The German proverb, "As a blind cow finds a pea," is now used to indicate an impossibility; and yet in the myth the blind cow (or the night) really finds the pea, kidney-bean, or bean (the moon), which are the same thing to all intents and purposes. The night is sacred to the dead; for the dead are as eaten vegetables—kidney-beans, vetches, peas, and cabbages—lunar symbols of resurrection and abundance. In the ninth story of the fourth book of Afanassieff, the daughter of the old man and woman eats beans; a bean falls upon the ground, and grows up to the sky; upon this bean the old man (the sun) climbs up to heaven and sees everything. In the numerous stories in which the young hero sells a cow or cow's hide, we almost always find a pipkin full of kidney-beans, which he induces people to think can cook themselves, the hero having first cooked them, and then placed them upon the fire covered with ashes (the darkness); the pipkin is also the moon. The stories of the pipkin belonging to the house-mother in the Mahâbhâratam, which the god Kṛishṇas, having been hospitably entertained by her, refills with beans, and of the lord who, in an unpublished Piedmontese legend, disguised as a poor old man, throws pebbles into the kettle of the pious widow, which, as soon as thrown in, become kidney-beans, involve the same myth. In the same way I think the kidney-bean is evidently intended by the fruit of fruits, which, according to the Mahâbhâratam, the merciful man receives in exchange for the little black cow (kṛishṇadhenukâ) given to the priest.[457] In the English fairy tale of "Jack and the Bean-stalk," Jack barters his cow for some beans; his mother (the blind cow) scatters the beans; one of them takes root, and grows up to the sky.[458] By means of the black cow, of the funereal or blind cow, of the cow-aurora, which becomes black or blind during the night, the hero finds the bean or the pea of abundance (the moon), by means of which he sees again in the morning and becomes rich.

We have seen a sack, instead of the hide of a black cow, used to signify the night; in like manner, after or instead of this same cow's hide (which the hero goes to sell), as well as the pea or bean, we have the pipkin—the poor hero finds the moon. The Slavonic story of the potter who becomes rich, and that of the brother believed to be stupid, who sells at a high price his pipkin, which makes the beans boil without a fire, are varieties of the same subject. In a Russian story in Afanassieff,[459] the amphora takes the place of the pipkin that makes its owner rich. The poor brother draws it out of the water; from the broken amphora comes a duck, which lays one day golden eggs, and the next silver ones—the sun and the moon (at morning the aurora hatches the golden day, at evening the silver night).

We have still to explain the proverbs of the cow that laughs and the cow that spins. The laughing aurora (after having, during the night, acted the princess that never laughs) and the spinning aurora (in relation with the cow, the moon, that spins by means of its horns) are already known to us. The aurora laughs at morn in the sky, at the sight of her husband; thus the princess that never laughs, in a numerous series of Slavonic, German, and Italian stories, laughs when she sees her predestined husband.[460] The proverb of the cow that laughs is connected with that of the cow that speaks; it is perhaps on this account that bulls and cows (and other animals) which speak, and say and do complimentary things among themselves, in an entire cycle of Indo-European stories, which have been learnedly illustrated by Professor Benfey, in Orient und Occident, under the title of "Ein Märchen von der Thiersprachen," always make the man who understands, and indiscreetly listens to their language, laugh. But if the man reveals what the bulls or cows (or other animals) have said to each other, he prepares his own ruin: the language and the inner life of animals must not be divulged to all; if published abroad, the augury is a sinister one. That which makes the princess of the Russian tale laugh, is seeing the courtesy which the animals, like men, show to the man taken out of the mud; that which makes the man who understands the language of animals laugh, is seeing them speak and act to each other exactly as men do in similar private relations. To betray this mystery is to wish for one's death. No one must know what the bull said in secret to the cow, the sun to his mistress, what the king said in the queen's ear. The violator of the mysteries of Venus is guilty of sacrilege, and merits the punishment of death, or at least brings evil down upon his head. Woe to the heroine if the hero hidden in the skin of an animal, on account of some indiscretion, or because she has spoken to her sisters, shows himself naked in his human form; she loses him, and their separation is inevitable.

