The legendary fox (or the jackal, which is its mythical equivalent) has, like nearly all mythical figures, a double aspect. As it represents the evening, and as the sun is represented as a bird (the c.o.c.k), the fox, the proverbial enemy of chickens, is, in the sky too, the robber and devourer of the c.o.c.k, and as such the natural enemy of the man or hero, who ends by showing himself to be more cunning than it is, and by effecting its ruin. The fox cheats the c.o.c.k in the evening, and is cheated by the c.o.c.k in the morning. It is therefore an animal of demoniacal nature, when considered as the devourer or betrayer of the sun (c.o.c.k, lion, or man), in the form of the red western sky, or of the evening aurora, and as being killed or put to flight by the sun itself (c.o.c.k, lion, or man), in the form of the red eastern sky, or the morning aurora.[195] We have already seen, in the first chapter of this work, the aurora both as a wise girl and a perverse one; in its animal metamorphosis, the fox reproduces this aspect. But the aurora has not this mythical aspect alone. If, as she is turned towards or against the sun, she is supposed to be the killer of the luminous day in the evening, and to be chased away by the luminous day in the morning, she also, when considered as turning towards or against the night, a.s.sumes a heroic and sympathetic aspect, and becomes the friend and a.s.sister of the solar hero or animal against the wolf of the darkness of night. In these two mythical aspects is contained and explained all the essential legendary story of the fox, to narrate which, as far as it concerns Western tradition, volumes have already been written. I shall limit myself to culling and summarising from Oriental and Slavonic tradition their chief characteristics, in order to compare them briefly with the most generally known particulars of Western legendary lore; as it seems to me that when I shall have shown the double nature of the fox in mythology, as representing the two auroras, when I shall have proved that the sun is personified now as a hero, now as a c.o.c.k, and now as a lion, and the night as a wolf, it will be easy to refer to this interpretation the immense variety of legendary subjects to which, on account of the smaller proportions to which I have been obliged to reduce this work, I shall be unable to allude.
In the _Mahabharatam_,[196] a learned jackal, who has finished his studies, a.s.sociates with the ichneumon, the mouse, the wolf, and the tiger, but only in order to cheat them all. He makes the tiger kill a gazelle, and then sends all the animals to bathe before eating it.
Then, when the tiger returns, he makes him run after the mouse, by representing it as having boasted that it had killed the tiger; he makes the mouse flee, persuading it that the ichneumon has bitten the gazelle, and that its flesh is therefore poisonous; he makes the wolf take to its heels, by informing it that the tiger is coming to devour it; he makes the ichneumon glad to escape, by boasting that he has vanquished the other three animals; then the jackal eats the whole gazelle himself. In the _Pancatantram_,[197] the jackal cheats, in a similar manner, the lion and the wolf out of their part of a camel; we have already seen how it cheated the lion out of the a.s.s. In the twentieth Mongol story, the fox stirs up discord between the two brothers, bull and lion, who kill each other in consequence.
In the _Ramaya?am_,[198] the jackal appears as the hero"s friend, inasmuch as by howling, and vomiting fire, he is of sinister omen to the monster Kharas, who prepares to attack Ramas. In the _Khorda-Avesta_, a hero devoured by Agra-Mainyu, the G.o.d of the monsters, is named Takhmo-urupis, or Takhma-urupa, which means strong fox.
One of the most interesting fables, in a mythological point of view, is that of the jackal who, falling among pigments, comes out blue, or of opaline l.u.s.tre, and pa.s.ses himself off as a peac.o.c.k of the sky. The animals make him their king, but he betrays himself by his voice: hearing other jackals howling, he howls also; upon which the lion, the real king of the beasts, tears him to pieces.[199] This is a variety of the a.s.s dressed in the lion"s skin, but yet more so of the crow that takes up and decks itself in the peac.o.c.k"s feathers; the black night shines as an azure sky, as sahasrakshas (an appellation of Indras and of the peac.o.c.k, as having a thousand eyes or stars). The evening aurora, the fox, transforms itself into the azure sky of night, until at morn, the deceit being exposed, the lion (_i.e._, the sun) rends the fox, and disperses the night and the aurora.
The _Pancatantram_ contains two other narratives relating to the legendary jackal--viz., the inquisitive and silly jackal, who, in an attempt to break the skin of a drum to see what is inside, breaks one of his teeth, and who, wishing to eat the string of a bow, has his mouth lacerated and dies;[200] and the vile jackal who, brought up among the lion"s cubs, reveals his vulpine nature when he should have thrown himself with the two lions, his adoptive brothers, upon the elephant, but, instead of that, took to flight.[201] In the _Tuti-Name_,[202] the jackal desires to revenge himself upon the parrots, whom he judges indirectly implicated in the death of his young ones; up comes the lynx, who is astounded that the jackal, celebrated for its craftiness, is unable to devise a way of ruining the parrots. At last the lynx advises him to pretend being lame, and let himself be followed by a hunter as far as the abode of the parrots, at which place he will be able to skulk away, and the hunter, seeing the parrots, will set his nets and catch them.
In the _Tuti-Name_ we also find several other particulars relating to the jackal, which will pa.s.s into the Russian stories of the fox.
