The characters of animals have become an integral part of our descriptive language. Owls are wise and lions are brave; bears are strong and monkeys mischievous. As they were establishing the first civilizations, humans must have quickly come to recognize which of the creatures who shared their world were harmful and dangerous and which were useful – whether to guard their homes, as means of transport, or as sources of food.
So strongly embedded are the supposed characters of many animals that the ancients believed these creatures to be the embodiments of deities or to be closely linked with them. In countless tales told down the ages – and, of course, in the Bible – the powers of animals are colourfully recounted, often with some kind of moral attached. As a result it has become only natural to think of snakes as evil (though they can also be good), of rats as dirty and of donkeys as stupid. From their typical behaviour, and their place in lore and legend, certain animals have also become symbolic of all kinds of attributes. So the dove is a bird of peace, the eagle an emblem of victory and the swan the symbol of pure beauty.
In folklore, animals can do almost anything. They can be friends and foes to the people with whom they share the planet, and can talk to each other with ease. They can be evil witches and devils in disguise and the objects of hate and opprobrium. They can bring good luck and bad. In real life they can, as our domestic pets, be our dearest companions, to the point of sheer worship, even helping to heal our ills.
Since ancient times birds, because of their keen eyesight and aerial view of the world, have been linked with wisdom and knowledge. Owls and ibises are believed to be especially wise.
A wise old owl sat in an oak,
The more he saw the less he spoke,
The less he spoke the more he heard,
Wasn't that owl a wise old bird?
In the days of King Arthur and his Knights of the Round Table, the owl was linked with the wizard Merlin, and was customarily depicted on his shoulder. The 'real' Merlin was probably a Celtic bard.
Thus runs the children's rhyme (which is as much a lesson in listening as on the good sense of the owl, and has the alternative last line 'Why can't we all be like that wise old bird?'). However the owl's association with knowledge stems largely from the fact that the bird was companion to Athene, Greek goddess of wisdom, sciences and arts. So strong was the connection that Athenian coins bearing the head of the goddess on one side were marked on the other with an owl and an olive branch (symbol of peace and plenty) from the tree believed to have been given to the earth by Athene. However, there is no known link between the owl's symbolic wisdom and its naturally 'bespectacled' knowing looks.
In the Christian tradition, the owl is associated with St Jerome, who was described as the fountain of wisdom, a reputation earned from the fact that he was a translator of the Bible and the foremost biblical scholar of his day.
In ancient Egypt the god Thoth, creator and commander of the universe, god of writing and knowledge, protector of scribes and keeper of the records of the dead, was commonly depicted with the body of a man and the head of an ibis, whose reputation for wisdom may have stemmed from its annual arrival in Egypt at the time of the Nile's inundation. Later, Thoth became linked with keepers of dangerous secrets and the occult.
The crocodile is the embodiment of hypocrisy – the creature who 'smiles' at you, then gobbles you up. The alligator (early writing made no distinction between the two) is equally feared.
It is a widespread urban legend that alligators inhabit the sewers of New York. They are said to be adult versions of small, rejected pets bought in Florida and flushed down toilets.
The crocodile, described by a 16th-century explorer as 'cowardly on land, cruel in the water', was said to lure its prey with moaning sounds then, having devoured its meal, shed tears of false remorse. Its hypocritical habits are wonderfully evoked by Edmund Spenser in The Faerie Queene, in these lines depicting the meeting of 'a weary traveller' and his attacker,
Outwitting the crocodile: It takes the cunning of a fox to foil a crocodile, as in this South African folktale. A big crocodile was killing sheep, cattle and people, and the king called a meeting to see how it might be banished. Fox jumped up and said: 'O King, I am small but wisdom surpasses bravery. Why do you wait for your enemy to grow strong? What do I do? I eat crocodiles while they are still in the eggs. Get rid of your enemy before he is stronger than you.'
Which, in false griefe hyding his
harmfull guile,
Doth weep full sore, and sheddeth
tender teares:
The foolish man, that pitties all this
while
His mournfull plight, is swallowed up
unwares…
Crocodiles do certainly make mournful noises, though their 'tears' are thought by zoologists to be the creature's natural mechanism for shedding excess salt rather than revealing their temperament. And not all who approach are attacked. After feeding, the Nile crocodile will lie with its huge mouth agape and allow small plovers or 'crocodile birds' to clean its mouth, teeth and throat.
Birds in the crow family, especially magpies, crows, ravens, jays and jackdaws, have a deserved reputation as nature's thieves – and one is the subject of a well-loved opera.
Ravens were long feared as harbingers of death. In The Jew of Malta Marlowe refers to 'The sad presaging raven, that tolls/The sick man's passport in her hollow beak.'
Shiny objects, including money and jewellery, are attractive to these birds, and have led to many stories, including the true one on which Rossini's opera The Thieving Magpie is based. In it, a servant girl is executed for stealing from her master but, after her death, it is discovered that the magpie was in fact to blame.
Another story is told by Jonathan Swift in Thoughts on Various Subjects of 1711: 'An old miser kept a tame jackdaw, that used to steal pieces of money, and hide them in a hole, which the cat observing, asked why he would hoard up those round shining things that he could make no use of? "Why," said the jackdaw, "my master has a whole chest full, and makes no more use of them than I."'
The corvines are relentless stealers of other birds' eggs and chicks. They nest in colonies of 20 or more birds, using church towers, mills, and the like – any building with a cavity that gives shelter and shade – from where they will sally forth on foraging expeditions.
Everything about the fox's looks and behaviour portray an expert in cunning. This inveterate night hunter will trick its pursuers by tracking in circles and even by making friends with the dogs trained to chase it down.
Legends of many lands relate that the vixen is a sorceress in disguise, lurking in the forests and sometimes assuming the looks of a beautiful woman who, once she had cast her evil spell, changed to animal form.
Farmer and fox have long had an uneasy relationship. As plunderer of poultry the fox is a hated enemy, but he also catches the rabbits and other vermin that destroy crops. It's nature is contradictory – it is both destructive and creative, bold but timid, defensive yet at ease in almost any environment, from open fields to city streets.
The fox figures widely in fables. In Aesop's story 'The Fox and the Crane' the two creatures are apparently on good terms. Fox invites the bird to share a meal, but for a joke serves soup in flat dishes. Fox laps it up with ease but Crane cannot eat. Crane then invites Fox to dine and serves soup in long-necked bottles, which only Crane, with his long bill, can reach. The moral of the tale is that turning the tables is fair play.
FOXY SAYINGS
The cunning of the fox is cemented into the English language in dozens of sayings, including:
• When the fox preaches, then beware your geese.
• It is an ill sign for a fox to lick a lamb.
• The fox preys farthest from his home.
• An old fox is not easily snared.
• If you deal with a fox, think of his tricks.
Many animal characters take on the role of tricksters, able to behave and talk like humans. With the coyote and the wolf such stories undoubtedly arise from observations of the natural cunning that helps these creatures survive in the wild.
The 'wolf in sheep's clothing' is the trickster in disguise. To 'cry wolf' is to set up a false alarm, like the shepherd boy who cried 'Wolf!' to taunt his neighbours then (with them) was eaten up when the animal really came calling, because no one any longer believed his repeated warnings.
No doubt the character and behaviour of the real animals led to their characterization as tricksters. Typical is the contradictory ferocity and skulking cowardice of wolves, including the prairie wolf or coyote. Among Native Americans, stories about this creature abound, with the trickster always on the lookout for opportunities to get his way. Typical is the story of 'Coyote and the Dancing Ducks':
One day, Coyote saw a flock of ducks by a lake. How he fancied a nice duck dinner! He stuffed a bag full of grass and walked past the ducks, singing a catchy tune. 'What's in the bag?' asked a duck. 'Songs,' replied Coyote. 'Please sing your songs for us,' implored the ducks. After much pleading, Coyote agreed, but only if the ducks stood in three lines with the fattest at the front, then closed their eyes and danced and sang as loudly as they could. So Coyote moved up and down the line, thumping the ducks on the head and stuffing the stunned birds into his bag. But one scrawny duck at the back opened his eyes, saw what was going on, and shouted a warning. At this, the surviving ducks made their getaway. Coyote was happy – he had plenty to eat. The ducks went home and mourned their dead, and gave thanks to the Great Duck that one of them had been wise enough to open his eyes, and that the rest had been wise enough to listen to the one who had raised the alarm.
It was once believed that the porcupine could transfix its enemies by shooting its spines at them. Though this is fanciful, the creature retains its place in folklore as an animal never to be underestimated. The hedgehog is another animal that it is prudent to approach with caution.
