CHAPTER VII.

THE CAT, THE WEASEL, THE MOUSE, THE MOLE, THE SNAIL, THE ICHNEUMON, THE SCORPION, THE ANT, THE LOCUST, AND THE GRASSHOPPER.

SUMMARY.

Mârgâras, mârgaras, mrigas, mrigâris, mrigarâgas.--Nakulas.--Mûsh.--Vamras, vamrî, vaprî, valmîkam, _formica_.--The serpent and the ants.--Indras as an ant; the serpent eaten by the ants.--Vamras drinking, assisted by the Açvinâu.--The grateful ant; the hermit-dwarfs.--Ants' milk.--Ants' legs.--The ant dies when its wings grow; the ants and the treasure.--The ants separate the grains.--The locust and the ant; çarabhas as the moon.--Grasshopper and ant.--Avere il grillo, aver la luna; indovinala, grillo.--Wedding between ant and grasshopper.--Locusts destroyed by fire.--Hippomürmêkes.--The Indian locust that guards honey again.--The scorpion, and its poison absorbed.--The ichneumon, enemy of the serpent.--The weasel.--Galanthis.--The cat with ears of butter.--The cat as a judge.--The lynx.--The penitent cat.--The beneficent cat.--The cat with a golden tail.--Cat and dog as friends; the dog carries the cat; they find the lost ring again.--The new-born son changed for a cat.--The cat that sings and tells tales.--The cat created by the moon; Diana as a cat.--The sacred cat.--The funereal and diabolical cat.--Cat and fox.--The cat hangman.--_Le chat botté_.--_Chatte blanche;_ the cat that spins and weaves.--The cat becomes a girl.--The enchanted palace of the cats.--The cats of February; the black cat; the cat dreamed-of.--The cat becomes a witch at seven years of age.--The cat in the sack.--The mewing of the cat.--The cats dispute for souls.--Battle of cats.--The mice that bite their tails or that gnaw the threads of the net.--The mouse in the honey.--The mouse that becomes a maiden; the mouse and the mountain.--The mouse that becomes a tiger.--The souls of the dead pass into mice; funereal and diabolical mice; superstitions relating to this belief.--The mouse that releases the lion and the elephant from the trap.--Ganeças crushes the mouse; Apollo Smyntheus.--When the cat's away the mice can dance.--The mouse plays blind-man's-buff with the bear.--The grateful mouse.--The mouse that foresees the future.--Mouse and sparrow, first friends and then enemies.--The batrachomyomachia.--The mouse, the tooth, and the coin.--Hiranyakas; the squirrel.--The monster mole; the mole as a gravedigger; the blind mole.--The snail in the popular song; the snail and the serpent; the snail as a funereal animal.

I unite in one series several mythical nocturnal animals, which, although really of very different natures, enter into only one order of myths.

They are thieving and hunting animals, and are therefore very aptly placed in the darkness of night (_naktacârin_ is an epithet applied in Sanskrit both to the cat and the thief), in the nocturnal forest, in connection now with Diana the huntress, or the good fairy the moon, and now with the ugly witch; now appearing as the helpers of the hero, and now as his persecutors.

The etymologies of several Hindoo words may be of some interest to the reader, and may with propriety be adduced here. _Mârgâras_, the cat, means the cleanser (as the animal that, in fact, cleans itself). Referring to the myth, we know already that one of the principal exactions of the witch is that her step-daughter should comb her hair, or else clean the corn, during the night; and that the good fairy, the Madonna, while she too has her hair combed, scatters gems about, spins, and cleans the corn for the good maiden. The witch of night forces the maiden aurora to separate the luminous wheat of evening from the dark tares of night; the moon with its silvery splendour disperses the shades of night. The _mârgâras_, or cleanser of the night, the white cat, is the moon. _Aranyamârgâras_, or cat of the forest, is the name given to the wild cat, with which the lynx, too, is identified. As a white cat, as the moon, it protects innocent animals; as a black cat, as the dark night, it persecutes them. The cat is a skilful hunter; moreover, it is easy to confound the word _mârgâras_ (the cleanser) with the word _mârgaras_, the proper meaning of which is hunter, investigator, he who follows the track, the _mârgas_, or else the enemy of the _mrigas_ (as mrigâris); the road is the clean part of the land, as the margin is the white or clean part of a book. The hunter may be he that goes on the margin or on the track, or else he that hunts and kills the mrigas or forest animal. The moon (the huntress Diana) is also called in Sanskrit _mrigarâgas_, or king of the forest animals; and, as kings are wont, it sometimes defends its subjects and sometimes eats them. The cat-moon eats the grey mice of the night.

