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[5] Appendix B. Back

In the Middle Ages the dragon gave a title in Hungary to an order of knighthood, that of “the dragon overthrown.” This was established in the year 1418, to perpetuate the memory of the condemnation of John Huss and Jerome of Prague by the Council of Constance for heresy, and to denote the overthrow of the doctrines these men propagated in Hungary, Bohemia, and elsewhere in Germany, and for which they were ultimately burnt at the stake. The badge of the order was a dragon prostrate. In China the dragon is the symbol of the Imperial power, and all our readers who are familiar with the appearance of the Celestial pottery, bronzes, and so forth, will readily recall how commonly the form is introduced. Some little time ago the Chinese Government permitted coal-mines to be opened at Kai-ping, but they were speedily closed again, as it was supposed that their continued working would release the earth-dragon, disturb the Manes of the Empress, and generally bring trouble upon the Imperial house and upon the nation. Uncharitable people, however, have been found to declare that the fear of the earth-dragon is all an excuse, and that, as the Government set its face against the introduction of railways, so it was equally prepared, in its rigid conservatism and hatred of innovations, to forswear the mining operations. The dragon of the Chinese designers is of the weirdest forms, and conceived with a freedom and wildness of fancy that puts to shame our Western attempts, powerful as they often are.

As a symbol and attribute the dragon is constantly appearing in mediæval work, as carvings, illuminations, and the like, and we may remind our readers that in the term gargoyle, used in speaking of the strange and monstrous forms often found in our old cathedrals and abbeys doing duty as water-shoots, we get the dragon idea again, as the word is derived from an old French word signifying some such draconic monster. While, however, we find ourselves thus classing the dragon amongst the mythical and arbitrary forms of the stone-carver or the herald, we must be careful to remember that its terror had not thus in earlier days lost its sting, for the workman who sculptured it on a capital or thrust its hideous form into any other noticeable position not only regarded it as a symbol, but believed very really and truly in its veritable existence. Albertus Magnus gives a long account of the creature, an account altogether too elaborate for us to here transcribe; but its capture, according to him, is an easy matter enough if one only goes the right way to work. It was fortunately ascertained that dragons are “greatly afraid of thunder, and the magicians who require dragons for their enchantments get drums, on which they roll heavily, so that the noise is mistaken for thunder by the dragons, and they are vanquished.” The thing is simplicity itself, and rather detracts from the halo of heroism that has hitherto surrounded dragon vanquishers. A man is scarcely justified in blowing his trumpet when he has previously so cowed his antagonist by beating his drum and deluding its dull brains with his fictitious thunder. Pliny says that the eyes of a dragon, preserved dry, pulverised and then made up with honey, cause those who are anointed therewith to sleep securely from all dread of spirits of the darkness. In a mediæval work we are told that “the turning joint in the chine of a dragon doth promise an easy and favourable access into the presence of great lords.” One can only wonder why this should be, all clue and thread of connection between the two things being now so hopelessly lost. We must not however forget that, smile now as we may at this, there was a time when our ancestors accepted the statement with the fullest faith, and many a man who would fain have pleaded his cause before king or noble bewailed with hearty regret his want of draconic chine, the “turning-point” of the dragon and of his own fortunes. Another valuable receipt—“Take the taile and head of a dragon, the haire growing upon the forehead of a lion, with a little of his marrow also, the froth moreover that a horse fomethe at the mouth who hath woon the victorie and prize in running a race, and the nailes besides of a dogs-feete: bind all these together with a piece of leather made of a red deers skin, with the sinewes partly of a stag, partly of a fallow deere, one with another: carry this about with you and it will work wonders.” It seems almost a pity that the actual benefits to be derived from the possession of this compound are not more clearly defined, as there is no doubt that a considerable amount of trouble would be involved in getting the various materials together, and the zeal and ardour of the seeker after this wonder-working composition would be somewhat damped by the troublesome and recurring question, Wherefore? Mediæval medicine-men surely must have been somewhat chary of adopting the now familiar legend “Prescriptions accurately dispensed,” when the onus of making up such a mixture could be laid upon them. John Leo, in his “History of Africa” says that the dragon is the progeny of the eagle and wolf. After describing its appearance, he says—“This monster, albeit I myself have not seen it yet, the common report of all Africa affirmeth that there is such a one.” Other writers affirm that the dragon is generated by the great heat of India or springs from the volcanoes of Ethiopia; and one is tempted to take the prosaic view that this dragon rearing and slaying is but a more poetic way of dwelling on some miasmatic exhalation reduced to harmlessness by judicious drainage; that the monster that had slain its thousands was at last subdued by no glittering spear wielded by knightly or saintly arm, but by the spade of the navvy and the drain-pipes of the sanitary engineer. Father Pigafetta in his book declares that “Mont Atlas hath plenty of dragons, grosse of body, slow of motion, and in byting or touching incurably venomous. In Congo is a kind of dragons like in biggnesse to rammes with wings, having long tayles and divers jawes of teeth of blue and greene, painted like scales, with two feete, and feede on rawe fleshe.” We cannot ourselves help feeling that if we saw a dragon like in bigness to a ram we should so far be disappointed in him. After having had our imagination filled by legend after legend we should look for something decidedly bulkier than that, and should feel that he really was not living up to his reputation. Abundant illustrations of the most unnatural history may be found in the works of Aldrovandus: his voluminous works on animals are very curious and interesting, and richly illustrated with engravings at least as quaint in character as the text. His “Monstrorum Historia,” published in folio at Bologna in 1642, is a perfect treasure-house; the various volumes range in date from 1602 to 1668, and are, with one exception (Venice), published at either Bologna or Frankfort. If any of our readers can get an opportunity of looking through them they will find themselves well repaid.