If you grow fruit, beware – at night, a hedgehog will carry off both apples and grapes on its prickles. And farmers accuse hedgehogs of milking cows during the hours of darkness.
The porcupine's reputation for 'killer quills' probably comes from the fact that if one of its spines becomes embedded in an enemy it is easily shed by the porcupine but, being barbed, is difficult, if not impossible to remove. A porcupine in full attack raises its spines and rattles them together, stamping its feet. The charge is not made head on: instead the creature reverses at speed, ramming its quills into its victim.
As a character in Native American tales, Porcupine regularly encounters other masters of subterfuge, including Coyote. One popular Plains Indian story relates how Porcupine, wanting a meal and also needing to cross a stream, hitches a ride with a buffalo. He is cunning enough to wait until he has been helped across before killing his carrier, but he is out-witted by Coyote. The two have a contest to see who will get the meat, agreeing,
Shakespeare called the hedgehog the 'hedge-pig' because of the snorting sounds it makes. These, in folklore, are warnings that ghouls and ghosts are on the prowl.
at Coyote's suggestion, that whoever manages to jump over the carcass shall have it. Coyote, of course, jumps over but short-legged Porcupine cannot. In revenge Porcupine kills Coyote's children.
The 19th-century poem by Mary Howitt that begins '"Will you walk into my parlour?" said the spider to the fly' sums up the spider's cunning in luring its prey into its web. These creatures, feared by many to the point of phobia, get their name from the Old English word spithra, a spinner.
'Eight legs, two fangs and an attitude' was the tagline of the 1990 movie Arachnophobia, in which a South American killer spider hitches a lift to the US in a coffin and starts to breed and kill.
In West Africa, where it's said, 'The wisdom of the spider is greater than that of all the world put together', the supreme trickster is the spider Anansi. People also say: 'Woe to him who would put his trust in Anansi – a sly, selfish and greedy fellow.' One story relates how a farmer put a gum doll (a kind of sticky scarecrow) in a field to stop his crops being stolen. Confronted with the doll, Anansi kicked him, but his feet and hands got stuck. Finding his thief, the farmer beat Anansi until his body was flat, and had the mark of the cross on his back.
The arachnids, the zoological group to which spiders belong, are named from the spider's association with Arachne, a Greek girl who was renowned for her skill at spinning and weaving. When she dared to challenge the goddess Athene to a weaving contest, the tactless Arachne completed a wonderful depiction of the loves of the gods. Consumed with fury at her rival's skill, Athene changed Arachne into a spider, condemning her to a life of eternal weaving.
PRECIOUS CREATURES
Protect spiders and their webs because:
• When Jesus was born in a manger, he was protected by a spider's web.
• Sweep a spider out of the door and you will sweep away your luck.
• Spiders and cobwebs in stables prevent horses from going lame.
• 'If in life you want to thrive,/Let a spider run alive'.
• A spider's web on a boat will prevent the craft from sinking.
In lore and legend the whale is renowned more for its symbolic association with rebirth than for its sheer size. And the ancient practice of whaling is surrounded by ritual.
The 'whalebone' used in women's corsetry for nipping in the waist from the early 17th century was not bone at all, but horny baleen. This hangs like combs along the sides of the whale's mouth, and the creature uses it to filter vast quantities of krill and other plankton from the sea.
Whether or not the big fish that swallowed the prophet Jonah in the Bible story was a whale, the two remain inextricably linked. Though ordered by God to travel to Nineveh to reprimand its people for their wickedness, Jonah instead boarded a boat sailing across the Mediterranean. When the ship hit a storm Jonah confessed that this might be God's revenge on him for his disobedience, and was tossed into the sea by the sailors – where he was swallowed by a 'fish'. Despite his pleas to the Almighty, Jonah was kept captive in the animal's stomach for three days. Once free, Jonah completed his mission to Nineveh, where God forgave the people and saved them from destruction.
In medieval allegory Jonah's ordeal became symbolic of the three days which passed between Christ's death and resurrection, when he was believed to be in a dark place 'under the earth'.
WHALING TRADITIONS
Though whaling is now banned in many parts of the world, customs like these reflect past practice:
• Before a whaling expedition, sprinkling ashes on the ice will dispel evil spirits and protect the whalers.
• To celebrate a catch, a whaler's wife and children should dance within a circle made from the bones of a whale.
• After a whale has been killed there must be three days of mourning, ending with a ritual return to the sea of any remaining flesh, so that both the spirit and the body of the animal may be reborn.
In Christian symbolism the pelican is the bird of charity, a tradition that has arisen from a misinterpretation of both the creature and its behaviour. In some old bestiaries, the pelican was virtually interchangeable with the phoenix.
According to ancient lore the pelican pecks at its breast and makes itself bleed; it is this blood on which the chicks feed. A more embroidered tale relates that the female pelican, provoked to anger by her growing young, kills them. But three days later the father returns to the nest, covers the dead chicks with his wings, smites himself in the chest and pours his blood over them to bring them back to life.
It is the birds' sacrifice of body and blood – which is comparable to Christ's sacrifice in giving his life to save others – that lies behind pelican symbolism. The scene of the pelican feeding blood to her chicks was adopted as a heraldic device by medieval knights. It became known as 'The Pelican in Her Piety' and can still be seen in coats of arms and in the stained glass windows of churches all over Europe. And in Hamlet Shakespeare has the bereaved Laertes declare:
To his good friends thus wide I'll ope my arms,
And like the kind life-rendring pelican,
Repast them with my blood.
It is perhaps confusion with the flamingo, which secretes dark red 'crop milk' into its mouth and ejects it to feed its young, that led to the pelican's reputation. Also, the bird often keeps its bill tucked close to its chest as it feeds its brood.
Whether they watch and wait in silence or noisily announce the approach of danger, the crane, cockerel and goose are all renowned for their vigilance.
It is said that no evil spirit would dare to make an appearance at Christmas time because in this season 'Chanticleer clamours the livelong night'.
The crane, according to Aristotle, holds a stone in its claw to keep itself awake while waiting at the waterside for its prey to come within reach. If the bird drops off to sleep the stone falls with a splash, which wakes it up. This may explain why the crane, with its naturally watchful habits, was adopted in medieval times (when awareness of an enemy's approach was a critical survival skill) as a symbol of vigilance.
The cockerel, by contrast, though it
Good as gold: When, in 390 BC, the Gauls attempted to capture the stronghold of the Capitoline Hill, it is said that the Romans were warned of the enemy's approach by the cackling of a flock of geese sacred to the goddess Juno Moneta (whose temple stood on the hill and whose talent was to give reliable warnings of trouble). Believing this to be a divine intervention, the Romans subsequently created a golden goose, which was paraded in processions as a symbol of vigilance.
may wait quietly, announces the end of its watch – whether impending evil or merely the arrival of the dawn – with cacophonous crowing. In Christianity it is associated with vigilance against the Devil's wiles and with the incident before Jesus's arrest and trial when he correctly predicted that, before the cock had crowed three times, Peter would 'deny him thrice'. A cock on a church tower or weathervane waits to call both the faithful and the wavering to come to worship. Linking this with the St Peter story, Spenser, in his poem The Faerie Queene, writes:
What time the native Bellman of the
night,
The bird that warnèd Peter of his fall,
First rings his silver bell t'each sleepy
wight, [person]
That should their mindes up to
devotion call.
The bird that graces our dinner tables at Christmas and Thanksgiving is renowned for its lack of guile in allowing itself to be caught and eaten, as well as for its gobbling voice.
The turkey was widely regarded as an interloper when it arrived in Europe from America in the early 16th century and was said to have 'violated the rights of hospitality'. In a 19th-century drawing that expresses the unworthiness of this sentiment a turkey cock is shown, with plumes spread, meeting a proud cockerel, the spurs on its legs lifted ready to attack. Underneath is a verse from Leviticus: 'And if a stranger sojourn with thee in your land ye shall not vex him.'
The saying 'to talk turkey' means to discuss frankly – it is said to derive from the turkey's habit of revealing its presence to hunters making gobbling noises by gobbling in return.
In its native lands the turkey is thought by some to be a cowardly creature; and certain tribes refused to eat its meat lest they be similarly afflicted. As for its voice, one Cherokee Indian tale tells how the turkey, regretting its feeble tones, asked the grouse to teach it to call more loudly. The grouse accepted, but asked for payment in return. The turkey offered some feathers (which the grouse is said to wear round its neck to this day), but when the time came for the turkey to try out his improved voice he got so agitated that he could only let out a gobble.
In the turkey trot, an American folk dance, partners flap their arms at each other like turkey wings. 'Turkey in the Straw' is traditionally danced to the accompaniment of fiddles and banjos.
