Part II: Fantasy

Be sure to check out the illustrations at the end of the text sections!


Chapter Seven
Botany in Myth

Possibly because of a high school English class more than for any other reason, Americans have a good idea of what myths are. Myths succeed in talking about important truths. The truths spoken about in myth may deal with the world, society, or the spiritual realm. Really good myths transcend space and time; they're apt to make a reader say, "I don't know these people or how they lived, but I get their point-- I understand their story and see connections with my own life." That is what makes myth important. As Joseph Campbell (see The Power of Myth, pp. 3-4) puts it:

"One of our problems today is that we are not well acquainted with the literature of the spirit. We're interested in the news of the day and the problems of the hour. (...) When you get older, and the concerns of the day have all been attended to, and you turn to the inner life-- well, if you don't know where it is or what it is, you'll be sorry. (...) It used to be that these stories (myths) were in the minds of the people. When the story is in your mind, then you see its relevance to something happening in your own life. It gives you perspective on what's happening to you. With the loss of that, we've really lost something because we don't have a comparable literature to take its place. These bits of information from ancient times, which have to do with the themes that have supported human life, built civilizations, and informed religions over the millennia, have to do with deep inner problems, inner mysteries, inner thresholds of passage, and if you don't know what the guidesigns are along the way, you have to work it out yourself. But once this subject catches you, there is such a feeling, from one or another of these traditions, of information of a deep, rich, life-vivifying sort that you don't want to give it up."

Myth or mythos, in the oldest sense of the word, has to do with stories or accounts. As was discussed in the chapter on the Genesis creation stories, myth can refer to a human attempt to understand deep, even mysterious, truths; although the stories themselves may be fictional, there exists in each some reality at a fundamental human level which calls for the telling. The truth or reality at the core of myth may be a statement about the natural world or, just as likely, about humanity or the human mind itself. Some of the myths are poetic, mysterious, otherworldly, while others seem to be more casual commentaries on the everyday experiences of the teller. Some are set in a sort of "once-upon-a-time" world, not unlike the Australian Aborigine's dream time,(1) while others give specific geographical locations and dates. Some are ancient, and others are as new as the latest issue of a favorite tabloid. Even when a myth is stated in mundane terms, or when it seems to be a thinly veiled fabrication, or even a wildly exaggerated traveler's tale, it is important and can say something about the culture in which the myth appears. All that being said, first the plant kingdom's myths will be sampled, then exploration will turn to the animal kingdom.

Sacred Plant Life

In some cultures, certain plants and trees were considered sacred or even as the seats of divine spirits. Under the animistic view, for example, such plants and trees could enclose gods of nature or strength. In other mythological systems, plants or trees were sacred to a deity more symbolically. They could even be avenues for coming into contact with the divine because of their intoxicating or uplifting effects; this was sometimes the case with wine, which was fermented from the fruits of the grapevine, in the Mediterranean region or with tobacco in the New World. In the Germanic mythological traditions, along with some others, certain trees were associated with the gods. One source of evidence for this kind of association is a legend from the Christian evangelization of Germany.


In the 720's A.D., the Anglo-Saxon apostle to Germany, St. Boniface, went on a mission to convert the people there to Christianity in the name of Rome. When he arrived in Germany, he was confronted with the cult of Thor, the German god of thunder and storms. At first, Boniface wasn't very successful in making converts, but he eventually settled on a great idea. It seems there was a certain ancient and gnarled oak which was held sacred to Thor, and before which the priests of Thor performed their magical rites. Boniface, in a show of Christian bravado, approached the giant tree and threw out an irresistible challenge to the priests of Thor and to those who followed them. He said that he intended to cut down the tree and reasoned with the people that if their god was a true god, he would prevent the cutting of the tree. Seeing a way to get rid of the pesky missionary, the priests foolishly agreed to the test, just as the prophets of the Baals had done to Elijah's challenge in I Kings 18:21-46, and Boniface was able to cut down the tree without hindrance by god or by man. In the absence of any prevention or retribution from Thor, many Germans converted and were baptized that day. As for the tree itself, it was sawn into planks with which was built the first Christian church in that area.

Vegetative Animal Mythology

Unknown lands have always served as great sources for the bizarre. Such travelers as Marco Polo returned with tales of wonderful things from far away. Many of the travelers circulated manuscripts of accounts of their travels and the exotic mysteries that they had seen or heard about. One such traveler was a man who called himself Sir John Mandeville.(2) Sir John claims to have encountered a plant which produced not only fruit but also edible meat which was consumed with great relish by the people of China where this marvelous plant was supposed to be native.(3) In his travelogue he writes:

"...there grows a manner of fruit like a gourd, and when it is ripe, men cut it in two and find within a little beast, with flesh and blood and bone, like a little lamb, but without the wool. Men eat both the fruit and the beast, and it is a great marvel. I have tasted it myself."

This account, although certainly not worthy of belief today, would have been accepted readily by Europeans of the fourteenth century. The reason was that a fairly common bird, the barnacle goose, was thought by them to "grow on trees" in just the same sort of way. Sir John claims to have topped his Chinese hosts by telling them about these marvelous geese:

"... as great a marvel to them, which is common to us, was that of the barnacle geese. For I told them that in our country there are trees that bear a fruit that becomes a flying bird, but if the fruit falls to the ground the bird soon dies, and that the birds are very good meat for men to eat. What I said caused such marvel that some of the listeners swore it was impossible."

Although it is not really our purpose here to find the logical explanations behind such stories, Ley's search through the scholarly accounts and his subsequent conclusions are hard to resist. Apparently, the oldest surviving account of the bird tree was written in the second half of the twelfth century by a man named Giraldus Cambrensis. In his book, Topographia Hibernia,(4) Cambrensis speaks of geese called bernacae which he says are numerous in Ireland:

"...against nature, nature produces them in a most extraordinary way. They are like marsh geese, but somewhat smaller. They are produced from fir timber tossed along by the sea...they hang down by their beaks, as if from a sea-weed attached to the timber...I have frequently, with my own eyes, seen more than a thousand of these small bodies of birds, hanging down from one piece of timber at the seashore, enclosed in shells and already formed."

Cambrensis also reports a sort of crisis in the Irish Catholic Church. In some dioceses of Ireland the consumption of the barnacle goose was allowed on days of abstinence and fast because it was "not born of flesh." Other dioceses strictly forbade the practice. And although he condemned the eating of the barnacle goose as a vegetable on such days, Cambrensis agreed that no one had ever seen the geese breed or lay eggs. According to Ley, papal intervention was eventually required, and Pope Innocent III, arguably the most powerful pope of all times and a reform-minded man, condemned the practice in 1215, in the midst of implementing the improvements of the Fourth Lateran Council.


Later in the century, Bishop Albert von Bollstadt, better known as St. Albertus Magnus,(5) rejected the story of the bird tree as absurd, stating categorically that he had observed the mating behaviors of the goose species in question and had even spent time studying them while they were nesting and laying eggs. Even this, however, was not enough to discourage the stories. One of Albert's own students, Thomas of Cantimpre, claimed to have researched accounts of the marvelous tree back as far as Aristotle, the scholastic philosophers' ultimate authority on everything. And, according to Ley, a craving for the miraculous by medieval European society, and the evidence of the greatness of God these wondrous creatures provided, explains why such stories continued in circulation.(6)


As late as 1678, accounts of the geese which grew on wood continued to appear. In the published transactions of the Royal Society for that year, Sir Robert Moray, a member of the king's Council for Scotland, reported that he had himself seen on the beach of the Isle of Uist, a nine or ten foot long section of fir tree with multitudes of shells hanging from the underside of it. He stated that although he did not open any of the shells because they were dead and dry, they had within them little birds thought to be barnacle geese. He also described the necks by which the shells clung to the wood as round, hollow, creased, and not unlike the wind-pipe of a chicken. Since 1700, however, the truth of the barnacle goose has been widely known, although there seems not to have been much of an "ah-ha!" moment. It seems that two different animals had been combined into one. The actual goose, still called the barnacle goose in English, was a bird with standard reproduction. The great taxonomist Linnaeus called the species Anser bernicula(7) because of the legend. Ireland was called Hibernia in Latin; therefore, Irish goose would be anser Hibernicae or anser Hiberniculae, and the early account placed the bird tree in Ireland. According to Professor Max Muller, a linguist writing in 1864, confusion followed: Hiberniculae was shortened to berniculae, and the Latin for the sea creatures called barnacles was bernaculae. This brings us to the second animal, Lepas anatifera,(8) a type of barnacle which anchors itself to driftwood by a long, dark "neck" and has light gray or white wing-like shells around its body, giving the same overall color effect as the goose. With a little imagination, one could certainly see an "unripe" goose.


As far as the lamb plant or barometz is concerned, there are two possible explanations. The first is Polypodium barometz,(9) again named by Linnaeus because of the legendary plant. This Asiatic fern has thick roots which grow along the surface of the soil. These roots are covered by what seems to be a thick, woolly fur and can be branched in such a way as to resemble small animals. According to Ley, the root releases a thin red fluid when cut which could appear to be blood, but, he points out, the fern is not edible. The second, and more plausible, explanation revolves around language and another unlikely combination of two things. In this theory, put forward by Henry Lee in his 1887 book, The Vegetable Lamb of Tartary, the problem started when Theophrastus(10) needed a word to describe the cotton boll, the rounded seed pod of the cotton plant. He chose the word melon which has a first definition of "apple" or "fruit". It, apparently, has the secondary meaning of "sheep".(11) This led to the figurative interpretation of the cotton plant as a "vegetable sheep" which bore wool, and this added to the confusion among would-be translators and later writers. It should be pointed out that Sir John's description is once again rather far from the mark; although cottonseed oil can be used in food preparation, the cotton plant itself is not edible, and this little lamb certainly does have "wool" on it.

Vegetative Human Mythology

Here there are two striking examples of myths that seem to say as much about the human psyche, and about humanity"s egocentrism, as about anything else in nature. After all, these two myths are about plants which are thought of as created in our own image and likeness. Although there is no evidence for this, the first of the two myths may well be a slightly more "fictionalized" version of the second. The first "vegetable human" is called the jidra, and the second is called the mandrake.(12)


The jidra appears in a book by Dr. L. Lewysohn. Published in 1858, it was called Zoology des Talmuds, and was claimed to be an exploration of all the animals mentioned in the Jewish Talmud. The jidra is described as an animal whose bones have magical properties, and the rest of the description is only slightly more plant-like. It grew from roots which were firmly anchored in the ground to which it was attached by a long vine described as being like an umbilical cord. It took the form of a sort of pumpkin which was shaped like a man. According to the account, this "pumpkin man" ate anything it could reach within the radius allowed by the vine and would instantly kill any animal or man it could get at. In order to harvest the jidra one needed to detach it from its roots, causing its death.


The mandrake legend, although based on a real plant, seems just as fantastic.(13) According to Dale-Green, Pythagoras, the famous Greek philosopher and mathematician of the sixth century B.C., mentioned the mandrake in his writings and referred to it as an anthropomorphic plant. And, one Christian theory held that it was made from the same earth as Adam and resembled man due to a trick of the Devil. It was said that the plant came in both male and female forms, that is, that there were both mandrakes and womandrakes. The plant has been known and used for more than three thousand years and seems to have always carried with it the taint of the demonic in the human mind. It was generally thought that the plant was inhabited by evil spirits, and some even claimed that at the center of the roots was entangled a human heart, guarded by Satan himself. In some places it was called "thieves' root" or "little gallows man" because it was thought to grow under gallows, having come from the hanged man's mouth or having been "seeded" by him from semen and urine voided during the execution. Despite all of the evil and negative imagery associated with it, the mandrake was thought to bring great good fortune once harvested.


