RICKSTERS, OFTEN ANIMALS, ARE DEFINED FAR LESS BY TANGIBLE qualities than by a very fundamental ambiguity. They are frequently shape-shifters, and they almost always try to prevail by wit and deception rather than by brute force. Because of their equivocal nature, they frequently double as culture heroes and as clowns. Among the important anthropomorphic tricksters are Prometheus and Dionysius in Greek mythology, and Loki in Norse. There are innumerable tricksters in the more zoomorphic mythologies, especially those of Africa and the Americas, including Anansi the spider among the Ashanti people, Mishaabooz the Hare among the Algonquin Indians, and many more.
Since the trickster figure was first identified as a cross-cultural phenomenon by folklorist Daniel Brinton around the end of the nineteenth century, academics have examined it intensely. One theory holds that such figures belong to a stage of cultural evolution when individual personalities were not yet clearly differentiated, while another maintains that the trickster is an archetype in the human psyche. It is also possible, however, that tricksters only seem incoherent because scholars do not fully understand their societies. The blending of apparently divergent personalities involves a delicate balance, which may be extremely difficult to comprehend across lines of culture. There is a strong temptation to simplify these figures, viewing the trickster one-dimensionally in terms of a quality such as cleverness, ambition, obscenity, or service to humankind.
The raven, particularly among Indians of the Northwest Pacific Coast might have been included here, but, while often comical, its cosmic power may place it in a more exalted category. It will be found in Chapter Three on “animal sages.”
COYOTE, FOX, AND JACKAL
One can gloss, think, study, and muse
More upon Renard than anything else in the world.
—ANONYMOUS, “The Romance of Renard”
The fox and jackal are predators of moderate size, a trait that has probably made them easier for most people to identify with them rather than with the huge lion or the ferocious wolf. The two are virtually interchangeable in Near Eastern literature. Both of these canids are renowned for their cleverness. The “sagacity” of animals in folklore is often a rationalization of magic, and archaic manuscripts confirm that these animals once appeared as powerful sorcerers. The coyote is a canid of about the same size as the fox and jackal, but it is indigenous to the New World. In a striking instance of the universality of animal symbolism, it has much the same role in Native American lore as that of its cousins in Eurasia.
In one of the very earliest surviving literary manuscripts, written in Mesopotamia about the middle of the third millennium BCE, a fox brings back Enki—son of the god of air, Enlil—from the Netherworld. Enki, this Sumero-Babylonian god of magic, continued to be associated with a fox in Sumerian and Babylonian mythology. In another cuneiform manuscript, Enki had disobeyed Ninhursag, the great earth mother, and she punished him with the curse of death. The other gods gazed on helplessly as Enki sank into oblivion, when the fox appeared and brought the deity back. The tale may have originated with a shamanic trance, in which Enki entered the realm of the dead as his body was possessed by a fox.
By the second millennium the role of the fox as a trickster was already established in Mesopotamian animal proverbs, the ancestors of Aesop’s fables. A Babylonian tablet entitled “The Fable of the Fox” from the early first millennium BCE told of a fox, wolf, and dog that brought suit against one another before a lion. They accused one another of sorcery, theft, and, most especially, of provoking the gods to bring a terrible drought that threatened to destroy the world. Much of the manuscript is missing, but the fox seemed to carry the day with his cleverness. In the final tablet, we learn that rain had come and the fox was entering the temple in triumph.
Frontispiece by Paul Meyerheim to a ninenteenth-century collection of tales about Renard the Fox.
The Egyptian equivalent of this magical fox was the god Anubis, depicted with a human body and the head of a dog or a jackal. Anubis is a psychopomp, who guides the dead to their place of judgment, and then weighs the heart of the deceased against Maat, the spirit of cosmic order, which is often represented by an ostrich feather. If the heart sinks on the scales, the deceased will be devoured by demons, but if the heart rises he or she might join the god Ra and sail across the sky in the boat of the sun. That jackals burrow may have suggested intimacy with the earth, while their scavenging kills may also have contributed to an association with the dead.
The fox was a trickster in the fables attributed to the legendary Aesop in Greco-Roman civilization. He constantly matched wits with other animals, though he was generally obsequious to the lion. The most famous of these tales was known as “The Fox and the Grapes,” and the story could hardly be simpler. A fox looked up at grapes on a trellis. He tried repeatedly to reach them by jumping without success. Finally, the fox said, “They are probably sour anyway” and walked away. This anecdote has been told in various eras with different morals. In Medieval versions, the fox is called wise, while in modern ones he is mocked as foolish. For a trickster, even a frustrated one, wisdom and foolishness are often very close indeed.