_Nakulas_ is the name given in Sanskrit to the ichneumon, the enemy of mice, scorpions, and snakes. The word seems to be derived from the root _naç_, _nak = necare_, whence nakulas would appear to be the destroyer (of nocturnal mice).

The mouse, _mûsh_, _mûshas_, _mûshakas_, is the thief, the ravisher, whence also its name rat (_a rapiendo_).

The Hindoo names of the ant are _vamras_ and _vamrî_ (besides _pipîlakas_). _Vamrî_ is connected with _vapâ_, _vapram_, _vaprî_, ant-hole, and, by metathesis, _valmîkam_ (_i.e._, appertaining to ants), which has the same meaning. The Latin _formica_ unites together the two forms _vamrî_ and _valmîkam_. The roots are _vap_, in the sense of to throw, and _vam_, to erupt or to throw out, as the ants do when they erect little mounds of earth.

In the _Mahâbhâratam_, the hole of a serpent is also called by the name of _valmîkam_; from this we can explain the fable of the third book of the _Pancatantram_, where we have a serpent fighting against ants. He kills many of them, but their number is so interminable that he is at last forced to succumb. Thus, in the mythical Vedic heavens, it is in the shape of a vamras or ant that Indras fights victoriously against the old monster that invades the sky.[72] Nay, more, in the _Pancatantram_, the ants sting and bite the serpent and kill it; thus Indras (who, as we have just said, is an ant in the cloud or the night) gives to the ants the avaricious serpent, the son of Agrus, dragging it out of its hiding-place.[73] Indras is therefore a variety of the Captain Formicola of the Tuscan fairy tale. Finally, the _Rigvedas_ offers us yet another curious particular. The two Açvinâu come to assist Vamras (or Indras in his form of an ant, _i.e._, they come to assist the ant) whilst it is drinking (vamram vipipânam). The ant throws or lifts up little hillocks of earth by biting the ground. The root _vap_, which means to throw, to scatter, has also the sense of to cut, and perhaps to make a hole in. The convex presupposes the concave; and _vam_ is related to _vap_ (as _somnus_ is related to _hüpnos_, to _svapnas_, and to _sopor_). Indras, as an ant, is the wounder, the biter of the serpent. He makes it come out of its den, or vomits it forth (eructat); the two etymological senses are found again in the myth. The weapons with which Indras wounds the serpent are doubtless now the solar rays, and now the thunderbolts. Indras, in the cloud, drinks the somas. The ant drinks, and the Açvinâu, whilst it drinks, come to its help, for no doubt the ant when drinking is in danger of being drowned. And this brings us to the story of the grateful animals, in which the young hero finds an ant about to be drowned.

