on which account it is killed by Priapos:
The apologue is well known of the long-eared ass, who, when called upon to judge between the nightingale and the cuckoo as to who has the sweetest voice, decides in favour of the cuckoo. The nightingale then appeals to man with the sweet song that we are all acquainted with.[723] In the myth of Midas, the Phrygian hero is given ass's ears as a chastisement by Apollo, because, having been called upon to judge between the cithern or lyre of Apollo (whence the proverb "Asinus ad lyram") and the pastoral pipe (calamus agrestis) of Pan (who is represented as a horned and bearded satyr, with a tail and long ears), he pronounced that the pan-pipes were the most harmonious instrument. Midas hides his ears in a red cap, but his comber lets out the secret, as in the Mongol story, and in a manner almost identical—
The same Greeks who held the ass up to derision, made the Phrygian king Midas, of the ass's ears, the object of their satire. This is a particular form of the mythico-heroic struggle between Greeks and Phrygians or Trojans. Apollo is the enemy of the Trojans, as he is the enemy of the Phrygian king Midas. The Trojans and Troy are represented by the ass, and the Greeks, who vanquish and take by assault the Trojan fortress, by the horse; the sun disperses the night; the hero kills the centaur; the horse defeats the ass, the Greek the Trojan; and every one can see how the fact that the Greeks personified in the ass their enemies in Asia Minor, must have damaged the reputation of the poor long-eared animal. The most bitter and cutting satire is always that which is directed towards one's own enemies; and the ass, unfortunately, had at one time the honour of representing the Phrygian, the traditional enemy of the Greek. The ass bore the load of this heroic war, in the same way as in the Middle Ages he was publicly impaled by the Paduans for having had the misfortune of being the sacred animal on the arms of the city of Vicenza, with which the Paduans lived in rivalry.[725]
In the same eleventh book of Ovid where the transformation of the human ears of Midas into ass's ears is described, it is very remarkable that the new ears are called whitish, as in the Mongol story they are said to be golden. This confirms still more the interpretation of the myth, to the effect that the ass is the solar steed during the night. The head and the tail of the night, conceived as an animal, are now the two whitish or grey twilights, and now the two golden auroras of morning and evening.
The changeableness of the twilights must have served very well to express the mobility of the ears of an ass. In the story of the ass, Midas, the musical critic, the predestined ass, pronounces in favour of Pan; and he does so not only on account of the consanguinity between himself and the god, but also from a patriotic feeling. Pan was born in a forest of Arcadia, of Zeus and the nymph Kallisto; and it is well known that antiquity celebrated the asses of Arcadia above those of every other country. The ass as a musician, the ass as a musical critic, Pan the musician, and Pan preferred by the ass, are the same person. Arcadia, the country of pastoral music, of whistling shepherds, which made the Italy of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries bleat out so many useless verses, the country of Pan the satyr, par excellence, is the country of the ass. Arcadia is the most mountainous and wooded part of Greece,[726] and therefore, when the Olympians came down from heaven, celestial nymphs and satyrs came to people the forests and fountains of Arcadia. The divine guardian of the ambrosia in the heavenly cloud takes, in the Arcadian forest, the form of Pan, god of shepherds, who keeps guard over the honey. The gandharvâs, who danced and sung in the Hindoo Olympus with the apsarasas, has descended into Arcadia in the shape of Pan, to dance and sing with the nymphs.[727] Pan who goes alone into the gloomy forest, Pan who chases fear away, connected as he is with the story of the ass, reminds us on the one hand of the superstition recorded by Pliny, to the effect that an ass's skin put upon children chases fear from them[728] (in the same way as in the province of Girgenti, in Sicily, it is believed that shoes made of a wolf's skin, put on children's feet, make them daring and lucky in battle), and, on the other hand, of the unpublished Piedmontese story of the fearless Giovannino, who, in reward for his courage in going alone to hell, brings away with him an ass which throws gold from its tail.[729] In Tzetzas[730] I find again the curious notion that Midas sold his own stercus out of avarice, that is, that he changed it into gold, as Vespasian used to do by selling the excrement of his horse.
The Æsopian ass, when he goes to battle, terrifies by his braying all the animals of the forest; so Pan defeats his enemies by means of his terrible voice; and according to Herodotus,[731] in the heroic battle of Marathon, the Athenians were helped by the powerful voice of the god Pan. Finally, as we have seen Apollo to be the rival of Pan and the enemy of the Phrygian Midas, the predestined ass, as well as of the Trojans, so, in the eleventh of the Pythic odes of Pindar, we find the hero Perseus, among the Hyperboreans,[732] eating asses.[733] The morning sun devours the ass of night, as we have seen the solar hero Rustem do in the Shah-Name, where he eats the wild asses.