Amongst the Lansdowne MSS. in the British Museum will be found Aubrey’s “Gentilisme and Judaisme.” His remarks on St. George and the dragon are sufficiently quaint and interesting to justify insertion here. “Dr. Peter Heylin,” he says, “did write the Historie of St. George of Cappadocia, which is a very blind business. When I was of Trin. Coll. there was a sale of Mr. William Cartright’s (poet) books, many whereof I had: amongst others (I know not how) was Dr. Daniel Featley’s Handmayd to Religion, which was printed shortly after Dr. Heylin’s Hist. aforesaid. In the Holyday Devotions he speaks of St. George, and asserts the story to be fabulous, and that there never was any such man. William Cartright writes in the margent—For this assertion was Dr. Featley brought upon his knees before William Laud, Abp. of Canterbury. See Sir Thomas Browne’s ‘Vulgar Errors’ concerning St. George, where are good Remarks. He is of opinion that ye picture of St. George was only emblematical. Methinks ye picture of St. George fighting with ye Dragon hath some resemblance of St. Michael fighting with the Devil, who is pourtrayed like a Dragon. Ned Bagshaw of Chr. Ch. 1652, shewed me somewhere in Nicophorus Gregoras that ye picture of St. George’s horse on a wall neighed on some occasion.”

A vast amount of learning upon the subject of our patron saint may be found in Selden’s “Titles of Honour,” in which he treats of “The chiefest testimonies concerning St. George in the Western Church, and a consideration how he came to be taken for the patron saint of the English nation.” Selden originally inclined to the idea that the saint first stepped into this exalted position in the reign of Edward III., but in “a most ancient Martyrologie” that he afterwards came across—one of Saxon date in the library of one of the Cambridge Colleges—he found a sufficient testimony that the position of the saint as patron of Britain dated from a much earlier time.

Peter Suchenwirt, a German poet of the fourteenth century, gives in one of his poems a very curious and striking illustration of the esteem in which at the battle of Poictiers the English soldiers held their patron saint:—

“Di Frantzois schrienn ‘Nater Dam!’

Das spricht Unser Fraw mit nam;

Der chrey erhal;

‘Sand Jors! Sand Jors!’ ”

“The French shout forth ‘Notre Dame,’

Thus calling on our Lady’s name;

To which the English host reply,

‘St. George! St. George!’ their battle cry.”