The Bible, however, took a less anthropomorphic view of animals, which were often credited with pathos but rarely with wit. Foxes were associated with trickery, but it was as hapless implements rather than perpetrators. Samson caught 300 foxes (or, possibly, jackals), tied them in pairs by their tails, fastened a torch to each pair, and set them loose in the cornfields of the Philistines (Judges 15:4). The fox received increasing attention and respect in Jewish literature of the Diaspora, where political sensitivities forced leaders to express themselves indirectly by means of fables and parables.
Rabbi Akiba once defied Roman authorities by teaching the Torah. When a follower asked him if he was afraid of the government, he replied with a story. A fox once asked some fish why they kept moving from one place to another, and they replied they were fleeing the nets of the fishermen. The fox invited the fish to come out on dry land and live with them in peace. A wise fish replied that the danger they faced in their own element must be much less than what they would face in a foreign one. In a similar way, the Jews would face greater danger if they abandoned their traditions. The Talmud also contains many stories that celebrate the wit and wisdom of the fox. Without their own army or police, the Jews of the Diaspora had to live by wit and diplomacy, and they often identified with the crafty fox in respect to both his virtues and failings.
Illustration by Richard Heighway to Aesop’s fable of “The Fox and the Mask.”
The dual nature of the jackal and fox is especially clear in the Hindu-Persian Panchatantra, also known as The Fables of Bidpai, which was probably written down in about the second or third century BCE. The frame of this collection of stories concerned two jackals, the devious Damanaka and the honest Karataka, at the court of the lion king. Damanaka becomes jealous when the lion adopts the ox Sanjivaka as his favorite. Against the counsel of his companion, the insidious jackal stirs up strife between the lion and ox by telling each lies about the other. Finally Damanaka provokes the former friends to engage in a battle, in which the lion is wounded and the ox is slain. The debates and intrigues provide occasions for all of the various characters to tell stories in support of their advice.
With trickster figures, excessive cleverness is often a form of folly. In one of the tale of Bidpai, a jackal strayed into the city where he was chased by dogs. In desperation, he jumped into an enormous vat of blue dye to hide. When he could no longer hear any barking, the jackal slowly climbed out, and returned to the jungle. When the other creatures saw this strange blue beast passing, they were terrified and thought he possessed supernatural powers. The jackal had himself declared king and made the lion his Prime Minister, and the elephant and monkey became his royal attendants. The jackal then assigned some role in its kingdom to every creature except for the other jackals, which he banished out of fear that they might expose him. One day, however, the blue jackal heard other jackals howling in the distance. Unable to restrain himself, he began to howl with them. Realizing what had happened, the beasts were outraged and tore the blue jackal to pieces.
The Panchantra was translated into Arabic by Mohammed al Haq, and then it became known as Kalila wa Dimna. The Arab version, in turn, was translated into Latin and eventually into all major European languages during the late Middle Ages and Renaissance. It provided the foundation for the cycle of Renard the Fox stories, which were first written down in French toward the end of the twelfth century and quickly spread throughout Europe. The fox here is the clever peasant, who outwits the other animals, especially his more powerful, aristocratic adversaries such as the wolf and bear. His opponents end up ruthlessly beaten, cuckolded, maimed, eaten, and otherwise destroyed. Any sympathy we may have for the fox as the “underdog” is at least severely tested by his unscrupulousness. Depending in part on the class affiliation of the authors of various manuscripts, Renard comes across as a thorough villain, a flawed hero, or simply a figure of raucous fun. In one popular story, the lion was ailing, and the fox persuaded the king of beasts that the cure was to wrap himself in the skin of the wolf. The wolf, Renard’s great adversary, accordingly was flayed, but the lion died soon after, leaving Renard alone in triumph. Such sophisticated authors as Chaucer, La Fontaine, and Goethe later retold folktales of Renard.
Readers will find a complex and thoughtful perspective in the Fox Fables of the French Rabbi Berechiah ben Natronai ha-Nakdan, sometimes known as “the Jewish Aesop,” which were written in Hebrew around the end of the twelfth century. These fables are a bit reminiscent of the Old Testament, filled with violence and iniquity yet told with a highly moralistic gloss. Although most of the fables do not center on the fox, the author uses sometimes uses the fox as a spokesman. Much as the Jews often had to look to monarchs for protection, the fox of these stories has to cultivate a relationship with the lion-king. The fox of ha-Nakdan is highly pragmatic but, unlike that of the Renard cycle, rarely vicious. In one fable, the fox gnawed the bones of goats killed by the lion. When the lion rebuked him, the fox said he was ashamed and promised not to steal from the lion again. Ha-Nakdan concludes with a moral that we should, like the lion, forgive those who wrong us.