But we must look for more mythical personages in connection with the ass Midas in Arcadia, as the region of Pan and of asses. The ass Midas is considered as a rich progenitor of races, and is supposed to have been the first Phrygian. Windischmann has already observed (with the examples of Yamas, Yima, Manus, Minos, and Radamanthüs) the connection between the rich progenitor of races and the rich king or judge of hell. To Midas the progenitor and to Midas the judge, corresponds the ass whose excrements are of gold, the ass judge and prophet, the Arcadian and prophetic Pan. The Arcadians considered themselves not only autocthonoi, but proselênoi, or anterior to the moon. But they are also considered in the light of inhabitants of an infernal region. In Arcadia was situated the lake Stümphalos, the demoniacal birds of which were slain by Hêraklês in Arcadia; in a chasm formed of wild rocks was the source of the Styx, the principal infernal river, that by which the Hellenic infernal beings were accustomed to swear. Greek and Latin writers used to narrate of the ass (and the mule) that it had an especial aversion to the water of the Styx, as being poisonous. This superstition, when referred to the myth, appears to mean that, when the solar hero drinks this water—the water of the dark or cloudy ocean—he becomes a dark ass. (We find in Russian stories the hero who is transformed into a bull, a horse, or a he-goat, when he drinks water of which a demoniacal bull, horse, or he-goat has previously drunk.) Ælianos, in his tenth book relative to animals, speaking of the horned asses of Scythia, writes that they held in their horns the water of the Styx. A similar narrative is given by Philostratos in the third book of his romantic Life of Apollonios, concerning the fabulous horned ass of India. "It is said," he writes, "that in the marshy ground near the Indian river Hyphasis many wild asses are to be found; and that these wild beasts have on their heads a horn with which they fight bravely like bulls" (this seems to be a reminiscence of the Indian rhinoceros); "and that the Indians form out of these horns drinking-cups, affirming that those who drink out of these cups are delivered from every illness for all that day; when wounded they feel no pain, they pass safely through flames, nor, when they have drunk out of it, can they be hurt by any poison. They say that these cups belong to kings alone, nor is it permitted to any other than a king to hunt the animal. It is narrated that Apollonios (the hero of the romance) had seen this animal and observed its nature with wonder. Moreover, to Damis, who asked him whether he had faith in what was commonly said concerning the virtue of this cup, he answered 'I will believe it when I shall have learned that in this country the king is immortal.'" And no doubt Apollonios would have believed had it been impossible for him to divine that the king who makes use of this marvellous cup is the immortal sun, to whom alone it is reserved to kill the ass of the nocturnal forest, the ass whose hairy ears are like horns,[734] whose ears are of gold.
The horn of the Scythian ass full of Stygian water, the horn of the ass which, when used as a cup, gives health and happiness to him who drinks out of it, remind us (not to speak of Samson's jaw-bone of an ass, which makes water flow) especially of the myth of the cornucopia and that of the goat, with which the satyrs and fauns, having goat's feet, stand in particular connection. It is also for this reason that the ass is found in relation with Pan; wherefore it is too that Silenos rides upon an ass, and appears, as we have already seen, in the story of Midas, in his garden of roses; indeed the mythical centaurs or onocentaurs, satyr, faun, ass, and goat are equivalent expressions. We have seen, a few pages back, the Zendic three-legged ass; in the following chapter we shall find the lame goat.
As the ass was ridden by Silenos,[735] so was he the animal dedicated to Bacchus and to Priapos, whose mysteries were celebrated in the Dionysian feasts. It is said that when Bacchus had to traverse a marsh, he met with two young asses, and was conveyed by one of them, who was endowed with human speech, to the other side without touching the water. (The 116th hymn of the first book of the Ṛigvedas merits being especially compared with this. In it, immediately after having represented the Açvinâu as drawn by winged asses, the poet celebrates the Açvinâu as delivering the hero Bhugyus out of the waters upon a vessel that moved of itself in the air.)[736] On this account it is said that Bacchus, in gratitude, placed the two young asses among the stars.[737] This is another confirmation of the fact that the mythical ass really had the virtue of flying; and the proverb "Asinus si volat habet alas"[738] alludes to this myth. The fable of the ass who wishes to fly, and the flight of the ass, are derisive allusions, applied to the earthly ass. The celestial myth lingers in the memory, but is no longer understood.
In the myth of Prometheus, in Ælianos (vi. 5), we have the ass who carries the talisman which makes young again, which Zeus intended for him who should discover the robber of the divine fire (Prometheus). The ass, being thirsty, approaches a fountain, and is about to drink, when a snake who guards the fountain prevents him from doing so. The ass offers the snake the charm which he is carrying, upon which the serpent strips off its old age, and the ass, drinking at the fountain, acquires the power of becoming young again. The ass of night, when he drinks the dew of the dawn, grows young and handsome again every day. It is on this account, I repeat, that youth is celebrated as a peculiar virtue of the ass; it is on this account that the Romans attributed a great cosmetic virtue to ass's milk[739] (the white dawn, or moon).
The mythical ass seems to die every day, whereas, on the contrary it is born anew every day, and becomes young again; whence the Greek proverb does not celebrate the death in the singular, but the deaths of the ass ("Onou thanatous").
The Italian proverb of the ass that carries wine and drinks water, probably alludes to the ass that carries the water of youth, and then, being thirsty, drinks at the fountain in the legend of Prometheus. The wine of the Hellenic and Latin myth corresponds to the inebriating drink or somas in which Indras delights so much in the Ṛigvedas. The ass bears the drunken Silenos on its back.