The problem became how the harvesting could be done safely, and complicated rituals grew around it. According to the stories, there were two dangers which a would-be gatherer of the mandrake root could fall into. First, any resident demon needed to be avoided, and, next, the sound of the shriek of the mandrake when cut out of the ground was said to mean death for any who heard it. In order to avoid both of these problems a scapegoat was used, and, as far back as the first century, the Jewish historian, Josephus, recorded the use of a dog for this purpose. In their simplest form the rites associated with the harvest of the mandrake called for digging around the plant until the roots were exposed and tying a starving dog to the center root. Next, the ears of the gatherer were plugged with wax or a great deal of noise was made as he backed away and called the dog, tempting him with bread or meat. When the dog rushed toward the food, the root was pulled up, the mandrake shrieked, the dog dropped dead, and any vengeful demon was theoretically appeased by the death of the dog.(14)

Of course, more complex versions of the rite developed. By the sixteenth century, a German version was very elaborate indeed. The digger was to go out on a Friday before dawn accompanied by a black dog without a single white hair on it. When he found a suitable mandrake, he was to bless it three times with the sign of the cross; he then dug up and freed every root of the plant save a single thin rootlet. Now, with his ears stopped up, he tied the unfortunate dog to the main root, quickly dropped back and threw some food to just out of reach of the dog. He then said ritual prayers over the sacrificed dog and collected his prize, but the ritual was far from over. The mandrake was taken home to be bathed in red wine, wrapped in red and white silk, and laid respectfully in a casket.(15) It was then bathed each subsequent Friday and was given a clean white shirt to wear each month!

Trees of Death

The present section returns to the realm of traveler's tail with a vengeance. Each of the three trees in question either grew or was supposed to have grown on far-off and remote islands. Only rumors and questionable accounts made it back to Western Europe at first, but Western theology had already primed it to receive tales of a "tree of death" as the corollary to the Tree of Life, mentioned in Genesis and much debated.(16)


The first representative of this group is the manchineel, and it was said to be so deadly that none dare to get close to it, except those who had trained in order to collect its sap. The natives of the West Indies, where the manchineel grows, harvested the sap in order to poison arrows with it. In 1789 Erasmus Darwin, grandfather of Charles Darwin of natural selection fame, wrote (Ley, p. 308):

"With the milky juice of this tree the Indians poison their arrows; the dew drops which fall from it are so caustic as to blister the skin and produce dangerous ulcers; whence many have found their death by sleeping under its shade."

Apparently, even then, Darwin had it right to a great extent; it was not lethal, however, to sleep in the shade of Hippomane mancenilla. But, to have its distilled sap enter the blood stream on the point of an arrow would certainly do a lot of harm. Interestingly, Ley points out that the "deadly sleep" story was used as part of the plot of an opera by Meyerbeer which made its debut as late as 1865. The librettist got the geography wrong, however, when the heroine kills herself by resting under the manchineel in Africa in an opera entitled L'Africaine.

Our second death tree is known as the upas, but it should be noted that this word is simply a label for any vegetable poison in the Malay language. Stories of this wondrous tree of death first appeared in the West in about 1330 A.D. with the writings of Oderich of Portenau who was mentioned earlier in the chapter. According to Oderich there was but one cure for the poison of the upas, and that was to steep the leaves of the very tree itself in water and to drink the resulting tea. According to legend, the ground beneath the upas tree is always bare and devoid of any vegetation because of the prodigiously powerful poison produced by the tree. Another sign of the toxicity of the tree was supposed to be that dead birds circled the base of its trunk, these having perched in the tree and been overwhelmed by the murderous fumes. Some writers even claimed that villages could not be built within 12 or 14 miles of such a tree. Such rumors and fanciful tales about the tree persisted for centuries until a French naturalist named L. T. Leschenault de la Tour traveled to the interior of eastern Java in 1804. The tree, which he named Antiaris toxicaria, grew in very fertile soil and was surrounded by a thick undergrowth which was perfectly healthy, and he brought a large quantity of the sap back to France with him for chemical analysis without hurting himself or his shipmates. Today it is known that the genus Antiaris forms a part of the fig family and produces fruits which are edible and much sought after by birds with no ill effect. The sap is, however, deadly when introduced into the bloodstream, even to a very large animal.

The final example of the death tree is a very interesting case, indeed. Although the setting for the story is Madagascar, it says a lot more about the human imagination than it does about that great island or any of its native species. Second only to Australia in the depth of natural oddities it contains, Madagascar is certainly a land of mystery. One of its many mysteries is the tale of the man-eating tree. This story was first allegedly reported in a German magazine which was supposed to have been called Carlsruhe Scientific Journal from a letter to Dr. Omelius Fredlowski by an eye witness named Carl Liche in 1878. The problem was that Ley could, at first, find no reference to the letter, the author, the recipient, the journal, the tribe, or any part of the story before a 1924 book by Chase Salmon Osborn claims to quote it in its entirety. After 1924, some other books about Madagascar did incorporate statements about the tree, however. Although Ley reprints the whole "letter"(see pp. 326-329), the highlights of the story will be enough for our purposes here.

According to the story, the tiny Mkodo people of Madagascar were primitive in the extreme; they wore no clothing and kept only the loosest ties to one another so that they weren't really much of a tribe at all. The only thing that kept the people together was their worship of one of the trees of the forest. Along a swampy, slow-running stream one of the man-eating trees was supposed to have been seen in the company of a group of Mkodo who immediately forced one of their number to climb the tree. The tree was described something like a dracaena palm with an eight foot tall trunk which was somewhat bulbous, like the fruit of the pineapple. From the top, pairs of huge leathery leaves, shaped like those of the agave, hung to the ground and were covered on the inside with many hooks. From the midst of the crown of leaves a large white bowl-shaped structure contained a thickly sweet narcotic fluid, and two types of tendril-like stems grew from the same area. One set of stems were four inches in diameter at their bases and tapered along their eight foot length; the other set numbered six white stems of about six feet long which constantly waved about as if searching for something to latch on to. Once the native woman was made to climb the tree, she was instructed to drink. Immediately the stems began to crush the life out of the woman, and once she was dead the enormous leathery leaves began to raise around her. At this point the rest of the natives began to lap up the spilling liquid; they ended their sacrifice with an intoxicated orgy as the white men who were supposed to have witnessed the terrible ritual skulked quickly away into the forest.

It was not until Ley discovered the account of Dr. Conrad Keller, the Swiss writer of an 1887 travel book about East Africa and Madagascar, that he became convinced of the reason he could not find the corroborating writings he sought in the libraries of the world. Keller states that he was unable to trace the magazine in which the account was supposed to have been printed in Germany, but he published the translation of the letter which he had made from a Madagascar annual, published in 1881, which was mostly written by the missionaries and other settlers. Keller's mention of the German source was a red herring that was probably provided by a reference made in the Madagascar annual itself to lend verisimilitude to the account. Ley's conclusion was that the whole story was a hoax or a kind of inside joke aimed at seasoned residents who would see the story for what it was. Of course, there is always the possibility that the story was concocted for the benefit of tourists like Keller, however. No such tree and no such tribe have ever been found.

The Sea Nut of King Solomon

At least as far back as the 1600's, Europeans became aware of a natural curiosity which was considered quite valuable and quite remarkable. This curiosity went by a number of different names, but the most common seem to have been King Solomon's sea nut and the coco-de-mer.(17) The second name is the one preferred by most authors today. Occasionally, giant nuts, weighing as much as 50 pounds, would be discovered near the shores of such tropical lands as Java, Sumatra, and Borneo, but their source was a great mystery. This caused the demand for them to rise because the ground nut meats were believed to produce medicines that not only cured strokes, gall bladder troubles, and hemorrhoids, but that, when added to any food or drink, would protect the user from all poisons! According to legend, the powerful of Java, Burma, and China would pay enormous sums for just one such nut. Rumors about the source of the enormous nuts continued, and the people of Java had two main mythical traditions about them. As reported by Georg Eberhard Rumpf, who collected stories and wrote between 1662 and 1701, the first tradition claimed that the coco-de-mer grew far below the water and that it could sometimes be glimpsed through clam, clear seas; attempting to get a better look or diving toward the plant was thought to result in death, however. The second story reported by Rumpf seems to have major elements in common with both the Arabian Nights and a medieval German romance, according to Ley; Ley makes no conjecture about the reasons for this, but Rumpf, although probably Dutch, considered the German town of Hanau his home. At any rate, Rumpf claims to have heard a version of the following tale from natives in Java:

Beyond Java in the open sea grows a unique tree called the pausengi tree. This tree, although it grows in the sea, spreads one branch beyond the waves. Upon that branch is built the nest of a ferocious and enormous bird called the geruda. This fierce bird circles the islands in search of prey, carrying off elephants, rhinos, tigers, or any other large beasts to feed to its young. Since all the currents of the seas drift toward the spot where the tree grows, it is almost impossible to see the tree and return to tell the tale. Only a very few unlucky fishermen who drifted off course have found themselves there and have been able to return to Java by climbing into the plumage of the great geruda and clinging to it until the bird came close enough to the ground for them to make an escape. The wonderful and miraculous nut of the pausengi had a unique characteristic: it always moved against the current and so swam away from its parent tree, and when it reached some distant shore it would even pull itself out of the waves and up the beach to come to rest in the undergrowth of the island.

Although Rumpf seems to have had reservations about the last part of the story, Ley points out that "walking" coconuts, even fairly large ones, are possible in this part of the world. It seems that the local coconut crabs, Birgus latro, often drag the nuts into the underbrush at night to crack them open and feed on them. The native myth may well have incorporated the "walking" of the pausengi nut because of the occasional sighting of such crabs at work. Because of myths like the ones reported by Rumpf, it seemed logical to draw one conclusion about the coco-de-mer: it must be the product of some sort of sea plant which grows near Java, Sumatra, and Borneo, the islands on which the nuts sometimes wash ashore. This alone seemed to make sense.

Unfortunately life doesn't always answer to the rules of logic. In fact, when the mystery was finally solved in the 1760's, the correct solution seemed almost as strange as the Javan myths themselves. In the 1740's a group of granite islands about 600 miles north of Madagascar was claimed in the name of the king of France and was eventually christened the Seychelles Islands. This island group sits a mere 800 miles from the nearest point on the coast of Africa, and this means it is a remarkable 3000 miles from Java! On one of the islands, which had received little attention before, was discovered the only grove of coco-de-mer trees in the world. Whether the trees evolved in situ as unique island flora or constitute a "living fossil" as Ley asserts, is really less relevant than the rarity of these palms. The small population of trees has never been able to spread naturally to nearby islands let alone ones as far away as Java, so far as it is known. This may well be due to the extremely long germination period required by the nuts in combination with the slow growth of the trees to their adult size of nearly 100 feet. Called Lodoicea seychellarium,(18) The palm comes in male trees and female trees, and the females will not even begin to flower for the first 40 years of growth. It is at this age that the trunk begins to form, as the palm fronds grow up from a central heart on the ground up to this age. Although individual trees have been grown in other tropical locations by botanists as an insurance measure, the core of the world's population of these trees could, presumably, be wiped out in a single tropical storm.

As has been seen, plants play an interesting role in human mythologies. Often, the myths produced have some basis in nature, but, as with the case of the Madagascar carnivorous tree, this is not always so. The human fascination with plants native to far away places is still alive and well, as can be demonstrated in countless nurseries and florist's shops around the world, and many homes hold examples of once rare and precious plants native to exotic lands.

Notes For Chapter 7:

(1) This is their mythic "time before time" in which animals and men came to be and spoke to one another.

