sun are so fully identified with the chariot drawn by them, that they are said to be dependent on it, united with it, and almost born of it.[583] The Açvinâu, therefore, by means of the horse now enable the wife to be found by the solar hero, by the old Ćyavanas made young again (Tithôn),[584] now by the sun, and now find her themselves (perhaps drawing the chariot like horses). Râmas, too, who is represented in the Râmâyaṇam[585] as the deliverer of Sîtâ, is compared to the solar horse, to the sun born upon the mountain. We have seen in the Russian stories how the horse's head possesses the same magic power as the marvellous horse which the two horsemen give to the hero Ivan. Thus, in the Vedic myth, and in the corresponding brâhmanic tradition, the horse's head Dadhyańć stands in direct relation with the myth of the Açvinâu. The wise Dadhyańć shows himself pious towards the Açvinâu, to whom, although he knows that he will pay with his head for the revelation he makes, he communicates what he knows concerning the ambrosia or the Madhuvidyâ. For this, accordingly, Dadhyańć forfeits his head; but the Açvinâu present him with a horse's head (his own), which heroically achieves wonders. With the bones of Dadhyańć, or with the head of the horse Dadhyańć (he who walks in butter or ambrosia), fished up in the ambrosial lake Çaryaṇâvat (the head of the horse Vishṇus in the sea of butter),[586] Indras discomfits the ninety-nine hostile monsters (as Samson the Philistines with the jawbone of an ass).[587] This exchange of heads seems to be common to the traditions which are founded upon the myth of the Açvinâu, that is, to the legends of the two brother or companion heroes. In the Tuti-Name,[588] the heads of the prince and of the Brâhman, who are exceedingly like each other, are cut off and then fastened on again; but, by some mistake, the head of the one is attached to the body of the other, so that the prince's wife is embarrassed between them. This exchange of the husband (which corresponds to the exchange of the wife in the legend of Berta, referred to in the first chapter) is very frequent in the legend of the two brothers, and often ends in the rupture of the perfect concord reigning between them. The two brothers or companions who dispute about the wife, is a variety of the legend of the three brothers who, having delivered the beautiful princess, wish to divide her between them.

The Ṛigvedas does not seem as yet explicitly to exhibit the two Açvinâu at discord—they generally are united in doing good; but as we already know the Vedic blind man and lame man who are cured by the grace of Indras, or of the Açvinâu themselves; as we know that the Açvinâu, in the Ṛigvedas, make Dadhyańć, who has a horse's head, conduct them to the ambrosia, or indicate where it is, probably in order that they may procure health and strength for themselves; as in the ninth strophe of the 117th hymn of the first book of the Ṛigvedas, the marvellous horse of the Açvinâu, which kills the monster-serpent (ahihan), is but one; as we know that the Açvinâu run to gain the bride for themselves; and as we cannot ignore the fact that in the story of the blind and lame man, when a woman comes upon the scene, they endeavour to do harm to each other; as we know that of the two Hellenic brothers, the Dioscuri, one alone had from the gods the gift of immortality; as, finally, it is known to us that of the two brothers, he alone is the true hero who, by means of his horse, gains the victory over the monster,—it is clear that if we have not as yet in the Ṛigvedas the myth of the two brothers at discord, we have, at least, in the ambrosia, and in the bride won by them the origin of the myth already indicated; and from the idea of the privileged brother that of the envious one would naturally arise.

In Hesiod's Theogony we have the two brothers Chrysäor and Pêgasos, that come out of the Medusa (the evening aurora), who is made pregnant by Poseidôn, after Perseus has cut off her head. Pêgasos, the younger brother, becomes the heroic horse. In Hesiod himself, and in the Metamorphoses of Ovid, he carries the thunder and the thunderbolts for Zeus. The hero Bellerophontes rides him, and vanquishes, by his help, the Chimaira and the Amazons; he becomes the horse of the aurora, the horse of the Muses, the ambrosial steed. The monstrous Chimaira appears, in the Theogony of Hesiod, as the daughter of Typhaon and the Echidna, the monstrous daughter of Chrysäor. Therefore in the conflict which Bellerophontes maintains against the Chimaira, we have a form of the battle which goes on between the twin horses Pêgasos and Chrysäor, the one divine, the other demoniacal.

In the analogous myth of the Hellenic Dioscuri (the sons of the luminous one, i.e., of Zeus, just as the Vedic Açvinâu are the sons of the luminous sky;[589] Zeus is united with the Dioscuri, as Indras is with the Açvinâu), we again find the twins who fight to recover a woman who had been carried off from them, i.e., their own sister Helen. One of the two brothers is mortal, and the other immortal; he who is immortal passes the night in hell with his mortal brother. The double aspect of the sun, which at evening enters and loses itself in the night, now black, now illumined by the moon, and which, in the morning, comes forth in a luminous form, has enriched the story of the two brothers of mythology. One of the two brothers, the red horseman, is in especial relation with the morning sun; the other, in intimate connection with the silvery moon, the white horseman, and when the latter is amissing, with the infernal gloom.