The Celtic use of the word dragon for a chieftain is curious: in time of danger a sort of dictator was appointed under the title of pen-dragon. Hence any of the English knights who slew a chieftain in battle were dragon vanquishers, and it has been suggested that the military title was at times confused with that of the fabulous monster, and that a man thus got an added credit that did not belong to him. The theory is not, however, really tenable, as all the veritable dragon-slayers had the great advantage of living a long time ago, and no such halo of romance could well have attached itself to men of comparatively modern times. In any case, too, the use of the Celtic word is very local, and does not meet the case of a tithe of the histories of such deeds of valour. The red dragon was the ensign of Cadwallader, the last of the British kings. The Tudors claimed descent from this ancient monarch, and Henry VII. adopted this device for his standard at the battle of Bosworth Field. There is a place in Berkshire called Dragon Hill, near Uffington, and the more famous White Horse Hill, that is in local legend the scene of the encounter between St. George and the dragon; and for full confirmation a bare place is shown on the hillside where nothing will grow, because there the poisonous blood of the creature was shed. We learn, however, in the Saxon annals that Cedric, the West-Saxon monarch, overthrew and slew here the pen-dragon Naud, with five thousand of his men. The name of the hill, therefore, commemorates this ancient victory; but the common folk of the district, who know nothing of pen-dragons, erroneously ascribe the battle won there to the more familiar St. George.

The dragon of Wantley deserves a passing word, since he supplies a good illustration of how the mythical and the material are often mixed up. Wantley is merely a corruption of Wharncliffe, a delightful spot[6] near Sheffield, and here, of all places in the world, this very objectionable dragon took up his abode. One ordinarily expects to hear of such creatures uncoiling their monstrous forms in some dense morass or lurking in the dark recesses of some wide-stretching and gloomy forest; possibly he may have found the choice of such an attractive locality may have helped him to an occasional tourist. On the opposite side of the Don to the crag that held the cave of the dragon stood the desirable residence of More Hall; and its owner, doubtless feeling that the presence of such an objectionable neighbour was a great depreciation of his property, determined one day to bring matters to a crisis; so he walked up to the mouth of the cave clad in a suit of armour thickly covered with spikes, and administered such a vigorous kick in the dragon’s mouth, the only place where he was vulnerable, that the whole transaction was over almost at once, and he was back again in ample time for lunch. Dr. Percy, the editor of “Reliques of Antient English Poetry,” holds that we must not accept this story too seriously; that, in fact, the old ballad in which it is set forth is a burlesque, and that the real facts are as follows:—that the dragon was an overbearing and rascally lawyer who had long availed himself of his position and influence to oppress his poorer neighbours, but he capped a long series of dishonest and disreputable actions by depriving three orphan children of an estate to which they were entitled. A Mr. More generously took up their cause, brought all the armoury of the law to bear upon the spoiler, and completely defeated him, and the thievish attorney shortly afterwards died of chagrin and vexation.

[6] Lady Mary Wortley Montagu lived here for some time. Writing afterwards from Avignon, and dwelling on the exquisite landscape there spread out before her when standing on the Castle height, she exclaims that “it is the most beautiful land prospect I ever saw, except Wharncliffe.” Back

“Old stories tell how Hercules

A dragon slew at Lerna,

With seven heads and fourteen eyes,

To see and well discern-a;

But he had a club this dragon to drub,

Or he had ne’er done it, I warrant ye;

But More of More Hall, with nothing at all,

He slew the dragon of Wantley.

This dragon had two furious wings,

Each one upon each shoulder;

With a sting in his tayl, as long as a flayl,

Which made him bolder and bolder.

He had long claws, and in his jaws

Four-and-forty teeth of iron;

With a hide as tough as any buff,

Which did him round environ.

Have you not heard how the Trojan horse

Held seventy men in his belly?

This dragon was not quite as big,

But very near, I tell ye.

Devouréd he poor children three,

That could not with him grapple;

And at one sup, he eat them up,

As one would eat an apple.

All sorts of cattle this dragon did eat,

Some say he did eat up trees,

And that the forests sure he could

Devour up by degrees:

For houses and churches were to him geese and turkeys:

He eat all, and left none behind,

But some stones, dear Jack, that he could not crack,

Which on the hills you will find.

In Yorkshire, near fair Rotherham,

The place I know it well;

Some two or three miles, or thereabouts,

I vow I cannot tell;

But there is a hedge, just on the hill edge,

And Matthew’s house hard by it;

O there and then was this dragon’s den,

You could not chuse but spy it.

Hard by a furious knight there dwelt,

Of whom all towns did ring;

For he could wrestle, play quarterstaff, kick and cuff,

And any such kind of a thing;

By the tail and the main with his hands twain

He swung a horse till he was dead,

And that which is stranger, he in his anger

Eat him all up but his head.