(2) Sir John, although of questionable honesty, was very well respected as a learned man and physician by the people of Liege where he died in 1372. In Liege he went by the names of Jean of Bourgogne and Jehan a la Barbe; to add to the mystery, he claimed to have been given the travelogue he circulated by an English knight named Mandeville, but on his deathbed he claimed to be Mandeville himself. As a further complication, much of the work seems to have consisted of the plagiarized works of others. For more on this see Ley, pp. 48-50. The quotes from Mandeville's work have been modified into more current language; they also seem to be unattributed "borrowings" from the writings of a monk named Oderich of Portenau, according to Willy Ley.

(3) My main source for the lamb tree, goose tree, and jidra is Ley, pp. 48-61.

(4) The title may be translated as : "A Detailed Description of Ireland."

(5) Albert was quite a man. Among his many accomplishments was that he was a sort of one-teacher university; in his day he was the authority on theology, biblical studies, logic, metaphysics, mathematics, ethics, physics, geography, astronomy, mineralogy, chemistry, and biology. He wrote prolifically on all that he studied, from a treatise on the life cycle of the European eel to an argument demonstrating that the earth is a sphere. It does not seem possible, but this bishop and teacher also found time for field work. Through his own observations of the natural world, he was frequently able to prove or disprove earlier "scientific" theories, descriptions, and myths. He became the teacher of St. Thomas Aquinas in 1252, and is considered by the Church the patron of students of the natural sciences. For more information see Thurston, volume IV, pp. 345-348.

(6) Although we are supposed to live in a more scientifically enlightened and informed society ourselves, the tabloids and television schedules are filled with stories no less fantastic which people devour with great delight and some credulity. Some people, even today, want to believe in such things as impossible creatures, paranormal phenomena, and extra-terrestrial visitations. If one of these can be combined with, say, a conspiracy theory, such as the so-called "ufologists" have managed with the Roswell incident, so much the better, and the result is volumes of investigative writing and hours of documentary footage. This is not intended to ridicule those who believe in such things, but to illustrate that there is less difference between us and the people of earlier ages than we like to pretend.

(7) In resources that I have checked, the contemporary scientific name for the bird is Branta leucopsis or the "brant which appears white" (the other major representative of the genus is called the black brant in English, and this one is lighter in body color with more white and light gray markings). Apparently, since the time of Linnaeus an affinity has been found with members of the genus Branta which explains at least part of the name change. By the way, the "affinity" between the barnacle goose and other members of the genus is so strong that members of more than one species can't be housed together in the same waterfowl collection because crossbreeding will occur very readily. So much for not being "born of the flesh."

(8) Anatidae is the scientific name for the waterfowl family; this name would, therefore, translate as "the waterfowl-bearing barnacle".

(9) This would translate as "many footed" barometz. According to Ley, the plant named by Linnaeus is now called Cibrotum glamescens, but the genus Polypodium is still used, at least by nurserymen, to label ferns termed rabbit's foot ferns in English.

(10) Theophrastus was a Greek philosopher, botanist, and author of the late fourth and early third centuries B.C.

(11) I was able to trace this to a possible Indo-European root, mel or smel, which means a small animal

(12) Although the jidra does not seem to have a firm foundation in reality, the mandrake is a real plant. Its scientific name is Mandragora officinarum, and it is described as a Eurasian plant with purple flowers and roots which resemble the human body. From the roots, a narcotic substance can be prepared. While its original Greek name was mandragoras, it was shifted to mandragge in Middle English and finally to mandrake which takes on the new connotation of a dragon (draco or drake) in the shape of a man.

(13) My main source for this section on the mandrake is Dale-Green, pp. 160-162.

(14) Since the mandrake is a plant which is native to the area around the Mediterranean, one would think that this ritual was tried more than once. It is easy to explain why a person with his ears plugged or protected by loud noise could continue to think that the plant had shrieked without being heard, but what about the dog's death? If any starving dogs died, perhaps it was due to having sampled some of the poisonous plant in desperation or to the stresses of the ordeal itself.

(15) Dale-Green does not say whether she means a box or case for keeping precious items or a coffin, but, given the rest of the account, I suspect she means a coffin.

(16) The major source for the trees of death is Ley, pp. 307-319 and 326-329, 333.

(17) Here, again, the source is Ley. See pp. 256-270.

(18) According to Ley, the genus name is a reference to Laodice (Laodike) of Greek mythology. Although Ley identifies her as a daughter of Priam, the ruler of Troy, The Oxford Classical Dictionary also identifies it as a stock name meaning "princess", as is the case with the name Creusa in the story of Medea. This would make the name of the tree the Seychelles princess palm; this would be in perfect keeping with the names of other palms like the king palm, Archontophoenix cunninghamiana, and the queen palm, Syagrus romanzoffianum.


PART II: FANTASY

Chapter Eight
Zoology in Myth-- Domestic Animals

As promised, the animal kingdom's myths will now be explored. One logical way of doing this seems to be to proceed from the known to the unknown. Humanity's domestic animals are those which have been most studied and are, therefore, the most known. And, of these, the dog has probably been domesticated the longest.(1)

The Canine in Science

According to some estimates, dogs have been companions to man for as many as 25,000 years, but a love/hate relationship between anatomically modern humans and the ancestors of the dog, which led pack lives similar to those of the communal human hunters, may be as much as 120,000 years old. This puts their period of domestication far back into the mists of time, and there is no concrete evidence of its course; semi-wild canines may have lived on the refuse of human encampments for generations before anything like what we consider a domestic dog developed. Theories of where, exactly, the dog came from also vary; some claim that the dog is nothing other than a domesticated gray wolf, Canis lupus , perhaps with some other species contributing to its make up, and others claim that another species, the golden jackal, Canis aureus , is the main ancestor. Still others insist on a fairly even blend of several species of the Canidae , the canine family, in the make up of the domestic dog.(2) Whatever the ancestry, biologists consider canids to show signs of domestication when they retain certain characteristics of puppyhood in their skeletons, dentition, etc. as adults,(3) and these first domestic dogs had branched into five major types by 6500 years ago. This is evidenced by the various differences in the fossils which have been found in association with human camp sites and settlements of the time. The first type remained rather similar to a wild wolf and may be ancestral to such breeds as the spitz, husky, and elkhound. The second type was characterized by large stout bodies and massive heads and probably resulted in the mastiffs and bulldogs. The next type was long-legged and slim, and from them came the gaze hounds. Next came an intermediate type which probably gave birth to spaniels and pointers. The last type may have given rise to the various sheepdogs.(4) Although it is claimed by some that certain surviving breeds of domestic dog are many thousands of years old, it is probably more accurate to assign their age as "from antiquity" rather than to attempt to say with authority how many thousands of years ago any individual dog with enough characteristics to be considered of a certain breed first appeared. Breeds such as the saluki, afghan, greyhound, pharaoh hound, basenji, pekingese, and a few others claim such pedigrees, but the majority of common existing breeds have been developed in modern times. A few other breeds are considered primitive, that is, "pre-specialist", dogs by some scholars, and these, too, are thought of as quite old; Australian dingoes and Asian pariah dogs, who live at the edges of human society, fall under this heading. All varieties of dog remain very closely related, and will readily cross-breed with each other as well as with the wolf.

Dogs in Myth

There is a story told by certain Native Americans about the creation of the earth and its inhabitants. Once the Great Spirit had made all manner of creatures, man and beasts, an enormous gap or canyon began to form between the man and the other creatures. Most of the creatures looked on with indifference, but, as the crevasse grew, the dog became more and more agitated, pacing back and forth along the ledge and barking and whining. As the void widened still further, the dog could stand it no longer, and he sprang across with a huge leap. From then on the dog stood beside the man as his friend and companion forever.

This story illustrates the special place that the dog holds in human mythology. The dog, unlike other domestic animals, is thought of as a willing companion, a friend, and even a co-worker and helpmate. He has chosen us in this myth, just as he may actually have done in pre-history by frequenting human trash heaps and encampments. His canine lifestyle of co-operative hunting and pack life, of life in a "hierarchical" group structure, made him ideally suited to life with a humanity which lived under similar systems. Perhaps it is the similarity between canine and human lifestyles and behavior that makes the anthropomorphism of dogs so tempting and so prevalent, both in myth and in everyday dealings with dogs.

Deified and Demonized Dogs

Dogs have certainly had their share of good and bad press, but this goes beyond certain dogs or types of dogs having their reputations raised or lowered as good companion vs. vicious killer. Over the millennia, certain mythical dogs have been raised to the level of minor gods while others have sunk to the level of devils. This blessing and cursing of dogs seems to be fairly universal, and at one time or another has taken place in most regions of the world.

In ancient China it was considered polite for a guest to inquire after the household watchdog (see Dixey, p. 3). This was not because the Chinese were a nation of dog lovers; they were not, and most dogs were valued for their utility as watchdog or kitchen ingredient alone. Instead, the dog guardian of the house was asked about as a symbolic representation of the health and prosperity of the household. A healthy, alert watchdog meant a safe and happy family. The dog became not only the family's protector and guardian against physical intruders but also the "symbolic" guardian against other evils as well. Eventually, the symbolic duties became associated with the mythical guardian dog of China, the Fu kou or shih kou , the Buddha dog or lion dog. This mythical creature seems to be a blending of two traditions of ancient Asia. The first is the symbolic role of the family dog as "spirit" guardian, and the second is the Asiatic lion as the sacred animal of Buddha. With the advent of Buddhism in China, between the first and sixth centuries A.D., myths about the Buddha and his sacred lion escort and guard made their way into Chinese culture (see Godden, p. 33), and it is at this time that the two guardian figures are thought to have been intertwined. Lion-dogs have been a big hit in China ever since; great statues of them traditionally stood guard at the entrances to buildings and tombs of ancient China, and smaller versions can still be seen for sale in Chinatowns around the world. It is interesting to note that not all Chinese valued dogs as utilitarian alone; the emperors and favored nobles took great delight in keeping what were at first called hai-pa kou (under-table dogs or what we would call toy dogs). These seem to have been active little dogs with long coats and lots of personality. Such value was eventually placed on little dogs in the various courts of East Asia that a network of trade in the form of "presentation" dogs was soon developed, and breeding stock from one court was presented to another as a token of respect. Although some theories hold that these dogs were originally developed more than two thousand years before the adoption of Buddhism in China, the little dogs began to be thought of as miniature Fu kou almost immediately upon its arrival, and their descendants, such breeds as pekingese, shih tzu, lhasa apso, and their Japanese cousin the chin (a word which means Chinese), all took on the divinity of the sacred lion-dogs in Asian myth and legend. The pekingese, eventually the exclusive property of the Chinese imperial family under pain of death, has some interesting myths told about its origins. The first is that a lioness grew enamored with a beautiful butterfly and yielded to his attentions; when she whelped, the pekingese was born and remains as noble and fearless as a lion but as delicate and graceful as a butterfly (see Godden, p. 14). The other origin myth would have it that a great lordly lion once fell in love with a marmoset, a tiny graceful monkey. He begged the Buddha to make him small and attractive to the object of his affection, and the Buddha granted his request. The pekingese, depending on the version of the myth, is either their offspring or the miniature lion himself (see Dixey, p. 20). More modern legends are also told of the pekingese. The stories would have it that puppies of the imperial breed were suckled by the wet nurses of the court, that the ownership of one by non-royals would mean excruciating tortures and execution by the imperial army, and that the first to come to the West were saved from death in the nick of time by British officers in a raid on the imperial precincts at the summer palace during the Opium War when Chinese officials meant to kill the little dogs to save them from the indignity of being taken prisoner by the British. By the way, at least one of the little dogs continued to be pampered once it came West. It was named Looty, presumably to show its method of acquire, and was presented to Queen Victoria. Although the Queen never treated the little pekingese bitch as a personal pet, she had her well taken care of in the royal kennels at Windsor and commissioned the famous canine painter, Landseer, to paint her portrait.