The sun, who in the cloud is covered with the skin of an ass, carries the rain; whence the Greek proverb the ass is wetted by the rain ("Onos hüetai"), and the popular belief that when the ears of the ass or of a satyr (that is to say, of the ass itself) move, it is an indication of rainy weather (or dew). When the sun comes out of the shadows of night, he drinks the milk or white humour of the early morning sky, the same white foaming humour which caused the birth of Aphroditê, the same humour out of which, by the loves of Dionysos (or of Pan, of a satyr, or of the ass itself) and Aphroditê, the satyr was procreated—Priapos, whose phallic loves are discovered by the ass. The satyr serves as a link between the myth of the ass and that of the goat. On this account (that is, on account of the close relation between the mythical ass and the mythical goat) two ancient Greek and Latin proverbs—i.e., to dispute about the shadow of the ass ("Peri onou skias") and to dispute, "De lana caprina"—have the same meaning, a dispute concerning a bagatelle (but which is no trifle in the myth, where the skin of the goat or of the ass is sometimes changed into a golden fleece), which seems so much the more probable, as the Greeks have also handed down to us another proverb in which the man who expects to reap where he has not sown is laughed at as one who looks for the wool of the ass ("Onou pokas zêteis"), or who shears the ass ("Ton onon keireis"). We have seen, in the myth of Midas, the king, whose ears, when combed, betray his asinine nature. The Piedmontese story of the maiden on whose forehead a horn or an ass's tail grows, because she has badly combed the good fairy's head, is connected with this story of the combing of the long-eared Midas. The combed ass and the sheared ass correspond with one another; the combed ass has golden ears, in the same way as gold and gems fall from the head of the good fairy combed by the good girl in the fairy tale. To this mythical belief, I think, may be traced the origin of the mediæval custom in the Roman Church, which lasted till the time of Gregory VII., in which public ovations were offered to the Pope, and an ass bearing money upon its head was brought before him.[740]
The shadow of the ass[741] betrays him, no less than his ears, his nose, and his braying. The shadow of the ass and his nose are found in connection with each other in the legend of the Golden Ass of Apuleius, which, after narrating how the ass, by putting his head out of the window, had betrayed his master the greengrocer or gardener (the friend of perfumes, "Gandharvas, asinus, in unguento, onos en müro"), concludes thus: "The miserable gardener having been found again, and taken before the magistrates to pay the fine, they lead him to a public prison, and with great laughter cease not, says the ass Lucius, to "make merry with my face;" whence also was derived the popular proverb concerning the face and shadow of the ass ('De prospectu et umbra asini')." The ass who betrays his master the greengrocer or gardener by his face is a variety of the ass who, dressed in the forest in the lion's skin[742] (like Hêraklês who goes into hell dressed in a lion's skin), betrays himself by his braying, and of the ass who discovers by his braying Priapos, who delights in gardens (the vulva), Priapos the gardener, like the ogre[743] of the Pentamerone, who finds before him in his garden a beautiful maiden.
The ass can restrain neither his voice nor his flatus; we have already seen something similar in the story of Midas, where the comber of the ass feels he will burst if he is not permitted to relieve himself of the secret of the ass. Diogenês of Laertes narrates that the fields of Agrigentum being devastated by malignant winds which destroyed the crops, the philosopher Empedocles instructed them to take asses' skins, and having made sacks of them, carry them to the summits of the hills and mountains, to chase the winds away. Ælianos, confounding one noise with another, suggests, to prevent the ass from braying, the advantage of appending a stone to its tail. This ancient Greek fable is to this day very popular in Italy, and the narrator is accustomed to furbish it up with a character of actuality, as if it had happened yesterday, and among his acquaintances.
In the Italian stories,[744] when the ass brays upon the mountain, a tail grows on the forehead of the step-mother's ugly daughter; the third crowing of the cock is the signal for the monster's death; the third braying or flatus of the ass announces the death of the fool. With the end of the night the ass disappears, and the fool also disappears or dies. The braying of the ass cannot mount up into heaven; after the ass has brayed, after the cloud has thundered, the ass comes down upon the earth, is dissolved into rain, is dispersed and dies; the dark ass cannot remain in the luminous sky, it can only inhabit the cloudy, watery, or gloomy sky of hell. The way in which the fool of the story tries to elude death resembles that which was used, according to Ælianos, to prevent the ass from braying. In a story of Armagnac,[745] Joan lou Péc runs after a man whom he believes to be a sage, and asks him when he will die; the man answers, "Joan lou Péc, mouriras au troisièmo pet de toun ase." The ass does so twice; the fool endeavours to prevent the third: "Cop sec s'en-angonc cerca un pau (a stake) bien pounchut et l'enfouncéc das un martet dens lou cu de l'ase. Mes l'ase s'enflec tant, e hasconc tant gran effort, que lou pau sourtisconc coumo no balo e tuèc lou praube Joan lou Péc."
In Herodotus, the Scythians are defeated when the asses bray, and the dogs bark among Darius's tents. The braying of the ass, the thunder of the cloud, is an oracle; the ass that brays is a judge and a prophet. In hell everything is known; the devil knows every art, every species of malice, every secret; the ass in hell participates in this knowledge. The ass Nicon, in Plutarch, in the Life of Antony, predicts to Augustus his victory at the battle of Actium; on the contrary, in the Life of Alexander, by the same author, an ass who kills with a kick a great lion belonging to the Macedonian, appears to the great conqueror in the light of an evil omen. The dying sun of evening, the old lion, is killed in the evening by the ass of night; in the morning, on the contrary, the ass of night announces his fortune to the solar hero, who again becomes luminous and wise. The ass can predict all things, because it knows all things; it knows everything, because it hears everything, and it hears everything by means of its exceedingly long ears; the ass of Apuleius says of itself: "Recreabar quod auribus præditus cuncta longule etiam dissita sentiebam." And this ass which listens from a distance reminds us again of the third brother, now a fool, and now only supposed to be a fool; to the Andalusian Oidin-Oidon, hijo del buen oidor (a relation of the already cited Vedic Indras âçrutkarṇas), of the second cuento of Caballero,[746] who hears everything that is done in the deepest parts of hell, where Lucifer sits, horned and large-eared. The hero who combats with Lucifer only thinks of cutting off his ear; the ass without ears is no longer an ass; the ears of the mythical ass are its vital and characteristic organs. Instead of ears, give horns to the mythical ass, and we have the mythical goat; take the horns away and we have now the mythical abject sheep, now the hog; this is what we shall see in the two next chapters.