The notion that dolphins can rescue people from drowning or guide them safely through the water goes back centuries. Today it is claimed that dolphin therapy may be a cure for mental ills.
On a Mediterranean sea journey in the 7th century BC the Greek poet and harpist Arion was set upon by sailors who discovered that he was carrying gold – his prize for winning a musical competition. Before they threw him overboard, the sailors granted Arion's request to play one final melody. Attracted by the beauty of his music, a school of dolphins swam around the ship. Arion leapt into the sea and was carried to safety on a dolphin's back. Dolphins also attended deities, notably the sea-god Poseidon, whose seashell chariot they pulled through the waters, and it was after Cretan sailors had been guided there by a dolphin sent by Apollo that the famous oracle was founded at Delphi.
Saved from oneself: Therapists have found that swimming with dolphins is an excellent remedy for depression.
If you should die at sea, dolphins may save your corpse from being eaten by the fishes. It is said that dolphins know by the smell of a dead man whether or not he has ever killed and eaten one of their kind. If they judge him not guilty, they will bring his body to shore, intact, for his relatives to find. In Christian legend, the body of Lucian of Antioch, who was martyred in 312 CE, was brought ashore by a dolphin after it had been thrown into the sea to deny the saint a Christian burial.
Especially when feathered in white – the colour of purity – the dove is the perfect symbol of the undefiled simplicity of the soul. Its special significance in the Judeo-Christian tradition comes from its many appearances in the Bible.
It is the dove's gentle demeanour and quiet habits that have led to its symbolic association with the best behaviour, but most significantly it represents the Holy Spirit at Christ's baptism. St Luke's Gospel records: 'During a general baptism of the people, when Jesus had been baptized and was praying, heaven opened and the Holy Spirit descended on him in bodily form like a dove, and there came a voice from heaven, "You are my beloved Son; in you I delight".' The symbolic use of the bird on this occasion was no accident, since it had long been associated with the Jewish rite of purification.
The dove was the bird that Noah sent out from the Ark to see if the flood had subsided. When it returned with 'an olive leaf plucked off' in its beak he knew that this was so. Ever since, the dove and olive branch have been symbols not only of peace and gentleness between God and humans but also between nations.
DOVE DEEDS AND LORE
• Doves get their scientific family name Columbidae from their association with St Columba, who had a vision of the Holy Spirit in the form of a dove.
• If you make three wishes on hearing the first dove in spring they will all come true.
• The dove lays only two eggs because she has pride in – and concern for – the family she will raise.
• The dead may be reincarnated as doves.
Though valued for their swiftness and staying power, camels have a lasting reputation for stubbornness. And people 'get the hump' when they are generally dissatisfied with life.
Rudyard Kipling used the camel's shape and its character to wonderful effect in his story of 'How the Camel Got His Hump'. 'In the beginning of years,' it starts, 'when the world was new and all, and the Animals were just beginning to work for Man, there was a Camel, and he lived in the middle of a Howling Desert because he did not want to work; and besides, he was a Howler himself. So he ate sticks and thorns and tamarisks and milkweed and prickles, most 'scrutiating idle; and when anybody spoke to him he said "Humph!" Just "Humph" and no more.'
A camel with 'the hump' may sulk but it will also spit – as will its close relative, the llama.
The Camel goes on saying 'Humph' until 'the Djinn in charge of All Deserts' puts an actual 'humph' on his back which, because he missed three days work, allows him to go three days without eating. But, as Kipling concludes, 'We call it a "hump" now, not to hurt his feelings, and he has never yet learned how to behave.'
Someone who 'strains at a gnat and swallows a camel' is a person who makes a fuss about minor misdemeanours but then commits major offences. In this context the word 'strain' means to strain off (as you would to get rid of an insect in a glass of wine).
Though they may be stubborn, camels are certainly not stupid. The one named Al Kaswa was the favourite of Muhammad, and the mosque at Aqaba marks the spot where the creature knelt when the Prophet fled from Mecca.
The ass takes centre stage in stories that epitomize stupidity (though it does have redeeming features), but it was once associated with evil. We are all, on occasion, likely to make asses of ourselves.
To the Egyptians, an ass was to be approached with care, and to meet a red ass (one the colour of blood) was believed to be fatal to the soul, preventing it attaining the hereafter. It was associated with Seth, the god of chaos and evil, who murdered his brother, Osiris.
Of the 27 tales that Aesop tells about the ass, typical is 'The Ass Who Was Taken for a Lion': 'An ass, clothed in the skin of a lion, passed himself off in the eyes of everyone as a lion, and made everyone flee from him, both men and animals. But the wind came and blew off the lion's skin, leaving him naked and exposed. Everyone then fell upon him when they saw this, and beat him with sticks and clubs.' The moral is, be ordinary and poor: pretensions will make you an object of ridicule.
THE PROVERBIAL ASS
The creature's character is embedded in the language of proverbs:
• Every ass thinks himself worthy to stand with the king's horses. (A distorted idea of equality.)
• He is an ass that brays against another ass. (The epitome of foolishness.)
• Every ass likes to hear himself bray. (It is foolish to talk and not listen.)
• Wherever an ass falls, there will he never fall again. (Even the stupid can learn by experience.)
It is largely from their association with Christianity that the donkey and the lamb have acquired their reputations for goodness, and more specifically for gentleness and humility.
The donkey or ass makes two central appearances in the life of Jesus. After the Nativity, when they had been warned of Herod's evil intent to kill all male children under two years old, Mary and Joseph, with the infant Jesus, fled to Egypt on a donkey. In medieval France their escape was celebrated in the Feast of the Ass, on 14 January. As part of the celebrations, a girl carrying a baby was led through the streets on a donkey, but the Church took measures to stop the festival when, over the years, it degenerated into a burlesque, ending in a ceremony in which both priest and people brayed like asses.
Before his trial and crucifixion, Jesus made his triumphal entry into Jerusalem riding on a donkey. It is said that the dark cross-shaped marks that run over the creature's back and shoulders are there because it bore Christ on this journey.
That Jesus is 'the lamb of God, which taketh away the sin of the world' explains Christ's association with this gentle animal, created to be without malice. Jesus was also called 'the Paschal lamb' because this creature, traditionally sacrificed at the Jewish Passover, is linked with St Paul's testament: 'For even Christ our Passover lamb is sacrificed for us.'
When, in medieval times, Satan was believed to take on the form of an animal, the goat was most often cast in this evil role. Other vile associations come from the ritual of the scapegoat.
The 13th-century monk Matthew Paris told of a black billy goat, said to have been an evil spirit that carried the body of King William II (William Rufus) to judgment. The king, hated by his subjects for his cruelty, had been shot and killed by an arrow while out hunting in 1100.
The goat's evil reputation stems from accounts such as that of the trials in 1335 of Anne-Marie de Georgel and Catherine Delort, who were accused of having had sexual relations with the Devil in the form of a goat. And in 1460 the witches of Arras were condemned because they worshipped and made offerings to the Devil in similar guise. The trial record made special mention
Sheep good, goats bad: that is the Biblical assessment, by which they are destined to be separated at the Day of Judgment.
of the fact that 'with candles in their hands they kiss the hind parts of the goat that is the Devil'.
The 13th-century monk Matthew Paris told of a black billy goat, said to have been an evil spirit that carried the body of King William II (William Rufus) to judgment. The king, hated by his subjects for his cruelty, had been shot and killed by an arrow while out hunting in 1100.
The concept of the scapegoat, an animal that takes on the sin of another, comes from an ancient Jewish ritual described in Leviticus. Two goats were taken to the altar of the tabernacle, where the high priest cast lots, earmarking one animal for Yaweh (the Lord) the other for Azazel (the evil one). The Lord's goat was sacrificed, while the scapegoat, though spared, was doomed to take on the sins of the people and the priest. After the ceremony it was led away and allowed to escape into the wilderness, carrying the sins with it.
The unfortunate pig is often the butt of opprobrium, the animal having been associated over the centuries with demons. It is one of the 'unclean' animals that Jews are forbidden to eat.
When God advised Noah which animals he was to take into the ark he distinguished between 'clean' and 'unclean' animals. The pig is considered unclean because it has cloven hooves but, unlike a cow, does not chew the cud. Isaiah lists, among many abominations, 'he that offereth an oblation as if he offered swine's blood'.
In the New Testament, pigs were cursed when Jesus drove unclean spirits into the bodies of the 'Gadarene swine' which, turned mad, rushed to their own destruction. Small holes in the creatures' forefeet are believed to be the marks where the Devil's disciples entered them.