The jackal makes the wolf come out of his den, which the latter had taken possession of, by calling the shepherd.[203] In another place, the cunning fox laughs at the stolid tiger, but the woman proves herself to be more cunning than the fox.[204] It is also in the _Tuti-Name_[205]
that we read of a companion of the poor Abdul Me?id, enamoured of the king"s daughter, who teaches him how to enrich himself, or rather to appear rich, in order to wed her. In a much more scientific and interesting variety of this legend, in the Russian stories, it is, on the contrary, the fox who enriches the poor hero. The nineteenth Mongol story, in which the false hero makes his fortune by means of the spoils of a certain designated fox, is another intermediate form between the two traditions, the Hindoo and the Russian.
The name of a jackal in the _Pancatantram_ is Dadhi-pucchas, which means tail of b.u.t.ter, b.u.t.tered tail (the aurora is ambrosial).
In the first of the stories of _Afana.s.sieff_, the fox eats the honey belonging to the wolf (which reminds one of the sentence of Plautus, "Saepe condita luporum fiunt rapinae vulpium"[206]), and then accuses the wolf of having eaten it himself; the wolf proposes a sort of judgment of G.o.d; they are to go together to the sun, and he who pours out honey will be accounted guilty: they go and lie down; the wolf falls asleep, and when the honey comes out of the fox, he pours it upon the wolf, who, when he awakes, confesses his fault. In the first story of the fourth book of _Afana.s.sieff_, the c.o.c.k and the hen bring ears of corn to the old man and poppies to the old woman; the old couple make a cake of them and put it out to dry.[207] Up come the fox and the wolf and take the cake, but finding that it is not yet dry, the fox proposes going to sleep whilst it is drying. While the wolf sleeps, the fox eats the honey that is in the cake, and puts dung in its place. The wolf awakens, and after him the fox too pretends to waken, and accuses the wolf of having touched the cake; the wolf protests his innocence, and the fox proposes, as a judgment of G.o.d, that they shall go to sleep in the sunshine; the wax will come out of him who has eaten the honey.[208] The wolf really goes to sleep, and the fox goes meanwhile to a neighbouring beehive, eats the honey, and throws the honeycombs upon the wolf, who, wakening from his slumbers, confesses his fault, and promises in reparation to give his share of the prey to the fox as soon as he procures any. In the continuation of the story, the fox sends the wolf to fish with his tail (the same as the bone of the dog) in the lake, and, after having made his tail freeze, feigns to be himself ill, and makes the wolf carry him, murmuring on the way the proverb, "He who is beaten carries him who is not beaten." In a variety of the same story, the fox eats the wolf"s b.u.t.ter and flour; in another, the fox pretends to be called during the night to act as the rabbit"s midwife, and eats the wolf"s b.u.t.ter, accusing him afterwards of having eaten it himself; in order to discover the guilty one, they resolve upon trying the judgment by fire, before which the two animals are to go to sleep, and the one from whose skin the b.u.t.ter shall come out, is to be accounted guilty; whilst the wolf is asleep and snoring, the fox upsets the rest of the b.u.t.ter over him. In the seventh story of the fourth book of _Afana.s.sieff_, the fox promises to an old man to bring his wife to life again; he requests him to warm a bath, to bring flour and honey, and then to stand at the door without ever turning round to look at the bath; the old man does so, and the fox washes the old woman and then eats her, leaving nothing but the bones; he then makes a cake of the flour and honey, and eats that too, after which he cries out to the old man to throw the door wide open, and escapes. In the first story of the first book, the old man whose wife is dead goes to look for mourners; he finds the bear, who offers to do the weeping, but the old man thinks that he has not a sufficiently good voice; going on, he meets the fox, who also offers to perform the same service, and gives a good proof of his skill in singing (this particular would appear to be more applicable to the crying jackal than to the fox). The old man declares himself perfectly satisfied, and places the cunning beast at the foot of the corpse to sing a lament, whilst he himself goes to make the grave; during the old man"s absence, the fox eats everything he finds in the house, and the old woman too. In the ninth story of the fourth book the fable ends otherwise; the fox does his duty as a weeper, and the old man rewards him by the gift of some chickens; the fox, however, demanding more, the old man puts into a sack two dogs and a chicken, and gives it to the fox, who goes out and opens the sack. The dogs run out and pursue him; he takes refuge in his den, but neglects to draw in his tail, which betrays him. "Cauda de vulpe testatur," said also the Latin proverb. In a variety of the first story of the first book, it is as a reward for having released the peasant from the bear that the fox receives a sack containing two hens and a dog. The dog pursues the fox, who takes to his hole, and then asks his feet what they have done; they answer that they ran away; he then asks his eyes and ears, which answer that they saw and heard; finally he asks his tail (here identified with the phallos), which, confused, answers that it put itself between his legs to make him fall. Then the fox, wishing to chastise his tail, puts it out of the hole; the dog, by means of it, drags out the whole fox, and tears him to pieces. In the fourth story of the third book, the fox delivers the peasant from, not the bear, but the wolf; the peasant then cheats him in the same way, by putting dogs into the sack; the fox escapes, and to punish his tail for impeding his flight, leaves it in the dog"s mouth, and runs off; afterwards the fox is drowned by falling into a barrel which is being filled with water (the deed of the phallos; cfr.