SUMMARY.
The sun-shepherd, and the sun-lamb, ram, or goat.—The dark-coloured he-goat.—The goat-moon.—Aǵas; explanation given by Professor Bréal; the Finnic aija.—Meshas; she-goat, ram, skin, sack.—The ram Indras.—The goats Açvinâu.—The he-goat Veretraghna.—The lamb and the goat in the forest opposed to the wolf.—The apple-tree and the she-goat; the cloud and the apple-tree.—The goat, the nut-tree and the hazel-nuts.—The wolf assumes the goat's voice; the wolf in the fire.—The witch takes the voice of the little hero's mother; the child born of a tree.—The hero among the sheep, or in the spoils of the sheep, escapes from the witch.—Pûshan aǵâçvas and his sister.—The brother who becomes a kid while drinking; the sister in the sea.—The husband-goat; the goat's skin burned; the monster appears once more a handsome youth; the funereal mantle of the young hero; when it is burned, the hero lives again handsome and splendid.—The children changed into kids.—The cunning Schmier-bock in the sack.—Aǵamukhî—Ilvalas and Wâtâpis.—Indras meshâṇḍas, sahasradhâras and sahasradâras.—The rams of the wolf eaten.—The goat of expiation, the goat and the stupidity of the hero disappear at the same time.—The devil-ram; the putrid sheep that throws gold behind it.—The goat which deprives men of sight.—The young prince, riding on the goat, solves the riddle.—The spy of heaven; the eye of God.—The constellation of the she-goat and two kids.—The lame goat.—The heroine and the goat her guide and nurse.—The milky way and the she-goat.—The goat's blood, manus Dei; the stone bezoar.—The cunning goat.—The goat deceives the wolf; the goat eats the leaf.—The she-goat possessed of a devil.—The ram-vessel.—Ram and he-goat fœcundators.—The he-goat and the horned husband.—Zeus he-goat and the satyr Pan; Hêraklês the rival of a goat; the old powerless man called a he-goat.—Hellenic forms of the myth of the goat.—Phrixos and Helle; Jupiter Ammon; the altar of Apollo; the fleece of the Iberians; the golden ram of Atreus; Aigüsthos; Diana and the white sheep; Neptune a ram; satyrs and fauns; Hermês krioforos; the sheep of Epimenis; lambs, rams, and he-goats sacrificed; aixourania and the cornucopia.—The mythical goat; its threefold form; black, white, and light-coloured lambs.—Pecus and pecunia.
When the girl aurora leads out of the stable in the morning her radiant flock, among them there are found to be white lambs, white kids, and luminous sheep; in the evening the same aurora leads the lambs, the kids, and the sheep back to the fold. In the early dawn all this flock is white, by and by their fleeces are golden fleeces; the white, and afterwards the golden heavens of the east (or the west) constituting this white and golden flock, and the sun's rays their fleeces. Then the sun himself, who steps forth from this flock, is now its young shepherd-king, and now the lamb, the ram, or he-goat. When the sun enters into the region of night, the he-goat or lamb goes back to the fold and becomes dark-coloured; the sun veiled by the night or the cloud is a dark-coloured ram, he-goat, or she-goat. In the night, says the proverb, all cows are black; and the same might be said of goats, except in the case of the goat, luminous and all-seeing, coming out of the nocturnal darkness in the form of the moon. We must, therefore, consider the sheep or goat under a triple aspect; the principal and most interesting aspect being that of the sun veiled by the gloom, or by the cloud, which wears often a demoniacal form, such as that of the ass or of the hero in hell; the second being that of the grey-white, and afterwards golden sky of morning, or of the golden and thereafter grey-white sky of evening which, as a luminous, is therefore generally a divine form of the goat; and the third aspect being that of the moon.
The richest myths refer to the sun enclosed in the cloud or the shades of night, or to the cloud or darkness of night closing round the sun. The shifting shadow and the moving cloud on the one side, the damp night and the rainy cloud on the other, easily came to be represented as a goat and as a ram. In the Indian tongue, or even the Vedic, aǵas is a word which means, properly speaking, pushing, drawing, moving (agens), and afterwards he-goat; the he-goat butts with its horns; the sun in the cloud butts with its rays until it opens the stable and its horns come out.[747] The ram is called meshas, or mehas, that is, the pourer or spreader, mingens (like the ass ćiramehin), which corresponds with the meghas, or cloud mingens. Moreover, as in Greek from aix,[748] a goat, we have aigis, a skin (Ægis), so in Sanskṛit from aǵas, a goat, we have aǵinas, a skin; and from meshas, a ram, meshas, a fleece, a skin, and that which is formed from it; whence the Petropolitan Dictionary compares with it the Russian mieh (Lithuanian, maiszas) skin and sack.