We are already acquainted with the cloud-cow and the cloud-bull; the cloud thunders, the bull bellows and speaks. The clouds, the Vedic gnâ devapatnîs, gnâ devîs,[461] that is, the goddesses, or divine and knowing wives, the fairy goddesses (women with their presentiments, the women that know more than the devil), are also prophetic cows; these cows, in their character of fairies, speak with a human voice, and so do the cloud-bulls. Hence the Romans could take their auguries from an ox that spoke with a human voice. It has been said that this omen was a sinister one, but it is a mistake. According to Livy, under the consulate of Cn. Domitius and L. Quintius, an ox threw Rome into terror by the words, Cave tibi, Roma. These words seem to have a sinister meaning, but they are in reality nothing more than a friendly counsel or admonition, as much as to say, Look to your field occupations, O Rome; the thunder has been heard which announces the summer. Thus, when we read in the fifth book of Pliny's Natural History that whenever an ox was known to have spoken with a man's voice, the Roman Senate was accustomed to meet in the open air—sub dio, I only see in this allusion, and in ascribing this practice to the Senate, one way of saying that when thunder is heard (that is to say, when the ox speaks) it is a sign of summer, and we may go out into the country and sleep in the open air. And so, finally, when, according to Eusebius, an ox said, that for the death of Cæsar (which, as every one knows, took place on the Ides of March, that is to say, at the beginning of spring) there would be more blades of corn than men, I see a most evident announcement of the approach of summer, in which men or reapers are in fact never too many, and even rare when the harvest is a large one. The ox that with a man's voice heralds the near advent of summer corresponds to the cuckoo, the legend of which we shall reserve for a special chapter. Meanwhile, to confirm still more our identification, we shall cite here the almost proverbial verse of Theocritos: Women know everything, even how Zeus married Hêra (or that which the king said in the queen's ear). Zeus, transformed into a cuckoo, flew to the mountain, and alighted on the knees of Hêra, who, to protect him from the cold, covered him over with her robes. The cuckoo, or Zeus, disappears soon after having spoken, that is, announced the summer loves of the sun. After St John's Day the cuckoo, who appears in March, is no longer seen; so the ox, soon after it has spoken and betrayed the loves of Zeus, or soon after the cloud has thundered, revealing the secret loves of the sun within the sky covered with clouds, or the confidential speeches and secret caresses of the animals, pays for this indiscretion by his own death. As the aurora is represented in the Vedic hymns by a maiden who does not laugh, and smiles only when she sees her husband,[462] so the lightning that tears the cloud and comes before the thunder is compared to the laughing of an ox or a cow, or else of the man who has seen their loves. As long as the sky only lightens, or merely smiles,[463] there is little harm done. No one can know as yet why the ox or the cow, the hero or heroine, or the third person who is looking on, smiles before the spectator; but when the hero or the heroine speaks, betraying the thought or singular surprise which makes him or her smile, the penalty of the indiscretion is death; the thundering cloud is soon dissolved into rain. Nor will my identification of the cloud that lightens (making a distinction between the lightning and the thunderbolt) with the smiling cow, or ox, or man who, understanding the language of animals, as they speak in low tones, and seeing their most familiar habits, smiles, seem forced when we reflect that our language has preserved the figures of a ray of joy, of a flash of joy, to indicate a smile, of which we say that it shines, illumines, or lightens. Lightning is the cloud's smile. In the ninth story of the third book of Afanassieff, we meet with a fish which laughs in the face of the onlooker (the cloud that lightens, and also the moon that comes out of the ocean of night), and for which, on account of this singular property, the poor man (the sun in the cloud or in the night) obtains an extraordinary sum from a rich lord, even all his riches—i.e., the poor man takes the place of the lord; the splendid sun takes the place of the sun hidden in the cloud or in the darkness. In a Hindoo story of Somadevas (i. 5), a fish laughs upon seeing men disguised as women in the king's apartment. In the Tuti-Name (ii. 21), the fishes laugh when they see the prudery of an adulteress. With this is connected the fable of Lafontane, "Le Rieur et les Poissons" (viii. 8). In the legend of Merlin, the magician also laughs because the wife of Julius Cæsar lives with twelve heroes disguised as women, and because he himself allowed himself to be taken by Grisandole, a princess disguised as a cavalier.[464]

The fish is a phallic symbol (in the Neapolitan dialect, pesce, fish, is the phallos itself). The fish that laughs because it has been the spectator of adultery is the phallos itself in gaudio Veneris. The thunderbolt of Indras is his phallos that breaks the cloud. In Ovid,[465] we have Jupiter, who, by means of riddles, teaches Numa the way of forming the thunderbolt.