In the folklore of the Merovingians, who ruled Germany and much of France at the beginning of the Middle Ages, the creatures of the forest have a court. The lion is king, while the bear and stag are nobles. Every year at the summer solstice they meet to hear lawsuits and dispense justice. As human rulers in Europe appeared less glamorous and more corrupt, people also took a more jaundiced view of the animal kingdom. In stories of Reynard the Fox, told throughout Europe toward the end of the Middle Ages, the king of beasts was just a fool for all his pomp. The wolf and fox quarreled over chickens stolen from the coop in the language of piety and romance.
As the peasants were gradually emancipated from serfdom and the Jews from the ghettos, the traditional elites sometimes took out their residual class anger on the fox. As the hunt of stags and boars ceased to be an aristocratic privilege, the nobility, especially in England, would pursue the fox instead. Through the Middle Ages, the fox had been considered unworthy of being hunted by a lord. During the modern period, the foxhunt became a ritualistic affirmation of the feudal order, conducted in the most ceremonious way with elaborate calls, rituals, and uniforms. Modern sportsmen such as John Mansfield and Siegfried Sassoon wrote passionate accounts of the foxhunt, and prints of the chase became popular on living room walls. But many people were also distressed by the spectacle of so many men, ladies, children, dogs, and horses all arrayed against one diminutive creature, and the foxhunt was banned in all of Britain by 2004.
In East Asia, the fox of folklore has remained associated less with wit than with magic, and has generally been female rather than male. Foxes in Asia are symbols of marital fidelity, and the vixen is also an icon of maternal love. Early Chinese writings on the sanctity of marriage often invoked the model of the vixen in urging mothers not to practice female infanticide. But in their dealings with human beings, foxes are not necessarily bound by the same codes or loyalties. As shapeshifters, foxes often assume the form of beautiful women in order to seduce men. They frequently draw the life force from men, yet sometimes they also truly fall in love with their partners. While they may fool human beings, fox maidens are sometimes recognized by other animals. They can also be identified by placing a mirror in front of them, because they either do not leave any reflection in a mirror or else show their true vulpine countenances.
Among the earliest recorded stories about these shape shifters is “Jenshih, the Fox Lady,” written in China by Shen Chi-chi around the end of the seventh century CE. A poor soldier named Cheng Liu saw a lovely lady walking through the streets and gallantly offered her his donkey as a mount. The pair fell in love, and one day Jenshih confessed to him that she was really a fox, but she offered to remain with him in human form if he would not reject her on that account. When Cheng Liu accepted the offer, she not only proved to be a loving wife but also brought her husband prosperity by managing his affairs with tact and skill. One day, at the marketplace, however, some dogs caught scent of her. Jenshih immediately fell to the ground, assumed the form of a vixen, and began to run. Cheng Liu followed as best he could but was unable to save her from the hounds. More than anything else, the fox maiden in Asia represents the female realm, enticing and frightening men through its secrets.
In Japanese legends, magical foxes or “kitsune” have a society that parallels that of human beings. They have supernatural abilities that just about balance human technology, and they are curious about men and women, just as we are about them. They can easily produce the sort of things that people value such as gold and jewels, but they attach no significance at all to these. Instead, they value things that people find insignificant, such as a pile of straw to make a home in. When people befriend foxes, they will often receive good fortune in return. At times, kitsune assume human form, usually that of a young maiden. They are every bit as individual as human beings are, and some kitsune will seduce men, in the shape of beautiful women, in order to destroy them, but others make the most devoted wives. If a young fellow sees a beautiful woman alone in the woods, she is probably a kitsune; if he approaches her, he will be taking a big risk. Among the few unequivocally benign foxes in Asian lore are the messengers of Inari, the Japanese god of rice, who himself is often depicted as a fox.
Foxes are said to gather annually at Oji near Tokyo. A large number of foxes at the congregtion, according to legend, means a plentiful harvest the next year. The flames emanating from the foxes are known to Japanese as “kitsune-bi” or “foxfire.”
(The Metropolitan Museum of Art, #MMA60544B)
Much like Renard the fox, the coyote of folklore is both a sage and a buffoon. The greatest difference perhaps is that Coyote of Native American legend is far more of a cosmic figure than any of foxes or jackals of folklore. In a story told by the Zuni Indians, Coyote and Eagle once stole a box containing the sun and moon from the world of spirits, so that there would be light for the world, but Coyote opened the box out of curiosity. The heavenly bodies then flew away, thus there is winter as well as summer. The Klamath tell how Coyote won fire from Thunderer by cheating at dice. The Pueblo Indians recount that Coyote once helped a great magician to make human beings of clay, and then brought them to life by baking them in an oven. Unfortunately, most people were flawed because Coyote took them out of the oven either too early or too late. Coyote is also widely credited with bringing death into the world. It should surprise nobody that the European legends of Renard and the Native American myths of Coyote have blended in the tales told in the pueblos of Mexico and the American southwest.