In the twenty-fourth of the Tuscan fairy tales published by me, when the shepherd's son, by a good advice which he has received, determines to do good to every one he meets, he sees on the path an ant-hill, which is about to be destroyed by water; he then makes a bank round it, and thus saves the ants;[74] in their turn the ants pay back the debt. The king of the land demands of the young man, as a condition of receiving his daughter in marriage, that he should separate and sort the different kinds of grain in a granary; up marches Captain Formicola with his army, and accomplishes the stipulated task. In other varieties of the same story, instead of the embankment, we have the leaf that the hero puts under the ant to float it out of the water contained in the footprint of a horse, which again recalls the lotus-leaf on which the Hindoo deity navigates the ocean. This water in which the ant is drowning was afterwards changed into the proverbial ants' milk,[75] which is now used to express an impossibility, but which, when referred to Indras, to the mythical ant, represents the ambrosial and pluvial moisture. In the sixth Sicilian story of Signora Gonzenbach, the boy Giuseppe, having given crumbs of bread to the hungry ants, receives from the king of the ants the present of an ant's leg, in order that he may use it when required. When he wishes to become an ant, in order to penetrate into the giant's palace, he has only to let the ant's leg fall to the ground, with the words, "I am a Christian, and am becoming an ant," which immediately comes to pass. In the same story Giuseppe procures sheep, in order to attract the serpent by their smell, and induce it to come out of its lurking-place. Here we evidently return to the Vedic subject of the ant Indras, who tempts the serpent to come out in order to give it to the ants. In the eighth story of the fourth book of the _Pentamerone_, the ant shows the third part of the way to the girl Cianna, who is going to search for the mother of time; on the door of her dwelling Cianna will find a serpent biting its tail (the well-known symbol of the cyclical day or year, and of time, in antiquity), and she is to ask the mother of time, on the ant's part, advice as to how the ants can live a hundred years. The mother of time answers to Cianna that the ants will live a hundred years when they can dispense with flying, inasmuch as "quanno la formica vo morire, mette l'ascelle" (_i.e._, the wings). The ant, grateful for this good advice, shows Cianna and her brothers the place underground where the thieves have deposited their treasure. We also remember the story of the ants who bring grains of barley into the mouth of the royal child Midas, to announce his future wealth. In _Herodotus_ (iii.), and in the twelfth book of the stories of _Tzetza_,[76] I find the curious information that there are in India ants as large as foxes, that keep golden treasures in their holes; the grains of wheat are this gold. The morning and evening heavens are sometimes compared to granaries of gold; the ants separate the grain during the night, carrying it from west to east, and purifying it of all that is unclean, or cleansing the sky of the nocturnal shadows. The work assigned every night by the witch to the maiden aurora of evening is done in one night by the black ants of the sky of night. Sometimes the girl meets on the way the good fairy (the moon), who comes to her help; the maiden, assisted by the ants, meets the madonna-moon. But the moon is called also the leaper or hopper, a nocturnal locust; the darkness, the cloud and the dark-coloured earth (in lunar eclipses) are at the same time ant-hills and black ants, that pass over or before the moon; and, therefore, in the race between the ant and the locust, it is said in the fable that the ant won the race. The locust, or _çarabhas_, or _çalabhas_, is presented to us as an improvident animal in two sentences of the first and fourth books of the _Pancatantram_. The green grasshopper or locust leaps; the fair-haired moon leaps. (I have already noticed in the chapter on the ass how the words _haris_ and _harit_ mean both green and fair, or yellow; in the second canto of the sixth book of the _Râmâyanam_, the monkey Çarabhas is said to inhabit the mountain Candras or Mount Moon; Çarabhas, therefore, appears as the moon.) Locust and grasshopper jump (cfr. the Chap. on the hare); hence the ant is not only in connection with the locust, but also with the grasshopper: the Hindoo expression _çarabhas_ means both grasshopper (in Sanskrit, also named _varshakarî_) and locust. In one of the popular songs of the Monferrato collected by Signor Ferraro, we have the wedding of the grasshopper and the ant; the magpie, the mouse, the ortolan, the crow, and the goldfinch bring to the wedding a little cut straw, a cushion, bread, cheese, and wine. In the popular Tuscan songs published by Giuseppe Tigri, I find the word _grilli_ (grasshoppers) used in the sense of lovers. In Italian, _grillo_ also means caprice, and especially amorous caprice; and _medico grillo_ is applied to a foolish doctor.