The joke of the April fish (le poisson d'Avril), with which so many of our ladies ingenuously amuse themselves, has a scandalously phallical signification.[466] The fishes of the Zodiac are twins, a male and a female bound together, born of Erôs (Amor) and Aphroditê (Venus). In the Adiparvam of the Mahâbhâratam, we read of a fish which devours a man's seed, and a girl who, having eaten it, brings forth a child. The same myth occurs again in the Western popular tales.

The cow that spins still remains to be explained. We have already seen that the cow spins with her horns for the maiden; this cow is, generally, the moon, which spins gold and silver during the night. The aurora is ordered by her step-mother, the night, both to pasture the cow (the moon) and spin. If the cow-maid is to take care of her cow and guard her well, she will be able to spin but little; whence the German proverb is right when it says that if the cow-maid must spin there will be little yarn. The good cow-maid prefers to keep her cow well, and pays every regard to it, in order that it may find good pasturage; then the grateful cow (the moon) puts gold and silver upon its horns to spin for the maiden.[467] In the morning the girl appears upon the mountain with the gold and silver yarn, with the gold and silver robes given her by the good fairy or by the good cow.[468] And when the old woman kills the cow, the girl who keeps its bones and sows them in the garden sees, instead of the cow, an apple-tree with gold and silver apples grow up, by offering one of which to a young prince the maiden obtains a husband, whilst perverse women are beaten by the apple-tree or find themselves opposed by horns. This apple-legend is a variation of the star which falls upon the good maiden's forehead on the mountain, and of the horns, or donkey's tail, which grow out of the forehead of the bad sister who has maltreated the cow or badly combed the Madonna's head. The story of the good maiden and the wicked one, of the beautiful and the ugly one, finishes with the attempt made by the ugly and wicked girl to take the place of the beautiful and good one in her husband's bed, in the same way as, in other stories, a black washerwoman tries to take the place of the beautiful princess; and this conclusion brings us to the interesting story of the spinning Berta, or Queen Bertha, as she is called.

In German mythology we have the luminous Berchta, who spins, in contrast with the dark and wild Holda at the fountain (the washerwoman of fairy tales). The former seems to be (besides the moon as a white woman, in her period of light, the silvery night) the aurora, the spring, or the luminous aspect of the heavens; the latter (besides the moon in her period of darkness, Proserpina or Persephonê in hell), the dark night, winter, the old witch.[469] The same name is given to the various phenomena of the gloomy sky, in the same way as a contrary name is given to the various phenomena of the luminous heavens. On this account lunar and solar myths, daily and annual myths, enter into the story of Berta or Berchta.

Berta, like the cow of the fairy tales, spins silver and gold. Therefore, when we say in Italy that the time when Berta spun is past,[470] this expression means, that the golden age, the age in which gold abounded is past. And instead of this expression we also use another in Italy to denote an incident which took place in a very ancient era, at a time very remote from the memory of men; we say, in the times of King Pipino (Pepin). Queen Berta having been the wife of Pepin, it was natural that the times of the husband should correspond to the fabled era of his wife, who was, tradition alleges, mother of Charlemagne, the hero so-named of the legends, of whom it is said, in Turpin's Chronicle, that he had long feet, and his alter ego Orlando (a new and splendid mediæval form of the twin heroes), rather than of the King Charlemagne of history.