the chapter on the Fishes), and the peasant takes his skin. In another Russian story, recorded by _Afana.s.sieff_ in the observations to the first book of his stories, the fox, having delivered the peasant from the bear, asks for his nose in way of recompense, but the peasant terrifies him and puts him to flight. In a Slavonic story referred to in the same observations, the bird makes its nest, of which the fox covets the eggs; the bird informs the dog, who pursues the fox; the latter, betrayed by his tail, holds his usual monologue with his feet, eyes, ears, and tail. In the twenty-second story of the third book, the fox falls with the bear, the wolf, and the hare, into a ditch where there is no water. The four animals are oppressed by hunger, and the fox proposes that each should raise his voice in succession and shout his utmost; he who shouts feeblest will be eaten by the others.
The hare"s turn comes first, then that of the wolf; bear and fox alone remain. The fox advises the bear to put his paws upon his sides; attempting to sing thus, he dies, and the fox eats him. Being again hungry, and seeing a bird feeding its young, he threatens to kill the young birds unless the parent brings him some food; the bird brings him a hen from the village. The fox afterwards renews his threats, desiring the bird to bring him something to drink; the bird immediately brings him water from the village. Again the fox threatens to kill the young ones if the old bird does not deliver him out of the ditch; the bird throws in billets of wood, and thus succeeds in helping him out. Then the fox desires the bird to make him laugh; the bird invites him to run after it; it then goes towards the village, where it cries out, "Woman, woman, bring me a piece of tallow" (babka, babka, priniessi mnie sala kussok); the dogs hear the cry, come out, and rend the fox. In the twenty-fourth story of the third book, the fox again delivers the peasant from the wolf, whom he had shut up in a sack to save him from the persecution of the hunters. The wolf is no sooner out of danger than he wishes to eat the peasant, saying that "old hospitality is forgotten."[209] The peasant beseeches him to await the judgment of the first pa.s.ser-by; the first whom they meet is an old mare who has been expelled from the stables on account of her age, after having long served her masters; she finds that the wolf"s sentence is just. The peasant begs the wolf to wait for a second pa.s.ser-by; this is an old black dog who has been expelled from the house after long services, because he can no longer bark; he also approves the wolf"s decision. The peasant again begs them to wait for a third and decisive judgment; they meet the fox, who resorts to a well-known stratagem; he affects to doubt that so large an animal as the wolf could get into so small a sack. The wolf, mortified at so unjust a suspicion, wishes to prove that he has told the truth, re-enters into the sack, and is beaten by the peasant till he dies.
But the peasant himself then proves ungrateful to the fox, saying, too, that old hospitality is to be forgotten (properly the hospitality of bread and salt, _hlieb-sol_). In the eighth story of the fourth book, the fox brings upon his back to her father and mother a girl who, having lost herself in the forest, was weeping upon a tree. The old man and woman, however, are not grateful to the fox; for on the latter asking for a hen in reward, they put him into a sack with a dog; the rest of the story is already known to the reader. In the twenty-third story of the fourth book, the fox marries the cat and puts the bear and the wolf to flight. We have already mentioned the fox of the Russian story who sends the wolf to catch fish in the river with his tail, by which means the tail is frozen off. In a popular Norwegian story, instead of the wolf, it is the bear who is thus cheated by the fox. In a Servian story, we hear of a fox who steals three cheeses off a waggon, and afterwards meets the wolf, who asks where he had found them. The fox answers, in the water (the sky of night). The wolf wishing to fish for cheeses, the fox conducts him to a fountain where the moon is reflected in the water, and points to it as a cheese; he must lap up the water in order to get at it. The wolf laps and laps till the water comes out of his mouth, nose, and ears (probably because he was drowned in the fountain. The wolf, the black monster of night, takes the place of the crow in connection with the cheese (the moon) and the fox; the Servian story itself tells us what the cheese represents[210]). In a Russian story, published in the year 1860, by the Podsniesznik, and quoted in the observations to the first book of the stories of _Afana.s.sieff_, the fox is killed by a peasant whose fish he had stolen; the peasant takes his skin and goes off. Up comes the wolf, and seeing his G.o.d-father without a skin, weeps over him according to the prescribed ceremony, and then eats him. We have already seen the fox as a mourner and as a midwife. In the twentieth story of the third book of _Afana.s.sieff_, the fox wishes to work as a blacksmith. In other Russian stories we have the fox-confessor and the fox-physician; finally, the fox as a G.o.d-mother is a very popular subject of Russian stories. In a Russian story, published in the fourth number of the Russian _Historical and Juridical Archives of Kala.s.soff_, the fox appears as a go-between for the marriage of two young men with two princesses. But, above all, the fox is famous for having brought about the wedding of the poor Buhtan Buhtanovic and of his _alter ego_, Koszma Skorobagatoi (Cosimo the swiftly-enriched) with the daughter of the Tzar. Buhtan had only five kapeika (twopence in all). The fox has them changed, and asks the Tzar to lend him some bushels to measure the money with. These bushels are each time found too small, and larger ones are demanded, using which, the cunning fox always takes care to leave some small coin at the bottom. The Tzar marvels at the riches of Buhtan, and the fox then asks for Buhtan the Tzar"s daughter to wife. The Tzar wishes first to see the bridegroom.