Compared with its ancestor the wild boar – which not only grubbed in the undergrowth for nuts and roots but raided rabbit burrows and even, reputedly, killed fawns as they slept – the pig is a benign creature. When chased, said the 19th-century French zoologist J H Fabre, the boar 'sharpens its tusks and works its drivelling jaws. Its mane stands erect on head and back; its little eyes, inflamed with fury, resemble two glowing coals.'
Like goats, pigs were believed to be the Devil in disguise, especially in the form of the Black Boar. Or they might be the incarnations of witches. In 1457 a pig was even tried and condemned to death, though her piglets were saved. The Yird (earth) Pig was believed to roam graveyards, feasting on the bodies of the dead.
The same author declares, 'Despite all its improvements the [domestic] pig still remains a coarse animal … addicted to gluttony' and 'devotes itself unreservedly to the gratification of its voracious appetite … Its gluttony extends even to the devouring of kitchen refuse.' It is lazy, he says, 'always either sleeping, stretched out on its side in the full enjoyment of digestion, or rooting in the ground in the hope of some chance additional titbit, however small.'
The intelligence of the pig is celebrated, not least for its ability to hunt out edible treasures. Pigs even get some of the best roles on TV and in the movies.
In ancient Crete, the pig was so highly esteemed that it became an object of worship. Pigs – usually small, suckling pigs – were sacrificed to Demeter, goddess of the earth and fertility, and eating the animal's meat, except as a sacrifice, was taboo. The ancient Celts also worshipped the pig, and considered pork the best of all the meats.
St Anthony the Great, one of the early Church's Desert Fathers, was adopted as the patron saint of swineherds because he once tended pigs himself, and wandered the desert with a pig always at his side. Once, so the story goes, when fire existed only in Hell, people were freezing to death and came to St Anthony for help. He went to the inferno but was refused entry, though the pig was allowed in. It ran about creating havoc, until the demons were forced to ask the saint to come in and retrieve it. While doing so, St Anthony collected some fire in his staff and, on his return, he gave it to the world.
In all their truffle hunts, pigs have rarely been as successful as in 1858 when the Marquis des Isnard witnessed the unearthing of a monster haul weighing 55lb (25kg). However, today experts favour dogs over pigs for truffle hunting, because pigs have a tendency to consume the delicacies they unearth.
The smallest pig in a litter is still sometimes called a 'Tantony pig', which comes from the medieval custom of donating the runt of a litter to the monks of St Anthony's hospital in London for the benefitof the inmates.
FICTIONAL FAVOURITES
Pigs that hit the heights:
Miss Piggy – Muppet superstar.
Babe – the pig-turned-sheepdog, who wins the prize.
Porky the Pig – the stuttering straight man and Warner Brothers first cartoon star.
Empress of Blandings – the prize-winning sow of P.G. Wodehouse's novels.
Napoleon – the pig who is the self-appointed leader in George Orwell's Animal Farm.
Piglet – from the Disney animated version of Winnie-the-Pooh.
Wilbur – the main character in Charlotte's Web by E.B. White.
Many features of bats conspire to underline their sinister reputation – not least their leathery wings, fluttering flight and their habit of roosting in caves, ruins and other spooky places.
Bats' blood was regularly used by sorceresses in their black masses and by witches in their flying ointment.
Until its mammalian identity was clarified, the bat was a mystery. Known as a flitter-mouse or avis, non avis, meaning 'bird and not bird', in folklore it took a dual role, as both the symbol of the soul and the personification of the evil one who dwells in darkness. As the Devil in disguise, bats were hounded and killed from ancient times. Even in the 20th century they were sometimes nailed with outstretched wings to the doors of Sicilian homes to protect their occupants from disaster.
Bats could also, it was thought, be the embodiment of vampires – the living dead who fed on the blood of their human victims – or witches in animal form, which made it particularly unlucky to find a bat in the house or even flying around it. A bat circling a house three times was taken as a sign of impending death. And seeing bats ascending into the air, then flying straight down again, was said to indicate that witches were due to meet nearby. As an antidote to such danger, it was thought that protection could be gained by carrying a bat bone.
To rid people of evil spirits it is a widespread practice to 'magic' out a bat, usually via the mouth. One story relates how a Frenchman suffering from melancholia was brought a bat in a bag by a surgeon, a physician and a priest. While the surgeon made an incision in the man's side – and the priest prayed – the physician released the bat. The patient, convinced that the force of evil had departed, recovered instantly.
BAT SPEAK
Batty – plain mad, the same as having…
Bats in the belfry (the head).
As blind as a bat – to have very poor eye sight.
Like a bat out of hell – an expression of reckless speed. Any bat would be likely flee as fast as possible from the inferno.
It is largely their habit of feeding on the bodies of dead creatures – and circling above the ground ever hopeful of a carrion meal – that has earned the vultures their poor reputation. On the plus side, they are believed to have protective powers.
The eggs of other birds are a favourite food of vultures. The Egyptian vulture, presented with the tempting prospect of an ostrich egg, will even (having a bill too small to grasp the egg whole) pick up stones in its beak and hurl them at the egg until the shell breaks.
'The repulsive nature of its food,' said the 19th-century author Emma Phipson of the vulture, 'together with its ungainly appearance and great voracity, are some excuse for the disgust it has inspired.' Added to this, its hooked beak, bald head and unattractive feathers make for a bird once dubbed a 'feathered hyena' and, for its ability to kill live animals, 'the enemy of shepherds'.
Usually depicted as a woman, wearing a vulture headdress or with the head of a vulture, the Egyptian goddess Nekhbet was the protector of women in childbirth and of newborn babies.
The vulture's baldness came about, the Iroquois say, because when birds were first searching for feathers they sent the vulture to acquire their new 'clothes'. On his long journey the vulture, lacking food, was forced to eat carrion and, when he reached his destination, he greedily chose the best plumage for himself. But his headdress was so weighty that he was forced to remove it, which is why he has been bald ever since.
Once the symbol of the Virgin Mary, the swan is a bird of purity and beauty. Tales abound of swans being transformed into lovely women, and vice versa.
The swan has long associations with kings. Edward I adopted it as a heraldic device and at the Feast of the Swan in 1306 his son took an oath on two swans with gilded beaks to avenge a murder committed by Robert the Bruce.
It is said in Ireland that the souls of virtuous maidens dwell in swans. The birds pulled the chariots of Apollo and Venus, and are said to be so sacred that to kill one is to bring death upon the 'murderer' himself. In Greek legend, Zeus transformed himself into a swan to seduce Leda, the mother of Helen of Troy.
Of the many tales of swan maidens, typical is the one in which a man, having seen a flock of swans alight on the water and watched while they shed their feathers (revealing themselves as beautiful maidens) steals the robes of one of them. He marries her and all goes well until she discovers her feather dress in a cupboard, puts it on and disappears forever.
The purity of the swan and the story of Leda were used by Edmund Spenser in his poem 'Prothalamion', which describes a pair of young brides as two swans:
The 'king of birds', with super-keen eyesight, soaring flight and powerful beak and talons, the eagle has always been held in the highest esteem and has been adopted as a symbol by rulers and nations down the ages.
A silver eagle was the icon of the Roman Republic, while a golden one symbolized the Roman Empire.
As the bird that represents triumph over evil, the eagle was sacred to Zeus. To show its power, which included immunity from lightning strikes, it was depicted holding both a snake and a thunderbolt and was revered as the equal of the sun. In the Hindu Rig-Veda, the eagle is the bringer to earth of the sacred soma, an intoxicating drink of divine power.
An eagle is said to have lifted, and then replaced, the helmet of Tarquinius Priscus, foretelling that he would become king of Rome – a prediction that came true in 616 BC. Roman legions, who used the eagle as their standard (because it was sacred to Jupiter), would set up winter quarters where there was an eagle's eyrie nearby.
EAGLE SYMBOLS
• The Sioux sport eagle feathers in their war bonnets as a sign of victory.
• The American eagle was adopted as a national symbol in 1782.
• Poland's red eagle is depicted on a white background on the national flag.
• The Emperor Napoleon, who loved all things Roman, copied them by adopting the eagle as his symbol.
• The double-headed eagle was adopted as a national symbol by both Germany and Austria.
Whether flying singly or in swarms, bees are widely believed to be messengers of the gods and as such need to be kept happy and informed. As a swarm their behaviour may portend good or evil, depending on the circumstances.
A German folktale relates that bees were created so that they could supply wax for church candles. It was a common practice in medieval England for people to leave money in their wills to pay for the beeswax candles to light their funerals.