Berta has a large foot, like the goddess Freya, the German Venus, who has swan's feet. It is this large foot that distinguishes her from other women, and enables her husband to recognise her, in the same way as it is the foot, or footprint (the sun follows the path taken by the aurora), that betrays and discovers the fugitive maiden, who, we have said, is the aurora with the vast chariot (the vast chariot which, if it pass over the hare, may crush it. Frau Stempe, and Frau Trempe, and the large-footed Bertha, are the same person)—vast, because she occupies a large extent of the heavens when she appears. When standing on the chariot, she seems to have no feet, or a very small, an imperceptible foot; but the chariot on which she stands and which represents her foot is so much the larger; therefore when we leave the chariot out of account, and suppose, on the contrary, that she goes on foot, inasmuch as, when walking, she takes up much room, the swan's, or goose's, or duck's foot given to her in the myth of Freya and the legend of Berta is quite suited to her. And seeing, as we have said, that the foot (the myths almost always speak of one foot alone; even the devil is lame, or has only one foot) and the tail of an animal are often substituted for each other in mythology, we can understand how, in a Russian story,[471] the hero who has fallen into a marsh was able to deliver himself by clutching hold of the tail of a duck. This duck being the aurora, and having a wide spreading tail as well as a large foot, the solar hero, or the sun, can easily, by holding on to her, raise himself out of the swamp of night. There is a German story[472] in which the white woman, or the Berta, is transformed into a duck. In another German legend,[473] instead of the swan-footed Berta, we have the Virgin Mary (who, as a maiden, represents the virgin aurora, always pure, even after having given birth to the sun; like the Kuntî of the Mahâbhâratam, who gives birth to Karṇas, the child of the sun, and yet is still a virgin. On the other hand, when a good old woman, good woman or Madonna, she generally personifies, in the legends, the moon) who, in the shape of a swan, comes to deliver from the prison of the infidels (the Saracens or Turks, here the black demons, or the darkness of night), and carry off by land and by sea, the young hero whom she protects (the aurora delivers the sun from the night).[474] The same luminous Berta also assumes, in popular German tradition, the form of St Lucia, that is, the saint who, after having been made blind, became the protectress of eyesight. Of the blind or black cow of night is born the luminous cow of morning, the aurora that sees everything herself and makes us see everything. For the same reason that the cow or duck, Berta, is consecrated to St Lucia, whose appearance she assumes, the bull (the sun) is sacred to St Luke, the festival of whom is on this account celebrated at Charlton, near London, with a horn-fair or exhibition of horns, generally ornamented and perfumed.

In the above-quoted Hindoo legend of the Mahâbhâratam, the queen will not sleep with the old blind man, but sends instead her servant-maid. In the Reali di Francia, King Pepin is advised by his barons to take a wife, when he is already "far advanced in years" (he is a form of St Joseph). The barons look for a wife, and find, in Hungary, Berta, the daughter of King Philip, "the most beautiful and skilful horsewoman," or Berta with the large foot upon a beautiful and stately horse, which goes along the road bounding, whilst she is always laughing. Berta has a maid called Elizabeth, who resembles her in every respect except her feet. King Pepin is married by proxy to Berta, sends for her, and comes to meet her. Berta when she sees that King Pepin is so ill-favoured, grieves "although forewarned of his old age." When evening comes she takes off her royal robes and gives them to Elizabeth, that she may take her place and sleep with the king.[475] Hence the Italian proverbs, "Dar la Berta" (to give the Berta), and "Pigliar la Berta" (to take the Berta), meaning to deride and to be derided. But instead of to give the Berta, in Italy we also say, "Dar la madre d'Orlando" (to give the mother of Orlando). The Reali di Francia informs us that King Pepin had, by Elizabeth, two perverse bastards, Lanfroi and Olderigi, and by Berta, Charlemagne and another Berta, mother of Orlando; but the Italian proverb is perhaps nearer the mythical truth when it recognises the mother of Orlando as herself Pepin's wife, so that Charlemagne and Orlando are brothers; and, in fact, they accomplish several of the undertakings mentioned in the legend of the two brothers. In the so-called Chronicle of Turpin[476] when Orlando dies, Charlemagne says that Orlando was his right arm, and he has no longer anything to do in life without him; but he lives long enough to avenge the death of Orlando; and after this vengeance, the heroic life of Charlemagne comes at once to an end. In the Chanson de Roland, too, after the death of his hero, whom he avenges, Charlemagne feels the burden of life, weeps, tears his beard, unable to support this solitude; but in the Chanson, as well as in the Reali di Francia, Orlando explicitly appears as the nephew of Charlemagne, that is, as the son of his sister Berta. (As the Vedic aurora was now the mother, now the sister of the sun and of the Açvinâu, thus Berta may, mythically, be mother or sister of Charlemagne, and yet be always the mother of Orlando).