How dress him? The fox then makes Buhtan fall into the mud near the king"s palace whilst they are pa.s.sing over a little bridge. He then goes to the Tzar, relates the misfortune, and begs him to lend him a dress for Buhtan. Buhtan puts it on, and never ceases regarding his changed appearance. The Tzar being astonished at this, the fox hastens to say that Buhtan was never so badly dressed before, and takes the first opportunity of warning him in private against conduct so suspicious. Then, withdrawn from himself, he does nothing but stare at the golden table, which again astonishes the Tzar; this is accounted for by the fox, who explains that in Buhtan"s palace similar tables are to be found in the bath-room; meanwhile the fox hints to Buhtan to look more about him. The wedding ceremony is performed and the bride led away. The fox runs on before; but instead of leading them into Buhtan"s miserable hut, he takes them to an enchanted palace, after having, by a trick, chased out of it the serpent, the crow, and the c.o.c.k that inhabited it.[211]--Poor Kuszinka has only one c.o.c.k and five hens remaining. He takes the fox by surprise whilst he is attempting to eat his hens, but moved by the fox"s prayers, releases him. Then the grateful fox promises to transform him into Cosimo the swiftly-enriched. The fox goes into the Tzar"s park and meets the wolf, who asks him how he is become so fat; he answers that he has been banqueting at the Tzar"s palace. The wolf expresses a desire to go there too, and the fox advises him to invite forty times forty more wolves (that is 1600 wolves). The wolf follows his advice, and brings them all to the Tzar"s palace, upon which the fox tells the Tzar that Cosimo the swiftly-enriched sends them to him as a gift. The Tzar marvels at the great riches of Cosimo; the fox uses the same stratagem twice again with the bears and the martens. After this, he asks the Tzar to lend him a silver bushel, pretending that all Cosimo"s golden bushels are full of money. The Tzar gives it, and when the fox sends it back, he leaves a few small coins at the bottom, returning it with the request that the Tzar would give his daughter to Cosimo in marriage. The Tzar answers that he must first see the pretender to her hand. The fox then makes Cosimo fall into the water, and arrays him in robes lent by the Tzar, who receives him with every honour. After some time, the Tzar signifies his desire of visiting Cosimo"s dwelling. The fox goes on before, and finds on the way flocks of sheep, and herds of hogs, cows, horses, and camels. He asks of all the shepherds to whom they belong, and is uniformly answered, "To the serpent-uhlan." The fox orders them to say that they belong to Cosimo the swiftly-enriched, or else they will see King Fire and Queen Loszna,[212] who will burn everything to ashes. He comes to the palace of white stone, where the king serpent-uhlan lives. He terrifies him in the same way, and compels him to take refuge in the trunk of an oak-tree, where he is burnt to death. Cosimo, the swiftly-enriched, becomes Tzar of all the possessions of the uhlan-serpent and enjoys them with his bride.[213] (I need not dwell upon the mythological importance of this story; the serpent consumed by fire is found in the most primitive myths; here the canis-vulpes, the red b.i.t.c.h, the fox seems to play part of the _role_ of the Vedic messenger-b.i.t.c.h.)
In the first story of _Afana.s.sieff_, the fox chases the hare, instead of the serpent, out of its home. The fox has a house of ice and the hare one of wood. At the arrival of spring, the fox"s house melts; then the fox, under the pretext of warming itself, enters the hare"s house and sends its occupant away. The hare weeps, and the dogs come to chase the fox away, but it cries out from its seat by the stove, that when it leaps out, whoever is caught will be torn into a thousand pieces; hearing which, the dogs run away in terror. The bear comes, and then the bull, but the fox terrifies them too. At last the c.o.c.k comes up with a scythe, and loudly summons it to come out or be cut to pieces. The terrified fox jumps out and the c.o.c.k cuts it to pieces with the scythe. In another story of Little Russia, mentioned by _Afana.s.sieff_ in the observations to the first book of his stories, the fox, on the contrary, is the victim which the hairy goat wishes to expel from its home. Several animals, wolf, lion, and bear, present themselves to help it, but the c.o.c.k alone succeeds in expelling the intruder. Here the c.o.c.k appears as the friend of the fox and the enemy of the goat. In the twenty-third story of the third book of _Afana.s.sieff_, the fox defends the sheep against the wolf, who accuses it of having dressed itself in his skin, and brings about the ruin of the wolf by its craftiness. In the third story of the fourth book, the cat and the lamb release the c.o.c.k from the fox; these contradictions are explained by the double mythical significance which we have attributed above to the fox, and by its double appearance as aurora in the evening and in the morning. In the evening, it generally cheats the hero; in the morning it cheats the monster. In the second story of the fourth book of _Afana.s.sieff_, the fox requests the c.o.c.k to come down from a tree to confess itself to him. The c.o.c.k does so, and is about to be eaten by the fox, but it flatters him so much that he lets it escape again. (The solar c.o.c.k, supposed to be in the fox"s power at night, escapes from it and comes forth again in the morning.) The third story of the fourth book gives us the interesting text of the words sung by the fox to deceive the c.o.c.k:
"Little c.o.c.k, little c.o.c.k, With the golden crest, With the b.u.t.tered head, With the forehead of curdled milk!