[77] And yet the grasshopper ought to be the diviner _par excellence_. In Italy, when we propose a riddle, we are accustomed to end it with the words "indovinala, grillo" (guess it, grasshopper); this expression perhaps refers to the supposed fool of the popular story, who almost always ends by showing himself wise. The sun enclosed in the cloud and in the gloom of night is generally the fool, but he is at the same time the fool who, in the kingdom of the dead, sees, hears, and learns everything; and the moon, too, personified as a grasshopper or locust, is the supposed fool who, on the contrary, knows, sees, understands, and teaches everything; from the moon are taken prognostics; hence riddles may be proposed to the capricious moon, or the celestial cricket. In Italian, the expressions "aver la luna" (to have the moon), and "avere il grillo" (to have the grasshopper), are equivalent, and mean to suffer from a nervous attack, or the spleen. I also find the wedding between ant and grasshopper in a very popular, but as yet unpublished Tuscan song. The ant asks the grasshopper whether he desires her for his wife, and recommends him, if he does not, to look after his own affairs, that is, to leave her alone. And then the narrative begins. The grasshopper goes into a field of linen; the ant begs for a thread to make herself aprons and shirts for the wedding; then the grasshopper says he wishes to marry her. The grasshopper goes into a field of vetches; the ant asks for ten vetches, to cook four in a stew, and to put six upon the spit for the wedding-dinner. After the wedding, the grasshopper follows the trade of a greengrocer, then that of an innkeeper; but his affairs succeed so badly, that he first puts his own trousers in pawn, and then becomes bankrupt, and beats his wife the ant; at last he dies in misery. Then the ant faints away, throws herself upon the bed, and beats her breast for sorrow with her heel (as ants do when they die).[78] The nuptials of the black ant, the gloom of night, with the moon, locust, or grasshopper, take place in the evening; the grasshopper dies, the moon pales, and the black ant, the night, also disappears. In the _Pancatantram_, the locusts are destroyed by fire. In the so-called letter of Alexander the Great to Olympias,[79] I find the ants scared away by means of fire, whilst they are endeavouring to keep horses and heroes at a distance. These extraordinary ants recall to us the hippomürmêkes of the Greeks, or ants of horses. The ants, the insects of the forest of night, molest the hero and solar horse that traverse it; the black ants of night are dispersed by the solar fire of the morning: this we can understand all the better when Tzetza, quoted before, speaking of the Indian ants, calls them as large as foxes; when Pliny, in the eleventh book of his History, says they are of the colour of a cat, and the size of Egyptian wolves; and when Solinus tells us that they have the shape of a large dog, with lion's feet, with which they dig gold up. Ælianos calls them guardians of gold (tôn chrüsôn phülattontes). Evidently the ants have already taken here a monstrous and demoniacal aspect. Several other ancient authors have written concerning these Indian ants, including Herodotus, Strabo, Philostratos, and Lucian. I shall only mention here, as bearing on our subject, that, according to Lucian, it is by night that they dig up the gold, and that, according to Pliny, the ants dig up gold in winter (night and winter are often equivalent in mythology). "The Indians, moreover, steal it during summer, whilst the ants stay hidden in their subterranean lurking-places on account of the vapours; however, tempted forth by the smell, they run out, and often cut the Indians in pieces, although they flee away on very swift camels, they are so rapid, ferocious, and desirous of gold."[80] This monster ant, with lion's claws, which Pliny also describes as horned, approaches very closely to the mythical black scorpion of the clouds and the night, the Vedic _Vriçcikas_, which, now a very little bird (iyattikâ çakuntikâ), now a very small ichneumon (kushumbhakas, properly the little golden one, perhaps the young morning sun), destroys with its tooth (açmanâ, properly with the biter), absorbing or taking away the poison, as jars take off the water, _i.e._, the sun's rays dissipate the vapours of the sun enclosed in the cloud or the gloom.[81] Here the ichneumon (viverra ichneumon) appears as the benefactor of the scorpion rather than as its enemy; it takes its poison away, that is, it frees the sun from the sign of Scorpio, from the vapours which envelope it. The ichneumon is in Sanskrit called _nakulas_. In the twelfth story of the first book of the _Pancatantram_, we see it, on the contrary, as the declared enemy of the black serpent, which it kills in its den. But inasmuch as the weasel-ichneumon bites venomous animals, it is itself obliged to deliver itself from the venom it has in consequence imbibed. Therefore, in the _Atharvavedas_, mention is already made of the salutary herb with which the nakulas (which is also the name of one of the two sons of the Açvinâu, in the _Mahâbhâratam_) cures himself of the bite of venomous animals, that is, of serpents, scorpions, and monstrous mice, his enemies. The weasel (mustela), which differs but little from the ichneumon, is almost the same in the myths. The weasel, too, as we learn from the ninth book of Aristotle's _History of Animals_, fights against serpents, after having eaten the famous herb called rue, the smell of which is said to be insupportable to serpents. But, as its Latin name tells us, it is no less skilful as a hunter of mice.[82] The reader is doubtless familiar with the Æsopian fable of the weasel which petitions the man for its liberty for the service which it has rendered him by freeing his house from rats; and with that of Phædrus, of the old weasel which catches mice in the flour-trough by rolling itself in the flour, so that the mice approach, under the impression that it is a solid mass. Plautus's parasite reckons upon a good dinner for himself from having met with a weasel carrying away the whole of a mouse except its feet (auspicio hodie optumo exivi foras; mustela murem abstulit præter pedes); but the expected dinner never appearing, he declares that the presage is false, and pronounces the weasel a prophet only of evil, inasmuch as in one and the same day it changes its place ten times. According to the ninth book of Ovid's _Metamorphoses_, the maid Galanthis was changed by the goddess Lucina (the moon) into a weasel, for having told a lie, announcing the birth of Hêraklês before it had taken place:--