It would be a never-ending work to collect together all the Germanic, Scandinavian, and Celtic legends which, in one way or another, are connected with the myth of the cow and of the bull. The literature relating to this subject is composed not of one or a hundred, but of thousands of volumes, of which some (such, for instance, as the poem of the Nibelungen, and the poems of the Round Table) individually contain, in the germ, almost the whole diverse world of fairy tales. I must therefore limit myself to the indication of the more general features, leaving to more diligent investigators the minuter comparisons; and esteeming myself, I repeat, too happy if my brief notices should be found clear enough to spare others the labour of preparing the warp upon which to weave comparisons.

From what we have said thus far, it seems to me that two essential particulars have been made clear:—1st, That the worship of the bull and the cow was wide-spread, even in northern nations; 2d, That the mythical bull and cow were easily transformed into a hero and heroine.

The sacred character ascribed to the cow and the bull is further evidenced by a Scandinavian song, in which, on the occasion of the nuptials of the animals (the crow and the crane), the calf (perhaps the bull) appears as a priest, and reads a beautiful text.[477] As a symbol of generation, the bull is the best adapted to propitiate the married couple; so the priest in the Atharvavedas teaches the inexperienced husband and wife, by formulas ad hoc, the mysteries of Venus. Thus the jus primæ noctis was conceded to the Brahman in mediæval India; and so in the ritual of mediæval France, we still find indications of the priest pronubus. The beautiful text that the calf, or bull, recites in the Scandinavian song must be the same which, according to the ceremonial recorded by Villemarqué, the priest recited, whilst sprinkling them with incense, to the married couple sedentes vel jacentes in lectulo suo.[478] Thus, when the wolf dies (in a German writing of the twelfth century), it is the ox that reads the gospel.[479] Besides marriages and funerals, the bull or ox also appears, finally, as in the Hindoo ceremonial, in pregnancy. Gargamelle, while she has Gargantua in her womb, eats an excessive quantity[480] of tripe of fattened oxen. When she feels the pains of child-birth, her husband comforts her with an agricultural proverb of Poitou, "Laissez faire aux quatre beufz de devant;" and she then gives birth to Gargantua, who comes out of her left ear, in the same way as in the Slavonic stories we find the heroes come out of the ears of the horse (or of the ass of night; the luminous solar hero comes out of the ears of the ass, or of the grey or black horse; the twin horsemen come out of the two ears). Rabelais, to explain this extraordinary birth, asks "Minerve ne naquit-elle pas du cerveau par l'aureille de Iupiter?" No sooner is Gargantua born, than he asks with loud cries for something to drink; to give him milk, 17,913 cows are brought, his mother's breasts not being enough, although each time she is milked she yields "quatorze cens deux pipes neuf potées de laict." This is the giant of popular tradition, whom the gigantic phantasy of Rabelais has coloured in order to make him the butt of an immense satire. It is an amplified and humorous rendering in a literary form of the popular Superlatif,[481] whose mythical character is revealed in the curse hurled against him by the old dwarf-fairy, whom he maltreated: "One sun, to accomplish his work, eats eleven entire moons; but this time every moon will eat the work of a sun." The ascending and descending life of the solar hero is thus indicated. Superlatif will become continually smaller, until it seems as though he were about to disappear altogether; but at that very instant the curse comes to an end, and from a dwarf, he grows into a giant again in the arms of his bride.[482] Thus the days become continually shorter and shorter, till the winter solstice, till Christmas. At Christmas the sun is born again, the days lengthen, the dwarf grows tall; the sun, by a double but analogous conception of ideas, passes once each day and once each year from giant to dwarf, and from dwarf to giant.

