One meets with many famous steeds in classical and mediæval literature, but these, of course, are individual examples of the race, and anything told of them can scarcely be considered as testifying to the general though erroneous notions entertained on the subject of horses generally. The horse Bayard, for example, the property of the four Sons of Aymon, had a most useful peculiarity in that he grew larger or smaller in fair proportion to his rider, according as the big stalwart brother of six feet high, or the little fellow not yet in his teens got astride him. One of the horses of Achilles is said to have announced to his master his impending death. It is sufficiently evident that expanding, contracting, and talkative horses are altogether outside the ordinary pale.

According to a small manuscript of the twelfth century, called “Mappæ clavicula,” “if oxen drink first, then there will be enough water for both oxen and horses: but if the horses drink first there will not be sufficient either for horses or oxen.” Horses are afraid of elephants until they get used to them, and there is also some little antipathy between camels, bears and horses. Porta declares that “Horses will burst if they tread upon the Wolf’s footing. If Drums be made of an Elephant, Camel, or Wolves skin, and one beat them, the Horses will then run away and dare not stand. By the same reason, if you will drive away Bears, a Horse hath a capital hatred with a Bear: he will know his enemy that he never saw before, and presentlie provide himself to fight with him, and I have heard that Bears have been driven away in the Wildernesse by the sound of a Drum, when it was made of Horse’s skin.”

It has for centuries been a belief in many parts of the country that the hairs from a horse’s tail, when dropped in the water, become endued with life, and turn into small eels. A horsehair tied round a wart has been held to be of potent efficacy for its removal; and horsehair spread on bread and butter has been prescribed as a remedy, even in quite recent times, for worms. For sciatica, according to one Dr. Floyer, once on a time one of the shining lights of the medical profession, the finest preparation is “the marrow of a horse (kill’d by chance, not dying of any disease) mixed with some rose-water. Chafe it in with a warme hand for a quarter of an houre, then putt on a Scarlett cloth, broad enough to cover ye part affected, and go into a warme Bed.” As personal experience is so valuable in all such cases, he adds: “It cured my Aunt Lakes, who went yearly to the Bath for ye Sciatica, but never went after she knew and used this medicine.”

In Winstanley’s “Book of Knowledge,” a book that went through several editions (our copy we see is dated 1685),⁠[61] he deals with many strange matters, and gives receipts for various extraordinary requirements: to make men seem headless, to make it that men shall not find the door, and so forth; but amongst rather more reasonable items we find, “to make one dance.” The modus operandi is sufficiently simple, though perhaps a trifle disgusting; it is as follows:—“Cut the Hoof of a Horse in pieces, seethe it with Oyl and anoint the Table or any other place, and lay his head thereon, when you would have him to dance.” Such is a sample of the best that this storehouse of knowledge could yield to those who sought its help.

Horse-shoes were at one time often nailed on doors as a protection against witches and malignant spirits, and “The horse-shoe nailed, each threshold’s guard”⁠[62] may often still be seen on old country houses. John Aubrey, writing some two hundred years ago, says: “Most houses at the West End of London have a horse-shoe on the threshold.” Dwellers in town, however, have not the same dread of the mysterious as the more lonely dwellers in the country, though many a man who is brave enough on the gas-lighted pavement would feel a little “creepy” when the shrill scream of a trapped hare, or the wild cry of the peewit, broke upon the stillness of the night and found him in some country lane or on the open downland. It is a firm article of belief, however, with all who have faith in the efficacy of the horse-shoe that it must be picked up, not bought. Whatever virtue may reside in one that is found is wholly wanting in one that is purchased.

The humble donkey has its share of quaint associations. The conspicuous cross upon its back is popularly supposed to date from the day that our Saviour rode in Jerusalem upon an ass. It is, however, more probable that the ass that brayed and browsed in Eden bore a similar mark.