These children, as I told, being eat;

Men, women, girls and boys,

Sighing and sobbing, came to his lodging,

And made a hideous noise:

‘O save us all, More of More Hall,

Thou peerless knight of these woods;

Do but slay this dragon, who won’t leave us a rag on,

We’ll give thee all our goods.’

‘Tut, tut,’ quoth he, ‘no goods I want;

But I want, I want, in sooth,

A fair maid of sixteen that’s brisk and keen,

And smiles about the mouth:

Hair black as sloe, skin white as snow,

With blushes her cheeks adorning;

To anoynt me o’er night, ere I go out to fight,

And to gird me in the morning.’

This being done, he did engage

To hew the dragon down;

But first he went, new armour to

Bespeak at Sheffield town;

With spikes all about, not within but without,

Of steel so sharp and strong;

Both behind and before, arms, legs, and all o’er,

Some five or six inches long.

Had you but seen him in this dress,

How fierce he looked and how big,

You would have thought him for to be

Some Egyptian porcupig:

He frighted all, cats, dogs, and all,

Each cow, each horse, and each hog;

For fear they did flee, for they took him to be

Some strange outlandish hedge-hog.

It is not strength that always wins,

For wit doth strength excell;

Which made our cunning champion

Creep down into a well,

Where he did think this dragon would drink,

And so he did in truth;

And as he stooped low he rose up and cried ‘boh!’

And hit him in the mouth.

Our politick knight, on the other side

Crept out upon the brink,

And gave the dragon such a crack,

He knew not what to think.

‘Aha,’ quoth he, ‘say you so, do you see?’

And then at him he let fly

With hand and with foot, and so they both went to’t,

And the word it was, hey, boys, hey!

‘Oh,’ quoth the dragon with a deep sigh,

And turned six times together,

Sobbing and tearing, cursing and swearing,

Out of his throat of leather;

‘More of More Hall! O thou rascàl!

Would I had seen thee never;

With that thing at thy foot thou hast pricked me sore,

And I’m quite undone for ever.’

‘Murder, murder,’ the dragon cried,

‘Alack, alack, for grief;

Had you but missed that place, you could

Have done me no mischief.’

Then his head he shaked, he trembled and quaked,

And down he laid and cried;

First on one knee, then on back tumbled he,

And groaned, and kicked, and died.”

We sometimes see allusions in poetry and the press to the sowing of dragons’ teeth. The reference is always to some subject of civil strife, to some burning question that rouses the people of a state to take up arms against each other.

The incident is derived from the old classic legend of the founding of Thebes by Kadmos. Arriving on the site of the future city, he proposed to make a sacrifice to the protecting goddess Athene, but on sending his men to a not far distant fountain for water, they were attacked and slain by a terrible dragon. Kadmos thereupon went himself and slew the monster, and at the command of Athene sowed its teeth in the ground, from whence immediately sprang a host of armed giants. These on the instant all turned their arms against each other, and that too with such fury that all were presently slain save five. Kadmos invoked the aid of these giants in the building of the new city, and from these five the noblest families of Thebes hereafter traced their lineage. The myth has been the cause of much perplexity to scholars and antiquaries, but it has been fairly generally accepted that the slaying of the dragon after it had destroyed many of the followers of Kadmos indicates the final reduction of some great natural obstacle, after some few or more had been first vanquished by it. We may imagine such an obstacle to colonisation as a river hastily rising and sweeping all before it in its headlong flood, or an aguish and fever-breeding morass. The springing-up of the armed men from the soil has been construed as signifying that the Thebans in after times regarded themselves as the original inhabitants of the country—no mere interlopers, but sons of the soil from time immemorial; while their conflicts amongst themselves, as their city rose to fame, have been too frequently reflected time after time elsewhere to need any very special exposition.

Another literary allusion in which the dragon bears its part is seen in the dragonnades, those religious persecutions which drove so many thousands of Protestants out of France during the Middle Ages. Their object was to root heresy out of the land. Those who were willing to recant were left in peaceable possession of their goods, while the others were handed over to the tender mercies of the soldiery let loose upon them. These were chiefly dragoons; hence the origin of the term dragonnade; and these dragoons were so called because they were armed with a short musket or carbine called a dragon, while the gun in turn was so called because it spouted out fire like the dreadful monsters of the legends were held to do. On many of the early muskets this idea was emphasised by having the head of a dragon wrought on the muzzle, the actual flash of the piece on its discharge issuing from its mouth.