Capitalist society always loves tricksters, and so Coyote remains very popular today. Some Indians have complained that white interpreters of their traditions emphasize the undignified and amoral aspects of Coyote at the expense of his holy qualities. One inheritor of that tradition is Wile E. Coyote, a cartoon character who entertains people with his fanatic but usually futile pursuit of a bird called Road Runner. Wile often ends up falling off a cliff or being run over by a car. At first, he might appear to be too much of a loser to be a successor to the Native American trickster. On the other hand, whether Coyote won or lost was always less important than his continuous survival, which is something that Wile does remarkably well.
HARE AND RABBIT
What is it—a hopper of ditches, a cutter of corn, a little brown cow without any horns? Answer: A hare.
—IRISH RIDDLE
The rabbit and hare, members of the family Leporidae, are rodents, yet they usually have a far more benign reputation in folklore than their relative the rat. While rabbits are highly social, hares often tend to be solitary. They are also larger than rabbits and have smaller litters. Nevertheless, the two are often conflated in folklore, and often the same stories are told of both. Like many other prominent animals in myth and legend, leporids are dramatically distinguished from other animals by a single feature—their long ears. Though not terribly fast runners, they are remarkably agile, and their ability to elude predators by changing direction instantly has contributed to their reputation as tricksters. Even more than other rodents, they reproduce prolifically, which has made leporids, especially rabbits, symbols of fertility throughout the world. They are endearingly timid, arousing an affection that often makes it hard for farmers to shoot them, even when they ravish planted fields. The most remarkable feature of their lore, however, is the widespread notion that a hare may be seen in the moon, which is found in many cultures across the globe including those of the Chinese, the Khoikhoi (also known as “Hottentots,” a term some find derogatory), and the Mayans.
The widespread association of the hare with the moon cannot simply be due to the contours of lunar landscapes, since people envisage the hare in the moon in very divergent ways. Part of the reason is that the leaps of a hare suggest the rising moon, and the patterns of white, gray, and brown on the bodies of hares are suggestive of the lunar surface. The most important reason is probably the extreme watchfulness of hares, which stand almost completely still with their eyes wide open and their ears raised. In an analogous way, the moon, especially when full, which resembles an enormous eye that continually watches events on earth.
The Jakatas, early Buddhist animal fables from India centered on the previous lives of Buddha. Once the future Buddha was a hare and lived together with three wise animals, a monkey, a jackal, and an otter. He preached to the other creatures of the forest, telling them not to refuse alms. Sakra, the god of thunder, heard him, and came down to the forest in the guise of a Brahman. The monkey offered him fruit, then the jackal offered meat, and the otter offered fish. Finally, the Brahman came to the hare, which directed him to gather wood and start a fire. When the fire was blazing, the hare hopped in, for he had resolved to offer his own body as food. The flames, however, would not burn. The Brahman revealed that he was truly a god. Then he squeezed a mountain to make ink, and he drew an image of the hare in the moon.
The Chinese see a hare with a mortar and pestle, grinding the elixir of life, in the moon, an idea inspired by the reproductive powers of the animal. This comes from the story of Chang-O, the beautiful wife of the famous archer King Ho-Yi. At a festival, the Queen-Mother of Heaven gave Ho-Yi a pill containing the elixir of immortality. Having drunk much wine, the King wished to sleep before taking the pill, so he entrusted it to Chang-O. She swallowed it herself, immediately felt very light, and then discovered that she could fly. On awakening, Ho-Yi demanded the pill, and, when Chang-O failed to produce it, he threatened to kill her. Chang-O flew away to the moon, where she hid in a cave. One day she coughed up the pill, which immediately changed into a white hare. Chang-O demanded that the hare recreate the pill, and she gave the hare the tools of an alchemist, particularly a mortar and pestle, for that purpose. Being once more subject to the ravages of age, she turned into a three-legged toad as she waited for the hare to finish. In the moon, you can see Chang-O, both as a woman and a toad, standing before a cassia tree and watching the hare, with a pestle between its paws, pounding out the elixir of immortality on a mortar.
A story in the third book of the Hindu-Persian Panchatantra may affectionately poke fun at the association between the leporids and the moon, though it also shows the rabbit (in some versions, a hare) in the familiar role as a trickster. A herd of elephants discovered the paradisial Lake of the Moon, and, in their eagerness to drink, they crushed many rabbits to death. A rabbit named Victory went next day to the king of the elephants, saying he was an envoy from the Moon and protected by the laws of diplomacy. He rebuked the King and his herd for killing rabbits, which had been under the protection of the Moon, and he spoke so eloquently that the Monarch decided find the moon and beg forgiveness. Victory lead the King to a place where the full moon shone brilliantly in the water of a lake. When the elephant tried to bow down before it, his trunk touched the water, breaking the image into thousands of pieces. At that Victory said, “Woe, woe to you, O King! You have doubly enraged the moon.” The elephant then promised never to return, and the rabbits once again had the lake to themselves.