Amongst the ancient Egyptians the ass was dedicated to the evil spirit Typho, and once a year, if we may believe Plutarch, the people sacrificed an ass to this foul deity by hurling it over a precipice. The people of Lycopolis carried their antipathy so far that they excluded the trumpet from their festivals and military service from a fancy that its sound was a little too suggestive of the asinine vocal performances. The asses of the East are of a more tawny colour than those with which we are familiar in England; as this red tint was associated in people’s minds with a creature devoted to the Evil One, it was but a step further to ascribe an evil association to the colour itself; hence anyone who was so unfortunate as to have an especially ruddy countenance, or a more than usually deep shade of red in the hair, was at once held to be in an uncomfortably close relationship with Typho. The dun-colour of our British specimens gave them their name. Chaucer, for instance, calls the donkey the dun, as we may see in the “Canterbury Tales”—“Dun is in the mire.”

According to De Thaun, “The wild Ass, when March in its course has completed twenty-five days, brays twelve times, and also in the night, for this reason, that that season is the equinox—days and nights are of equal length. By the twelve times that it makes its braying and crying it shows that night and day have twelve hours in their circuit. The ass is grieved when he makes his cry that the night and the day have equal length, for he likes better the length of the night than of the day.” One can only read such an extract as this with a feeling of utter wonder; in the first place, how De Thaun could believe such a thing himself, and in the second place, how he could expect anyone else to do so. The exact accuracy of the wild ass as to the day of the month, and his twelvefold bray of regret as each recurring year brings it round again, are triumphs of the imaginative faculty. We may probably infer that when the twenty-ninth day of September has come round again the balance is redressed, hope springs again, and the twelve brays this time are of a peculiarly jubilant and sonorous character.

Asses’ hair was in the Middle Ages held to be a sterling remedy for ague, though one must have been credulous indeed to try it. It is interesting more especially perhaps as a foreshadowing of that doctrine of homœopathy which deals with the cure of like by like. Great healing powers are attributed to the hairs from the cross on the donkey’s back: hairs cut from it and suspended in a bag round a child’s neck were a potent influence in the prevention of fits and convulsions. Another famous remedy was the cure of whooping cough by passing the sufferer three times under the belly and three times over the back of a donkey. In Sussex a standard remedy for the same distressing complaint was procured by cutting some of the hair out of the cross, chopping it up finely, and spreading it on bread and butter for the breakfast of the patient; while in Dorsetshire prevention was rightly considered better than cure, and though the rustics may have doubted the efficacy of vaccination as a remedy against small-pox, they had no hesitation whatever in getting their children astride on the donkey’s back as early as possible as a preventative to their ever catching whooping cough. One meets with remedy after remedy of the same general nature, and all owing their efficacy to some mysterious connection between this particular complaint and donkey-hair, but what this occult influence can be is wholly unknown to us.

The old herald, Legh, says of the ass—“As he is not the wisest so is he the least sumptuous, especially in his diet, for his feeding is on Thistles, Nettles, and Briers, and therefore small birdes hate him, especially the Sparrowe is most enemie unto him,” as they see him stolidly devouring the plants that they visit for their own sustenance. The ancient author with ponderous humour finishes his account of the ass by saying, “I could write much of this beast, but that it wolde be thought it were to mine owne glorie.”

The dog, the friend and companion of man, was said to see ghosts, and their howling at untoward times portended death or conflagration or some such grave event, and has, therefore, for many centuries been held of evil omen, and no doubt in remote country districts the feeling still remains. The cries were said to be often in terror of sights invisible to man. Rabbi Menachem declares in his exposition of the Pentateuch that “when the Angel of Death enters into a city the dogs do howl,”⁠[63] and he records an instance of a dog that fled in terror from before the angel, and that someone kicked it back and it died, but whether from the effects of a too vigorous kick, or from being thrust into the path of the destroying angel, he does not venture to pronounce.

If a child has whooping cough some of its hair must be placed between slices of bread and given to a dog. Should the dog cough, as he most probably will, it is an indication that the disease has passed from the child to the dog. The same idea may be seen in the old custom of giving some of the hair of anyone attacked with scarlet fever to a donkey. Should the animal swallow it the disease was supposed then and there to pass from the one ass to the other.