Show yourself at the window; I will give you some gruel In a red spoon."[214]
The c.o.c.k, when caught by the fox, invokes the cat"s a.s.sistance, crying, "Me the fox has carried away; he carried away me, the c.o.c.k, into the gloomy forest, into distant lands, into foreign lands, into the three times ninth (twenty-seventh) earth, into the thirtieth kingdom; cat Catonaievic, deliver me!"
The knavish actions of the fox, however, are far more celebrated in the West than in the East. A proverb says that, to write all the perfidious knaveries of the fox, all the cloth manufactured at Ghent, turned into parchment, would not be sufficient. This proverb justifies me in saying but little of it, as I am unable to say as much as I should wish. Greeks and Latins are unanimous in celebrating the sagacity and perfidy of the fox. The cynic Macchiavelli, in the eighteenth chapter of the _Principe_, a.s.serts that a good prince must imitate two animals, the fox and the lion, (must, that is to say, have deceit and strength), but especially the fox; and this answers to the sentence attributed by Plutarch (in the _Memorable Sayings of the Greeks_) to Lysander, "Where the lion"s skin does not suffice, put on that of the fox." Aristotle, in the ninth book of the _History of Animals_, also considers the fox as the serpent"s friend, probably because of the a.n.a.logy existing between them in respect of perfidiousness, according to another Greek saying, viz., "He who hopes to triumph, must arm himself with the strength of the lion and the prudence of the serpent." A proverbial Latin verse says--
"Vulpes amat fraudem, lupus agnam, faemina laudem."
There is scarcely an animal which is not deceived by the fox in Greek and Latin fable; the fox alone does not succeed in deceiving the fox.
In aesop, the fox who has lost his tail in a trap endeavours to persuade the other foxes of the uselessness of that appendage; but the latter answer that he would not have given them such advice were he not aware that a tail is a useful member. The fox deceives the a.s.s, giving it up as prey to the lion (as in the _Pancatantram_); it deceives the hare by offering it as a prey to the dog, who, pursuing the hare, loses both hare and fox;[215] it deceives the goat, by cozening it into the well that it may escape out of it, and then leaving it there to its fate; it cheats in several ways now the c.o.c.k, now the wolf; and it imposes upon even the powerful king of beasts, whom, however, he sometimes cannot deceive. A graceful apologue of Thomas Morus shows us the counterpart of the h.e.l.lenic fable of the fox and the sick lion, that is to say, the sick fox visited by the lion:--
"Dum jacet angusta vulpes aegrota caverna Ante fores blando const.i.tit ore leo.
Etquid, amica, vale. Cito, me lambente, valebis, Nescis in lingua vis mihi quanta mea.
Lingua tibi medica est, vulpes ait, at nocet illud Vicinos, quod habet, tam bona lingua, malos."
But when we come down to the Middle Ages, the fable of the fox develops into such manifoldness, that the study of all the phases in which it unfolds itself ought to be the subject of a special work.[216] Suffice it to notice here that, to popularise in Flanders, and subsequently in France and Germany, the idea of the fox as the type of every species of malice and imposture, it is the priest who, for the most part, is the human impersonation of the masculine Reinart. The _Procession du Renart_ is famous; it was a farce conceived in 1313 by Philippe le Bel, on account of his quarrel with Pope Boniface VIII., and acted by the scholars of Paris. The princ.i.p.al personage was a man disguised in the skin of a fox, and wearing over all a priest"s surplice, whose chief industry it was to give chase to chickens. This form of satire, however, directed against the Church, is certainly much older than those times, and goes back to the epoch of the first differences between the Church and the Empire in the eleventh century, at which time two mediaeval Latin poems appeared, _Reinardus Vulpes_ and _Ysengrimus_; with the schism of England and the Reformation of the sixteenth century, however, _Reinardus Vulpes_ decisively became a Romish fox. The finesse and perfection of the satirical poem which S. Naylor, its English translator, calls "the unholy bible of the world," also increased the fox"s popularity, and made it yet more proverbial. The princ.i.p.al subjects of the poem existed previously, not only in oral, but also in literary tradition; they were grouped together and put in order, and a more human, more malicious nature was given to the fox, a nature more hypocritical even than before, and more priestly, whence it now more than ever--
"Urbibus et castris regnat et ecclesiis."
Macchiavelli, St Ign.a.z.io di Loyola, and St Vincenzo de" Paoli took upon themselves the charge of propagating its type over the whole world.
The wolf is better, when he is a wolf, for then we know at least what he wants; we know that he is our enemy, and are accordingly on our guard; but he, too, sometimes disguises himself, by imposture or magic, as a sheep, a shepherd, a monk, or a penitent, like Ysengrin; and from this point of view resembles not a little his perfidious G.o.d-mother the fox; it is well known that amongst the exploits of Reinart there is that of his extra-matrimonial union with the she-wolf.
In the _?igvedas_ we already find several interesting mythical data concerning the wolf; he is in it entirely demoniacal, as the exhausted V?ikas, to which, in a hymn, the Acvinau give back its strength,[217]
seems, as it appears to me, not to be the wolf, but the messenger crow which, during the night, must carry the solar hero.