The fable of “The Tortoise and the Hare.”
(IIllustration by J. J. Grandville from Fables de la Fontaine, 1839)
In the fables of Aesop, the hare is also a trickster, though, like most other tricksters, he often becomes the victim of his own cleverness. Perhaps the most famous fable of all is “The Tortoise and the Hare.” The hare had mocked the slowness of a tortoise, which then challenged him to a race. The hare agreed, and, as the two began, he spurted ahead, gaining a great lead. Supremely confident, the hare dawdled, rested, and played, until the slow but steady tortoise overtook him to claim victory.
Caesar states that the hare was sacred to the early Britons. According to the Roman historian Dio Cassius, Queen Boadicea, who led the Britons in revolt against Roman rule, would release a hare from the folds of her dress before each campaign. The direction in which the hare ran would be used to predict the outcome of the battle. The Easter Bunny, originally a hare, was probably a sacrificial animal, offered to the gods at the start of spring. Closely associated with the Easter Bunny are the colored eggs, which go back to pre-Christian celebrations of spring in Slavic lands. At one time eggs may have accompanied the hare not only in games but also in a festive meal.
In the European Middle Ages, hares were often a form in which witches ran about at night. One confessed Scottish witch, Isabel Gowdie, claimed that she had taken the form of a hare when hounds surprised her. She managed to evade them by running into a house and hiding long enough to say the rhyme which disenchanted her, though she still carried a mark on her back where a hound had nipped at her. In Precious Bane by Mary Webb (1924) a novel set in the countryside of early nineteenth century Shropshire, the heroine, Prudence Sarn, has a harelip, a slit upper lip like that of a hare. Her mother thought that a hare running across her path shortly before Prudence was born had caused the deformity. Fellow villagers constantly suspected the young woman of a connection with the Devil.
All across Africa, the hare is an important trickster figure, and he often matches his cleverness against the size and strength of a hyena or a lion. In one Hausa story from Nigeria, the lion had so terrified the other animals of the forest that they made a deal with him. One animal was to voluntarily sacrifice himself to the lion every day, and, in return, the king of beasts would refrain from hunting. After a gazelle, an antelope, and many other animals had given their lives, it was the hare’s turn. The hare told the lion that he had brought honey as a special present, but another lion, which was even fiercer than the first, had demanded the gift. When the king of beasts demanded to know where his challenger was, the hare pointed to a well. The lion looked into the well, saw his own reflection, pounced, and was drowned. All animals acclaimed the hare as the new king of beasts.
Master Rabbit is a trickster among several Native American tribes. In an Ute Indian tale, Rabbit had become angry because the sun burned his back. He tested his skills by killing all the people and animals that crossed his path, until he felt mighty enough to duel the sun itself. When he hurled a magic ball at the sun, fire spread all over the earth, and Rabbit was seared so badly that he began to cry. When his tears had finally put out the flames, Rabbit realized that killing does not solve problems.
The trickster hare has many names in Indian lore. Among the Ojibwa he is known as “Nanabozho,” and among many Algonquin peoples he is “Mishaabooz.” In the lore of the Lenape Indians, he is “Tschimammus,” one of the twins born to the earth mother after she had fallen from the clouds. He ascended to heaven, and, since he was expected to return to earth, Indian converts to Christianity identified Hare with Jesus.
Brer Fox laughs uproariously as Brer Rabbit gets stuck to the Tar Baby.
Illustration by A. B. Frost to an Uncle Remus tale by Joel Chandler Harris)
But perhaps the best known, and certainly the most controversial, leporid of modern times is Brer Rabbit, from the late nineteenth century tales that Joel Chandler Harris put in the mouth of an old black slave named Uncle Remus. Brer Rabbit is as ruthless as he is clever, and he continually matches wits with larger predators such as the fox, wolf, and bear. His adversaries can end up not only defeated but also humiliated, cuckolded, roasted, or otherwise horribly punished, though Brer Rabbit himself is also often outwitted by other tricksters such as Brer Terrapin and Mr. Buzzard.