One naturally turns to Shakespeare for an apt illustration of any conceivable point that may arise. The lover finds in him his tender sonnets, the lawyer his quillets of the law, the soldier the glorification of arms, and the philosopher rich mines of wisdom. The antiquary finds in him no less a golden wealth of allusion to all the customs and beliefs of his day. In “Midsummer Night’s Dream” we find the lines—

“Night’s swift dragons cut the clouds full fast,

And yonder comes Aurora’s harbinger.”

We get much the same idea again in the line in “Cymbeline”—“Swift, swift you dragons of the night,” and in “Troilus and Cressida”—“The dragon wing of night o’erspreads the earth.” “Scale of dragon, tooth of wolf,” and many other horrible ingredients are found in the witches’ caldron in “Macbeth,” while in “King Lear” we are advised not to come “between the dragon and his wrath.” King Richard III. rushes to his fate with the words, “Our ancient word of courage, fair St. George, inspire us with the spleen of fiery dragons.” In “Coriolanus” we find another admirable allusion—

“Though I go alone, like to a lonely dragon that his fen

Makes feared and talked of more than seen.”

In the play of “Pericles” we have the lines—

“Golden fruit, but dangerous to be touched,

For death-like dragons here affright thee hard.”

And there are other references in “Romeo and Juliet” and other plays—references that it is needless here to give, as enough has been quoted to show our great poet’s realisation of this scaly monster of the marsh and forest. In the last extract we have given, that from “Pericles,” the golden fruit are the apples of the Hesperides, guarded by the dragon Ladon, foul offspring of Typhon and Echidna. Allusions to this golden fruit are very common amongst the poets, so we content ourselves with quoting as an illustration one that is less well known than many, from a poem by Robert Greene in the year 1598:—

“Shew thee the tree, leafed with refinèd gold,

Whereon the fearful dragon held his seat,

That watched the garden called Hesperides.”

The dragon, like the griffin, is oftentimes the fabled guardian of treasure: we see this not only in the classic story of the garden of the Hesperides, but more especially in the tales of Eastern origin. Any of our readers who have duly gone through much of the “Arabian Nights’ Entertainments” will scarcely have failed to notice the employment of the dragon as a defender of gold and other hoarded wealth. Guillim, in his quaint book on heraldry, says that these treasures are committed to their charge “because of their admirable sharpness of sight, and for that they are supposed of all other living things to be the most valiant.” He goes on to add that “they are naturally so hot that they cannot be cooled by drinking of water, but still gape for the air to refresh them, as appeareth in Jeremiah xiv. 6, where it saith that the ‘wild asses did stand in the high places, they snuffed up the wind like dragons.’ ” Any one who has been in any mountainous district in hot weather will no doubt have noticed the cattle fringing the ridges of the hills like a row of sentinels. When we first observed this, and wondered at it, in North Wales, we were at once told that it was a regular habit of the creatures, that they did it partly to avoid the plague of flies that haunted the lower levels and the woodlands, but more especially to get the benefit of any breeze that might be stirring. While Guillim is willing to admit that even a dragon can render valuable service to those who are so fortunate as to be able to procure his kind offices, and induce him to play the part of watchdog, he very properly regards him, and such like monsters, as something decidedly uncanny. “Another sort there is,” he says, “of exorbitant Animals much more prodigious than all the former. Such are those creatures formed, or rather deformed, with the confused shapes of creatures of different kinds and qualities. These monsters (saith St. Augustine) cannot be reckoned amongst those good Creatures that God created before the transgression of Adam, for those did God, when He took the survey of them, pronounce to be valde bona, for they had in them neither excess nor defect, but were the perfect workmanship of God’s creation. If man had not transgressed the Law of his Maker this dreadful deformity (in likelihood) had not happened in the creation of animals which some Philosophers do call Peccata Naturæ.”