Moving west from East Asia, we come to the Zoroastrian or Parsi traditions. Although the dog itself is not divine here, he co-operates with the divine in the funeral rites of men, and each dying Parsi is attended by a dog whose job it is to take the dying man's soul and turn it over to the angels as well as to keep the demons at bay. According to Dale-Green (pp. 125-127), this is an ancient practice which developed over long periods of time and had many variations, and in some expressions dogs and sometimes vultures were later expected to consume the body of the deceased. This last part of the rite was also shared by Tibetan Buddhist monks, and this was thought of as the proper and respectful method of corpse disposal by both groups.

In Hindu myth there are twin four-eyed(5) dogs named Syama and Sabala, companions to the god of death. Syama is the black moon-dog who roams the night in search of the dying, and Sabala is the spotted sun-dog who does the same during the hours of daylight. The Vedas, Hindu sacred writings, state that the night and the day are "killers" of men, and the dogs are, therefore, dogs of death, according to Dale-Green (see pp. 85-86). The idea of a death/dog relationship extends beyond Asia, however.

In ancient Egypt the dog-like jackal lent its form to the god Anubis (Anpu)(6) who led the dead to their judgment before the great king of the dead, Osiris. It was Anubis and his priests who supervised every step of the preparation for the all-important funeral of an Egyptian, and it was Anubis who would weigh the heart of the dead against the feather of judgment in his underworld balance. If the heart was found lighter than the feather, it would be fed to a hideous reptilian chimera, but if the heart outweighed the feather and showed the deceased worthy, he would be accepted into the kingdom of Osiris and share in his identity. According to Dale-Green, this mythical dog was combined with the Greek god Hermes during the reign of the Ptolemies to form Hermanubis, a god who acted as messenger, guide, and granter of sexual petitions. He was worshipped in shrines called Anoubeions in great Egyptian cities such as Alexandria, and these often served as kennels for the numerous sacred dogs kept there (pp. 110-111). Still later, with the dawning of Christianity in Alexandria, it has been speculated that Anubis was once again combined with another sacred system; this time he would appear not as a Greek god but as a Christian saint. The now-baptized Anubis forms an obvious undertone to the Coptic version of the legend of St. Christopher. In this version, St. Christopher was depicted as a cynocephalic himself, that is, he would have the head of a dog and body of a man just as Anubis was portrayed in classical Egyptian myth. According to this fourth century legend, Christopher started life with the name Reprobus which means "reprobate" or "depraved" and made himself famous by eating as many people as he could. Eventually he was converted to Christianity and baptized by St. Bartholomew and St. Andrew, the Apostles, and began preaching the Gospel to many people, earning the name Christopher which means "Christ bearer". The lesson is obvious: through the saving action of God, the reprobate becomes the bearer of Christ. Christopher only begins to be shown with a human face in the West where he is depicted as carrying the Christ-child across a river, but with such a literal interpretation of Christ bearer much of the symbolism of the story is lost.(7) Because the original version of the legend seems to have been written in Egypt, scholars believe it was an attempt by Coptic Christians to include their old god, Anubis, in their new religion (see Dale-Green, pp. 177-180). Even though this seems probable, it should be noted that myths about dog-headed men don't end with Christopher. Well into the Middle Ages the world traveler, Marco Polo, heard and recorded strange rumors about a whole race of cannibalistic cynocephali living in Asia. This forms part of the wildman mythology which will be explored in a later chapter.

In ancient Greece, sacred dogs were fairly common. As in Parsi myth and practice, they were generally servants to the gods and not divine themselves. The ancient Greeks had an active dog cult at some of their temples where the dogs played messengers to the gods and acted as healers of the sick; this was not an original idea, however, because the Egyptians believed the jackal-headed Anubis to be the physician to the gods in addition to those duties already mentioned. According to Dale-Green (pp. 133-136) in writing about the Greek customs:

"In ancient Greece, Apollo the sun-god was the supreme god of healing, and the dog was sacred to Apollo... Immediately below the Mountain of the Rising Dog was Epidauros-- the centre of the cult of Asklepios, Apollo's son, who was known as the Divine Physician and God of Medicine. The temples of the Greek god of Medicine were not only places of worship but also health resorts. (...) Dogs were kept in the temples of Asklepios at Epidauros, Athens, Rome, Piraeus, and at Lebene in Crete. They were believed to have a presentiment of epidemics, and they took part in the religious ritual. (...) Slabs found within the precincts of the temple at Epidauros, inscribed with the names of people cured by Asklepios and the malady from which each had suffered, included the following:

Thuson of Hermione, a blind boy, had his eyes licked in the daytime
by one of the dogs about the temple, and departed cured.

A dog cured a boy from Aigina. He had a growth on his neck. When
he had come to the god, one of the sacred dogs healed him while he
was awake with its tongue and made him well."

As was already noted in terms of the founding of their city and the presence of the temple of Asklepios (also called Aesculapius) in Rome, the ancient Romans also had myths including divine and sacred canines. In addition to the she-wolf and Asklepios' healing dogs, the Romans had their lares or house gods. These house gods were frequently described as spiritual guardians of the family and had the same characteristics as good watchdogs. They guarded the family with the same sort of distrust of the stranger and fierce tenacity as shown by the protector of the Chinese family, the Fu kou .

In contrast to the sacred dog is the evil or demonic dog. Here the dog's darker, crueler, more vicious nature is emphasized, and we find both dogs as demons and as companions to demons and devils as well. Demonic dogs can be single dark specters or can run in hunting packs.

The single demonic dog myth seems to have much in common throughout Europe.(8) This dog is generally described as black with enormous eyes; he will worry nighttime travelers by brushing past, howling in a ghastly fashion, occasionally by riding his victims piggy-back style, or by running around the human target in smaller and smaller circles. Just in case the terrified human doesn't get the point, the dog can expand in size until he towers over his victim like a building. This type of demon is the harbinger of death or misfortune or is sometimes the watchful guardian of lost treasures, such treasures being thought of as belonging to Satan. Such hellish dogs go by many names. In Britain, the name Black Shuck(9) is widespread for the demonic dog, but the names Trash, Striker, the Mauthe Doog , the Gwyllgi , and the cu sith are also used in various locales.

In Goethe's version of the Faust tale, Mephistopheles the malignant spirit appears as a black poodle with eyes the size of saucers in scene II, but there is an interesting exchange between Faust and another character, Wagner, as to the character of the beast; while Faust sees the demonic nature of the dog, Wagner sees only an ordinary pet who has lost his master and circles about looking for him. This shows the importance of interpretation when it comes to the human evaluation of the dog, or anything else for that matter. In speaking of interpretation, there are two very interesting tales that come from neighboring English towns which are told about the same night, August 4, 1577. The events of that date certainly beg interpretation; a purely rational man may find nothing more than some unusually rough weather, while a more emotional one could find something vastly more sinister.

It seems that there was a terrible storm and many of the local folk were in the church at the town of Blythburgh, Suffolk, praying for an end to the tempest. All at once a great burst of energy roared through the wall of the church, making a great hole which extended a yard below the grade on which the church was built. The force of the blast knocked all the people on that side of the church over. Before it was over, a fiery fiend claimed three lives, scorched many bystanders, burned out the door of the church, and ruined its steeple and bells. Afterwards the blazing whirlwind headed across the marsh toward the town of Bungay. Although the fiend was at first described as the devil himself, modern locals claim it was none other than Black Shuck.

The second tale begins with the arrival of the storm at Bungay. Here, too, the locals were in the town church praying for deliverance from the storm. Black Shuck has always been the villain of this story, however; according to a tract published shortly after the event, eyewitnesses saw a great black dog giving off fearful flashes of fire, which they realized may have been, "the divil in such a likeness," running up and down the church aisles. Also according to the sixteenth century account, the dog-devil streaked through the congregation with tremendous speed, and, "passing between two parishioners kneeling in prayer, it wrung their necks and they died immediately." Another man was burnt until his skin seemed to be made of scorched leather.

These stories are not unique, however. There are at least two other accounts of a black dog attacking a church during a thunder storm: in 857 a bishop was celebrating the Eucharist at Treves when the bell tower was struck by lightening and a huge black dog ran circles around the altar; at Messina in Sicily a black dog was seen to enter the cathedral and destroy the sacred vessels on the altar in 1341.

Near Newgate prison in London, there is a pub called The Black Dog, and there is an old legend which goes with it. It seems that in the thirteenth century there was a terrible famine across England, and the prisoners in Newgate were starving and had turned to cannibalism in order to survive. A certain scholar had been arrested on suspicion of witchcraft, and when he was committed to the prison for holding, he was promptly eaten by the prisoners as "passing good meate." From then on these prisoners were tormented by visions of a huge black dog which growled and threatened to attack them. Shortly thereafter the warden was murdered and the prisoners fled, but according to the legend, the black dog pursued and punished the guilty cannibals. In the seventeenth century a pamphlet was published which gives an account of the ghost dog which preyed upon the minds of the worst offenders in the prison, and when the death penalty was to be put into effect, the dog roamed the prison yard and was said to ride beside the driver of the cart when the condemned were taken to Tyburn to be hanged.

Other more ancient myths about hellish dogs can be seen with the Greek stories of Cerberus, the multi-headed dog which guarded the gate to the land of the dead, and Orthrus, his lesser-known brother, which guarded the ogre Geryon's herd of beautiful red cattle from thieves. In these myths the descriptions of the dogs as multi-headed may be another way of saying that they were impossible to get by without being seen; after all, there was always at least one unsleeping head to keep watch. According to myth, both of these watchdogs were undone by the hero Hercules while performing his famous labors. A third Greek dog, although not evil in itself, became an irresistible temptation and caused great pain and punishment to befall two thieves. The dog was a golden mastiff forged by Hephaestus to watch over the infant Zeus in Crete. Later, the dog stood guard at Zeus' shrine at Dicte. It was stolen by a thief who gave it over to his friend for safekeeping. The friend immediately came down with a severe case of gold fever himself and plotted to keep the dog. Zeus searched for the precious dog in a rage and eventually asked Hermes to conduct an investigation and to recover the dog at all costs. When the dog was finally found, both thieves were punished with great torments. In addition to these myths, the goddess Hecate of the underworld and her daughter Scylla, later partnered with the whirlpool Charybdis in the straits of Messina, were both known as bitches; Artemis kept fierce hounds capable of carrying away live lions, and Ares held the leashes of the horrible dogs of war.

In the far East, sorcerers and witches kept inu-gami or dog-gods.(10) These dogs, although known as gods, are evil through and through. They were used to "hound" enemies, sometimes to the death, and were created by the malevolent magicians by starving a dog to death and then by praying to and appeasing the dog's spirit. After this the dog's spirit became the sorcerer's servant, and such spirit dogs were tied to the sorcerer's family and passed from one generation to the next.

In the stories of popular folklore there is no more hellish hound than the wolf itself. In Norse mythology there was the wolf demon, Fenris. Chained up by the gods, he would escape at the end of the world. According to the story, he would lope across the landscape with his jaws opened wide, his upper fangs scraping the vault of the sky and his lower ones raking the surface of the earth. In the end he would defeat Odin, the king of the gods, and would devour him; and Fenris' offspring, the wolves Skoll and Hati, would eat the sun and moon. Meanwhile, the wolf-dog, Garm, who was bound to the gates of the underworld by the gods, would break free, leaving the gates unguarded and the prisoners able to escape.