The most universal means of keeping bees happy (so that they will return to their hives and make honey) is to tell them at once of a death in the family. Recommended ways of doing this include tying black crape around the hive and bringing them food such as funeral biscuits soaked in wine or spicy funeral cake. They should also, it is said, be told of good news, as Rudyard Kipling advises in 'The Bee-boy's Song':
Marriage, birth or buryin'
News across the seas,
All your sad or merryin'
You must tell the bees.
Zeus, the father of the Greek gods, was believed to have been born in a cave of bees and fed by them, and he was given the title Melissaios, or 'bee man'. Meliteus, Zeus's son, whose mother was a nymph, was hidden from Hera (Zeus's consort) in a wood and she was also nourished by bees.
Bees swarm as they follow a virgin queen out of the hive, at which time they can aggressively sting any human or animal who interferes with their determined journey to found a new colony.
Swarms of bees also make legendary appearances, as in the Irish story of the 6th-century St Gobnait: when her territory was being invaded she routed the enemy by holding up a small hive of bees, which swarmed and stung the invaders in the eyes, so blinding and dispersing them.
LUCKY ENCOUNTERS?
Many myths and superstitions surround bees, whether real or dreamed of:
There are few more endearing birds than the robin redbreast, which is not afraid to come close to humans and their habitations. It is kindly regarded because of its legendary attention to the dying Jesus and its role as a bringer of fire.
Assisted by the wren, the robin was said to have covered the dead, unburied bodies of the Babes in the Wood with moss and leaves.
Because it is believed to carry a drop of God's blood in its veins, it is extremely unlucky to kill a robin. Even an errant cat, it is said, will lose a limb if it murders this bird.
When, on Good Friday, a prickle from the crown of thorns was pressing deep into the Saviour's brow, the robin, it is said, flew to the Cross and tried to remove the thorn. As it was doing so, a drop of Christ's blood fell on to its breast, staining it forever. Another similar story ends with the bird injuring itself in its task, with the same result.
The robin is also renowned as the bird that brought fire to the world – but got its breast singed in the attempt. And according to Welsh legend the robin is red from being burned as it brought cooling waters to wicked souls being consumed by the fires of Hell. A verse by the early 19th-century poet John Greenleaf Whittier is based on this folktale:
'Nay,' said the Grandmother, 'have you not heard
My poor bad boy, of the fiery pit,
And how drop by drop, this merciful bird
Carries the water that quenches it?
'He brings cool dew in his little bill
And lets it fall on the souls of sin
You can see the mark on his red breast still
Of fires that scorch as he drops it in.'
Often identified as the Behemoth of the Bible, the hippopotamus or 'water horse' is a symbol of power and strength. Recently, it has also become the subject of an urban myth.
That the Egyptian word for the hippopotamus was p-ehe-mau, which became transmuted into the Hebrew word b'hemah, 'beast', is one of the theories behind the link between this creature and the huge animal that God described to Job. Behemoth represented the strength and intelligence that could deliver people from death:
What strength is in his loins!
What power in the muscles of his belly!
His tail is rigid as a cedar, the sinews of his flanks
are tightly knit;
His bones are like tubes of bronze, his limbs like
iron bars.
A dwarf named Od, so one of the top urban legends of 2005 relates, was swallowed by a circus hippopotamus in a freak accident in Thailand. One wayward bounce off a trampoline launched the dwarf into the animal's open jaws, which, by reflex, closed instantly.
The hippo's habit of living in the water during the day is explained in the Nigerian folktale of the hippo king called Isantim and his seven large, fat wives. Isantim held a feast for the other animals, but challenged them to tell him his name, and when they failed he sent them away hungry. The tortoise asked what he would do if his name was discovered and the hippo said it would bring shame on him and he would leave the land to live in the river. While the hippo and his wives were bathing one day the tortoise overheard one of the wives calling his name. He revealed it at the next feast. The hippo, shamed by the discovery, went down to the water and stayed there, coming ashore only in darkness.
The elephant is so strong that even its image, carried as a talisman, is believed to confer similar power on the wearer. The creature's amazing memory, long renowned, is now a proven fact.
In Indian tradition the earth is held in the universe by eight pairs of elephants which, when they grow tired and shake their burden, cause earthquakes to occur. These creatures are named the Lokpalas. Hindus also believe that the warlike god Indra, symbol of prosperity and all-conquering temporal power, rode the earth on the back of an elephant.
In African fables the elephant is the wise chief who impartially settles disputes among the forest creatures. One story is of a hunter who found an elephant skin near Lake Chad and hid it. Soon afterwards he spotted a large but beautiful girl crying because she had lost her 'clothes'. The hunter promised her new clothes and married her, and they had many large children. One day, when the family had run out of grain, the hunter's wife discovered her elephant skin hidden at the bottom of the barn. She put it on and went back to the bush to live as an elephant again. Her human sons became the ancestors of the clan who not only have the elephant as their totem but have nothing to fear from these creatures, who are their kin.
It is true that elephants have truly prodigious memories, especially for the odours of their enemies and members of their family. Each herd follows the routes or 'elephant roads' remembered in detail by the matriarch, the senior female.
A 'white elephant' is a euphemism for an unwanted object, especially one that is expensive to maintain. The expression comes from the rare, high-maintenance creatures given by the king of Siam (now Thailand) to those on whom he wished financial disaster.
These proverbial deserters of sinking ships, rats are generally reviled for their fecundity, destructive habits and their ability to carry disease.
The bad habits of rats which 'fought the dogs and bit the cats,/And bit the babies in the cradles' were the subject of Robert Browning's poem 'The Pied Piper of Hamelin', in which the piper's playing lures both rats and children to their deaths.
Shakespeare eloquently expresses the link between rats making their escape before a voyage and disaster at sea in The Tempest, when Prospero describes to Miranda how:
Rats will gnaw anything, from computer cables to the traps set out to kill them, but they relish the garbage of human living. Most seriously, they are notorious as the vectors (with the help of fleas) of fatal diseases such as the Black Death of the Middle Ages (see page 127). Today, rats transmit Weil's disease, listeria, toxoplasmosis and possibly even SARS, a deadly variant of flu.
RATTY SAYINGS
The rat race – the struggle to get ahead in business, whatever it takes.
'You dirty rat' – an expression famously attributed to the actor James Cagney. In fact in the 1932 movie Taxi! Cagney says to actor David Landau: 'Take that, you dirty yellow rat!'
To rat on someone – to tell tales about them, invariably to their detriment.
King Rat – the 'leader of the pack'. 'If you live in a city, you're probably in close proximity to two rats having sex right now' – observation of American rat-watcher Robert Sullivan.
Mice appear to be naturally timid because their keen eyesight and hearing, and sensitivity to vibrations, make them run for cover whenever danger threatens. Inhabitants of both town and country, they quietly share our human lives.
There are few more engaging descriptions of the habits of mice than Beatrix Potter's 'Appley Dapply':
A medieval German legend tells of Hatto, Bishop of Mainz, who, when starving people came to him begging for food, instead of helping them locked them in an empty barn where they were killed by fire. A plague of mice followed and the Bishop fled to his 'Mouse Tower' in the middle of the Rhine, but the mice gnawed him to death.
Mice are said to embody the soul, which may leave the body during sleep in that form. If such a mouse is killed it is believed to bring about the person's death. Even more ominously, mice are thought to be the inventions of witches, who make them out of pieces of cloth. When a death is imminent, they will leave a house. Mouse colour is important: a black mouse is thought to be stained by sin, while a red one has a pure soul.
The habits of mice have made them the subjects of many tales – some true, others about endearing fictional inventions such as Mickey Mouse and his fellow cartoon characters.
To be as poor as a church mouse is to have absolutely nothing. Unlike a home, the church is devoid of tempting edibles.
The silent daring of mice is celebrated by Aesop in his tale 'The Lion Who was Afraid of a Mouse, and the Fox' in which the fox rebukes the lion for fearing the mouse that 'ran all the way up his body' when he was asleep. In reply the lion says: 'It isn't that I was afraid of the mouse, but I was most surprised that there was anyone at all who could be so bold as to run along the body of a sleeping lion.' And the moral? Wise men don't ignore even little things.
The zoologist Frank Finn, writing in the early 1900s, says: 'The queer thing is that mice really are very familiar with lions, which seem to consider them beneath their notice … I have seen one run over a lion's foot, and another sit up and trim his whiskers under the terrible paw as it conveniently overhung him where the lion lay.'
IN WORDS AND PICTURES
Mice are widely portrayed – and loved – in fiction, including:
Mickey Mouse – Walt Disney's most famous character first appeared in Steamboat Willie in 1928. His girlfriend Minnie was with him from the start.