The dragon, though, as we have seen, at times induced to mount guard over other people’s property, is ordinarily a very Ishmaelite; his hand is against everybody, and everybody’s hand against him; yet would he appear, if we may credit Pliny, to bear an excess and maximum of ill-will against the elephant. The elephant always strikes one as being such a great good-natured beast, as one who could do so much mischief if he would, yet spends his strength instead for the good of others, that it is difficult to understand how he should in so pre-eminent a degree have earned the ill-will of so potent an enemy. The dragon would appear to be always the aggressor, and the elephant has to defend himself as well as he can against the uncalled-for attack: it is satisfactory in this case to know that the scaly assailant sometimes fully meets his match. In Book VIII. of Pliny’s history we read that “India bringeth forth the biggest elephants, as also the dragons, that are continually at variance with them, and evermore fighting, and those of such greatnesse that they can easily clasp and wind them round the elephants, and withall tie them fast with a knot. In this conflict they die, both the one and the other; the elephant hee falls downe dead as conquered, and with his great and heavie weight crusheth and squeaseth the dragon that is wound and wreathed about him. Also the dragon assaileth him from an high tree, and launceth himselfe upon him, but the elephant knowing well enough he is not able to withstand his windings and knottings about him, seeketh to come close to some trees or hard rocks, and so for to crush and squeese the dragon between him and them. The dragons ware hereof, entangle and snare his feet and legs first with their taile; the elephants on the other side undoe those knots with their trunke as with a hand, but to prevent that againe, the dragons put in their heads into their snout, and so stop their wind, and withall fret and gnaw the tenderest parts that they find there.” One does not quite understand how this last counter-plan of the dragon is effected, but it is evidently to be understood as equivalent to “checkmate.”

In the “Bestiare Divin” of Guillaume this antagonism of the elephant and dragon is again referred to, and indeed we find it an accepted belief throughout the Middle Ages. Pliny’s work was held for centuries in the greatest admiration, and to add “as Pliny saith” to any statement, no matter how wild, was considered amply sufficient. Guillaume’s description of the dragon is as follows—“C’est le plus grand des animaux rampants. Il nait en Éthiopie: il a la gueule petit, le corps long et reluisant comme or fin. C’est l’ennemie de l’éléphant; c’est avec sa queue qu’il triomphe de lui: là est, en effet, le principe de sa force; sa gueule ne porte point venin de mort.” The book of Guillaume is a fair type of several books of the sort written by ecclesiastics during the Middle Ages. Such books were an attempt to show that all the works of nature were symbols and teachers of great Scriptural truths; hence, while much that they give is interesting, their statements always require to be received with great caution. If the facts of the case got at all in the way of a good moral, so much the worse for the facts; and if a little or a great modification of the true state of the case could turn a good moral into one much better, the goodness of the intention was held to amply justify the departure from the hampering influence of the real facts. The MS. of Guillaume dates from the thirteenth century, and is at present preserved in the National Library in Paris. The writer was a Norman priest. The work has been very well reproduced in a French dress by Hippeau, a compatriot of the writer.[7] As we simply wish in our extract to bring out the belief in the antagonism between the elephant and the dragon, we forbear to add any moral teachings that a more or less morbid symbolism was able to deduct from the supposititious fact; but we shall have occasion to quote again more than once from the “Bestiare,” and doubtless the peculiar connection between scientific error and religious truth will have an opportunity of making itself felt in one or more of these extracts.