"Strenuitas antiqua manet, nec terga colorem Amisêre suum, forma est diversa priori; Quæ, quia mendaci parientem juverat ore, Ore parit."

The popular superstition which makes the weasel bring forth its young by its mouth, probably had its origin in this fable. From the mouth intemperate words are brought forth. Simonides, in Stobeus, quoted already by Aldrovandi,[83] compares wicked women to weasels. The moon that changes the chattering Galanthis into a weasel appears to be the same as the white moon itself transformed into a white weasel, the moon that explores the nocturnal heaven and discovers all its secrets.

Ants, mice, moles (like serpents), love, on the contrary, to stay hidden, and to keep their secrets concealed. The ichneumon, the weasel, and the cat generally come out of their hiding-places, and chase away whoever is concealed, carrying away from the hiding-places whatever they can. They are both themselves thieves, and hunt other thieves.

It is easy now to pass from the Latin _mustela_ to the Sanskrit cat _mûshakârâtis_, or _mûshikântakrit_.

In the _Pancatantram_, the cat Butter-ears (dadhikarnas), or he of the white ears, who feigns to repent of his crimes, is called upon to act as judge in a dispute pending between the sparrow, kapingalas and the hare Quick-walker (sîghragas), who had taken up his quarters in the dwelling of the absent sparrow. Butter-ears solves the question by feigning deafness, and requesting the two disputants to come nearer, to confide their arguments in his ears; the hare and the sparrow rely on his good faith, and approach, when the cat clutches and devours them both. In the _Hitopadeças_,[84] we have, instead of the sparrow, the vulture caradgavas, which meets with its death in consequence of having shown hospitality to the cat, "of which it knew neither the disposition nor the strength" (agnâtakulaçîlasya). In the _Tuti-Name_,[85] we have, instead of the cat, the lynx,[86] that wishes to possess itself of the lion's house, which is guarded by the monkey; it terrifies the lion, and drives it to flight. In the _Anvari-Suhaili_,[87] instead of the cat or lynx, we find represented the leopard. In the _Mahâbhâratam_,[88] we find again the fable of the penitent cat. The cat, by the austerity which it practises on the banks of the Ganges, inspires confidence in the birds, which gather round it to do it honour. After some time, the mice imitate the example of the birds, and put themselves under the cat's protection, that it may defend them. The cat makes its meals upon them every day, by inducing one or two to accompany it to the river, and fattens exceedingly fast, whilst the mice diminish every day. Then a wise mouse determines to follow the cat one day when it goes to the river; the cat eats both the mouse that accompanies it and the spy. Upon this the mice discover the trick, and evacuate altogether the post of danger. The penitent cat is already proverbial in the _Code of Manus_.[89] In the _Reineke Fuchs_ of Goethe,[90] the cat goes to steal in the priest's house, by the wicked advice of the fox, when every one falls upon him--

"Sprang er wüthend entschlossen Zwischen die Schenkel des Pfaffen und biss und kratzte gefährlich."

The _Roman du Renard_,[91] when the priest is mutilated by the cat, makes his wife exclaim--

"C'en est fait de nos amours! Je suis veuve sans recours!"

In the same _Roman_, when the cat Tibert, the ambassador of King Lion, arrives at Mantpertuis, where the fox reigns, we read--

"Tibert lui présenta la patte; Il fait le saint, il fait la chatte! Mais à bon chat, bon rat! Renard aussi le flatte! Il s'entend à dorer ses paroles de miel! Si l'un est saint, l'autre est hermite; Si l'un est chatte, l'autre est mite."

In the romance of the fox, the fox endeavours to destroy the cat by inducing it to catch the mice that are in the priest's house. In an unpublished Tuscan story,[92] we have, on the contrary, the fox that invites the mouse to the shop of a butcher who has recently killed a pig. The mouse promises to gnaw the wood till the hole is large enough for the fox to pass through it; the fox eats till it is able to pass, and then goes away; the mouse eats and fattens so much that it can no longer pass; the cat then comes and eats it.

In the thirty-fourth story of the second book of _Afanassieff_, the cat occurs again, as in India, in connection with the sparrow, but not to eat it; on the contrary, they are friends, and twice deliver the young hero from the witch. This is a form of the Açvinâu. In the sixty-seventh story of the sixth book, the two Açvinâu return in the shape respectively of a dog and a cat (now enemies one of the other, as the two mythical brothers often show themselves, and now friends for life and death). A young man buys for a hundred roubles a dog with hanging ears, and for another hundred roubles a cat with a golden tail,[93] both of which he nourishes well. With a hundred roubles more, he acquires the ring of a dead princess, from which thirty boys and a hundred and seventy heroes, who perform every kind of marvel, can come forth at the possessor's will. By means of these wonders, the young man is enabled to wed the king's daughter; but as the latter wishes to ruin him, she makes him drunk, steals his ring, and departs into a far distant kingdom. The Tzar then shuts the youth up in prison; the dog and the cat go to recover the lost ring. When they pass the river, the dog swims and carries the cat upon his back (the blind and the lame, St Christopher and Christ). They come to the place where the princess lives, and enter into her dwelling. They then engage themselves in the service of the cook and the housemaid; the cat, following its natural instinct, gives chase to a mouse, upon which the mouse begs for its life, promising to bring the ring to the cat. The princess sleeps with the ring in her mouth; the mouse puts its tail into her mouth; she spits, the ring comes out, and is taken by the dog and the cat, who deliver the young man, and force the fugitive Tzar's daughter to return to her first abode.

In the following story of _Afanassieff_, when the youngest of the three sisters bears three sons to Ivan Tzarevic, her envious elder sisters make the prince believe that she has brought forth a cat, a dog, and a vulgar child. The three real sons are carried off; the princess is blinded and enclosed with her supposed child in a cask, which is thrown into the sea. The cask, however, comes to shore and opens;[94] the supposititious son immediately bathes the princess's eyes with hot water, and she recovers her sight, after which he finds her three luminous sons again, who light up whatever is near them with their splendour, and is again united to her husband. In a Russian variation of the same story, the three sons are changed by the witch into three doves; the princess, with her supposed son, is saved from the sea, and takes refuge upon an island, where, perched upon a gold pillar, a wise cat sings ballads and tells stories. The three doves are transformed into handsome youths, whose legs are of silver up to the knee, their chests of gold, their foreheads like the moon, and their sides formed of stars, and recover their father and mother.