Jerry – The 'enemy' of Tom the cat; Jerry often gets the upper hand in the cartoons directed by Bill Hanna and Joe Barbera. Tom and Jerry debuted in Puss Gets the Boot in 1940.
The Two Bad Mice – The subjects of Beatrix Potter's endearingly illustrated story of 1904 narrowly escape discovery after wrecking a doll's house.
Stuart Little – The boy who looks like a mouse, and is adopted by a human family but terrorized by cats, came to the essayist EB White in a dream in the 1920s. His story did not appear in print until 1945.
Possessing superhuman strength and with a dangerous propensity for unprovoked attack, the bear is a symbol of power.
Since the 19th century the bear has frequently been used as a symbol of Russia, especially in the Punch cartoons of the 1870s drawn by Sir John Tenniel.
The bear is sacred to many of the indigenous North American people, and to the Ainu of Japan it was an important ancestral figure. In Scandinavia the bear was deified as Odin, chief of the gods and deity of wisdom and war. To endow them with bear-like strength, Viking warriors, known as Berserkers, wore bearskins into battle. The bearskins worn today by Britain's Grenadier Guards were first captured from Napoleon's Imperial Guard at the Battle of Waterloo in 1815.
For the Greeks the bear was sacred to Artemis the huntress, and the creature was sacrificed to her. In one of her cults young women dressed as bears, probably for a pre-marriage initiation rite.
In the Old Testament, the two boys who shout after the prophet Elisha, 'Go up thou baldhead,' were punished with many others when 'there came forth two she-bears out of the wood and tore forty and two of them'. Before his encounter with Goliath, David killed bears and other wild animals with his sling, which symbolized his spiritual as well as his physical strength.
In Tudor times, every English town of any note had its own bear, and bear baiting was an amusement fit for royalty. In our own times, bears are loved as both toys and fictional characters.
Keeping a town bear afforded symbolic, if not real, protection for its inhabitants. Among the most famous was the bear of Congleton in Cheshire. In 1620 the town needed a new Bible for its chapel but at the same time the town bear died and the money set aside for the Bible was spent instead on a replacement bear.
Dancing bears toured throughout Europe for public amusement, and bear baiting, begun by the Romans, was a popular London amusement by the 12th century, though condemned as 'dishonest' by Edward III. It was also much enjoyed by Elizabeth I. A bear would be chained to a post, able to move but not escape. Dogs would be set on the animal and spectators would bet on whether the dogs or the bear would survive the vicious fight that ensued. Some of the bears were unfortunate enough to have long and bloody careers.
BELOVED BEARS
The teddy bear was named after President Theodore (Teddy) Roosevelt by toymakers Morris Michtom and his wife Rose in the early 1900s, after the President spared the life of a bear cub.
Steiff bears, toys identified by an ear button, have been made continuously in Germany since 1905.
Winnie-the-Pooh, the honey-loving invention of AA Milne, is the 'bear with very little brain' who gets himself into all kinds of scrapes.
Rupert Bear, with his distinctive yellow and black checked trousers and scarf and red sweater, first appeared in a strip cartoon in the Daily Express in 1920. The original illustrations were by Mary Tourtel.
Yogi Bear, the animated resident of Jellystone Park who first appeared in 1958, is a memorable Hanna-Barbera creation. 'Smarter than the average bear', his greatest friend is Boo-Boo.
Paddington Bear, found by the Brown family on the eponymous London station, was a stowaway from 'deepest, darkest Peru'. Michael Bond's first book about him was published in 1958.
Courage, strength and majesty are the attributes of the lion, a symbol of Christ and of Britain. The noble lion, it is said, will not attack a true prince.
Statues of the king of beasts guarded the entrances to Egyptian tombs and palaces and sat astride the doors of Assyrian temples. As a symbol of the sun the lion was linked with the Egyptian sun god Ra, the life giver.
As the Lion of Judah, Christ was a figure of power and majesty. In Revelation the writer bemoans the fact that only 'the Lion from the tribe of Judah, the shoot growing from David's stock, has won the right to open the scroll and its seven seals'. This is an expression of the lion's almighty power. The association between the lion and the Resurrection comes from the fable that the lion cub is born dead but is licked into life by its parents (or awoken by their roaring) in three days.
The one crucial quality missing in the Lion whom Dorothy meets in The Wizard of Oz is courage.
In CS Lewis's stories of Narnia, the land at the back of the wardrobe, the lion Aslan is a metaphor for Christ.
In Africa, where humans and lions have coexisted for millennia, the lion is revered as a reincarnation of dead ancestors or a spirit that needs to be propitiated. Some African people believe that men can be transformed into lions, thus becoming invulnerable to attacks by other animals. To retain their status, they must leave part of any animals they kill as food for the lions.
Though the lion can be roused to anger it also has a reputation for magnanimity – this is another aspect of its nobility and a trait recorded by natural historians down the ages.
The trademark of Tate and Lyle the British sugar refiners is a dead lion surrounded by bees. It comes from the Biblical story of Samson, who killed a lion and returning later noticed that a swarm of bees had made a honey-comb in the carcass. Samson turned this into a riddle: 'Out of the eater came forth meat and out of the strong came forth sweetness.'
The Roman naturalist Pliny described the lion's behaviour like this: 'Only the lion among wild animals shows mercy to suppliants; it spares those bent down before it, and, when angry, turns its rage on men rather than women, and only attacks children when desperately hungry.' Pliny even reported that 'lions understand the meaning of prayers' and wrote that the lion's 'noble spirit is most discernible in dangers: he sneers at weapons and protects himself for a long time by fearsome threats only …'
That the lion can forget its fierceness and lie down with the gentle lamb symbolizes the concept of peace in the Christian tradition. The same symbolism is used in Mughal art and Naïve painting.
In many stories, lions are renowned for their tenderness towards virgins. And in the tale of Androcles and the lion, the Christian Androcles, who once removed a thorn from a lion's paw, is rewarded years later when the same lion refuses to devour him after he has been sentenced to die in a Roman arena.
Though the lion and tiger are both large cats, the tiger is never credited with the lion's saving graces. Nor is the leopard, which was once perceived as the embodiment of evil.
Can a man take on the tiger's might? Various traditional methods are tried, including eating tiger flesh – or, especially, its gall bladder – knotting a tiger whisker into your moustache or beard or carrying a tiger's claw in your pocket. You can also wear a 'tiger's eye' a semiprecious stone (a type of quartz), which glows golden brown. Roman soldiers are said to have worn them to distract their enemies.
Regarding the tiger with respect is only common sense, for of all the big cats it is the one most likely to be a maneater. In Sumatra, it is customary to offer formal apologies to such a creature before it is killed because, like other Asian peoples, Sumatrans believe that having eaten a man a tiger can subsequently make his ghost prowl the jungle and entice other victims to their deaths.
Other means of keeping the tiger happy are never to speak of it disrespectfully and never to trespass on tiger trails. Keeping one's head covered also shows respect. At night, when the tiger's eyes are believed to shine, no sensible person would look back for fear of revealing apprehension to a potential attacker.
It is their obvious similarities to humans that make monkeys and apes so intriguing and explain their association with mischief. Many of these creatures are thought to have special powers of wisdom.
The Three Wise Monkeys, covering their hands, ears and mouth, originated as an image carved above the portico of the Sacred Stable of the Nikko Toshogu Shrine, a 17th-century Japanese temple. Their motto, literally translated, reads: 'Don't see, don't hear and don't speak' and is popularly rendered as: 'See no evil, hear no evil and speak no evil.'
Playing on their resemblance to humans, a typical Creole folktale tells of Mr Monkey, who falls in love with a beautiful young girl. He dresses as a man and goes to call on her. One day he takes his best friend with him, who hints to the girl's father that there is a secret abroad, but will not reveal it. On Mr Monkey's wedding night the friend (who is jealous of Mr Monkey) sings a song that makes all monkeys dance, whether they wish to or not. Mr Monkey is forced to jump about so wildly that his tail comes out of his clothes, and his true identity is revealed. The father now understands what the secret is, and beats the bridegroom dreadfully, but the friend runs off, dancing and singing.
The Chinese Monkey King, Sun Wu-Kung, is a master shape-shifter and his mischief-making even disrupts the peace of the gods, but he is instrumental in bringing Buddhism from India to China.
In ancient Egypt the baboon was sacred to Thoth, the god of magic and learning. In one myth, Thoth disguises himself as a baboon in order to retrieve Tefnut, daughter of the supreme god Ra, who has fled from her father and is wreaking havoc round the country in the form of a ravening lioness. As a reward for his success Ra appoints Thoth as his representative in the afterlife, judging the souls of the dead.
MONKEY LANGUAGE
Monkey business – fooling about.