As in the Zendic _Vendidad_,[218] the souls of good men, when on the way to heaven, are afraid of meeting the wolf, so in the _?igvedas_, the devotee says that once the reddish wolf (which seems to be confounded here with the jackal or the fox) saw him coming on the way, and fled in terror;[219] he invokes the (luminous) night to send the wolf, the robber far away,[220] and the G.o.d Pushan (the sun) to remove the evil wolf, the malignant spirit, from the path of the devotees, the wolf that besieges the roads, thieving, fraudulent, double-dealing.[221] The poet, after having called the enemy V?ikas, prays, with imprecations, that he may lacerate his own body;[222] and the wild beast, full of witchcraft,[223] which Indras kills, is probably a wolf. But, besides this, I think I can find in the _?igvedas_ the _lupus piscator_ of Russian and Western tradition; (according to aelianos there were wolves friendly to fishermen near the Palus Motis.) In the fifty-sixth hymn of the eighth book, Matsyas (the fish) invokes the adityas (that is, the luminous G.o.ds) to free him and his from the jaws of the wolf. So in another strophe of the same hymn, we must in reason suppose that it is a fish that speaks when she who has a terrible son (_i.e._, the mother of the sun) is invoked as protectress from him who in the shallow waters endeavours to kill him.[224] We also find a fish lying in shallow water explicitly mentioned in another hymn;[225] which proves to us the image of the fish without water, which was widely developed in later Hindoo tradition, to have been in the Vedic age already a familiar one. We find the dog as the enemy of the wolf in the Hindoo words _v?ikaris v?ikaratis_, and _v?ikadancas_. (In the thirteenth story of the fourth book of _Afana.s.sieff_, the wolf wishes to eat the dog; the latter, who feels himself too weak to resist, begs the wolf to bring him something to eat, in order that he may become larger, and be more tender for the wolf"s teeth; but when he is in good condition, he acquires strength and makes the wolf run. The enmity of the dog and the wolf was also made popular in the aesopian fables.)
In the _Ramaya?am_,[226] we already meet with the proverbial expression of the sheep who do not increase when guarded by the wolf or jackal (rakshayama?a na vardhante mesha gomayuna).
In the _Mahabharatam_, the second of the three sons of Kunti, the strong, terrible, and voracious Bhimas, is called Wolf"s-belly (V?ikodaras, the solar hero enclosed in the nocturnal or winter darkness). Here the wolf has a heroic and sympathetic form, as in the _Tuti-Name_[227] he, although famished, shows compa.s.sion upon a maiden who travels to fulfil a promise; as in the same _Tuti-Name_[228] he helps the lion against the mice, and in the story of Ardschi Bordschi, the boy, son of a wolf, understands the language of wolves, and teaches it to the merchants with whom he lives; like the Russian she-wolf that gives her milk to Ivan Karolievic, in order that he may take it to the witch, his wife, who induced him to fetch it in the hope that he would thereby meet with his death;[229] and like the she-wolf of the fifteenth Esthonian story, who comes up on hearing the cry of a child, and gives its milk to nourish it. The story tells us that the shape of a wolf was a.s.sumed by the mother of the child herself, and that when she was alone, she placed her wolf-disguise upon a rock, and appeared as a naked woman to give milk to her child.
The husband, informed of this, orders that the rock be heated, so that when the wolf"s skin is again placed upon it, it may be burnt, and he may thus be able to recognise and take back to himself his wife. The she-wolf that gives her milk to the twin-brothers, Romulus and Remus, in Latin epic tradition, was no less a woman than the nurse-wolf of the Esthonian story.[230] The German hero Wolfdieterich, the wolves who hunt for the hero in Russian stories, sacred to Mars and to Thor as their hunting dogs, have the same benignant nature. (The evening aurora disguises herself in the night with a wolf"s skin, nourishes as a she-wolf the new-born solar hero, and in the morning puts down her wolf"s skin upon the fiery rock of the East, and finds her husband again.) What Solinus tells us of the Neuri, viz., that they transformed themselves into wolves at stated periods; and what used to be narrated of the Arcadians, to the effect that when they crossed a certain marsh, they became wolves for eight years,--suggests us a new idea of the zoological transformations of the solar hero.[231] In La Fontaine,[232] the shadow of the wolf makes the sheep flee in the evening. As a hero transformed, the wolf has a benignant aspect in legends. According to Baronius, in the year 617, a number of wolves presented themselves at a monastery, and tore in pieces several friars who entertained heretical opinions. The wolves sent by G.o.d tore the sacrilegious thieves of the army of Francesco Maria, Duke of Urbino, who had come to sack the treasure of the holy house of Loreto.
A wolf guarded and defended from the wild beasts the head of St Edmund the Martyr, King of England. St Oddo, Abbot of Cluny, a.s.sailed in a pilgrimage by foxes, was delivered and escorted by a wolf; thus a wolf showed the way to the beatified Adam, in the same way as, in _Herodotos_, the wolves served as guides to the priests of Ceres. A wolf, having devoured two mares which drew a cart, was forced by St Eustorgius to draw the cart in their stead, and obeyed his orders. St Norbert compelled a wolf, first to let a sheep go after having clutched it, and then to guard the sheep all day without touching them. We read of the youth of the ancient Syracusan hero Hielon that, being at school, a wolf carried off his tablets in order to make him pursue it; no sooner was Hielon out, than the wolf re-entered the school, and ma.s.sacred the master and the other scholars.