The tales are as controversial as they are popular. While some critics admire the cleverness of Brer Rabbit, others consider him a racist caricature of blacks as shiftless and amoral, but the controversy is probably misplaced. Most folklorists now agree that Brer Rabbit is a version of an Algonquin trickster hare, which entered African-American folklore through Indians who were enslaved along with blacks. The farcical plots make political moralizing seem rather heavy handed, and, for all his wit, Brer Rabbit, like most of the other animals in the tales, is a model of how not to act. But despite an Indian origin, the Brer Rabbit tales remain an important part of African-American folklore, and those who believe the versions of Harris are too preposterous, violent, or patronizing may prefer those of Zora Neale Hurston and others.
The most famous story told by Harris is that of Brer Rabbit and the Tar Baby. Brer Fox made a little figure out of tar, left it in the bushes, and watched until Brer Rabbit came down the road. When the Tar Baby failed to return his greeting, Brer Rabbit became angry and punched the figure. His paw stuck to the tar, so Brer Rabbit struck again and again, until finally all his limbs were bound together by the pitch. Brer Fox had the culprit completely at his mercy, and was trying to choose the most dreadful punishment, when the clever rabbit begged not to be thrown into the briar patch. Brer Fox obliged by tossing the rabbit straight into the brambles. “Bred and bawn in a briar patch” shouted Brer Rabbit as he ran away.
In the nineteenth century, rabbits and hares became favorite figures in books for children. Peter Rabbit, created by Beatrix Potter, is perhaps the most beloved, but just about everybody is also familiar with the White Rabbit and the March Hare from Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland. Potter makes the traditional trickery of leporids in folklore into childish misbehavior, while Lewis Caroll makes it into what, from a child’s point of view, is the insanity of adults. Far less appealing, yet in some ways closer to folk traditions, is Bugs Bunny, a cartoon character created by Warner Brothers in the 1940s. An amoral trickster, Bugs outwits the dim-witted hunter Elmer Fudd, who often ends up falling from a cliff or being run over by a truck. In the 1970s Richard Adams tried to give greater dignity to rabbits in his novel Watership Down, about a group of male rabbits who set out to found a new warren. Although rabbits and hares are not patriarchal, virtually all of these popular images are male.
In Playboy Magazine, young girls are referred to as “bunnies.” At parties they put on skimpy costumes with long ears and white tails, and every issue features a “bunny of the month.” These practices build on the reputation of rabbits for being cute and cuddly. Such use of fertility symbolism is paradoxical, however, since the male clientele supposedly wish to remain unattached, and are certainly not looking at the “bunnies” as potential mothers for their children.
SPIDER
The Soul, reaching, throwing out for love,
As the spider, from some little promontory, throwing out filament
after filament, tirelessly out of itself, that one at least may catch
and form a link, a bridge,
a connection
—WALT WHITMAN
The spider is an image of fate in its relentlessness, as well as in its combination of terror and beauty. The image of a spiderweb gleaming in the dew recalls the stars against the Milky Way. Furthermore, spiders certainly have abilities that could move even a goddess to envy. Even today, engineers have not managed to create a filament with the same combination of thinness, flexibility, and tensile strength as that of a spider’s web.
Nevertheless, the usual manner in which many spiders devour their prey can make anybody shudder. When a fly is caught in a web, the spider will inject it with digestive juices and go away, returning later to eat the prey a little at a time. Among certain species, particularly the garden spiders of southern Europe, the female will at times devour the male upon mating, an eerily literal expression of the primal unity of conception and death. Spiders usually have eight eyes, enabling them to see in almost every direction. Nobody can meet, much less read, the gaze of a spider. Two eyes are so much the rule among animals from whales to grasshoppers that any other number is viewed as grotesque. Folklore constantly exaggerates the fearsome attributes of spiders, especially the deadliness of their poisons.
Ovid traced the origin of spiders to the story of Arachne, a young girl who was so skilled at spinning and weaving that even the nymphs gazed on her with wonder. She had boasted that her skill exceeded even that of the goddess Athena. Upon hearing this, the goddess took on the shape of an old woman and went to Arachne, warning her against arrogance. When Arachne refused to retract her boast, Athena revealed herself and challenged Arachne to a weaving contest. Even then, Arachne was not intimidated, and she accepted without hesitation. On her loom, Athena wove pictures of mortals who had dared to measure themselves against the divinities and met their doom. On her loom, Arachne wove pictures showing the follies of gods and goddesses, especially in their affairs with mortals. Athena, on seeing this, became so furious that she began to beat Arachne until the young girl ran away, placed her neck in a noose, and tried to hang herself. “Live,” said Athena, “but hang forever,” and Arachne was changed into a spider suspended by a thread. This tale shows the horrible fate that awaits those who would challenge the gods and goddesses. But just a moment! Take a good look at Arachne. Many people think she is creepy, and many others think she is beautiful. Nobody, however, really thinks she appears unhappy.