Monkey puzzle – a Chilean pine (Araucaria araucana), a tree with prickly branches that is said to be a puzzle even to an agile monkey.
To monkey with – to meddle with.
Get one's monkey up – to be irritable (as a monkey can be in life).
Monkey nuts – peanuts, perceived to be a food that monkeys enjoy.
Both their fluttering flight and their life cycle have undoubtedly contributed to the notion that connects butterflies with the soul. Moths, however, have more sinister connotations.
All over the world, the emergence of the butterfly from a dead-looking chrysalis is seen as a symbol of the soul leaving the body at the end of life. In some cultures the dead are believed to undergo a series of transformations before eventually coming back to life as butterflies.
It is said that to dream of a butterfly represents a wish to attain perfection or freedom from life's troubles.
Shakespeare used the butterfly to illustrate human fickleness when he wrote that 'men, like butterflies/Show not their mealy wings but to the summer.'
Both butterflies and moths have connections with witches and bad things. Some say the butterfly is the soul of a witch, but if it can be caught at night it will not be able to re-enter her evil body and will die. Moths are still often called witches and are believed to do evil deeds during the hours of darkness. Children were traditionally encouraged to kill them with hammers or at least catch them before they could steal the miller's grain.
Both angels and fairies are often depicted with butterfly wings, as is Psyche, the beautiful maiden loved by the immortal Eros, who visited her only in the dark so she should not know who he was. Fearing that he would not let her see him because he was a hideous monster, one night she lit a lamp while he was asleep to find out what her lover looked like. But a drop of hot oil fell on him and he woke and fled. Psyche spent years a-flutter, searching for her love.
In an expression of his agility and power in the ring the boxer Muhammad Ali (formerly Cassius Clay) predicted that he would 'Float like a butterfly, sting like a bee.'
The salmon's long and arduous up-river journey to its spawning grounds is taken as evidence of its wisdom. This fish was once prized as the food of kings and only those of royal birth could eat it.
St Kentigern, patron saint of Glasgow, miraculously retrieved the lost ring of the Queen of Cadzow, finding it in the belly of a salmon.
The uncanny, almost supernatural closeness of twins is explained in a North American legend that they were once salmon. For this reason twins are asked to use their voices to summon the fish and ensure a profitable harvest.
The Irish legend of Fionn MacCumal tells how the warrior-to-be met the poet Finneces, who taught him the lessons of life. For seven years Finneces had been trying to catch the salmon of knowledge, which lived in a pool on the river Boyne: whoever ate the salmon would gain all the knowledge in the world. Eventually he caught it, and told the boy to cook it for him. While doing so Fionn burned his thumb, which he instinctively put in his mouth, and in so doing he swallowed a piece of the salmon's skin. He thus became imbued with the salmon's wisdom and from that day could call on it simply by sucking his thumb.
In western North America, where the salmon harvest was vital to the survival of the indigenous people, the leaping of salmon up massive rapids was explained by an earthquake, brought about by an evil spirit which, in trying to injure the people, blocked the fish's journey. The tribes of British Columbia constructed salmon 'ladders' for the fish to ascend, even resting on the rungs when exhausted. By setting salmon traps on these ledges, they could catch the fish easily.
Limbless, silent and deadly – it is easy to see how snakes have come to be prime symbols of evil, not least because of the role played by the serpent in the Garden of Eden.
Good over evil? In Christian art, the snake is often shown being crushed by the foot of Jesus, or at the foot of the cross signifying that Christ has triumphed over sin. It is said that there are no snakes in Ireland because they were driven out by the good deeds of St Patrick. In the game of snakes and ladders, players landing on snakes are down on their luck. Only ladders lead to the 'heaven' of victory.
The snake in the grass – the lurking, unseen evil – is an image dating back to the poet Virgil.
As Genesis tells us, it was the serpent (which possessed the secrets of life) who persuaded Eve, the first woman, to eat the forbidden fruit from the tree of knowledge. As a result sin came into the world and marred what had until that moment been a state of perfection. After the event, God punished the creature, saying: 'Cursed are you above all the livestock and all the wild animals! You will crawl on your belly and you will eat dust all the days of your life.'
The vanquishing of the evil serpent is a theme that recurs in many cultures and in legends such as those of Perseus and Medusa (see page 210). English legend relates how an abbess, St Hilda, rid the Yorkshire valley of Eskdale of its snakes by driving them to the edge of a cliff, then cutting off their heads with her whip. The coiled ammonites (in fact fossilized shellfish) on the beach below are said to be the evidence of her success.
In many instances, the serpent is the embodiment of admirable attributes including healing and wisdom. It is also a symbol of eternity and almighty power.
The link between the snake and healing may derive from the snake's ability to grow and rejuvenate itself by sloughing its skin, an action often accomplished by squeezing its body between two rocks. The snake was sacred to Asclepius, the Greek god of healing, whose shrines were guarded by sacred snakes. He was said to disguise himself as a serpent before carrying out his healing arts, and he is depicted, like his Roman counterpart Aesculapius, holding a staff with a snake entwined around it – which is still the physicians' symbol.
Many African tribal people share the belief that the souls of the dead reside in snakes, which is why the creatures visit houses. For this reason milk and food are often left out for them at night.
Because it can coil into a circle with its tail in its mouth, the snake represents eternity.
The wisdom of serpents meant that they were believed to have prophetic powers, and they were kept in Greek temples. A snake in the temple of Athene was thought to have been kept alive by the soul of Erichthonius, a mythical king of Athens, half human and half serpent, who as a child had been kept by Athene in a box. This box was guarded by the daughters of the mythical king Cecrops (meaning face with a tail), the city's founder, who had strict instructions not to open it. They did so, however, and were so frightened that they jumped off the Acropolis to their deaths.
The behaviour of beetles – especially the scarab beetle – gave rise to their association with creation and renewal. They were sacred to the Egyptians, who believed they had divine powers.
Much to be feared is the deathwatch beetle (Xestibium rufovillosum), whose larvae chew their way through structural timbers. The nocturnal adults betray their presence by a ticking sound that is heard in the quiet of a sleepless night – such as when keeping vigil beside a sickbed – and is believed to be an omen of impending death.
The scarab or dung beetle (Scarabeus sacer) feeds on dung, which it rolls into a ball by pushing it up a slope with its hind legs. It then makes a hole in the ground, where it lodges the ball and begins to consume it. Both males and females do this, but the female may also remove a piece from the side of the ball where she lays her eggs, leaving a 'flap' with which she covers them over. Seeing the young emerging from the ball, the Egyptians believed that new beetles were being created from the earth and, by inference, made the beetles divine, though they believed the males to be the 'creators'.
The Egyptian sun god Ra was sometimes represented by a large black scarab sitting in the solar boat and rolling the sun's disk across the sky, another reference to the ball-forming habits of the scarab beetle.
By extension, the scarab was thought to hide within itself the secret of eternal life and, as a result, images of scarabs were made and worn by the Egyptians for protection. Often heavily encrusted with jewels, these amulets were worn as pendants or rings. Most notable was the 'heart scarab', which was placed on the breast of a mummified dead body and inscribed on it was a petition addressed by the dead person to his or her own heart, begging it not to bear witness against the deceased when it was weighed in judgment on the day of truth.
Although revered for their piety, deer have long been hunted for their flesh – and for sport. According to the poets, these creatures shed tears.
The gentleness of the deer, and its fate in the hunt, was immortalized in the 1942 Walt Disney feature length cartoon Bambi, based on a vastly more realistic book of the same name by the German author Felix Salten (the pseudonym of Siegmund Salzmann) published in 1926.
The verse from Psalm 42, 'As a stag longs for flowing streams, so my soul longs for you, O God!' is central to the symbolism of the deer in Christian iconography. When shown unmoving the animal is used to portray spiritual longing, but when it is depicted drinking it represents fulfilment.
A stag with a crucifix between its horns is a reminder of St Hubert, heir to the dukedom of Aquitaine in the 7th century, who, in the story, was converted to Christianity when he was out hunting and saw that the deer he was about to shoot bore such an embellishment – an experience shared with St Eustace, who is often similarly represented. Hubert relinquished all his titles and wealth to enter the church.
The hunted deer may indeed produce oily secretions from its eyes, but these are not real 'tears'. However, the animal's suffering is real enough, as Shakespeare comments in As You Like It:
… a poor sequester'd stag,
That from the hunter's aim had ta'en a hurt,
Did come to languish; and indeed my lord,
The wretched animal heav'd forth such groans
That their discharge did stretch his leathern coat
Almost to bursting; and the big round tears
Cours'd one another down his innocent nose
In piteous chase …
Since the days of ancient Egypt cats have been worshipped and revered. As well as being human companions and vermin exterminators extraordinary, many are renowned for bringing good luck.