Coles, in his “Art of Simpling,” says that “the herb called Hound’s tongue will tye the Tongues of Houndes, so that they shall not bark at you, if it be laid under the bottom of your foot.” A little hare’s fur somewhere about the person was held to be equally valuable, and no doubt it was. One authority hath it that a dog will not bark if another dog’s tongue be carried under the great toe, and the carrying of a dog’s heart in one’s pocket is another capital idea to the same end. “The tail of a young Wheezel put under your foot is also recommended,” and if none of these methods are available, the dog may be equally well silenced by giving him a frog to eat, artfully secreted in a piece of meat.

During the Middle Ages it was held that the head of a mad dog pounded up and drank in wine was a specific for jaundice. If, on the other hand, the head was burnt and the powdered ashes put to a cancer, it was held a sure remedy, and, naturally, on the homœopathic principle of like to like, these ashes, if given to a man who had been bitten by a rabid dog, “casteth out all the venom and the foulness, and healeth the maddening bites.” The liver of the dog was equally efficacious. A gipsy preventative of hydrophobia was to take some hairs from the dog that gave the bite, a very risky operation by the way, and fry them in oil, applying them with a little green rosemary to the wound. To eat churchyard grass⁠[64] was esteemed also a good thing in the case of anyone bitten by a rabid dog. So lately as the year 1866 it came out at the inquest held on the body of a child that had died of hydrophobia, that one of the relatives fished up out of the river the dead body of the dog that had done the mischief, in order that its liver might be cooked and eaten by the child. In spite of this the patient died.

It was held that if a cat were in a cart, a state of things that need rarely happen one would imagine, the horses would soon tire if the wind blew from Pussy to them, and that in like manner the steed would soon flag that was ridden by a man who had any cat’s fur in his dress, and that anyone swallowing the hair of a cat would be subject to fainting fits. On the other hand, it was believed that nothing was better as a cure for whitlow than to put the ailing finger for a quarter of an hour each day into the ear of a cat. Anything that touches a cat’s ear is received with such marked disfavour that we imagine this remedy is simply unworkable, as the cat would never be a consenting party. Three drops of blood from a cat’s tail were held to be a cure for epilepsy, while a sovereign remedy for those who would preserve their sight was to burn the head of a black cat to ashes, and then blow a little of the dust three times a day into the eyes. This, we imagine, should rather be classed amongst the methods of injuring the sight.

To cure a stye our forefathers had great faith in rubbing it with hairs from a cat’s tail,⁠[65] two essential points being that the cat should be a black one, and that the operation should take place on the first night of the new moon; but to cure warts the hairs must be taken from the tail of a tortoiseshell cat, and even then the remedy is only efficacious during the month of May. Another strange belief was that a cat having three colours in its fur was a great protection against fire. It is an old idea that the brains of cats are of destructive malignity, and that anyone desiring to quietly get rid of an enemy has only to invite him to a repast in which some of the delicacies have an imperceptible fragment of this poison added.

Cats see well by night, and were often, and especially black ones, believed to be the witches’ familiars, and therefore regarded with fear and aversion. It was held that they had power to raise a gale, and on board ship the malevolent disposition with which they were credited has made them in an especial degree unpopular shipmates. Pussy was thought to particularly provoke a storm by playing with any article of wearing apparel, by rubbing her face, or by licking her fur the wrong way; she was sheltered from rough usage however by the belief that provoking her would bring a gale, while drowning her would cause a regular tempest. In Germany there is a belief that anyone who makes a cat his enemy will be attended at his funeral by rats, and heavy rain. As cats see well by night, and are given to wandering abroad at unholy hours, they were connected with the baleful influences of the moon. Freye, the Norse goddess, was attended by cats, and Friday, her especial day, was always considered unlucky. The ruffling of the water by the rising wind is called a cat’s paw, and cats are said to smell a coming gale, while all must be familiar with that tempestuous state of affairs known as “raining cats and dogs.” In Cornwall, and on some other parts of the coast, the people say that a spectral dog, called Shony, is sometimes seen, and that this always predicts a storm.