Let us now first of all see how these simple images developed themselves in the Hindoo myth.
Indras, the pluvial and thundering god, is represented in the first strophe of a Vedic hymn as a very celebrated heroic ram;[749] in the second strophe, as the one who pours out ambrosial honey (madaćyutam); in the third strophe, as opening the stable or precinct of the cows to the Añgirasas;[750] in the fourth strophe, as killing the serpent that covers or keeps back; in the fifth strophe, as expelling the enchanters with enchantments, and breaking the strong cities of the monster Piprus;[751] and in the sixth strophe, as crushing under his foot the giant-like monster Arbudas[752] or monster serpent. Thus far we have two aspects of the myth, the ram which pours out ambrosial honey, and the ram which opens the gate and crushes with its foot. In another hymn the Açvinâu are compared to two he-goats (aǵeva), to two horns (çṛiñgeva), and to two swift dogs.[753] A third hymn informs us that Indras by means of a ram killed a leonine monster.[754]
Here we evidently have a heroic he-goat or ram.
Let us compare it with other traditions. In the Khorda Avesta[755] we find Veretraghna (the Zend form of Indras, as Vṛitrahan) "with the body of a warrior he-goat, handsome, and with sharpened horns."
In the Russian tale given by Afanassieff,[756] the lamb, companion of the bull in the wood, kills the wolf by butting against its sides, while the bull also wounds the ferocious beast with its horns. In another variation of the same story,[757] the cat is confederate with the lamb against the wolf; the lamb butts hard at the wolf, while the cat scratches it till blood flows. In yet another version, besides the lamb, the he-goat also appears; the cat twists some of the bark of the birch-tree round the horns of the he-goat, and bids the lamb rub against it to produce fire; sparks come from it, the cat fetches hay, and the three companions warm themselves. The wolves come up, and the cat makes them run, presenting them the goat as a scarecrow, and frightening them further by ominous hints as to the strength contained in its beard. Finally, we have in the Russian stories two singular variations of the fable of the goat, the kids, and the wolf.[758] The goat is about to give birth to her young ones under an apple-tree. (We have seen in Chapter I. the apple-tree, the fruit of which, when eaten, causes horns to sprout. It is well-known that in Greek, mêlon means a goat and an apple-tree, as the Hindoo masculine noun petvas, which means a ram, is in the neuter petvam = ambrosia. The mythical apple-tree is ambrosial, like the cornucopia of the goat of mythology; and it seems to me that here, too, I can find an analogy in the Slavonic field itself between the Russian words óblaka, clouds, in the plural ablaká, the clouds, and iablony, apple-tree, plural jáblogna, the apple-trees, jablok, the apple.) The apple-tree advises the goat to betake itself to some other place, as the apples might fall upon its new-born kids and kill them. The goat then goes to give birth to her young ones under an equally shady walnut-tree; the walnut-tree also advises her to go away, as the nuts might fall and do serious harm to her little ones;[759] upon which the goat goes to a deserted tent in the forest, another form of the cloud of night. When the kids are brought forth, the goat issues forth out of the tent to procure food, and cautions her children not to open to any one (the fable is well known in the West, but the Slavonic variations are particularly interesting). The wolf comes and pronounces the same password as the goat to induce the kids to open, but they perceive by the rough voice of the wolf that it is not their mother, and refuse to admit him. The wolf then goes to the blacksmith, and has a voice made for him resembling that of the goat; the deceived kids open, and the wolf devours them all except the smallest, who hides under the stove (the favourite place where the little Slavonic hero, the third brother, the ill-favoured fool, who afterwards becomes handsome and wise, is accustomed to squat). The goat returns, and learns from the kid which has escaped the massacre of its brothers. She thinks how to avenge herself, and invites her friend and gossip the fox with the wolf to dinner; the unsuspecting wolf arrives along with the fox. After dinner, the goat, to divert her guests, invites them to amuse themselves by leaping over an opening made in the floor; the goat leaps first, then the fox leaps, and then the wolf, but falls down on the burning ashes and is burnt to death, like the witch in some other stories, as the night is burned by the morning aurora; and the goat chaunts a marvellous Te Deum (ćudesnoi pamin) in the wolf's honour. The other Russian version adds some new and curious details. The goat goes to find food, and leaves the kids alone; they shut the door after her. She returns and says, "Open, my sons, my little fathers; your mother is come; she has brought some milk, half a side full of milk, half a horn full of fresh cheese, half a little horn full of clear water (the cornucopia)."[760] The kids open immediately. The second day the goat goes out again; the wolf, who had heard the song, tries to sing it to the kids; but the latter perceive that it is not their mother's voice, and do not open. Next day the wolf again imitates the mother's voice; the kids open the door, and are all devoured except one which hides itself in the stove, and afterwards narrates to the mother-goat all that has happened. The goat avenges herself as follows: She goes into the forest with the wolf, and comes to a ditch where some workmen had cooked some gruel, and left the fire still burning. The goat challenges the wolf to leap the ditch; the wolf tries and falls into it, where the fire makes his belly split open, from which the kids, still alive, skip out and run to their mother.