Was the punishment of Athena so terrible? After all, Arachne not only eluded death but was able to continue the work she loved until the end of time. Animal gods, and tribal totems are far more ancient than divinities in the form of men and women. I suspect that Arachne, far from being a simple mortal, was at one time a divinity who was more powerful than even Athena. The spider symbolizes archaic mother-goddesses, the weavers of fate. This creature is associated with the Egyptian Neith, the Babylonian Ishtar, and the Germanic Holde. In Greek mythology, the three fates, to whom even the greatest of the gods and goddesses are subject in the end, resemble spiders. Perhaps in some lost version of her story, Arachne simply assumed a human appearance to trick Athena, and she revealed her true form after her victory.
The spider is among the most primordial and powerful divinities in many cultures. For numerous West African tribes, the spider is a trickster and a culture hero. Among the Hausa of West Africa, the spider is Gizo. Among the Ashanti of Ghana and in Jamaica, it is Anansi. According to the Ashanti, the animals were once arguing about which was the oldest and deserved the most respect. Finally, they asked Anansi to be the judge, and the deliberations went something like this:
The parrot said, “I was around when there were not yet any blacksmiths. I had to pound iron with my beak, and it is bent to this day.”
The guinea fowl said, “I was around when there was a great fire at the beginning of the world. I had to stamp it out with my feet, and they are red to this day.”
The elephant, rabbit, and porcupine all told stories from the beginning of the world, showing their great age as well.
Finally, Anansi said, “I was around before earth was created, so there was nothing to stand on. When my father died, there was no ground for a graveyard, so I had to bury him in my head.”
The animals bowed to Anansi, acknowledging that he was the most ancient of them all. Boasting aside, the spider—with its thin, segmented limbs—can appear old indeed.
Because spiders are utterly unique, they mirror human alienation from the natural world. The ability to spin threads from their bodies is shared by silkworms and caterpillars, but spiderwebs are unrivaled in terms of intricacy. It may well be that early hunters were inspired by these webs to create nets and traps. By preserving food to be eaten later, spiders seem to show a human sort of foresight. By stunning prey yet not killing it immediately, they also seem to show a human sort of cruelty.
The spider is a solitary creature, and it has been an aid and inspiration to people who are isolated and pursued. According to legend, when David was fleeing from the soldiers of King Saul and took refuge in a cave, a spider immediately covered up the entrance with its web. The pursuers thought nobody could have entered, and so they passed on. The same story is told of Mohammed when he was hiding from his enemies in Mecca. When Robert the Bruce of Scotland was hiding from the English in a barn on the island of Rathlin, he looked up and saw a spider try six times to swing from one rafter to another. “Now shall this spider teach me what I am to do,” said Robert, “for I also have failed six times.” The spider made it on the seventh try. Robert returned to Scotland, rallied his men, and won a great victory over the English at Bannockburn in 1314.
But the asocial character of spiders also contributes to the fear they inspire. In the Middle Ages spiders were a frequent ingredient in witches’ brew; they were also familiars of witches. The spider, lying in wait for its prey, became a common symbol of the Devil. The most feared spiders of all are the large, hairy ones known as tarantulas, found in Latin America, Africa, and southern Europe. In southern Italy during the Renaissance, there was an epidemic of hysteria about these spiders that was far out of proportion to the danger from their actual bite. People believed that only continual movement could overcome the poison of the spider, and thus, to stay alive, a bitten person had to do a dance known as the “tarantella.”
In cultures of East Asia, spiders are generally disliked because they hide in corners. Furthermore, as major predators in the world of small creatures, they seem sinister and almost cannibalistic. Wu Ch’eng-en’s Journey to the West tells how the monk Tripitaka Tang was once captured by spider-women on his journey from China to India to obtain the Buddhist scriptures. He stopped at a mansion to ask for a vegetarian meal and was greeted by four pleasant young women, but the meal they offered turned out to be human flesh. When the monk tried to leave, they tied him with strings spun from their navels. Only rescue by his animal companions prevented him from becoming their meal.
In Japan there are many stories of enormous spiders that haunt abandoned castles and other ruins. They may take the form of human beings in order to fool the unwary. In one tale collected by Lafcadio Hearn, a samurai went to spend the night in an old temple that villagers said was haunted. A priest came in the night and played on a stringed instrument with more-than-human skill. After a while, the priest turned to the samurai and said laughingly, “Did you think me a goblin? I am only a priest, but I must play my instrument to keep the goblins away. Would you like to try?” The samurai carefully reached out his left hand to touch the instrument, whereupon the strings changed into a giant spiderweb, and the priest became an enormous spider. The samurai drew his sword with his right hand and slashed at the goblin-spider, which retreated. Bound in the web, the samurai could not follow. The next morning villagers came and set him free, and then they followed the trail of blood and killed the spider.