Thus far we have seen the cat with white ears, who hunts the hare (or moon), the morning twilight, and the penitent cat who eats mice at the river's side, and which is mythically the same. We have observed that, of the two Açvinâu, one represents especially the sun, and the other the moon; the thieving cat, who is the friend of some thieves and the enemy of others (whence the Hungarian and Tuscan superstition, to the effect that for a good cat to be a skilful thief, it must itself have been stolen; then it is sure to catch mice well), is now the morning twilight, now the moon who gives chase to the mice of the night. According to the Hellenic cosmogony, the sun and the moon created the animals; the sun creating the lion, and the moon the cat. In the fifth book of Ovid's _Metamorphoses_, when the gods fled from the giants, Diana took the form of a cat.[95] In Sicily the cat is sacred to St Martha, and is respected in order not to irritate her: he who kills a cat will be unhappy for seven years. In the ancient German belief, the goddess Freya was drawn by two cats. At present, the cat and the mouse are sacred to the funereal St Gertrude. In the sixty-second story of the sixth book of _Afanassieff_, we have the chattering cat, which the hero Baldak must kill in the territory of the hostile Sultan (that is, in the wintry night). In the eighth story of the fourth book of the _Pentamerone_, we also find a she-cat that plays the part of the ogre's spy; in the tenth story of the _Pentamerone_, and in the first of the _Novelline di Santo Stefano di Calcinaia_, on the contrary, the cat reveals the witch's treachery to the prince. In the twenty-third story of the fourth book of _Afanassieff_, the cat Katofiei appears as the husband of the fox, who passes him off as a burgomaster. United together, they terrify the wolf and the bear,[96] the cat climbing up a tree. In the Æsopian fables, on the contrary, the cat and the fox dispute as to which is the superior animal; the cat makes the dog catch the fox, whilst it itself climbs up a tree. In the third story of the second book of _Afanassieff_, the cat associates with the cock in the search for the bark of trees; it delivers its comrade three times from the fox that had run off with it; the third time, the cat not only liberates the cock, but also eats the four young foxes. In the thirtieth story of the fourth book, the cat Catonaievic, the son of Cato (this name is derived from the equivoque between the words _catus_ and _caton_; in French, besides _chat_, we have _chaton_, _chatonique_, &c.), delivers the cock twice from the fox, but the third time the fox eats the poor bird. In a Russian variety of this story, the cat kills the five little foxes and then the fox, after having sung as follows:--

"The cat walks upon its feet In red boots; It wears a sword by its side, And a stick by its thigh; It wishes to kill the fox, And to make its soul perish."[97]

In another variety, the cat and the lamb go to deliver the cock from the fox. The latter has seven daughters. The cat and the lamb allure them by songs to come out, and they kill them one after the other, wounding them in their foreheads; they then kill the fox itself, and so deliver the cock. In the romance of the fox, the cat is the hangman, and ties the fox to the gibbet.

In the third story of the first book, the witch's cat, grateful to the good girl who has given her some ham to eat, teaches her how to escape, and gives her the usual towel which, when thrown on the ground, makes a river appear, and the usual comb which, in like manner, causes an impenetrable forest to arise before the witch who runs after the girl to devour her.

We have already seen the Vedic moon who sews the wedding-robe with a thread that does not break. In the Russian story we have already remarked how the little puppet, to oblige the good maiden, makes a shirt destined for the Tzar, which is so fine that no one else can make the like. In the celebrated tale of the witty Madame d'Aulnoy, _La Chatte Blanche_, we have the white cat Blanchette, veiled in black, who inhabits the enchanted palace, rides upon a monkey, speaks, and gives to the young prince, who rides upon a wooden horse (the forest of night), inside an acorn, the most beautiful little dog that ever existed in the world, that he may take it to the king his father--a little dog, "plus beau que la canicule" (evidently the sun itself, which comes out of the golden egg or acorn), which can pass through a ring (the disc of the sun), and then a marvellously painted cloth, which is so fine that it can pass through the eye of a small needle, and is enclosed in a grain of millet, although of the length of "quatre cents aunes" (the eye of the needle, the acorn, the grain of millet, and the ring are equivalent forms to represent the solar disc). This wonderful cat finally herself becomes a beautiful maiden, "Parut comme le soleil qui a été quelque temps enveloppé dans une nue; ses cheveux blonds étaient épars sur ses épaules; ils tombaient par grosses boucles jusqu'à ses pieds. Sa tête était ceinte de fleurs, sa robe, d'une légère gaze blanche, doublée de taffetas couleur de rose." The white cat of night, the white moon, resigns her place in the morning to the rosy aurora; the two phenomena that succeed each other appear to be metamorphoses of the same being. The white cat, with its attendant cats, before becoming a beautiful maiden, invites the prince to assist in a battle which he engages in with the mice. To this we can compare the Æsopian fable of the young man who, in love with a cat, beseeches Venus to transform her into a woman. Venus gratifies him; the youth marries her; but when the bride is in bed (_i.e._, in the night, when the evening aurora again gives up its place to the moon, or when it meets with the grey mice of night), a mouse passes by, and the woman, who still retains her feline nature, runs after it.