And the dwarfs of tradition know and reveal the mythical how and why of their transformations, since, though they are dwarfs and hidden, they see all and learn all. It is from the knowing dwarf Allwis, his diminutive alter ego, that the mighty Thor, in the Edda, learns the names of the moon, the sun, the clouds, and the winds. The moon, according to Allwis, when it is in the kingdom of hell (in the kingdom of death, in the infernal world, when it is Proserpina), is called a wheel that is hurrying on; it then shines among the dwarfs (i.e., in the luminous night, in which the sun hides itself; it becomes an invisible dwarf). The sun among the dwarfs (i.e., when it is a dwarf) plays with Dwalin (the mythical stag, probably the horned moon); among the giants (i.e., when in the aurora, it becomes a giant again), it is a burning brand; among the gods (the Ases), it is the light of the world. The cloud, the dwarf Allwis goes on to inform us, is the ship of the winds, the strength of the winds, the helmet (or hat, or hood) which makes its wearer invisible. The wind, again, is the wanderer, the noisy one, the weeper, the bellower, the whistler (no one can resist the cries or the whistling of the hero of fairy tales; the bellowing of the bull makes the lion tremble in his cave). In this learned lesson on Germanico-Scandinavian mythology, given us by the dwarf Allwis, we have a further justification of the transition which we here assume to have been made from the natural celestial phenomenon to its personification in an animal, and to the personification of the animal in a man: Allwis, who knew all things, has explained the mystery to us.

SECTION VI.

The Bull and the Cow in Greek and Latin Tradition.

SUMMARY.

Preparatory works.—Bos quoque formosa est.—Zeus as a bull.—Iô and Eurôpê as cows.—The cow sacred to Minerva, the calf to Mercury, and the bull to Zeus.—Demoniacal bulls.—Taurus draconem genuit et taurum draco.—White bulls sacrificed to Zeus, and black ones to Poseidôn.—Poseidôn as a bull.—The horn of abundance broken off the bull Acheloos.—The bulls of Aiêtas.—The bull who kills Ampelos.—Dionysos a bull.—The bull that comes out of the sea.—The eaters of bulls.—The sacrifice of the bull.—The intestines of the bull.—From the cow, the lamb.—The bull's entrails are wanting when the hero is about to die, that is, when the hero has no heart.—Even the bull goes into the forest.—The bull that flees is a good omen when taken and sacrificed.—The bull and the cow guide the lost hero.—Analogy between solar and lunar phenomena.—Hêraklês passes the sea now on the cow's neck, now in a golden cup.—Hêraklês shoots at the sun.—The moon, the bull of Hêraklês, becomes an apple-tree; anecdote relating to this.—The moon as a golden apple.—The moon as a cake.—The funeral cake.—Instead of a cow of flesh, a cow made of paste, in Plutarch and Æsop.—Ashes and excrement of the cow.—L'eau de millefleurs.—The bulls of the sun.—Hêraklês stable-boy and cleaner of the herds.—The bull Phaethôn.—The myth of the bull and the lion.—The bull's horns.—The god a witty thief; the demon an infamous one.—The myth of Cacus again.—The worm or serpent that eats bulls.—The bellowing or thundering bull, celestial musician.—The bull and the lyre.—The voice of Zeus—Bull-god and cow-goddess.

In descending now from the North upon the Hellenic and Latin soils, to search for the mythical and legendary forms assumed there by the bull and the cow, the mass of available material in point which offers, instead of diminishing, has increased prodigiously. Not to speak of the rich literary traditions of mediæval Italy and Spain (as to those of France, they are often but an echo of the Celtic and Germanic), nor the significant traditions of the Latin historians and poets themselves, nor the beliefs, superstitious customs, and legends still existing on the half-Catholic, half-Pagan soil of Italy, all of which are notably fraught with the earliest mythical ideas, we here find ourselves face to face with the colossal and splendid edifice of Greek poetry or mythology itself; for that which constitutes the greatness and real originality of Greek poetry is its mythology, by means of which it is that a divinity breathes in every artistic work of Hellenic genius. The poet and the artist are almost always in direct correspondence with the deities, and therefore it is that they so often assume such a divine and inspired expression. It would, therefore, be a bold presumption on my part if I were to essay to extract and present, in a few pages, the soul, the contents of this endless mythology. I have, moreover, the good fortune of being able to plead relief from the obligation to venture on any such attempt, by referring the reader to the learned preparatory works published in England, in the same interest, by Max Müller and George Cox, upon the Hellenic myths in relation to the other mythologies. It is certainly possible to take exception to interpretations of particular myths proposed by these two eminent scholars, as, no doubt, might be the fate of many of mine, were I to enter into minute explanations, and were my lucubrations fortunate enough to obtain any measure of consideration. But as I flatter myself with the hope that, notwithstanding occasional diversions, in which I may have gone aside and lost myself for a few minutes, I am taking the royal road which alone leads to the solution of the great questions of comparative mythology, I recognise with gratitude the labours of Max Müller and Cox upon Greek mythology, the writings of Michael Bréal upon Roman mythology, the immortal work of Adalbert Kuhn upon the Indo-European myth of fire and water, and a few other helpful beacon-towers which send their light-shafts clear and steady athwart the waste, and serve as useful guides to the studious navigator of the mare magnum of the myths. And because that which there is yet to do is immense in proportion to the little that has been done well, I shall take for granted what has already been demonstrated by my learned predecessors (to one and all of whom I confidently and respectfully refer my readers), and go on with my own researches, restricting myself, however, entirely to the zoological field, in order not to increase, out of all proportion, the dimensions of this opening chapter, which already threatens to straiten the space I must leave for the rest of my undertaking.