[7] Appendix C. Back

Referring back to the “300 Animals,” the natural history that was considered good enough for the people living in the year of grace 1786, we find, after the account of the Dart, “so called from his flying like an arrow from the tops of trees and hedges upon men, by which means he stings and wounds them to death,” the following description:—“The Cockatrice is called the king of serpents, not from his bigness—for he is much inferior in this respect to many serpents—but because of his majestic pace, for he does not creep upon the ground, like other serpents, but goes half upright, for which cause all other serpents avoid him; and it seems nature designed him that pre-eminence, by the crown or coronet upon his head. Writers differ concerning the production of this animal. Some are of opinion that it is brought forth of a cock’s egg sat upon by a snake or toad, and so becomes a cockatrice. It is said to be half a foot in length, the hinder part like a serpent, the fore part like a cock. Others are of opinion that the cock that lays the egg sits upon and hatches it himself. These monsters are bred in Africa and some parts of the world.” In England it would appear, so far as we have observed the matter, that the hens have entirely usurped the egg-laying department, and we are therefore spared the mortification of finding that our hoped-for chick has assumed the less welcome form of a cockatrice, for we shall see that the advent of a cockatrice is no laughing matter. The book goes on to tell us that authors differ about the bigness of it, for some say it is a span in compass and half a foot long, while others, with a truer sense of the marvellous, realise more fully that bulk is a potent element in all such matters, and at once make it four feet long. Its poison is so strong that there is no cure for it, and the air is in such a degree affected by its presence that no creature can live near it. It kills, we are assured, not only by its touch, but even the sight of the cockatrice, like that of the basilisk, is death. We read, for instance, in “Romeo and Juliet” of “the death-darting eye of cockatrice;” and again in “King Richard III.”—“A cockatrice hast thou hatched to the world whose unavoided eye is murtherous;” while in “Twelfth Night” we find the passage, “This will so fright them both, that they will kill one another by the look, like cockatrices.” After this we can scarcely wonder at a certain vagueness of description, as those who never saw the animal have full licence of description, while those, less fortunate, who have had an opportunity of studying from the life have forfeited their own in doing so. The only hope of getting an idea of it would be the discovery of a dead specimen, for we read that “as all other serpents are afraid of the sight and hissing of a cockatrice, so is the cockatrice itself very fearful of a weasel, which after it has eaten rue will set upon and destroy the cockatrice. Besides this little creature, it is said there is no other animal in the world able to contend with it.” We can well imagine the indignant astonishment of the cockatrice, after being for years the monarch of all it surveyed, when the gallant little weasel, strong in the triple armour which makes a quarrel just, and duly fortified by the internal application of rue, charges boldly home and takes him, monstrorum rex, by the throat. At the time that our authorised version of the Old Testament was made there was a sufficient belief in the creature to make the translation of some Hebrew word seem correctly rendered by the word cockatrice, for we read in the book of Isaiah that one sign of the millennial peace shall be that the child shall put his hand, unharmed, upon the den of the cockatrice; and a little farther on we find the passage, “For out of the serpent’s root shall come forth a cockatrice, and his fruit shall be a fiery flying serpent.” In the fifty-ninth chapter the workers of iniquity are described as hatching the cockatrice egg, and amongst the judgments pronounced upon the impenitent Jews by the prophet Jeremiah we find the verse, “Behold, I will send serpents, cockatrices, amongst you, which will not be charmed, and they shall bite you.” The heraldic cockatrice is represented as having the head and legs of a cock, a scaly and serpent-like body, and the wings of a dragon.

Guillim[8] in his “Heraldry” says that “the Cockatrice is called in Latin Regulus, for that he seemeth to be a little King among Serpents: not in regard of his Quantity, but in respect of the Infection of his pestiferous and poisonous Aspect wherewith he poisoneth the Air. Not unlike those devillish Witches that do work the Destruction of silly Infants, as also of the Cattel of such their Neighbours whose prosperous Estate is to them a most grievous Eye-sore. Of such Virgil in his Bucolicks makes mention, saying, I know not what wicked Eye hath bewitched my tender Lambs.” The belief in the evil eye has been almost universal, and may be found in tribes the most remote from each other either in distance or in time. If it were not that Guillim is so ostentatiously loyal, and, like all heralds, a zealous upholder of rank and state, one might suspect him almost of a touch of bitter sarcasm in ascribing royal rank to the cockatrice, not from his magnanimity, not from his noble bearing, not from his beauty, but from the power of inflicting injuries that he so especially displays. When we consider what sort of a sovereign politically, socially, and every way the second Charles was, Guillim’s dedication of his book to him errs somewhat, perhaps, on the side of fulsome and sickening adulation:—“To the most August Charles the Second, King of Great Britain, France, and Ireland, Defender of the Faith, &c. Dread Sovereign, Here is a Firmament of Stars that shine not without your Benign Beam; you are the Sun of our Hemisphere that sets a splendour on the Nobility: For as they are Jewels and Ornaments to your Crown, so they derive their lustre and value from thence. From your Breast, as from a Fountain, the young Plants of honour are cherisht and nurst up. Your vertuous Atcheivements are their Warrant and Example, and your Bounty the Guerdon of their Merit. And as all the Roman Emperors after Julius Cæsar, were desirous to be called Imperatores and Cæsares after him, so shall all succeeding Princes in this our Albion (in emulation of your Vertues) be ambitious to bear your Name to Posterity.”