When the sun enters into the night, it finds in the starry heavens an enchanted palace, where either there is not a living soul to be found, or where only the cat-moon moves about. Hence, in my opinion, the origin of the expression that we make use of in Italy to indicate an empty house--"Non vi era neanche un gatto" (there was not even a cat there). The cat is considered the familiar genie of the house. The enchanted palace is always situated either at the summit of a mountain, or in a gloomy forest (like the moon). This palace is the dwelling either of a good fairy, or a good magician, or of a witch, or a serpent-demon, or at least cats. The visit to the house of the cats is the subject of a story which I have heard told, with few variations, in Piedmont and in Tuscany.[98]

We have hitherto seen only the luminous or white cat, the cat-moon and twilight, under a generally benignant aspect. But when the night is without a moon, we have only the black cat in the dense gloom. This black cat then assumes a demoniacal character.

In the Monferrato it is believed that all the cats that wander about the roofs in the month of February are not really cats, but witches, which one must shoot. For this reason, black cats are kept away from the cradles of children. The same superstition exists in Germany.[99] In Tuscany, it is believed that when a man desires death, the devil passes before his bed in the form of any animal except the lamb, but especially in that of a he-goat, a cock, a hen, or a cat. In the German superstition,[100] the black cat that places itself upon the bed of a sick man announces his approaching death; if it is seen upon a grave, it signifies that the departed is in the devil's power. If one dreams of a black cat at Christmas, it is an omen of some alarming illness during the following year. Aldrovandi, speaking of Stefano Cardano, narrates that, being old and seriously ill, or rather dying, a cat appeared unexpectedly before him, emitted a loud cry, and disappeared. The same Aldrovandi tells us of a cat which scratched the breast of a woman, who, recognising in it a supernatural being, died after the lapse of a few days. In Hungary it is believed that the cat generally becomes a witch from the age of seven years to that of twelve, and that witches ride upon tom-cats, especially black ones; it is, moreover, believed that to deliver the cat from the witch, it is necessary to make upon its skin an incision in the form of a cross. The cat in the bag of proverbs has probably a diabolical allusion. In the tenth story of the _Pentamerone_, when the King of Roccaforte, thinking that he is marrying a beautiful maiden, finds that, on the contrary, he has espoused a hideous veiled old hag (the night), he says, "Questo è peo nce vole a chi accatta la gatta dinto lo sacco." In Sicily, when the Rosary is recited for navigators, the mewing of the cat presages a tedious voyage.[101] When the witches in _Macbeth_ prepare their evil enchantments against the king, the first witch commences with the words--

"Thrice the brinded cat hath mewed."

In a German belief noticed by Professor Rochholtz, two cats that fight against each other are to a sick man an omen of approaching death. These two cats are probably another form of the children's game in Piedmont and Tuscany, called the game of souls, in which the devil and the angel come to dispute for the soul. Of the two cats, one is probably benignant and the other malignant; they represent perhaps night and twilight. An Irish legend tells us of a combat between cats, in which all the combatants perished, leaving only their tails upon the battlefield. (A similar tradition also exists in Piedmont, but is there, if I am not mistaken, referred to wolves.) Two cats that fight for a mouse, and allow it to escape, are also mentioned in Hindoo tradition.[102]

In the 105th hymn of the first book of the _Rigvedas_, and in the thirty-third of the tenth book, a poet says to Indras, "The thought rends me, thy praiser, as mice tear their tails by gnawing at them."[103] But according to another interpretation, instead of "tails," we should read "threads;" in this case, the mice that rend the threads would refer to the fable of the mouse that delivers from the net now the elephant, and now the lion (of which fable I shall endeavour to prove the Vedic antiquity in the next chapter).