Another story, however,[761] affords us still more aid in the interpretation of the myth; that is, in leading us to see in the goat and her kids the sun horned or furnished with rays, as it issues radiant out of the cloud, or darkness, or ocean of night, and in the wolf, or in the wolf's skin, split open or burned, out of which the kids come, the dark, cloudy, watery nocturnal sky. Instead of the wolf we have a witch, instead of the goat a woman, and instead of the kids the young Vaniushka (Little John); the witch has a voice made by the blacksmith like that of Vaniushka's or Tereshićko's mother, and thus attracts him to her. Tereshićha says that he was originally the stump of a tree, which his father and mother, being childless, had picked up in the forest, and wrapped up and rocked in a cradle till he was born.
The monster wolf, or the witch, having the faculty of simulating the voice of the goat,[762] and an especial predilection for both sheep and goats,—so much so that the witch Liho (properly Evil) keeps some in her house, and those which come out (of the dark sky) in the morning, and which re-enter (the dark sky) in the evening, are considered her peculiar property,[763]—often transforms the hero (the evening sun) into a kid (into the darkness or cloud of night). Of course, as the dark and cloudy monster is often represented as a wolf, it is easy to understand his wish that everything should be transformed into a lamb in order to eat it. But the mythical lamb or kid, the young solar hero, generally escapes out of the jaws of the wolf, out of the hands of the witch, or out of the darkness, the waters, or the cloud of night.
A Vedic hymn celebrates the strong Pûshan, who has a he-goat for his horse (or who is a goat-horse), and is called the lover of his sister. Perhaps these words contain the germ of the Russian story of Little John, brother of Little Helen, who is changed by witchcraft into a kid. I have already observed in Chapter I. how Helen, who at the commencement of the story shows affection for her brother John, ends by betraying him. The Vedic hymn would appear to contain the notion of the brother Pûshan transformed into a he-goat (the sun which enters into the cloud or darkness of night), because he has loved his sister. In another Vedic hymn we have the sister Yamî, who seduces her brother Yamas. In European fairy tales, the sister loves her brother, who is metamorphosed by the art of a witch, now into a young hog, and now into a kid. In the forty-fifth story of the fourth book of Afanassieff, Ivanushka (Little John) becomes a kid after drinking out of a goat's hoof. In the twenty-ninth story of the second book of Afanassieff, Ivanushka and Little Helen, the children of a Tzar, wander alone about the world. Ivanushka wishes to drink where cows, horses, sheep, and hogs feed and drink; his sister Little Helen advises him not to do so, lest he should turn into a calf, a colt, a lamb, or a young pig; but at last John is overcome by thirst, and, against the advice of his sister, he drinks where goats drink, and becomes a kid. A young Tzar marries the sister, and gives every honour to the kid, but a witch throws the young queen into the sea (Phrixos and Helle; in other European stories, into a cistern), and usurps her place, inducing the people to believe that she is Helen, and commanding the kid to be put to death. The kid runs to the shore and invokes his sister, who answers from the bottom of the sea that she can do nothing. The young Tzar, to whom the affair is referred, hastens to deliver Helen out of the sea; the kid can again skip about in safety, and everything is green again, and flourishes as much as it withered before; the witch is burnt alive.[764]
According to the fiftieth story of the sixth book of Afanassieff, a merchant has three daughters. He builds a new house, and sends his three daughters by turns to pass the night there, in order to see what they dream about. (The belief that the man dreamed of by a maiden during the night of St John's Day, Christmas Day, or the Epiphany, is her predestined husband, still exists in the popular superstitions of Europe.) The eldest daughter dreams that she marries a merchant's son, the second a noble, and the third a he-goat. The father commands his youngest daughter never to go out of the house; she disobeys; a he-goat appears and carries her off upon his horns towards a rocky place. Saliva and mucous matter fall from the goat's mouth and nostrils; the good maiden is not disgusted, but patiently wipes the goat's mouth. This pleases the animal, who tells her that if she had shown horror towards him, she would have had the same fate as his former wives, whose heads were impaled on a stake. The geese bring to the girl news of her father and sisters; they announce that the eldest sister is about to be married; she wishes to be present at the wedding, and is permitted by the goat to go, who orders for her use three horses as black as a crow, who arrive at their destination in three leaps (the three steps of Vishṇus), whilst he himself sits upon a flying carpet, and is transported to the wedding in the form of a handsome and young stranger. The same happens on the occasion of the second sister's marriage, when the third sister guesses that this handsome youth is her own husband. She departs before the rest, comes home, finds the skin of the goat and burns it; then her husband always preserves the form of a handsome youth, inasmuch as the enchantment of the witch has come to an end.[765]
The lamb, the he-goat, and the sheep are favourite forms of the witch. In the European story, when the beautiful princess, in the absence of the prince, her husband, gives birth to two beautiful sons, the witch induces the absent prince to believe that, instead of real sons, his young wife has given birth to pups. In the seventh story of the third book of Afanassieff, the young queen gives birth, during the king's absence, to two sons, of whom one has the moon on his forehead, and the other a star on the nape of his neck (the Açvinâu). The wicked sister of the young queen buries the children. Where they were buried a golden sprout and a silver one spring up. A sheep feeds upon these plants, and gives birth to two lambs, having, the one the moon on its head, the other a star on its neck. The wicked sister, who has meanwhile been married to the king, orders them to be torn in pieces, and their intestines to be thrown out into the road. The good lawful queen has them cooked, eats them, and again gives birth to her two sons, who grow up hardy and strong, and who, when interrogated by the king, narrate to him the story of their origin; their mother is recognised, and becomes once more the king's wife; the wicked sister is put to death.[766]
The witch is sometimes herself (as a wolf-cloud or wolf-darkness) a devourer of young luminous kids or lambs, such as the Schmierbock in the Norwegian story. The witch carries Schmierbock three times away in a sack; the first and second time Schmierbock escapes by making a hole in the sack; but the third time the witch succeeds in carrying him to her house, where she prepares to eat him. The cunning Schmierbock, however, smuggles the witch's own daughter into his place, and, climbing up, conceals himself in the chimney (a variation of the stove, the place where the young Russian hero usually hides himself, in the same way as in the Tuscan story the foolish Pimpi conceals himself in the oven). From this post of security he laughs at the witch, who endeavours to recapture him; he throws a stone down the chimney and kills her, upon which he descends, rifles her treasure-stores, and carries off all her gold. Here the young hero is called a he-goat; in the chapter on the wolf, we shall find the witch of the Norwegian story actually bears the name of wolf. These two data complete the myth; the wolf which wishes to devour the little hero, and the witch who endeavours to eat the little lamb, are completed by the fable which represents the wolf as, at the rivulet, eating the lamb, which, in the mythical heavens, means the cloudy and gloomy monster which devours the sun.