[8] The reader must notice the near approach to similarity of name in the Frenchman Guillaume, author of “Le Bestiare Divin,” and in the Englishman Guillim, the writer on heraldry, and at the same time make due discrimination. They are men of widely different periods, and approach our subject from wholly different directions. Back

The Basilisk, to whom also was given the title of king of the serpents, was another of the stern, very stern realities of our forefathers, though, like the cockatrice, it has fallen a victim to the march of intellect. Its royal rank was bestowed upon it not from its pestiferous qualities, but from the crest or coronet it wears, or rather wore, as the species may now be considered extinct. Like the monstrous kraken of the Norway seas and the classic harpy or minotaur, down to the sheeted spectre that clanked its chains last century in churchyard or corridor, it has failed to make good its claims to our credence; and even the great sea-serpent, that from time to time appears in the columns of the newspapers when Parliament is not sitting, will have to appear very visibly elsewhere as well, or the scepticism of the nineteenth century will disestablish it. The basilisk was by some old writers described as a huge lizard, but in later times it became a crested serpent. Exact accuracy on this point was impossible, as, like the cockatrice, the glance of its eye was death. Pliny says, “We come now to the basiliske, whom all other serpents do flie from and are afraid of; albeit he killith them with his very breath and smell that passeth from him: yea, and by report, if he do but set his eye on a man it is enough to take away his life.” Readers of Shakespeare will recall the passage in King Henry VI., “Come, basilisk, and kill the innocent gazer with thy sight;” and again where the Lady Anne exclaims to Richard III., with reference to her eyes, “Would that they were basilisk’s, to strike thee dead.” Beaumont and Fletcher, too, in their “Woman Hater,” speaks of “The basilisk’s death-doing eye.” Dryden avails himself of the same old belief, and makes Clytus say to Alexander, “Nay, frown not so; you cannot look me dead;” and in another old poem, King’s “Art of Love,” we find the lines, “Like a boar plunging his tusk in mastiff’s gore, or basilisk, when roused, whose breath, teeth, sting, and eyeballs all are death.” The only way to kill the basilisk was held to be to cause it to gaze on its own image in a mirror, when its glance would be as fatal to itself as it had hitherto been to others. To effect this, however, evidently presents many practical difficulties, and he must have been a bold man who ventured on so perilous an errand, where the least nervousness or mismanagement of the mirror would be literally fatal in bringing the basilisk to a proper state of reflection.

The basilisk is mentioned by most of the old writers, by Dioscorides, by Galen, Pliny, Solinus, Ælian, Ætius, Avicen, Ardoynus, Grevinus, and many others. Aristotle makes no mention of it. Scaliger gravely describes one that was found in Rome in the days of Leo IV., while Sigonius and others are so far from denying the possibility of such a beast that they have duly set forth various kinds or sub-species. Pliny, for instance, describes a thing he calls the Catoblepas, while Ætius gives details of another called Dryinus, each being only modifications of the basilisk idea. Where, of course, the whole thing was purely a figment of the imagination, the multiplication of species presents no difficulty at all, and it really makes little difference whether all the peculiarities and properties be focussed on one creature, or whether they be divided by a three or a four, and due distribution of them made to a like number of slightly varying monsters. There is no doubt but that if Baron Munchausen had turned his attention to this branch of natural history, we should have had many more species to record, and some of them probably still more wonderful than any at present described. The very indefiniteness of the descriptions gives them an added charm and affords full scope for romancing. Familiarity is undoubtedly likely to lead to contempt, and probably if the Zoological Society of London are ever able to add a basilisk to their fine collection of reptiles it will be a very disappointing feature.

The Phœnix had what we may be allowed to call a literary existence amongst the Greeks and Romans, but scarcely became a visible creation of the artist until the mythic fowl was accepted by the early Christians as a type of the resurrection of the body—an association of ideas that afterwards rendered its use very common, and Tertullian, amongst other early writers, thus refers to its symbolic use. According to a tale narrated to Herodotus on his visit to Heliopolis, the phœnix visited that place once every 500 years, bringing with it the body of its predecessor, and burning it with myrrh in the sanctuary of the Sun-god; but the version on which the Christian moral and application is based is somewhat different. It is founded on the old belief that the phœnix, when it arrived at the age of 1461 years, committed itself to the flames that burst, at the fanning of its wings, from the funeral pyre that it had itself constructed of costly spices, and that from its ashes a new phœnix arose to life. This belief, which appears to us so absurd, was for hundreds of years as accepted a fact as any other point in natural history. The home of the phœnix was said to be at that delightfully vague address, somewhere in Arabia.

In Hoole’s translation of the “Orlando Furioso” of Ariosto we have both the mystic bird and its very indefinite home thus referred to:—