Some persons have a marked antipathy to cats. Henry III. of France fainted if he caught sight of one, and Napoleon I. had almost as strong a feeling and failing. Shylock, in the Merchant of Venice it will be remembered, says:—

It is well known that cats have a wonderful knack of falling on their feet, and they are so tenacious of life that they are ordinarily credited with having nine lives, though it is proverbially held that care will kill even a cat. Not only does Shakespeare refer to cat-lore in Macbeth in “the poor cat i’ the adage,” but in Romeo and Juliet this old belief in the strong hold that Pussy has on life is distinctly referred to in the first scene of the third act:—

The cat again appears in the legend of the indomitable cats of Kilkenny that fought till a little fluff was all the record of that sanguinary struggle, and we have all of us heard of the special power of facial expression of the cats of Cheshire.

The Grimalkin of Shakespeare’s Macbeth was one of the witch’s familiar spirits, and the cat, the reputed companion of these unlovely and unloved personages, often therefore receives this name. Aubrey, writing in 1686, tells a story that smacks strongly of witchcraft and the black cat. “Mrs. Clarke, a Herefordshire woman, told me,” he says, “to bury the head of a black Catt with a Jacobus or a piece of gold in it, and put into the eies two black beanes (what was to be done with the beanes she hath forgott), but it must be done on a Tuesday at twelve o’clock at night, and that time nine nights after the piece of gold must be taken out, and whatsoever you buy with it (always reserving some part of the money) you will have money brought into your pockett, perhaps the same piece of gold again.” Unfortunately, he does not seem to have tried it, so we never learn what success might have attended the experiment.

The description of pussy by Bartholomew Anglicus is most graphic, and is an evident study from the life. “He is a full lecherous beast in youth,” saith he, “swift, pliant, and merry, and leapeth and reseth on everything that is afore him, and is led by a straw and played therewith, and is a right heavy beast in age and full sleepy, and lieth slyly in wait for mice, and is aware where they be more by smell than by sight, and hunteth and reseth on them in privy places, and when he taketh a mouse he playeth therewith, and eateth him after the play. In time of love is hard fighting for wives, and one scratcheth and rendeth the other grievously with biting and with claws; and he maketh a rueful noyse and ghastful when one proffereth to fight with another, and hardly is he hurt when he is thrown down off an high place.⁠[66] And when he hath a fair skin he is, as it were, proud thereof, and goeth fast about, and is oft for his fair skin taken of the skinner and slain and flayed.”⁠[67] This is clearly the description of a close and accurate observer.

The description in the “Speculum Mundi,” though much shorter, is almost equally happy. “The common or vulgar Cat is a creature well known, and being young it is very wanton and sportfull: but waxing older is very sad and melancholy. It is called a Cat from the Latine word signifying wary, for a Cat is a watchfull and warie beast, seldome overtaken, and most attendant to her sport and prey.” John Bossewell says of the cat that “he is slie and wittie and seeth so sharply that he overcommeth darknesse of the nyghte by the shynynge lyghte of his eyne. He doth delighte that he enjoyeth his libertie.” Men may come and men may go, but cat-nature is evidently unchanging.

Cats naturally suggest rats and mice. It was an ancient belief that these sprang spontaneously from any mass of putrefaction. “Mice excell all living creatures,” writes one of the ancient authorities, “in the knowledge and experience of things to come: for when any old house, habitation, tenement, or other dwelling place waxeth ruinous and ready to fall, they perceive it first, and out of that their foresight they make present avoidance from their holes, and betake themselves to flight even as fast as their little legs will give them leave, and so they seek some other place wherein they may dwell with more securitie.” Our readers will naturally recall the proverbial belief that rats desert the sinking ship. Swift, in his epistle to Mr. Nugent, writes of those that “fly like rats from sinking ships,” and the desertion of the losing side has received the opprobrious name of “ratting” on this account.