We have seen above the witch who imitates the voice of the mother of the little hero, in order to be able to eat him, and the wolf who mimics the voice of the goat and eats the kids; but the wolf does more than assume the goat's voice; he sometimes even takes her form.
In the Râmâyaṇam,[767] Aǵamukhî, or goat's face, is called a witch, who wishes Sîtâ to be torn to pieces. In the legend of Ilvalas and Vâtâpis,[768] the two wizard brothers who conspire to harm the Brâhmaṇâs, Vâtâpis transforms himself into a wether, and lets himself be sacrificed in the funeral rites by the Brâhmaṇâs. The unsuspecting Brâhmaṇâs eat its flesh; then Ilvalas cries out to his brother, "Come forth, O Vâtâpis!" and his brother, Vâtâpis, comes out of the bodies of the Brâhmaṇâs, lacerating them, until the ṛishis Agastyas eats of himself the whole of Vâtâpis, and burns Ilvalas to ashes. The Râmâyaṇam itself explains to us why, in these sacrifices, a wether, and not a ram, is spoken of,[769] when it narrates the legend of Ahalyâ. It is said in this passage that the god Indras was one day condemned to lose his testicles by the malediction of the ṛishis Gâutamas, with whose wife, Ahalyâ, he had committed adultery. The gods, moved to pity, took the testicles of a ram and gave them to Indras, who was therefore called Meshâṇḍas; on this account, says the Râmâyaṇam, the Pitaras feed on wethers, and not on rams, in funeral oblations. This legend is evidently of brâhmanic origin. The Brâhmaṇâs, being interested in discrediting the god of the warriors, Indras, and finding him called in the Vedâs by the name of Meshas or ram, invented the story of the ram's testicles, in the same way as, finding Indras in the Vedâs called by the name of Sahasrâkshas (i.e., he of the thousand eyes), they malignantly connected this appellation with the same scandalous story of the seduction of Ahalyâ, and degraded the honourable epithet into an infamous one, he of the thousand wombs, probably by the confusion arising out of the equivoque between the words sahasradhâras, the sun (as carrying, now a thousand stars, now a thousand rays), or sahasrânçus, and sahasradâras, which has a very different meaning.
In the important 116th hymn of the first book of the Ṛigvedas, Ṛiǵrâçvas (i.e., the red horse, or the hero of the red horse) eats a hundred rams belonging to the she-wolf (in the following hymn, a hundred and one); his father blinds him on this account; the two marvellous physicians, the Açvinâu, give him back his two eyes.[770] Evidently the father of the solar hero is here the gloomy monster of night himself; the sun, at evening, becomes the devourer of the rams who come out of the she-wolf, or who belong to the she-wolf; it is for this reason that the monster wolf blinds him when evening comes. The red horse Ṛiǵrâçvas, or the hero of the red horse, who eats the rams of the she-wolf, affords a further key to enable us to understand the expiatory goat, which in the Ṛigvedas itself is sacrificed instead of the horse. We are told in a hymn, that in the sacrifice of the horse the omniform he-goat (aǵo viçvarûpaḥ) has preceded the horse;[771] and the Âitareya Br., commenting on this exchange of animals, also speaks of the he-goat as the last animal destined for the sacrifice. In the Russian stories, too, the goat has to pay the price of the follies or rogueries done by the man, and is sacrificed.[772] This sacrificed he-goat appears to be the same as the ass which undergoes punishment for all the animals in the celebrated fable of Lafontaine (which becomes a bull in the hands of the Russian fabulist Kriloff, who could not introduce the ass, an animal almost unknown in Russia); and we already know that the ass represents the sun in the cloud or the sun in the darkness; and we have also said that the ass and the fool die together in the legend. The she-goat dies in the Russian story to deliver the fool, who, after her death, is a fool no longer, his folly having died with her.[773] The popular story offers us another proof of the identity of the mythical ass and the mythical goat. We have also seen above, in the Norwegian story, how the witch possesses a treasure which is carried off by the Schmierbock, who kills her; the magician, or the devil, is always rich. The ass which the devil gives to Little Johnny throws gold from its tail; the ass personifies the devil. But the devil, as we have observed, also has a predilection to embody himself in a ram, a lamb, or a he-goat. I remember the puppets who every day improvised popular representations in the little wooden theatre on the Piazza Castello, at Turin, when I was a boy; the final doom of the personage who represented the tyrant was generally to die under the bastinadoes of Arlecchino, or to be carried to hell by the devil in the form of a bleating lamb, which came upon the scene expressly to carry him away with him, this disappearance being accompanied by much throbbing of the spectators' hearts, to whom the manager preached a salutary sermon.[774] In the twenty-first of the Tuscan stories published by me, it is not the devil, but the little old man, Gesù, who gives to the third brother, instead of the usual ass, a putrid sheep, which, however, has the virtue of throwing louis-d'or behind it. This putrid, or wet, or damp sheep represents still better the damp night.