And even after his death the wolf is useful. The ancients believed that a wolf"s hide, when put on by one who had been bitten by a mad dog, was a charm against hydrophobia. According to Pliny, wolf"s teeth rubbed on the gums of children during teething relieves the pain (which is quite credible, but any other sharp tooth would serve the same purpose, by making the teeth cut sooner). In Sicily it is believed that a wolf"s head increases the courage of whoever puts it on. In the province of Girgenti shoes are made of wolf"s skin for children whom their parents wish to grow up strong, brave, and pugnacious. The animals themselves that are ridden by persons who wear these shoes are cured of their pain. The animal _allupatu_ (that is, which has once been bitten by a wolf) becomes invulnerable, and never feels any other kind of pain. It is also believed in Sicily that when a wolf"s skin is exposed in the open air, it causes drums to break when they are beaten. This superst.i.tion reminds us of the fable of the fox that kills itself by breaking the drum or biting the string of a bow; the mythical drum (that is, the cloud) is destroyed when the wolf"s skin is taken off. In aesop"s fable, the wolf"s skin is recommended by the fox as a cure for the sick lion.
But the wolf of tradition usually has a perverse or diabolical signification; and as the demon is represented now as a master of every species of perfidy and wickedness, and now as a fool, so is the wolf. In the h.e.l.lenic myth, Lycaon, King of Arcadia, became a wolf because he had fed upon human flesh. According to Servius, the wolves among the people, called for this reason Hirpini (the Sabine word _hirpus_ meaning a wolf), carried off the entrails of the victim sacrificed to Pluto, and therefore brought down a pestilence upon the land. Wolves tore the hero Milon to pieces in the forest. Wolves are an omen of death; the loup garou of popular French tradition is a diabolical form.[233] In the _Edda_, the two wolves Skoll and Hati wish to take, one the sun and the other the moon; the wolf devours the sun, father of the world, and gives birth to a daughter. He is then killed by Vidarr. Hati precedes the luminous betrothed of the sky; the wolf Fenris, son of the demoniacal Lokis, chained by the Ases, bites off the hand that the hero Tyr, as an earnest of the good faith of the Ases, had put into his mouth,[234] when chained to the western gate.
Nanna, of the _Pentamerone_, after having travelled over the world, is disguised in the shape of a wolf, and changes in character and in colour, becoming malicious; the three sons of the Finns go to inhabit the Valley of the Wolf, near the Wolf"s Lake, and find there three women spinning, who can transform themselves into swans. On Christmas Eve, the King Helgi meets a witch who rides upon a wolf, having eagles for bridles.[235] Wolves eat each other; the wolf Sinfiolti becomes a eunuch; the wolf who flees before the hero is an omen of victory, as well as the wolf who howls under the branches of an ash-tree. (The howling of the wolf, the braying of the a.s.s, the hissing of the serpent, announce the death of the demoniacal monster; this howling must necessarily take place in the morning, or the spring, when the hero has recovered his strength, as the _Edda_ says that "a hero must never fight towards sunset)." If Gunnar (the solar hero) loses his life, the wolf becomes the master of the treasure, and of the heritage of Nifl; the heroes roast the wolf. All these legendary particulars relating to the wolf in the _Edda_ concur in showing us the wolf as a gloomy and diabolical monster. The night and the winter is the time of the wolf spoken of in the _Voluspa_; the G.o.ds who enter, according to the German tradition, into wolves" skins, represent the sun as hiding himself in the night, or the snowy season of winter (whence the demoniacal white wolf of a Russian story,[236] in the midst of seven black wolves). Inasmuch as the solar hero becomes a wolf, he has a divine nature; inasmuch, on the contrary, as the wolf is the proper form of the devil, his nature is entirely malignant. The condemned man, the proscribed criminal, the bandit, the _utlagatus_ or outlaw, were said in the Middle Ages to wear a _caput lupinum_ (in England, _wulfesheofod_; in France, _teste lue_). The wolf Ysengrin, descended partly from the aesopian wolf, and partly from Scandinavian myths, which were propagated in Germany, Flanders, and France, possesses much of the diabolical craftiness of the fox; he usually adopts against sheep the same stratagems which the fox makes use of to entrap chickens. The French proverb makes the fox preach to the fowls; the Italian proverb makes the wolf sing psalms when he wishes to ensnare the sheep. As we have seen the jackal and the fox confounded in the East, so Reinart and Ysengrin are sometimes identified by their cunning in Western tradition. A recent French writer, who had observed the habits of the wolf, says that he is "effrayant de sagacite et de calcul."[237] In the second story of the second book of _Afana.s.sieff_, the same wizard-wolf who knew how to imitate the goat"s voice to deceive the kids, goes to the house of an old man and an old woman, who have five sheep, a horse, and a calf. The wolf comes and begins to sing. The old woman admires the song, and gives him one sheep, then the others, then the horse, next the calf, and finally herself. The old man, left alone, at last succeeds in hunting the wolf away. In the preceding story, where the animals accuse each other, the demoniacal wolf, when his turn comes, accuses G.o.d. We have already spoken of the wolf who, by the order of St Eustorgius, draws the cart instead of the mares which he had eaten. In the twenty-fifth story of the third book of _Afana.s.sieff_, the wolf comes up to the sleeping workman, and smells him; the workman awakes, takes the wolf by the tail,[238] and kills him. Another time the same workman, when he goes with his father to the chase, after having enriched himself with money which he had taken from three brigands who had hidden it in a deserted mill, meets again with two wolves who eat the horses, but, entangling themselves in the reins, they are compelled to draw the car home again themselves; here, therefore, we have the miracle of St Eustorgius reduced to its natural mythical proportions. Here, evidently, the wolf begins to show himself as a stupid animal; the demon teaches his art to the little solar hero in the evening, and is betrayed by the hero himself in the morning; the fox cheats the solar c.o.c.k in the evening, and is deceived by it in the morning; the wolf succeeds by his wickedness in the evening, and is ruined in the morning. We have already mentioned the Norwegian story of the little Schmierbock, who, put into a sack by the witch, twice makes a hole in the sack and escapes, and the third time makes the witch eat her own daughter.