The last individual dog demon constitutes the zenith of the anthropomorphic dog. This "demon" is the lycanthrope or the cynanthrope.(11) In fact, there are different legends which accompany these labels. The lycanthrope, also called a werewolf or wolf-man, has been depicted by Hollywood as a pathetic individual who has caught a "disease" by being bitten by a wolf or another werewolf. Under this curse the individual changes form, into something between a wolf and a man in structure, with the rising of the full moon and wanders about slaughtering and eating anyone who crosses his path. The traditional Italian tale about becoming a lupo di notte, a "wolf of the night", simply by sleeping under the light of the full moon, seems to go along with this version of lycanthropy. In more common traditional myths, the lycanthrope is a sorcerer who has discovered how to transform himself into a wolf, virtually at will; he seems to be indistinguishable from other wolves while doing this but retains his human intellect and desires and uses his form to secretly accomplish those desires. The cynanthrope accomplishes the same goal in the guise of a dog.

According to Barry Lopez on pp. 226-236, persecution of the wolf, especially in the Middle Ages when werewolf hunting was prevalent, was really an exercise in self-loathing. The goodness shown by such mythological characters as the Roman she-wolf, which nursed a future nation, was admirable. The seeming hubris of the killer of the flock was worthy of hatred. But, the wolf came to symbolically represent what was good and evil about humanity, and any love or hatred shown toward the wolf was really a thinly veiled self-love or self-hatred. It seems that what is lupine in man's nature, the wolf suffers for. In fact, similarities between human and wolf behavior, rather than causing human compassion toward the wolf, have been the wolf's downfall, and superstitions which blend man and wolf natures have only compounded the wolf's problems. With wolf-man superstitions, too, there is a link with the wildman myths, and the giant, naked wildman of European folklore, who acts on his every passion and lives in the dark forest between human settlements along with all of the social outcasts of the day, is a representation of the persistent psychological urges of medieval man. The wildman in turn is represented by the wolf, symbol of all things wild, of all things beyond the society of man. It is not only in Europe, however, that the werebeast supposedly roamed. Many cultures had some belief in "shapeshifting", and such creatures as African werehyenas, Japanese werefoxes, South American werejaguars, Norwegian werebears, wander the folklore landscape right along with Native American and European werewolves.

One European account of werewolves is passed on by Giraldus Cambrensis, who we met in a previous chapter. Writing in 1188 A.D., he retold an Irish tale. It seems that there was a certain priest traveling along a road through a wood between Ulster and Meath, and he was approached by a wolf who spoke to him in human language. The wolf begged the priest to come and give his wife the Last Rites because she was very ill. On seeing the man's reluctance to follow, the wolf explained that he and his wife were the victims of a curse by St. Natalis on their home village of Ossory. Every seven years two people from the village had to wear wolf skins and live as wolves until the end of the seven year period. On hearing this the priest reluctantly followed. After a short walk, they come upon a she-wolf resting under a tree, but when the priest knelt down beside her he could not bring himself to anoint the grizzled wolf, fearing he would be committing sacrilege by using the sacred chrism on an animal. The male wolf seemed to understand the priest's hesitation, and reaching down he tugged at the she-wolf's hide. This exposed the thin frame of an old woman beneath the fur, and the priest anointed her. The male wolf thanked the priest and promised to reward him when he had lived out his seven years as a wolf.

In keeping with the blurring of the line between the canine and the human, there are a number of labels which are worthy of mention. A man who is a womanizer is often called a "wolf". As was seen earlier, a prostitute was known as a "she-wolf" in ancient Rome. A short-tempered or "snappy" woman is often called "bitchy", and a man who has a satisfying sex life is called a sly or lucky "dog". On the other hand, enemies are frequently referred to as "dogs", especially in Asia.

In addition to the individual demon dogs, there are whole packs of hell hounds to be found in the tales of Europe. In England the pack is part of what is called the Wild Hunt. The leader of the hunt is the Teutonic god Woden, called Odin by the Norse myths. According to the stories, Woden rides to hounds on dark and stormy nights, and the baying of the curs can be heard over the raging wind. Any laundry left on the line will be shredded by the hunt, and any open cottage door will be passed through, the contents of the cottage ransacked and anything remotely edible promptly swallowed by the pack, including cold ashes on the hearth. Occasionally, one of the dogs becomes separated from the pack and is stranded in the cottage until the hunt returns, giving the occupants much cause for alarm. In France the same stories are told, but there the hunt is called the Chasse Hennequin or the Chasse du Diable and the leader of the hunt is the devil, joined by unrepentant fornicators from among the clergy and religious. In Wales the dogs are called the Cwn Annwn or the Cwn y Wybr , the Dogs of Hell or the Dogs of the Sky, and they belong to the King of Hell, Annwn. Throughout the British Isles the hounds are variously known as wisht hounds (uncanny or melancholy hounds), Yeth hounds (heathen hounds), Gabriel hounds (said to be hunted by the angel), and Gabble Retchet (the souls of unbaptized infants doomed to haunt the earth).

One last interesting account records an event which supposedly took place in the twelfth century, during the reign of Henry II. Townspeople along the banks of the River Wye heard a great tumult with shouts and the blowing of hunting horns and the baying of hounds. Since it was the middle of the day, the people were unafraid and went out to see the course of the hunt. When they arrived at a certain meadow, they saw a great hunting party, and many of the townspeople recognized dead friends among the huntsmen. When they tried to talk to the riders, the whole hunt began to rise into the air and eventually disappeared into the river.

The Cat

The domestic cat descends from one or more of the three subspecies of wildcat found in North Africa, Asia, and Europe. In scientific nomenclature this cat is known as Felis sylvestris , and the aforementioned three types go by the added subspecific names of lybica, asiatica, and sylvestris respectively. The first evidence for the domestication of the cat comes with the agricultural civilizations of the Near East and Egypt which flourished because of the cultivation of certain cereal grains.(12)

With farming came a more stable food supply and the advantage of living in larger groups, and with these came villages, cities, and civilization, but the animal spirits of prehistoric animism remained. Ancient Egypt maintained an extensive kingdom-wide system of temples dedicated to the various local gods which had taken on national importance. The vast majority of these gods were depicted as animals with human bodies or even sometimes simply as animals. There was Horus the hawk, Hathor the cow, Anubis the jackal, already mentioned. There were also other sacred animals that played a part in Egyptian mythology such as the vulture, the asp, the hippo, the crocodile, the dung beetle, and too many others to list. The cat was one very important object of veneration by the ancient Egyptians. With the construction of the great granaries of Egypt in the so-called agricultural revolution came the semi-domestication of the cat which was attracted to the abundance of mice living in them. The cat was depicted in Egyptian art from about 4500 years ago but was certainly present long before. This important animal, which guarded the very sustenance of the people, was worshipped as a protector and fertility symbol. The Egyptian temple system was run by an enormous class of priests who made regular and apparently huge ritual sacrifices to the gods of their temples. Thousands of young, strangled cats were mummified and have been discovered at ritual sites sacred to the cat goddess, Bastet (Bast). By far the most important of these sites is Bubastis in the Nile delta. Bastet was a consort of the god Ptah, the Egyptian creator god, as was Sekhmet, the lioness goddess. Sekhmet is sometimes erroneously depicted as Bastet's ferocious alter-ego. Although both were said to have been created from the fire in the eye of the sun god, Ra, as avengers and punishers of evil, Bastet's job was the slow torture of the wicked while Sekhmet's job was swift and lethal justice.

Interestingly, for a short time a pharaoh named Akenhaten, the father-in-law of Tutankhamun, disbanded the priests and closed the temples. He made himself the only priest of the one god, Aten, the disc of the sun. This was probably the first time monotheism was ever tried.(13) However, rather than giving Akenhaten credit for piety in the presence of his one god, it is just as easy to interpret this as a clever political move to limit the priestly power over the royal house and the government of ancient Egypt. When Akenhaten died, so did his religious reforms, and the powerful animal-spirit priests reasserted their authority over Egypt.

So, in contrast to the dog's 25,000 year relationship with humanity based on his wild ancestors' willingness to scavenge scraps of hunted animals, the cat is a relative new-comer, and it wasn't until the agricultural stage was set that cats and men saw any benefit in or attraction to one another. It is, therefore, claimed that cats aren't really domesticated in the same way as some other animals are and that the limited domestication which the cat has undergone has left it almost intact as a wild animal. As evidence, anatomists point out that the cat is physically closer to its wild ancestors than is the dog or other domestics. Roger Caras (p. 90) suggests that there is a real difference between most domestic animals and their ancestors, a difference not only of appearance but of intelligence and of behavior as well. As evidence, he shows that of feral animals (i.e.: animals that have "gone native" and returned to the wild) only the cat's behavior is identical to that of the wildcats from which it descends. While the dog's brain is some 1/3 smaller in proportion to the wolf's,(14) this is not the case with the cat. Cat and wildcat brains are proportionately the same size, and this may reveal only a limited extent of domestication among felines.

Despite the theory that cats are only slightly removed from their wild ancestors when compared to some other domestic animals, the lives of cats and humans are deeply interconnected, especially when it comes to myth. The cat's "wild" independence and aloofness may well contribute to its mystique. When a cat interacts with humanity it certainly seems to be on the cat's terms, but this exercise of seeming discernment on the part of the cat makes some people suspicious. It is rare to see someone who is ambivalent toward the cat as the cat usually sparks strong emotions one way or the other. In Asia the cat has long been venerated and respected.

In Siam, modern Thailand, cats live in Buddhist temple precincts and once lived in the royal palaces. There is a legend about a beautiful Siamese princess and her devoted cat. One day the princess went down to the palace pool to bathe as it was a hot and sultry day. Her little siamese cat followed her as it often did. When the princess arrived at the pool she realized that she had forgotten a box in which to put her exquisite rings. She looked down at the little cat which looked back at her, twisting and twitching its thin tail this way and that. It came to the princess that her cat was offering to mind her rings on its tail. At once the happy princess placed her rings on the cat's tail which then kinked in a peculiar way so that the rings would safely remain where they had been placed. According to the story, this explains why the best siamese cats have kinks near the tips of their tails. Another myth involves the blue-eyed and golden coated birman cat of Thailand.(15) Although cats are held in high esteem throughout Asian cultures, the Thai Buddhists claim the prize. Their precious siamese cats are said to be cross-eyed from staring intently at the Buddha in meditation, and their birman cats are said to have their beautiful coloring as a reward. According to medieval Thai Buddhist philosophy a great spiritual teacher who died would have his spirit sent to occupy the body of a temple cat until it too died. When the famous monk and teacher Mun-Ha died, his soul entered one of the cats at the temple. Within the week the perfectly healthy cat was also dead, and his feline descendants would wear the raiment of gold fur forever as a reward for and sign of his self-sacrifice.

In Arabia cats also fared pretty well. Although Moslems are known for their prejudice against all dogs but the valuable gaze hounds such as the saluki, at least some are great cat lovers. The prophet Mohammed himself owned a cat toward which he showed a great deal of respect. On one occasion Mohammed had been sitting for some time, and his little cat, called Muezza, had fallen asleep on his large sleeve. Rather than disturb the sleeping cat, Mohammed slit his garment and left cat and sleeve where they had been and stood up without disturbing his beloved pet. In another instance Mohammed saw the cat drink from a certain water source and went over and used the water to ritually purify himself; although much could be made of this, watching the cat drink is not a bad criterion for choosing clean water as cats are often more picky about such things than some other animals. Despite the respect that cats enjoyed in many places, they often didn't do as well in medieval and renaissance Europe.