To deliberately kill a cat was a crime in ancient Egypt that could result in the culprit's death.
Freya, Scandinavian goddess of love and fertility, travelled in a chariot drawn by cats.
Their natural instinct to catch and kill rats and mice is possibly the trait that first endeared cats to the ancient Egyptians, for it was the cats that kept the precious granaries free from rodent ravages. On the death of a cat, Egyptian owners would even shave their eyebrows as a mark of respect. The creature's body would be taken to Bubastis, the city of the cat-headed goddess Bast or Pasht (who was believed to have nine lives) where it was embalmed in costly spices. The Chinese, too, used cats to protect their silkworms from rats. Even images of 'silkworm cats' were thought to be effective if no live animals were to hand.
Despite their associations with evil (see next page) cats achieved high repute in medieval Europe. In 10th-century Wales Howel Dha 'the Good' ruled that the price of a kitten before it could see was a penny. If it caught a mouse its value rose to twopence. If anyone killed or stole a cat that guarded the prince's granary the offender was 'compelled either to forfeit a ewe, or as much wheat as would cover the cat when suspended by its tail'.
While black cats are lucky in Britain, elsewhere in Europe white ones have this effect. A cat with fur in three colours (as in a tabby or tortoiseshell) was once thought to provide protection against fire. And the brains of any dead cat would, it was said, have a lethal effect when fed to an enemy.
CAT CAUTIONS
Why cats need to be regarded with respect:
• If you kick a cat it will give you rheumatism.
• The Devil will haunt you if you kill a cat.
• A cat's purr is the sound of a ghost.
• It is extremely unlucky for a cat to die in your house.
• A cat's cough will be caught by everyone in the family.
• Cats can suck babies' breath and kill them.
The uncanny nature of cats certainly contributed to their link with witches – either as familiars or as a disguise for the women themselves. In some places it is still believed to be dangerous to discuss your most intimate secrets in a cat's presence.
Cats were, some say, accidentally created by the Devil, who tried to produce humans but made only cats without skins. Out of pity for the unfortunate animals, St Peter gave them their only valuable asset – fur coats.
Of all the cats reviled for their evil associations, those born in May – a time of year when witchcraft was at its height – were most feared. The so-called 'May kittens' were routinely drowned at birth as they would be poor mousers and bring snakes and other unwanted creatures into the house. In Hungary, kittens, whenever born, were believed to turn into witches between the ages of seven and twelve. To prevent this transformation cuts in the shape of a cross were routinely made into the animals' skins.
To test whether or not a cat was really a witch in disguise it was an old custom to immerse the animal in holy water. If it attempted to escape (which it no doubt did) its evil nature was revealed.
Their self-sufficiency and powerful night vision are two of the most mysterious qualities of cats. Cat lovers admire the independence of the creatures, and their penchant for doing just what they like, when they like.
Reverence for the cat, and the legend that a cat gave birth to kittens at the same moment as Christ was born, probably led to the animal's association with the Virgin Mary. Leonardo da Vinci was one of many artists who depicted a cat in scenes of the Virgin and Child.
Kipling got the nature of the cat just right in his Just So Stories when he described a time before the dog, the horse and the cow were domesticated and all 'the Tame animals were wild':
'But the wildest of all the wild animals was the Cat. He walked by himself, and all wild places were alike to him … [then] the Cat went back through the Wet Wild Woods waving his wild tail and walking by his wild lone …'
The fixed, unblinking stare of the cat adds to its mystique. What's more, cats' eyes shine in the dark and their pupils contract and dilate hugely with changes in the intensity of the light. You see a yellowish glow if you shine a light into a cat's eyes at night. Add to this their habit of hunting at night and you have an animal that is indubitably 'dark'.
THE QUOTABLE CAT
• 'A cat has absolute emotional honesty: human beings, for one reason or another may hide their feelings, but a cat does not.' (Ernest Hemingway)
• 'Cats are the ultimate narcissists. You can tell this because of all the time they spend on personal grooming …' (James Gorman)
• 'Cats know how we feel … they just don't give a damn.' (Anon)
• 'Cats are mysterious kind of folk. There is more passing in their minds than we are aware of.' (Sir Walter Scott)
• 'A cat knows you are the keys to his happiness … a man thinks he is.' (Anon)
'Man's best friends', dogs are our companions and the guardians of our homes, appreciated for their faithfulness and trainability – the exact opposite of cats.
At the end of his story 'The Cat that Walked by Himself' Rudyard Kipling compares cats and dogs:
Pussy can sit by the fire and sing,
Pussy can climb a tree,
Or play with a silly old cork and string
To 'muse herself, not me.
But I like Binkie my dog, because
He knows how to behave;
So, Binkie's the same as the First Friend was,
And I am the Man in the Cave.
The first dogs to be tamed were probably those drawn to human settlements where they could be guaranteed at least some scraps of leftovers. Soon they were not only guarding their human companions but being used in the hunting chase – like the 'greyhound' depicted pursuing a gazelle on a piece of Mesopotamian pottery some 8000 years old.
DOGGY SAYINGS
The nature of the dog summed up by some of those who know …
• 'The tiniest Poodle or Chihuahua is still a wolf at heart.' (Dorothy Hinshaw)
• 'To err is human, to forgive, canine.' (Anon)
• 'If you pick up a starving dog and make him prosperous, he will not bite you; that is the principal difference between a dog and a man.' (Mark Twain)
• 'Dogs have given us their absolute all. We are the center of their universe … They serve us in return for scraps. It is without a doubt the best deal man has ever made.' (Roger Caras)
• 'The dog who barks furiously at a beggar will let a well-dressed man pass him without opposition.' (TH Huxley)
The bite of a dog was, until modern times, rightly feared, for rabies was a real threat to life. Scratching, digging in undesirable places and howling were other ominous forms of behaviour.
The annals of superstition say that you should welcome a strange dog that enters your home voluntarily. It will keep away all troubles.
Beware of dogs that howl in the night. These are greatly feared as omens of death, especially if they raise their voices in or near a house where someone is sick. Also to be feared in such circumstances is a dog that is driven away but comes back again. A dog seen scratching the earth was once deemed to be digging a grave.
So terrifying was the prospect of being bitten by a rabid dog that animals that howled on Christmas Eve were killed, on the supposition that such behaviour betrayed the fact that they would go mad the following year. In the Channel Island of Guernsey it was the custom to chant these words to a dog as a way of telling it not to bite:
May thy tail hang down!
May St Peter's key close thy jaws until tomorrow!
Even a bite from a perfectly healthy dog might lead to the creature being put down, following the logic that, if the animal should go mad in the future then the person bitten would, equally, become insane. In a vain attempt to effect a cure, people bitten by a rabid dog would eat the grass from a churchyard and apply to the wound dog's hair fried in oil and mixed with rosemary. Even the animal's flesh might be eaten – including the heart, after it had been dried and powdered.
Dogs have no doubt been helping to guard us and our property for as long as they have been our companions. Most fearsome of all was Cerberus, who kept guard at Hades' gate.
A poodle named Boye was the constant companion of Prince Rupert of the Rhine, even riding into battle draped over his master's saddle. The Puritans attacked the animal in a pamphlet, deeming him (in modern English): 'No better than a witch in the shape of a white dog' and 'A Popish, profane dog, more than half a devil, a kind of spirit.'
Writing in The Art of Husbandry, the 16th-century writer Conrad Heresbach (as translated by Barnaby Googe) extolled the virtues of the mastiff as a guard and watchdog: 'First the mastie [mastiff] that keepeth the house: for this purpose you must provide you such a one as hath a large and mightie body, a great and shrill voyce, that both with his barking he may discover, and with his sight dismay the theefe, yea, being not seene, with the horror of his voice put him to flight … for he is but to fight at home, and to give warning of the enemie.'
Cerberus, the many-headed guard dog of Hades, resided at the entrance to the underworld on the far side of the River Styx. There he prevented the souls or 'shades' of the dead from leaving; he also greeted the newly deceased as they were rowed across by Charon the ferryman, sometimes in a friendly way, but sometimes with ferocious snarling. To ensure that he remained in an amenable mood the dead were provided with honey-cakes with which to placate the creature and keep him occupied as they passed. These so-called 'sops to Cerberus' are now used metaphorically to describe any small sweetener offered to avert a threat temporarily.
In modern parlance a watchdog can also be a person or group appointed to monitor some aspect of public life, such as the performance and the behaviour of institutions ranging from the police force to public transport.