Illustration of a spider in a nineteenth-century book of fairy tales.
By contrast, for many Native American tribes, including the Navaho and Hopi, Spider Woman is the creator deity. According to Navaho legend, a young girl once saw a line of smoke emerging from a hole in the ground. When she looked closely, she saw Spider Woman, who invited her to come down and learn to weave. Navaho women still place a hole in their blankets in memory of the place where the young girl encountered the goddess.
Similarly powerful but far less beneficent is Iktomi, the major trickster figure of the Sioux and other Indians of the American Midwest. According to the traditions of the Lakota Sioux, he is the creator of time and the inventor of language. He is, however, also a coward, a liar, a lecher, and constantly prone to trouble. Undisciplined though he may be, the Indians still respect his power. An offering of tobacco to Iktomi can bring success in hunting.
Like many tricksters, the spider can inspire intense scorn or affection. There could hardly be a more enthusiastic arachnophile than Thomas Muffet, the Englishman who wrote The Theater of Insects in 1658. He observed of the spider:
When she sticks aloft with her feet cast every way, she exactly represents a painted star. As if nature had appointed not only to make it round like the heavens, but with rays like the stars, as if they were alive. The skin is so soft, smooth, polished and neat, that she so precedes the softest skin’d maids, and the daintiest and most beautiful strumpets, and it is so clear that you may almost see your face in her as in a glass; she hath fingers that the most gallant virgins desire to have theirs like to them, long slender, round of exact feeling, that there is no man, nor any creature that can compare with her.
Spiders may be ruthless toward flies, but, Muffet argues, they provide many services to human beings. Not only are their webs good for binding wounds, but the spiders themselves may be used in many kinds of medicines.
Of course, not everyone agreed with his judgment. Perhaps the most famous of the Mother Goose nursery rhymes is a satire that was probably written about Patience Muffet, the daughter of Thomas:
Little Miss Muffet
Sat on a tuffet (a nonsense word),
Eating her curds and whey;
There came a big spider,
Who sat down beside her
And frightened Miss Muffet away.
By giving the spider so many feminine virtues, perhaps Thomas Muffet had made her an ironic patron for girls and women.
Jonathan Swift, however, showed us a distinctly masculine spider in his story “The Battle of the Books,” (1697), a satire on the dispute over which writers were better, those of antiquity or those of contemporary times: “For upon the highest corner of a large window there dwelt a certain spider, swollen up to the first magnitude by the destruction of infinite numbers of flies, whose spoils lay scattered before the gates of his palace, like human bones before the cave of some giant. The avenues to his castle were guarded with turnpikes and palisades, all after the modern way of fortification.” Because he lived indoors and practiced a sophisticated form of architecture, this spider became the advocate of the modern writers, while a wayward bee represented the ancient ones.
Folklore not only makes spiders fearsome but also gives them protection. It is very widely believed that to kill a spider brings bad luck. Another English nursery rhyme goes:
If you wish to live and thrive,
Let the spider run alive.
A small black spider found in England is known as the “money spider,” and if it lands on your clothes, it is an omen of wealth. You must not carelessly brush this spider off, though you are permitted to toss it over your shoulder. The spider is close to primordial powers and should be treated with care.
As chthonic figures, spiders are constantly linked with the dead and the realm beneath the earth. The Massachusetts Puritan Jonathan Edwards preached in his sermon “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God” (1734) that “God that holds you over the pit of Hell, much as one holds a spider, or some loathsome insect, over a fire, abhors you, and is dreadfully provoked.” Spiders are among our most potent symbols of primeval life, yet they are associated not with expansive landscapes but with desolate crannies. This paradox is the basis of a vision by the perverse Svidrigaylov in Fyodor Dostoyevsky’s novel Crime and Punishment (1866). Svidrigaylov pictures eternity not as vast but as “a little room, something like a village bath-house, grimy, and spiders in every corner …”
The spider has a very positive image in the classic children’s story Charlotte’s Web, by E. B. White (1952). By writing messages in her web, Charlotte tricks people into sparing the life of a piglet named Wilbur from slaughter, but her compassion is tempered by acceptance of a natural order in which life is sustained only through killing. Even Wilbur must accept that Charlotte and her children sustain their lives by eating insects.
Giant spiders, sometimes created through radioactivity, have become a cliché of horror and science fiction. A popular comic-book hero today is Spiderman. He climbs buildings and throws out mechanical webs. Although Spiderman is usually a hero, his arachnid identity suggests power, mystery, and a piquant sense of menace. Today, the spider has become a symbol of technology, the gatekeeper of the Internet and the World Wide Web.