Possibly because of its independent and mysterious nature, the cat has often been distrusted by Europeans. The cat has been associated with papism by Protestants and with heresy by Catholics, and it has been linked to witchcraft by both. There are tales of cats being tried and hanged for worshipping the devil or for helping those who did. Both dogs and cats could be the familiar spirits of a witch; these did the witch's will and in turn sucked blood from the witch's body to keep their powers strong. In the 1600's a woman named Elizabeth Clark was accused of witchcraft and admitted to having several familiars, including dogs named Jarmara and Vinegar Tom and a cat named Pyewackett (see Dale-Green, p. 79 and plate 3f). Even Queen Elizabeth I who presided over a grand blossoming of English culture joined in the hatred of and cruelty toward cats. Apparently, she once had a large effigy of the pope made of straw and stuffed it to the brim with cats; she then set the whole thing ablaze.
Perhaps because of the cat's identification with the fertility goddess Bastet or because of the sexual undercurrents of the witch/familiar relationship or simply because of the very vocal nature of the domestic cat's sex life, a sexually promiscuous woman can be labeled a "cat", and a free and easy attitude about granting sexual favors is called "catting around". A sexually overactive man is sometimes called a "tom cat". By the way, annoying feline vocalizations, whether of a sexual nature or not, are appropriately labeled "caterwauling", a word that comes from the Low German katerwaulen which means "cat's shriek".

The Horse

Even before its domestication, the horse probably played a major role in the myths and rituals of humanity. In the Upper Paleolithic period, as was already mentioned in an earlier chapter, men painted accurate and beautiful portraits of the wild horse along with other animals (the mammoth, the rhinoceros, the stag, the aurochs or wild bull, etc.) on cave walls. This may have been an attempt to secure a successful hunt through animistic ritual. The domestic horse seems to have descended from two wild types of the species Equus ferus . The stout, muscular, and shaggy ancestor depicted on the cave walls of Europe and the more slender, graceful one from warmer climes came together to form most of the modern breeds. The two are known as cold bloods and hot bloods, giving birth to the large, slow plow horses and the slender, swift thoroughbreds respectively. Horses with a fairly even mixture of the two, such as the hunters, are known as warm bloods.

In the ancient myths, horses made an appearance. One example of a mythical horse is the winged Pegasus. Pegasus is the bearer of the thunderbolts of Zeus. He was born of Medusa as she died, but even so, he seems to have been of average character for a Greek horse, throwing who he chose and obeying who he chose like any other Greek plug.(16) Despite the reputation of the horses of the time, both the Greeks and the Romans spent a lot of time around horses at the hippodromes and circuses. The Greek version of the chariot race, far more important than the racing of individual horses with riders, took place on a rectangular course with rows of pillars at each end. The charioteers raced toward one end, maneuvered their chariots and teams of two or four horses abreast around a pillar and raced back.

In Rome, chariot racing became very popular with crowds of 200,000 in attendance, leading to at least one riot at Constantinople during the period of the Eastern Empire. Racing factions were formed, and horses raced under a certain faction's colors, just as is the case with Siena's Palio race today. In the ancient world, hot bloods from North Africa were popular, but the Greeks and Romans preferred cross-bred horses of mixed type. This may have given Hannibal his most effective weapon against Rome as his North African horses are said to have been much more swift, maneuverable, and obedient. Alexander the Great was an admirer of such good horses and, according to legend, is said to have paid as much as 100 times the cost of an average horse for his personal mount, Bucephalus.

In Greek mythology, Glaucus, the king of the city which would later be known as Corinth, fed his beautiful team of chariot horses on human flesh in order to cause them to be fierce in battle. This angered the gods who avenged Glaucus' human victims with a cruel twist of fate. The gods caused the king to be thrown from his chariot. At once his beautiful team of fierce horses sprang on him, and he was ripped to shreds by them and devoured.

There was a youth in the same town named Bellerophon, and Bellerophon wanted one thing more than anything else in life. He coveted the winged horse Pegasus. Although he thought of little else, he could not find a way to capture the creature. Finally he told his troubles to a local seer who advised him to sleep in the temple of Athena and that perhaps she would give him some help, as the gods and goddesses often spoke to supplicants in dreams. He took the seer's advice and went off to the temple to put his petition before the goddess. As he slept, he saw before him the great, gray-eyed Athena holding a bridal of purest gold.(17) When he awoke the goddess was gone, but the sparkling bridal remained before him. He took it and went in search of Pegasus without delay. He found the winged horse at a famous spring of water, Pirene, just outside the city, and he approached cautiously. As Bellerophon came closer and closer with the magic bridal, Pegasus never stirred, and Bellerophon was easily able to place the bridal over the great beast's head. From that moment, the winged horse obeyed his every command, and he was able to ride him across the sky. It seems that Bellerophon's happiness was short-lived, however, because he accidentally killed his brother. He went to a neighboring king who absolved him and wined and dined him. When the king's wife showed romantic interest toward him, Bellerophon refused, and this outraged the unfaithful wife. She told her husband that the interest had been on Bellerophon's side and that he should punish him without delay. Although the king wanted to punish his guest, he knew that this was against the rules of hospitality and that Zeus would not tolerate such behavior. He then came up with a scheme which would take care of Bellerophon without himself having to raise a hand against him. He composed a letter to a friend and fellow king detailing the situation and asking the foreign king to do the dirty work. All he had to do then was to ask Bellerophon to deliver the letter to the foreign king. This he did, and Bellerophon promptly agreed.

When the youth arrived at the palace of the foreign king, he was treated as an emissary from the first king and was again wined and dined for several days before the recipient of the letter bothered to read it. Now, his hands were tied as well, but he came upon the idea of asking Bellerophon to perform certain tasks in the hopes that one would do him in, taking the foreign king off the hook with his friend. What would have been impossible tasks for other men were very easily performed while sitting on the back of Pegasus, however. Before he was through, Bellerophon had killed the Greek version of the chimera, composed of parts of the lion, the goat, and the serpent, had defeated the Solymi, a group of mighty warriors, and had defeated the Amazons, men-hating, warring women. With that, even the foreign king was impressed and gave up, offering Bellerophon his own daughter's hand in marriage.

All went well until one day, when Bellerophon was feeling particularly full of himself, he decided that he had proven himself worthy to visit high Olympus, seat of the gods. He mounted Pegasus' wide back and started toward the gods' home, but before he had come near it, the winged horse saw his folly and threw him off. Bellerophon, realizing his vain foolishness, was condemned to wander the earth alone, despised by gods and men alike.

Finally, we come to the centaurs. These were Greek wildmen, and they were horse bodied from the waist down. Although they are often portrayed as brutish and bloodthirsty hunters and unthinking sensualists, at least one among their number, Chiron, was known for his wisdom and learning. In fact, Chiron was often called upon to raise and educate the sons of the great, including Apollo's son Asklepios, and it was from Chiron that Asklepios first learned the healing arts.

Cattle

All domesticated cattle, whether of the meat breeds or milk breeds, descend from the same wild ancestor, the aurochs or urus. In scientific name, the beast was Bos primigenius , the Eurasian wild bull which had large horns, massive frame, and evil temper. This dangerous creature no longer exists; it has been extinct since the last specimens were killed in Poland in the seventeenth century. It also resists attempts to recreate it by "breeding back" from the domestic breeds thought to be most like it. It had a wide range throughout Europe and Asia and was known to cultures throughout both continents. In Babylon it was known as the re'em and is featured on the Ishtar Gate, adding to the mystery of the unicorn legend which will be looked at later. By the time Egyptian art was in full bloom, three breeds of domestic cattle were being depicted there. A major distinguishing feature between the three was that one breed had enormous, heavy horns, the second had small horns, and the third was polled or naturally hornless.

In Egyptian mythology, there was the very early goddess Hathor (Het-heru, Het-hert). Her name means the "house of Horus" or the "house above" in reference to her as a sky goddess. She is often depicted as a cow with dark blue skin covered in golden stars or as a beautiful woman wearing a headdress composed of two cow's horns with the sun disk between them. Her shrine site was at Dandarah where she was honored as a model of femininity. As the Egyptian goddess of love, festivity, joy, art, fertility, and childbirth she was linked with the goddess Aphrodite in Ptolemaic times.

Another image of the bovine in ancient Egypt was Apis (Hapi), the bull god of Memphis. Apis was said to be the physical manifestation of the creator god, Ptah. His conception occurred when his mother, Isis, was hit by lightning. Apis was thought to be incarnated on earth by a black bull with a white blaze on his forehead. The priests of Apis observed the behavior of the living bull-god in order to predict the future, and when an Apis bull died, he was mummified and buried at the Serpeum, the shrine of Apis. His priests then searched for another bull calf with the correct markings to take his place. The pharaohs were said to share in Apis' strength and fertility. In art, the god Apis was depicted as a bull with the disk of the sun between his horns. An earlier god, also named Hapi, is sometimes blended with the bull-god. He was the river god responsible for the annual flood of the Nile each year, and so was a god of both fertility and plenty.

Ancient Greece also had its cattle myths. In addition to the red cattle of Geryon, there was also a special herd kept by King Phylacus. But, the two most important myths are the transformation myths involving two of Zeus' romantic conquests. These are the myths of Io and Europa.

Once, Zeus fell in love with a lovely young princess named Io. He sent her many messages in her sleep all designed to show his attraction to her. Finally the young girl agreed to a meeting, and Zeus spread a cloak of cloud over the earth to keep what he was about to do secret from his wife, Hera. This, of course, made the rightly suspicious Hera go in search of her unfaithful husband. As the clouds dispersed at her approach, Zeus quickly changed Io into a white heifer. Hera knew something wasn't right about Zeus' claim that the calf had just sprung up from the ground as he was passing, and asked for the heifer as a gift. Zeus could not refuse without drawing even more suspicion on himself. Hera gave Io over to Argus, the hundred-eyed watchman, for safekeeping. Zeus sent Hermes to kill Argus and to set Io free, and Hermes disguised himself as a simple shepherd for the task. Hermes began to tell the watchman story after story, but only some eyes would sleep while others remained watchful. Finally, Hermes hit upon a tale which did the trick, and all of Argus' eyes closed at the same time. This was the opportunity that he was waiting for, and he slew Argus at once. As Io wandered off, Hera came to find her watchman dead. As a reward for his service unto death, she placed his eyes on the plumage of her sacred bird, the peacock. Next, Hera created a biting fly which she sent to drive Io mad. Io was chased by the fly until she reached the Caucasus peak where Prometheus had been imprisoned for helping men. Here Prometheus predicted that she would one day be happy and that she would bear a son to Zeus and that one of his descendants would eventually set Prometheus free. This descendent was to be Hercules.

The other myth, that of Europa, begins with a young girl gathering flowers into a basket which was decorated with scenes from the story of Io. One would think that this would make an end to any romantic intentions on the part of Zeus as far as this girl was concerned, but it did not. Here again, Zeus was in love with a mortal girl. To be safe, this time Zeus disguised himself by changing into a great chestnut-colored bull with a silver circle on his brow and wonderfully curved horns. The bull lowed in a sweet voice and smelled of heavenly perfumes. He offered Europa his broad back, and she climbed on; at once the bull was off and leapt over the great sea with the frightened princess holding tight. She began to question the bull as to his identity, which Zeus revealed along with his love for her. When they arrived at Crete, the island sacred to Zeus, she conceived brave sons from him.

Finally, there is the role of the bull in the Mithraic mystery religion. The name Mithras was associated with a very ancient god of Iraq, and it has been assumed that the Roman mystery religion was based on his worship. At any rate, he was a sun god and the winter solstice, the shortest day of the year, was sacred to him as the feast of the unconquerable sun; this feast was later taken over by Christians to celebrate the birth of Christ, the Light of the World. Secret rituals of Mithras were performed in underground chambers called mithraea or spelaea which could hold twenty-five or thirty worshippers at a time. Although what happened in these shrines is unknown, they were usually decorated with a scene known as the tauroctony . This scene depicted the slaying of a bull by the god Mithras watched by a dog, a serpent, and a scorpion. For years, it was assumed by scholars that the Iraqi myth which corresponds to the scene had been lost. However, recent research has revealed that the positions of the figures in the scene correspond to the astronomical positions of the constellations Taurus, Canis Major, Hydra, and Scorpio, and it is known that astrology played some part in this religion.