says Ovid, in the first book of the Metamorphoses, when the daughter of Inachos is transformed into a luminous cow by Jupiter. The bull Zeus of Nonnos is also beautiful, as he swims on the sea, carrying the beautiful maiden Eurôpê. Her brothers wonder why oxen wish to marry women; but we shall not wonder when we remark that Iô and Eurôpê are duplicates of one and the same animal, or, at least, that Iô and Eurôpê both took the shape of a cow—one as the moon especially,[483] the other, the far-observing daughter of Telephaessa, the far-shining,[484] as the moon also, or the aurora. In the first case it is the heroine that becomes a cow; in the second, it is the hero who shows himself in the shape of a bull.[485] These forms are, however, only provisional and unnatural, in the same way as in the Vedic hymns the representation of the aurora, the moon, and the sun as cow and bull is only a passing one. The cow and the bull send their calf before them; the sun, the moon, and the aurora are preceded or followed by the twilight. Jupiter and Minerva have for their messenger the winged Mercurius; and hence also Ovid[486] was able to sing:—

The fruit of the nuptials of Iô and of Eurôpê with Zeus is of a monstrous nature, such as the evil-doing daughters of Danaos, who, on account of their crimes, are condemned in hell to fill the famous barrel (the cloud) that is ever emptying (the counterpart of the cup which, in the Scandinavian myth, is never emptied); such too as Minôs, he who ordered the labyrinth to be made, the infernal judge, the feeder of the Minôtauros (of which the monstrous bull of Marathon, first subdued by Hêraklês and afterwards killed by Theseus, is a later form), the son of his wife and the gloomy and watery black bull Poseidôn. Even Kadmos, the brother of Eurôpê, ends his life badly. He descends into the kingdom of the dead in the form of a serpent. Of good, evil is born, and of evil, good; of the beautiful, the hideous, and of the hideous, the beautiful; of light, darkness, and of darkness, light; of day, night, and of night, day; of heat, cold, and of cold, heat. Each day and each year the monotonous antithesis is renewed; the serpent's head always finds and bites its tail again. A Tarentine verse of Arnobius expresses very happily these celestial vicissitudes:

Thus, in the romance of Heliodoros (Aithiopika) we read that the queen of Ethiopia, being black, gave birth to a white son; that is to say, the black night gives birth to the white moon and to the white dawn of morning. To Zeus (Dyâus, the luminous,) are sacrificed white bulls; to his brother Poseidôn, black ones; indeed, entirely black[488] ones, according to the Homeric expression.