Schmierbock is the ram; the witch or night puts him into the sack. In the Piedmontese story,[239] and in the Russian one, instead of Schmierbock, we have Piccolino (the very little one), and the Small Little Finger (malcik-s palcik, that is, the little finger, which is the wise one, according to popular superst.i.tion). The Russian story is as follows: An old woman, while baking a cake (the moon), cuts off her little finger and throws it into the fire. From the little finger in the fire, a dwarf, but very strong son, is born, who afterwards does many wonderful things. One day he was eating the tripe of an ox in the forest; the wolf pa.s.ses by, and eats dwarf and tripe together. After this, the wolf approaches a flock of sheep, but the dwarf cries out from within the wolf, "Shepherd, shepherd, thou sleepest and the wolf carries off a sheep." The shepherd then chases the wolf away, who endeavours to get rid of his troublesome guest; the dwarf requests the wolf to carry him home to his parents; no sooner have they arrived there than the dwarf comes out behind and catches hold of the wolf"s tail, shouting, "Kill the wolf, kill the grey one." The old people come out and kill it.[240] The mythical wolf dies now after only one night, now after only one winter of life. To the mythical wolf, however, b.a.s.t.a.r.d sons were born, who, changing only their skin, succeeded in living for a long period among mortals in the midst of civil society, preserving, nevertheless, their wolf-like habits. The French proverb says, "Le loup alla a Rome; il y laissa de son poil et rien de ses coutumes." The pagan she-wolf gave milk to the Roman heroes; the Catholic wolf, thunderstruck by Dante,[241] on the contrary, feeds upon them--
"Ed ha natura s malvagia e ria, Che mai non empie la bramosa voglia, E dopo il pasto ha piu fame che pria.
Molti son gli animali a cui s"ammoglia."
FOOTNOTES:
[194] Cfr. _Ueber den Zusammenhang indischer Fabeln mit griechischen_, Berlin, Dummler, 1855.
[195] In a German tradition referred to by Schmidt, _Forschungen_, s.
105, we have the deity who presents himself as a fox to the hunter voluntarily to be sacrificed; the hunter flays him, and the flies and ants eat his flesh. In a Russian story of which I shall give an abridgment, the wolf eats the fox when he sees it without its hairy covering.
[196] i. 5566, _et seq._
[197] i. 16, iv. 2; cfr. also iv. 10, and the chapter on the Hare.--In the story, iii. 14, of the _Pancatantram_, the jackal cheats the lion who has occupied his cave, by making him roar; and thus a.s.suring himself that the lion is in the cave, he is able to escape.
[198] iii. 29.
[199] Cfr. _Pancatantram_, i. 10; _Tuti-Name_, ii. 146.
[200] i. 2, ii. 3.--In the nineteenth Mongol story, the young man who pa.s.ses himself off as a hero is ordered to bring to the queen the skin of a certain fox which is indicated to him; on the way the youth loses his bow; returning to look for it, he finds the fox dead close to the bow, which it had tried to bite, and which had struck and killed it.
[201] iv. 4.
[202] i. 134, 135.
[203] _Tuti-Name_, ii. 125.--In the stories of the same night (the twenty-second) of the _Tuti-Name_, we have the lynx (lupus cervarius) who wishes to take the house of the monkey who occupies the lion"s house, and the jackal who runs after the camel"s t.e.s.t.i.c.l.es, as in the _Pancatantram_ he runs after those of the bull. In the story, ii. 7, the fox lets his bone fall into the water in order to catch a fish (a variety of the well-known fable of the dog and of the wolf or devil as fisherman).
[204] _Tuti-Name_, ii. 142, 143.
[205] i. 168, _et seq._
[206] _Querolus_, i. 2.
[207] In the eighteenth story of the fourth book of _Afana.s.sieff_, an extraordinary cake escapes from the house of an old man and woman, and wanders about; it finds the hare, the wolf, and the bear, who all wish to eat it; it sings its story to them all, and is allowed to go; it sings it to the fox, too, but the latter praises the song, and eats the cake, after having made it get upon his back.