第61章 NATURE MYTHS(6)

"Unable to account for the motive power, he imagines the paddle to be linked round the tongue of a coiled serpent, fastened to the tail of the vessel," and so he represents it on the black stone pipe. Nay, a savage's belief that beasts are on his own level is so literal, that he actually makes blood-covenants with the lower animals, as he does with men, mingling his gore with theirs, or smearing both together on a stone; while to bury dead animals with sacred rites is as usual among the Bedouins and Malagasies to-day as in ancient Egypt or Attica. In the same way the Ainos of Japan, who regard the bear as a kinsman, sacrifice a bear once a year. But, to propitiate the animal and his connections, they appoint him a "mother," an Aino girl, who looks after his comforts, and behaves in a way as maternal as possible. The bear is now a kinsman, , and cannot avenge himself within the kin. This, at least, seems to be the humour of it. In Lagarde's Reliquiae Juris Ecclesiastici Antiquissimae a similar Syrian covenant of kinship with insects is described. About 700 A. D., when a Syrian garden was infested by caterpillars, the maidens were assembled, and one caterpillar was caught. Then one of the virgins was "made its mother," and the creature was buried with due lamentations. The "mother" was then brought to the spot where the pests were, her companions bewailed her, and the caterpillars perished like their chosen kinsman, but without extorting revenge. Revenge was out of their reach. They had been brought within the kin of their foes, and there were no Erinnyes, "avengers of kindred blood," to help them. People in this condition of belief naturally tell hundreds of tales, in which men, stones, trees, beasts, shift shapes, and in which the modifications of animal forms are caused by accident, or by human agency, or by magic, or by metamorphosis. Such tales survive in our modern folk-lore. To make our meaning clear, we may give the European nursery-myth of the origin of the donkey's long ears, and, among other illustrations, the Australian myth of the origin of the black and white plumage of the pelican. Mr. Ralston has published the Russian version of the myth of the donkey's ears. The Spanish form, which is identical with the Russian, is given by Fernan Caballero in La Gaviota.

Magazine of Art, January, 1883.

"Malagasy Folk-Tales," Folk-Lore Journal, October, 1883.

We are indebted to Professor Robertson Smith for this example, and to Miss Bird's Journal, pp. 90, 97, for the Aino parallel.

"Listen! do you know why your ears are so big?" (the story is told to a stupid little boy with big ears). "When Father Adam found himself in Paradise with the animals, he gave each its name; those of THY species, my child, he named 'donkeys'. One day, not long after, he called the beasts together, and asked each to tell him its name. They all answered right except the animals of THY sort, and they had forgotten their name! Then Father Adam was very angry, and, taking that forgetful donkey by the ears, he pulled them out, screaming 'You are called DONKEY!' And the donkey's ears have been long ever since." This, to a child, is a credible explanation. So, perhaps, is another survival of this form of science--the Scotch explanation of the black marks on the haddock;they were impressed by St. Peter's finger and thumb when he took the piece of money for Caesar's tax out of the fish's mouth.

Turning from folk-lore to savage beliefs, we learn that from one end of Africa to another the honey-bird, schneter, is said to be an old woman whose son was lost, and who pursued him till she was turned into a bird, which still shrieks his name, "Schneter, Schneter". In the same way the manners of most of the birds known to the Greeks were accounted for by the myth that they had been men and women. Zeus, for example, turned Ceyx and Halcyon into sea-fowls because they were too proud in their married happiness. To these myths of the origin of various animals we shall return, but we must not forget the black and white Australian pelican. Why is the pelican parti-coloured? For this reason:

After the Flood (the origin of which is variously explained by the Murri), the pelican (who had been a black fellow) made a canoe, and went about like a kind of Noah, trying to save the drowning. In the course of his benevolent mission he fell in love with a woman, but she and her friends played him a trick and escaped from him.

The pelican at once prepared to go on the war-path. The first thing to do was to daub himself white, as is the custom of the blacks before a battle. They think the white pipe-clay strikes terror and inspires respect among the enemy. But when the pelican was only half pipe-clayed, another pelican came past, and, "not knowing what such a queer black and white thing was, struck the first pelican with his beak and killed him. Before that pelicans were all black; now they are black and white. That is the reason."

Barth, iii. 358.

Apollodorus, i. 7 (13, 12).

Sahagun, viii. 2, accounts for colours of eagle and tiger. Anumber of races explain the habits and marks of animals as the result of a curse or blessing of a god or hero. The Hottentots, the Huarochiri of Peru, the New Zealanders (Shortland, Traditions, p. 57), are among the peoples which use this myth.

Brough Symth, Aborigines of Australia, i. 477, 478.