Maundevile, amongst many other wonderful things that he saw or heard of in his travels, came to a place where the rats were as large as dogs;⁠[68] requiring great mastiffs for their capture, as they were altogether beyond the power of the cats of the place to deal with. “And ther ben Myse als grete as Houndes, and yalowe Myse als grete as Ravennes.” If the rats and mice kept the proportion between their respective sizes that we are familiar with, and the mice were as big as hounds, we can readily understand that the rats must have been very formidable creatures indeed, and quite beyond the power of ordinary terrier or pussy to cope with.

Jordanus brought home a story of rats in India as large as foxes. The creatures he saw were probably bandicoots,⁠[69] very rat-like animals, though not quite so big as foxes, even though the Indian foxes are much smaller than the species we have in England. A bandicoot is about twenty-one inches long, full measure, about five inches of this being tail. According to Herodotus, it was not the rats that were equal in size to foxes in India, but the ants. We can recall an absurd picture of these in one of the mediæval natural history books, where a couple of Europeans stand at a very respectful distance from a large mound that is covered with ants as big as cats, the effect of the ant-form when thus magnified being very quaint.

It was a very ancient belief that oysters, mussels, cockles, and all shell fishes grew or diminished according to the phases of the moon. “Some have found it out by diligent search that the fibres in the livers of rats and mice answer in number to the days of the month’s age.” This was really a very curious discovery to make, or shall we rather say—a very curious assertion to be responsible for?

It is impossible to mention a tithe of the strange facts got together by the industry of the men of science of the past; sometimes introducing to our notice the most extraordinary creatures, at others presenting the most ordinary creatures in an extraordinary way. What can we say, for instance, of the Catoblepas, a beast bred in Lybia, “a fearful and terrible beast to look upon”? His eyes “very fierie, as it were of a bloudie colour, and he never useth to look directly forward, nor upward, but always down to the earth.” He has a long mane and cloven feet, and his body covered with scales. “As for his meat, it is deadly and poysonfull herbes, and he sendeth forth a horrible breath which poysoneth the aire over his head and about him, inasmuch that such creatures as draw in the breath of that aire are grievously afflicted, and losing both voice and sight, they fall into deadly convulsions.” What shall we say of the Oryges, the only beast in creation that has his hair growing reversed and turning towards the head? Or of the Lomie in the forests of Bohemia, “which hath hanging under its neck a Bladder always full of scalding water, with which, when she is hunted, she so tortureth the Dogs that she thereby maketh her escape”? Or of the wonderful Eale of Ethiopia as large as a hippopotamus, and having horns that he can incline backwards or forwards at any angle to suit the exigencies of conflict? Or of the Manticora, having the face of a man and the body of a lion, and voice like the blending of flute and of trumpet? Or of fifty other creatures equally extraordinary? It is painful to think that such stories were deliberate inventions, and that knaves devised them and fools accepted them; and we must, we believe, conclude that almost every story had a grain of truth in it, but that the love of the marvellous, the tendency to exaggeration, the change that took place as the story travelled, and received almost unconsciously here an additional graphic touch and there a little more fully developed detail, made the fully matured statement an entirely different thing to the modest seed from which it sprang.

We have already encountered many instances of how the most ordinary creatures are described in a way that leads one to suppose that the two great virtues in a naturalist, observation and experiment, were almost entirely wanting at any period for the last two thousand years or more. How else could such a belief as that the badger has his two legs on one side shorter than the other two have ever gained credence? or that the ram “when he slepeth, from spring-time till harvest he lyeth on the one side, and from harvest till spring-time againe on the other side”? Or, to travel a little further afield, that the whiskers of a tiger are mortal poison, causing men to die mad if given to them in meat? Or that the camel is so ashamed of its ugliness that before drinking in a stream it always fouls the water so that it may not see the reflection of itself? Or fifty other statements equally at variance with the facts? The respect for those who by the vigour and uncompromising directness of their assertions became regarded as great authorities was so tremendous and all-embracing that no one seemed to dare to challenge statements made by them, while the ease and comfort to subsequent writers of having all responsibility taken off their own shoulders by merely copying instead of testing had a fatal fascination, the result being that many assertions have had a vigorous vitality for centuries that could have been readily disproved in a week or even an hour of honest personal investigation.