Goats and Sheep

Next, there are two domestic herd animals which frequently appear together in the stories of the cultures of the Middle East, especially of Israel. They seem to have been kept in large mixed flocks in that area. Goats are thought to descend from the Bezoar wild goat (Capra aegagrus ). Sheep have three probable ancestors, the Asiatic moufflon (Ovis orientalis ), the Urial sheep (Ovis vignei ), and the argali or Marco Polo sheep (Ovis ammon ).(18) According to some experts, goats and/or sheep may well vie with the dog for the title of longest domesticated animal. There is a different problem, however, in that much of the archeological material which is being used for species identification purposes was damaged by human butchering and cooking fires. To add to the problem, those bones which are most likely to be found in the kitchen waste of these archeological sights are the ones which appear very similar in domestic goats and sheep, especially those of unknown breed or type; these are the bones of the legs, typical of roasted joints of meat. With this sort of difficulty, we may never know for certain which species, goat or sheep, was domesticated earlier at various sites.

In ancient Egypt, Amun (Ammon) was a god of the sky and god of the sun. His name meant "the hidden one", and he was the head of the Egyptian pantheon, especially in his combined form Amun-Ra, which adds the attributes of another sun god, Ra, to his own. Under this combined name he is king of the gods and creator who brought earth and sky out of his very thoughts. When he is shown in human form, he is a blue-skinned, bearded man with long stylized plumes on his head, but he was also occasionally depicted as a human figure with the head of a horned ram, a symbol of sexual power. Still, in his role as a virility god, he was called Min (Menu) and was shown as a man with a flail and an erect penis. However, in later myths he was said to be, "hidden of aspect, mysterious of form," and he was considered invisible yet omnipresent. His cult flourished at his temples at Karnak and Luxor. Both the ram and the goose were sacred to him.

In Greece, myths which mention sheep and goats abound, and both animals have been a part of the Mediterranean way of life since pre-historic times. Perhaps the most striking of the myths is that of the golden fleece. A king wished to divorce his wife and marry another. This he did, and the former wife became afraid for the lives of her children. It seems she was right to fear as the new wife wanted to assure the crown for any son she might have herself. The new wife hatched a plot to have the first wife's son killed. The way she did this was quite underhanded; first she ruined all the seed grain in the stores by parching it, ensuring that nothing would grow. When the seed failed to sprout, a messenger was sent to the oracle for advice. The messenger was bribed by the new wife to return with the message that the oracle said the sacrifice of the young prince would stop a famine in the land. The king reluctantly agreed, and all was prepared for the slaughter of the innocent prince. As the sacrifice was about to take place, Hermes heard the first wife's prayers and sent a golden-coated ram to free the prince, Phrixus, and to take him and his sister to safety. The miraculous ram descended from the heavens and took the children away just as their father was about to have his son destroyed.(19) The golden ram flew off with the two children on his back; unfortunately the sister, Helle, fell into the sea, giving the Hellespont its name. Phrixus, however, arrived safely at Colchis on the Black Sea. Although the people were fierce and war-like, the golden ram won the young prince entrance into Colchis society. When the prince came of age, the king of Colchis even offered him a daughter's hand in marriage. The prince slaughtered the golden ram as a thanksgiving sacrifice to Zeus and gave its golden fleece to the king.

Now Phrixus had an uncle king who had been cheated out of his kingdom, and the king's son, Jason, was sent away by the king for safety's sake. The usurper of the kingdom sent for advice to the oracle who told him to beware a man with one sandal. Meanwhile, Jason grew and returned to his father's kingdom to claim it for himself. He came to the city marketplace wearing only one sandal. When the usurper heard about this he went and questioned Jason who told him who he was and that although the usurper could keep anything that he had acquired as king, Jason wanted the crown back. The usurper agreed on the condition that Jason go and retrieve the golden fleece and so return the now dead Phrixus' spirit to Greece. Jason drew together the greatest heroes of Greece and set out at once. After many adventures the heroic crew of the Argo arrived at Colchis with Jason, their leader. The goddesses Hera and Aphrodite were on Jason's side and caused the king of Colchis' daughter, Medea a powerful sorceress, to fall in love with him. With her aide, another story in itself, Jason was able to flee Colchis with both the fleece and Medea in his care.

When Jason arrived at his father's kingdom, he discovered that the usurper had caused the death of his father and mother. Medea gave Jason his revenge. She told the usurper's daughters that she could make the old young once more. To prove it, she slew an old ram, cut him up and placed the pieces into a boiling pot. When she began to recite an incantation, a lamb sprang from the pot and ran away. Medea said that she would help the daughters rejuvenate anyone that they wanted. Of course the daughters wanted to make the aging usurper young, and while he slept they slew him and cut up his body and put the pieces in a boiling pot. When they turned to Medea for the incantation, she was gone, having fled the land with Jason.

Although most of the Greek gods were portrayed as physically idealized versions of humans, the god Pan was an exception. Pan had goat's horns and ears and from the waist down was made like a goat, right down to the cloven hoofs. This minor god was in charge of wild places and woods, and was a sort of patron for goatherds and shepherds. He was a superb musician who played the reed pipes, one type of which bears his name. He played so the wood nymphs might dance and was portrayed as always in love with, but rejected by, one or another of them. He was the leader of a race of beings which looked like him called satyrs, wildmen who, like the centaurs, were known for sexual excess. Roman mythology also had these beings; here they were known as fauns. Strange noises in wild places, especially at night, were often attributed to Pan, and his name gives us the English word "panic" which was the typical reaction to the unknown noises. By way of sexual terminology, the name for these wildmen has given us the word "satyr" which is a label for a lecher, and the word "satyriasis" means an excessive and uncontrollable sexual appetite in men.

Also from classical Greek myth, there is the story of Polyphemus and Odysseus. There was a beautiful land were grapes grew unplanted and grain could be harvested without the slightest labor in cultivating or planting the fields. Here, too, was grazing land for any number of goats and sheep. This wondrous land, in later stories identified as Sicily, was given to a race of giant workmen called the Cyclopes or the "wheel-eyed" by Zeus. In exchange, the workmen ran forges and made thunderbolts for the great storm god. Despite the easy life which the huge, one-eyed Cyclopes enjoyed, they remained fierce and bloodthirsty monsters. One day Odysseus and his men landed on the shore of the enchanted land on their way home from the Trojan War. They were amazed by the plenty they saw and decided to rest there before continuing their journey. Taking a large skin filled with strong wine with which to barter, Odysseus and twelve of his men went off to explore. They found a large cave which contained many pens of lambs and kids, jugs of milk, and wheels of cheese; once they had eaten their fill, they decided to await the return of the shepherds and promptly fell asleep. Instead of a group of human shepherds, Odysseus was startled to see one gigantic shepherd driving the sheep and goats into the cave. Once all were in, the giant, called Polyphemus, closed the entrance to the cave with a huge boulder. When Polyphemus realized he was not alone, he demanded to know the identity of the intruders. Odysseus, thinking quickly said he was called "no-man". Odysseus began to tell Polyphemus that they were under Zeus' protection, but this only angered the giant who seized two of the men and, tearing them apart, ate them. This gruesome spectacle was repeated in the morning and again the following evening when the Cyclops returned to his captives after grazing the sheep and goats all day. Meanwhile, Odysseus had devised a plan; while the giant was away, the men sharpened and fire hardened a pole they had found in the cave. After the giant's evening feast of human flesh, Odysseus offered Polyphemus the wine he had brought to barter with. Polyphemus drank it and was soon asleep. This was the chance the men had been waiting for, and they plunged the sharpened pole into the giant's single eye.

The monster let out such a scream that his brother Cyclopes came to the entrance of the cave and called, "Polyphemus, who torments you that you yell out so?"

Polyphemus answered, "No-man, no-man torments me!" With this, his brothers left him alone. He stretched his arms this way and that around the cave in a fury, but he was unable to catch any of the nimble men. At dawn when the vast herd assembled at the entrance to the cave to be let out, each man lashed three large rams together with any leather belts, straps, and ties that he had, then he grasped the shaggy wool on the belly of the center ram and waited for Polyphemus to roll back the boulder. When Polyphemus finally released the herd, he sat in the entrance with arms outstretched, feeling anything that came by, but he could not locate the hidden men who made their escape.

The vast and fertile herd is very important to the telling of the myth. The natural plenty represented by the lambs, kids, milk, and cheese serves to emphasize the sickening horrors to which the men are subjected by the unnatural monster, Polyphemus. The flock is here a symbol of goodness, purity, and wholesome sustenance which stands against the vile anthropophagy(20) of the giant Cyclops. The monster rejects the fruits of his flock in favor of human flesh, and this is the unforgivable sin which brings on his punishment at the hands of man.

Let us now turn to some of the Judeo-Christian symbolism of the flock. As was already stated, the Passover lamb was an adaptation from a Canaanite fertility festival. Eventually, this lamb took on the symbolic imagery of a pure and spotless victim which dies so that others may live. St. John in turn applies this symbolism to Christ when, unlike the synoptic Gospels, he has Jesus being sacrificed on the cross at the same time that the lambs are being slaughtered in anticipation of the Passover. For John, Jesus has become the Lamb of God, the one pure, spotless victim of the one true sacrifice. John continues to use this imagery of Lamb of God in the Book of Revelation(21) as well. In Matthew 25, Jesus describes the last judgment as a shepherd separating the sheep and the goats. The two walk together, eat together, live together as members of the same flock, as do good and wicked men. The time will come when the flock will be pulled apart, however, and the good and evil separated. Such symbols as the splitting of the flock and the Lamb of God continue to be used in Christian art even today.

Swine

Domestic swine are descended from two subspecies of wild boar. These are the European wild boar (Sus scrofa scrofa ) and the Asian wild boar (Sus scrofa vattatus ). Of the two, the European subspecies seems to be a bit more trim and agile, but both are formidable wild creatures having nine inch tusks, called tushes , and the determination to use them when cornered.(22) The earliest known human depiction of wild boars is to be found on the cave walls of Altamira in Spain with an age of about 30,000 years. When Neolithic culture swept into Europe from Asia about 10,000 years ago, it probably brought domestic pigs with it. Archeological artifacts from Anau, Turkestan relating to domestic hogs have been dated to 6500 B.C. Produced more recently, there are artifacts and art objects from China, Egypt, Greece, and eventually, virtually everywhere else. Swine had been mentioned in official documents of both China and Egypt by about 5000 years ago, and they appear in Greek literature attributed to Homer which dates to about 3000 years ago.

According to some scholars, an extremely ancient version of the god Osiris was intimately associated with swine. In this cult, hogs were thought to be so unapproachable that to touch them meant the need for instant ritual bathing by entering into the Nile fully clothed, before coming into contact with anyone else. Once a year hogs were ritually slain and eaten in honor of the god, probably as a symbolic stand-in for the god himself. As it was so closely associated with Osiris, the pig was also probably considered a sacred animal, its sacredness responsible for the fact that it was to be untouched by man. Over time the original reason for the taboo was forgotten, and the avoidance of contact with hogs was eventually attributed to uncleanliness and impurity. Later, when hogs continued to be slaughtered in sacrifice to Osiris despite the taboo, the misconception arose that the hog must be an enemy of Osiris rather than his image on earth. This occurred despite the fact that in other Egyptian cults animals continued to stand in for the gods on earth, as was the case with the Apis bull.