Poseidôn, in Hesiod (Theog. 453), is the eldest brother; in Homer (Il. xv. 187), he is, on the contrary, the youngest; and both are right; it is the question of the egg and the hen; which is born first, darkness or light? The son of Poseidôn, Polyphêmos the Cyclop, is blinded by Odysseus. Poseidôn, representing the watery, cloudy, or nocturnal sky, his one-eyed son seems to be that sky itself, with the solar star, the eye of the heavens, in the midst of the darkness or of the clouds (the mouth of the barrel). When Odysseus blinds his son, Poseidôn avenges him by condemning Odysseus to wander on the waters (that is, lost in the ocean or the clouds of night). Inasmuch, moreover, as Zeus, properly the luminous one, is often called and represented by Homer as black as the clouds and pluvial,[489] he is assimilated to Poseidôn, the presbýtatos or oldest; in fact, in the oldest Hellenic myths, Poseidôn is essentially the pluvial form of Zeus. When Poseidôn, in the form of a bull, seduces Pasiphaê, the daughter of the sun and wife of Minôs, he appears, indeed, of a white colour, but has between his horns a black spot.[490] This spot, however small, is enough to betray his tenebrous nature. Thus Acheloos, vanquished by Hêraklês in the shape of a serpent, rises again in that of a pugnacious bull, one of whose horns Hêraklês breaks,[491] which he gives to the Ætolians, who receive abundance from it (the waters of the Acheloos fertilise the country traversed by them; the dragon of the cloud kept back the waters; Hêraklês discomfits the dragon, i.e., the darkness, and it then reappears in the form of a bull; when its horns are broken, abundance is the consequence). This monster reappears in the two perverse and terrible bulls of King Aiêtas, with copper feet (taurô chalkópode), which breathe dark-red flames and smoke, and advance against the hero Iêsôn in the cavern; in the same way as the king of the monkeys in the Râmâyaṇam vanquishes the demoniacal bull that fights with its horns, by taking hold of the horns themselves, and throwing it down; so Iêsôn does in Apollônios.[492] The same bull is repeated in that ridden by the youth Ampelos, dear to Diónysos (who has also the nature of a bull, taurophüsês, but of a luminous one). Ampelos, persuaded by the death-bringing Atê (thanatêphóros Atê), mounts on this bull, and is thrown by it upon a rock where his skull is broken, because he was full of pride against the horned moon, her who agitates the oxen, who, offended, sends a gadfly to the bull and maddens it. The bull Diónysos wishes to avenge the young Ampelos, by fixing his horns in the belly of the perverse and homicidal bull.[493] In this myth, the black bull of night and the bull-moon are confounded together in one sinister action.

From the ocean of night comes forth the head of the solar and lunar bull, and on this account, in Euripides[494] Okeanos is called the bull-headed (taurókranos); or else the head of the solar bull enters the nocturnal forest, or that of the lunar bull comes out of it. This phenomenon gave rise to several poetical images. The bull is devoured by the monsters of night; hence in the Seven at Thebes (xlii.) of Æschylos, the messenger accuses of impiety the seven eaters of bulls, who touch with their hands the blood of bulls; hence in the forty-third fable of Æsop, the dogs flee, horrified, from the peasant who, being of a gluttonous nature (like the old man of the Russian story who eats all his cows), after having devoured sheep and goats, prepares to eat the working oxen themselves.[495] The bulls head, or even the bull itself, or the milch-cow, which must not be eaten, can, however, be sacrificed; nay, he is lucky who offers them up (except when the deity is named Heliogabalus, who receives the taurobolium as a homage due to him, without giving anything in exchange to the devoted sacrificers).[496] According to Valerius Maximus,[497] the empire of the world would, by an oracle of the time of Servius Tullius, belong to the nation who should sacrifice to the Diana of the Aventine a certain wonderful cow belonging to a Sabine (the aurora or the moon, from the sacrifice of which the sun comes out at morning). The Sabine prepares to sacrifice it, but a Roman priest takes it from him by fraud, whilst the Sabine is sent to purify himself in the water near at hand. This is a zoological form of the epico-mythic rape of the Sabines, of the exchange of the wife or of the precious object, of the exchange effected in the sack. In Ovid,[498] the same myth occurs again with a variation:

We shall return to this myth in the following chapters. The monster is killed only when his heart, which he keeps shut up, is taken away. Sometimes he does not keep it shut up in his own body, but in a duck (the aurora), which comes out of a hare (the moon sacrificed in the morning).[499] When this duck is opened, a golden egg (the sun) is found. When the egg is thrown on the ground, or at the monster's head, the monster dies. The golden duck, whence the monster's heart, the sun, comes forth, is the same as the cow which gives birth to the lamb (the night gives birth to the aurora, and the aurora to the solar lamb). The historian Flavius cites, among the prodigies which preceded the destruction of the temple of Jerusalem, a miracle of this kind, which took place in the middle of the temple itself, in the case of a cow led thither to be sacrificed. It occurs still every morning in the mythical heavens, and was a phenomenon familiar to human observation in the remotest antiquity, when it became a proverb; but, as often happened, the proverb which affirmed an evident myth, when its sense was lost, was adopted to indicate an impossibility; wherefore we read in the second satire (cxxii.) of Juvenal:—