Ṛiǵrâçvas, as we have said, eats the ram and becomes blind, his father having blinded him to avenge the she-wolf to whom the rams belonged; but the mother of the rams being the sheep, it is probable that the she-wolf who possessed the rams had assumed the form of a putrid sheep, in the same way as we have seen her above transformed into a she-goat; the father of Ṛiǵrâçvas, who avenges the she-wolf on account of the hundred rams, may perhaps himself have been a horned wolf transformed into a he-goat, and have blinded Ṛiǵrâçvas with his horns. In the popular story, the she-goat, when she is in the forest, takes a special pleasure in wounding people's eyes with her horns; hence is probably derived the name of the reptile aǵakâvas, conjured with in the Ṛigvedas,[775] as durdṛiçikas, or making to see badly, damaging the eyesight, and the name of aǵakâ, given to an illness in the eyes by the Hindoo physician Suçrutas. However, we must not forget the connection between the idea of skin and that of goat, by which the aǵakâ might mean simply the thin membrane that sometimes harms the pupil of the eye, and produces blindness. This thin membrane, stretched over the eye of the solar hero, blinds him. We shall see in the chapter on the frog and the toad, which very often represent, in the myths, the cloud and the damp night, that the toad[776] causes blindness only by means of the venom which it is fabled to exude, like the reptile aǵakâvas.
But, as the hero in hell learns and sees everything, the goat, which deprives others of sight, has itself the property of seeing everything; this is the case, because the goat, being the sun enclosed in the cloud or gloomy night, sees the secrets of hell, and also because, being the horned moon or starry sky, it is the spy of the heavens. We have already observed in the first chapter how the marvellous girl of seven years of age, to answer the acted riddle proposed by the Tzar, arrives upon a hare, which, in mythology, represents the moon. In a variation of the same story given by Afanassieff,[777] instead of riding upon a hare, the royal boy comes upon a goat, and is recognised by his father; the goat, in its capacity of steed of the lost hero, seems here to represent the moon, as the hare does.
We have already spoken of Indras sahasrâkshas, i.e., of the thousand eyes; Hindoo painters represent him with these thousand eyes, that is, as an azure sky bespangled with stars. Indras as the nocturnal sun hides himself, transformed, in the starry heavens; the stars are his eyes. The hundred-eyed or all-seeing (panoptês) Argos placed as a spy over the actions of the cow beloved of Zeus, is the Hellenic equivalent of this form of Indras. In Chapter I. we also saw the witch's daughter of the Russian fairy tale who has three eyes, and with her third eye plays the spy over the cow, which protects the good maiden. In the second story of the sixth book of Afanassieff, when the peasant ascends into heaven upon the pea-plant, and enters into a room where geese, hogs, and pastry are being cooked, he sees a goat on guard; he only discovers six eyes, as the goat has its seventh eye in its back; the peasant puts the six eyes to sleep, but the goat, by means of its seventh eye, sees that the peasant eats and drinks as much as he likes, and informs the lord of the sky of the fact. In another variation of the story, given by Afanassieff,[778] the old man finds in heaven a little house guarded in turns by twelve goats, of which one has one eye, another two, a third three, and so on up to twelve. The old man says to one after the other, "One eye, two eyes, three eyes, &c., sleep." On the twelfth day, instead of saying "twelve eyes," he makes a mistake and says "eleven;" the goat with twelve eyes then sees and secures him. The eye of God which sees everything, in the popular faith, is a variation of Argos Panoptês, the Vedic Viçvavedas, and the Slavonic Vsievedas, the eye of the goat which sees what is being done in heaven. When the moon shines in the sky, the stars grow pale, the eyes of the witch of heaven fall asleep, but some few eyes still stay open, some few stars continue to shine to observe the movements of the cow-moon, the fairy-moon, the Madonna-moon, who protects the young hero and the beautiful solar maiden lost in the darkness of night.
This spying goat's eye is perhaps connected with the constellation of the goat and two kids. Columella writes that the kids appear in the sky towards the end of September, when the west, and sometimes the south, wind blows and brings rain. According to Servius, the goat united with the two kids in the constellation of Aquarius is the same goat which was the nurse of Zeus; he says that it appears in October, with the sign of Scorpio. Ovid, in De Arte Amandi, and in the first book Tristium, and Virgil in the ninth book of the Æneid,[779] also celebrate the goat and the kids of heaven as bringers of rain. Horace, in the seventh ode, elegantly calls the goat's stars insane:—