Several mythologists have interpreted the Açvinâu as only the two twilights; but it seems more exact, inasmuch as they are often found together, whilst the two twilights are always apart, to recognise in them two crepuscular lights, the lunar of evening and autumn, and the solar of morning and spring.[590] Of the twin-brothers, one is always imperfect; the lunar crepuscular light offers us a similar imperfection, with respect to the sun. Inasmuch as the Açvinâu are affiliated both to the sun and the moon, when they come out of the two ears of the horse of night, we should understand, it would appear, that on one side the moon goes down, while on the other the sun is born, or that the solar horse arises, upon which the young hero lost in the night mounts and wins the princess aurora. In the Russian stories referred to in the preceding chapter, we have seen how the maiden abandons her hero-husband, or brother, to give herself into the monster's hands; the evening aurora forsakes the sun to throw herself into the night, and the evening twilight stays for a long time with the evening aurora (the reddish sky of evening), when the sun is already gone. In the morning the two lovers, the twilight, or sun and moon, and the aurora, meet once more; when the sun, or solar hero, arrives, he surprises them in flagrante delicto, and punishes them. Sometimes, on the contrary, the twilight and the aurora stay together, preserving their chastity; in this case the brother twilight figures as the good and honest guardian of the rights of his brother the sun. This appears to me to have been the most ancient, as it is the most subtle, interpretation of the myth; afterwards, it is possible, and even probable, that in the two Açvinâu only the two gods of morning and of evening were seen, with their respective twilights, considered as two brothers, so like that they were easily mistaken for each other. But from the data of the Russian story, which gives us the lunar twilight as a white horseman and the rising sun as a red one, the aurora being found exactly between the white and the red horsemen, between the moon or the white dawn (alba) and the sunrise, and seeing that the Ṛigvedas, which makes the aurora mount upon the chariot of the Açvinâu, considers them in the celebrated nuptial hymn as the paranymphoi of Sûryâ, the daughter of the sun or of the aurora herself, I venture to insist upon my interpretation as the most obvious, and perhaps the most logical one. The two brothers may very naturally be conceived of as contending for the possession of the bride when they have her between them, since the Açvinâu, considered as lunar light and sun, really take the aurora between them. The Vedic hymn cited above shows us how both the Açvinâu, arriving on the swift-running chariot, became the husbands of Sûryâ, the daughter of the sun. But this very Sûryâ, in the Vedic nuptial hymn, must be satisfied with one husband, who is called Somas, so that the Açvinâu can only occupy the place of paranymphs. The Açvinâu, therefore, would appear to be excluded from the wedding of Sûryâ as principal personages; they would seem to be nothing more than assistants, and, in fact, they often assume this part in the Vedic hymns, by enabling now the bride to find a husband, now the husband to recover his bride. We know already that by means of them Ćyavanas, the old sun (a Vedic Tithôn), became young again, and was able to espouse the aurora. We know that they gave sight to Vandanas (properly, the Face), that they made the blind see,[591] the lame walk, and performed sundry other works of charity, which would, however, have been much more glorious if these acts did not, in fact, always issue in benefit to themselves, as blind, lame, or drowned. It is hence very probable that when they give a bride to the hero, they, being now lunar, now solar heroes, do only appropriate her to themselves. When, therefore, we read that the Açvinâu assist as paranymphs at the nuptials of Sûryâ and Somas, we are much inclined to think that under Somas in this case one of the Açvinâu is hidden. In Indras and Somas, often sung of together in the Ṛigvedas, it seems to me that we have just another form of the Açvinâu, the more so because I also find them both, like the Açvinâu, personified in one and the same horse, whose back is covered with honey, and who is terrible and swift,[592] and because they are invoked together against the yâtudhânas, which, by the grace of the Açvinâu, the hero Rebhas succeeds in discovering and then chasing away.[593] The Tâittiriya Brâhmaṇam[594] represents to us the daughter of the sun (Sâvitrî) by the name of Sîtâ, as enamoured of Somas, who, on the contrary, loves another woman, the Çraddhâ (i.e., Faith), almost as if the daughter of the sun, the aurora, were, for him at least, a symbol of infidelity. Probably this embryo of a myth refers to the passage of the aurora, in the morning, from her amours with the white horseman (the white twilight), which, as we have said, was supposed to be in particular relation with the moon (Somas), to her amours with the red horseman (the sun), or, vice versa, to the aurora who, in the evening, abandons the red horseman, the sun (now her father, now her husband), to throw herself into the arms of the white horseman, the white twilight, the king Somas, or silver god Lunus. Moreover, Yâskas, in the Niruktam,[595] already notices that the Açvinâu were identified now with the day and the night,[596] now with the sun and the moon.