The natives in the area which became known as Greece are said to have worshipped a gray goddess before hitting upon the Greek pantheon. This goddess was often depicted as a sow, an animal symbolizing fertility and motherhood. Pigs and humans were both sacrificed to the sow goddess in spring rites which were both dark and chilling. According to one theory, Greek myths which contain hogs and wild boars, especially those in which the animals are subdued, are allegorical statements about the rejection and suppression of the more ancient religion by the followers of the new pantheon. Such a rejection and suppression may have eventually added to the strong taboo placed upon the killing of the innocent and upon human sacrifice written into the new myths.

In the Greek myth which explains the changing seasons based on the presence or absence of Demeter's daughter, Persephone, Demeter the grain goddess searches high and low for her daughter but finds only the tracks of a herd of swine where Persephone had been standing before her abduction by the king of the underworld, Hades. Swine then become ritual animals in the cult of Demeter, and live hogs are thrown into deep caverns to die each year. The following year, the planting of a part of one of the decayed carcasses of the sacrificed hogs with the grain would ensure a bountiful crop.

Circe, the witch of Aeaea, turned many of Odysseus' men into swine; with the help of Hermes, her potion was rendered ineffective on Odysseus himself and she quickly agreed to free his men from the spell. Hercules' fourth labor was to capture the gigantic wild boar of Mount Erymanthus; this he accomplished by first chasing the beast to exhaustion and then trapping it in the deep snow. Another famous boar hunt occurred when the goddess Artemis sent a great wild boar to ravage the land of Calydon because of a slight received at the hands of its king. Years before, when the king's son was just born, the Fates told the baby's mother that her son would live no longer than a certain brand in the fireplace would burn. At once she saved the brand which she extinguished and put away for safe keeping. When the boy was grown, all the greatest heroes of Greece, many of whom would serve as crew on the Argo with Jason, came to participate in the extermination of the monstrous boar. Atalanta, the woman huntress, participated with the rest. The king's son, Meleager, fell in love with Atalanta as soon as he saw her. When the boar was surrounded, it lashed out at the hunters with such fury that it killed two of their number outright, and a third was wounded by a comrade's javelin in the excitement. Atalanta's arrow was the first to find its mark, but the wound did not kill the boar. On seeing the beast struck, Meleager rushed in and slew the beast with his knife. Once the boar was dead, Meleager awarded the hide to Atalanta, but the other heroes objected since she had not actually killed the monstrous creature. A deputation, made up of Meleager's two uncles, went to him to protest the gift of the hide to Atalanta. Meleager was furious and killed his mother's two brothers there and then. With that, Meleager's mother threw the brand into a fire, causing the death of her own son. Thus, the boar, a symbol of cruel death and destruction, ruined not only the land of Calydon, but its royal house as well.

The symbolic significance of pigs is not restricted to ancient Egypt and Greece, however. In Hindu myth, Kali is often depicted as a ravenous black sow. She is the mother goddess who gives both life and death to her children. That is, she is acknowledged as initiating life, and this in itself means that she condemns what she creates to death. Death is the natural consequence of having been alive; life cannot be begun without the inevitability of death following. Therefore, this ever-hungry black sow, the mother of life, must be the mother of death as well; she ultimately consumes those to whom she gives birth. On the Pacific island of Malekula in the New Hebrides, a ceremony called a Maki is performed whenever anyone dies. In this ceremony a boar, which has been specially raised, is offered to the goddess of the underworld to eat in place of the deceased person. The boar's circular tusks represent the waxing and waning of the moon, which has a death/resurrection or cyclical symbolism. Without the stand-in boar, the dead can neither enter the land of the dead nor be reborn at the appointed time. In both the Cameroons and in Gaboon in Africa, natives hold that a man's spirit can be shared with a wild hog, and some other animals. If the wild pig host dies, so does the man. In Ireland the son of the great giant Finn MacCool was approached by a woman enchanted by a Druidic curse; she had the head of a pig. She explained that the head would become normal only if she would marry a son of MacCool, and the son, Oisin, married her. The curse was broken at once, and the two ruled as king and queen of the Land of Youth ever afterward. In a British spin on the same theme, there is the legend of Sir Parzival who met a woman with a boar's snout and coarse whiskers, but because he was pure of heart, he could see only her beauty.

Despite the well-known restriction on eating the flesh of animals which do not both chew the cud and have cloven hoofs, some scholars hold that there was a secret rite performed by some Israelites which entailed the consumption of pork and of rodents as a symbolic representation of various gods. It is said that this secret rite persisted at least until the time of Isaiah. Perhaps this sort of ritual added to the condemnation of hogs as unclean in the customs of Israel. After all, such polytheistic ceremonies go strongly against the grain of the determinedly monotheistic mainstream Jews.

There is one final porcine symbol which is worthy of note. Rather than coming from an ancient legend or practice, it comes to us from the pages of a piece of fiction written after World War II. Still, it seems to echo universal themes in swine mythology which go back to the ancient sow goddess herself. The symbol comes from William Golding's Lord of the Flies , a story about the best of British young boys and the effects of their being stranded on a island; many have seen the novel as an allegory of human nature itself. At this point in the story, the boys have been on the island for some time, and without the constraints of adult society, their behavior has begun to move toward the cruel and savage. Golding writes:

"The pigs lay, bloated bags of fat, sensuously enjoying the shadows under the trees. There was no wind and they were unsuspicious; and practice had made Jack silent as the shadows. He stole away again and instructed his hidden hunters. Presently they all began to inch forward sweating in the silence and heat. Under the trees an ear flapped idly. A little apart from the rest, sunk in deep maternal bliss, lay the largest sow of the lot. She was black and pink; and the great bladder of her belly was fringed with a row of piglets that slept or burrowed and squeaked.

Fifteen yards from the drove Jack stopped, and his arm, straightening, pointed at the sow. He looked round in inquiry to make sure that everyone understood and the other boys nodded at him. The row of right arms slid back.
'Now!'

The drove of pigs started up; and at a range of only ten yards the wooden spears with fire-hardened points flew toward the chosen pig. One piglet, with a demented shriek, rushed into the sea trailing Roger's spear behind it. The sow gave a gasping squeal and staggered up, with two spears sticking in her fat flank. The boys shouted and rushed forward, the piglets scattered and the sow burst the advancing line and went crashing away through the forest.
'After her!'

They raced along the pig-track, but the forest was too dark and tangled so that Jack, cursing, stopped them and cast among the trees. Then he said nothing for a time but breathed fiercely so that they were awed by him and looked at each other in uneasy admiration. Presently he stabbed down at the ground with his finger.
'There--'

Before the others could examine the drop of blood, Jack had swerved off, judging a trace, touching a bough that gave. So he followed, mysteriously right and assured, and the hunters trod behind him.

He stopped before a covert.
'In there.'

They surrounded the covert but the sow got away with the sting of another spear in her flank. The trailing buts hindered her and the sharp, cross-cut points were a torment. She blundered into a tree, forcing a spear still deeper; and after that any of the hunters could follow her easily by the drops of vivid blood. The afternoon wore on, hazy and dreadful with damp heat; the sow staggered her way ahead of them, bleeding and mad, and the hunters followed, wedded to her in lust, excited by the long chase and the dropped blood. They could see her now, nearly got up with her, but she spurted with her last strength and held ahead of them again. They were just behind her when she staggered into an open space where bright flowers grew and butterflies danced round each other and the air was hot and still.

Here, struck down by the heat, the sow fell and the hunters hurled themselves at her. This dreadful erruption from an unknown world made her frantic; she squealed and bucked and the air was full of sweat and noise and blood and terror. Roger ran round the heap, prodding with his spear whenever pigflesh appeared. Jack was on top of the sow, stabbing downward with his knife. Roger found a lodgment for his point and began to push till he was leaning with his whole weight. The spear moved forward inch by inch and the terrified squealing became a high-pitched scream. Then Jack found the throat and the hot blood spouted over his hands. The sow collapsed under them and they were heavy and fulfilled upon her. The butterflies still danced, preoccupied in the center of the clearing.
At last the immediacy of the kill subsided. The boys drew back, and Jack stood up, holding out his hands.
'Look.'

He giggled and flicked them while the boys laughed at his reeking palms. Then Jack grabbed Maurice and rubbed the stuff over his cheeks. Roger began to withdraw the spear and boys noticed it for the first time. Robert stabilized the thing in a phrase which was received uproariously.
'Right up her ass!'"


The sow can easily be seen as a symbol of the maternal side of nature; she is fertile, productive, life-giving. The sow is engorged with the very life-essence of the jungle. She is hugely fat, and her teats bestow the largesse of nature's bounty on the piglets which can be seen as representing the children of nature. The quiet natural scene of the sleeping sow erupts into chaos with the arrival of the hunters. The symbolic mother is assaulted by them, injured by them, pursued by them, and eventually murdered by them in an extremely bloody and sexually charged and orgiastic climax. Nowhere in literature can a better description of the consequences of a "laissez faire" attitude toward natural resources be found. This episode is truly a mythic depiction of man's selfish rape of the natural world.

Chickens

The domestic cock and hen are the descendants of one or more species of the jungle fowl of Asia. The predominant bloodline seems to be that of the red jungle fowl, Gallus gallus,(23) but the green jungle fowl, Gallus varius , and Sonnerat's jungle fowl, Gallus sonnerati , and Lafayette's jungle fowl, Gallus lafayettei , may have contributed genes. It should be noted that some breeds of domestic chickens, especially a breed called the old English game fowl, are almost identical to the wild red jungle fowl, and this species must figure very heavily in the ancestry of these breeds. Cockfighting is, perhaps, the oldest spectator sport in the world, and it was for the sake of this sport, according to one theory, that chickens were first bred in captivity and not for meat or egg production. It was discovered only later that when a hen's eggs are taken from her, she will continue to lay over a very extended season; in the wild she will usually only lay as many eggs as she can incubate comfortably. This means that hens have gone from laying something like twenty eggs per year to a staggering average of over 200 eggs for a hen of a commercial laying breed. These "egg machines" hit their peak in March with an average of 21 eggs and hit their lowest point of production in October with an average of 6 eggs for the month. If artificial lighting and temperature control are used, however, seasonal production variability can be kept to a minimum.

Just when the domestication of chickens began is a matter of debate, but experts agree that it took place in southern Asia where the jungle fowl are native. The breeding of chickens for sport alone had certainly given way by about four thousand years ago. By that time the Egyptians had incubators capable of hatching ten to fifteen thousand chicks at a time. The clay brick incubators were manned by attendants who lit fires when necessary in order to ensure a constant temperature of about 105 degrees Fahrenheit. This was done without any thermometer other than the attendants' skin. Once the chicks hatched they continued to live in the incubators which did double duty as brooder houses as well. What makes this system of chicken hatching so remarkable is the extent of social cooperation and sophistication which made the raising of so many chickens necessary. Egyptian society was in the pyramid mode at the time, and the chickens were required to feed countless workers on building projects of an unprecedented scale. The Egyptians also maintained a vast nation-wide irrigation system which added to their ability to mass produce food.

In ancient China it is believed that great numbers of chickens were raised to feed the workers required to build the many construction projects culminating in the Great Wall of China which was built about 2200 years ago. By about 1300 years before that, chickens were mentioned in official imperial documents, and chicken has been an important part of Chinese cuisine from early times. The mass production, preservation, and exportation of eggs has been a major industry in China for thousands of years.

In ancient Egypt the chickens were not just a food source for hungry builders, but they where also sacred animals. The cock was a sacrificial animal in the rites of Osiris