The twelfth story of the third book of the _Pancatantram_ is of great mythological interest. From the beak of a hawk (in another Hindoo legend, from two cats that are disputing for it) a mouse takes refuge in the hands of a penitent, whilst he is bathing in the river. The penitent transforms the mouse into a beautiful maiden, and wishes to marry her to the sun; the maiden declines--he is too hot. The penitent next wishes to marry her to the cloud which defeats the sun; the maiden declares it is too dark and cold. He then proposes to give her to the wind which defeats the cloud (in the white _Yagurvedas_, the mouse is sacred to the god Rudras, the wind that howls and lightens in the cloud); the maiden refuses--it is too changeful. The penitent now proposes that she should wed the mountain, against which the wind cannot prevail, but the girl says it is too hard; and finally the penitent asks if she would be willing to part with her affections to the mouse, who alone can make a hole in the mountain; the maiden is satisfied with this last proposal, and is again transformed into a female mouse, in order to be able to wed the male mouse. In this beautiful myth (which is a variation of the other one which we have already mentioned of the cat-maiden that, though transfigured, still retains its instinct as a huntress of mice), the whole revolution of the twenty-four hours of the day is described. The mouse of night appears first; the twilight tries to make it its prey; the night becomes the aurora; the sun presents itself for her husband; the sun is covered by the cloud, and the cloud is scattered by the wind; meanwhile the evening aurora, the girl, appears upon the mountain; the mouse of night again appears, and with her the maiden is confounded. The _Hîtopadeças_ contains an interesting variety of the same myth. The mouse falls from the vulture's beak, and is received by a wise man, who changes it into a cat, then, to save it from the dog, into a dog, and finally into a tiger. When the mouse is become a tiger, it thinks of killing the wise man, who, reading its thoughts, transforms it again into a mouse. Here we find described the same circle of daily celestial phenomena. The succession of these phenomena sometimes causes transformations in the myths.

The well-known proverb of the mountain that gives birth to the mouse, refers to the myth contained in the story of the _Pancatantram_. We already know that the solar hero enters in the evening with the solar horse into the mountain and becomes stone, and that all the heavens assume the colour of this mountain. From the mountain come forth the mice of night, the shadows of night, to which the cat-moon and the cat-twilight give chase; the thieving propensities of the mice display themselves in the night. In German superstition the souls of the dead assume the forms of mice, and when the head of a house dies, it is said that even the mice of the house abandon it.[104] In general, every apparition of mice is considered a funereal presage; it is on this account that the funereal St Gertrude was represented surrounded by mice. The first witch in _Macbeth_, when she wishes to persecute the merchant who is sailing towards Aleppo, and shipwreck him, that she may avenge herself upon his wife, who had refused to give her some chestnuts, threatens to become like a rat without a tail. In the _Historia Sarmatiæ_, quoted by Aldrovandi, the uncles of King Popelus II., whom, with his wife for accomplice, he murders in secret, and throws into the lake, become mice, and gnaw the king and queen to death. The same death is said to have been the doom of Miçcislaus, the son of the Duke Conrad of Poland, for having wrongfully appropriated the property of widows and orphans; and of Otto, Archbishop of Mainz, for having burned the granary during a famine. Mice are said to have presaged at Rome the first civil war, by gnawing the gold in the temple; and it was, moreover, alleged that a female mouse had given birth in a trap to five male mice, of which she had devoured two. Other prodigies, in which mice were implicated, are mentioned as having taken place at Rome, even in the times of Cato, who was accustomed to make them the butt of his indignant scorn. To a person who told him, for instance, how the mice had gnawed the boots, he answered that this was no miracle; it would have been a miracle if the boots (_caligæ_) had eaten the mice.

The mouse in the fable is sometimes in connection with the elephant and the lion, whom it sometimes insults and despises (as in the _Tuti-Name_),[105] and sometimes comes to help and deliver from their fetters. The meaning of the myth is evident: the elephant and the lion represent here the sun in the darkness; in the evening the mouse of night leaps upon the two heroic animals, which are then old or infirm; in the morning the sun is delivered out of the fetters of the night, and it is supposed that it was the mouse which gnawed the ropes and set at liberty now the elephant, as in the _Pancatantram_, now the lion, as in the Æsopian fable.

The Hindoo god Ganeças, the god of poets, eloquence, and wisdom, is represented with an elephant's head, and his foot crushing a mouse. Thus, among the Greeks, Apollo Smintheus, so called because he had shot the mice that stole the yearly provisions from Krinos, the priest of Apollo himself, was represented with a mouse under him. As the Christian Virgin crushes the serpent of night under her foot, so does the pagan sun-god crush under his feet the mouse of night.

When the cat's away, the mice may play; the shadows of night dance when the moon is absent.

In the fifteenth story of the fifth book of _Afanassieff_, the witch step-mother desires her old husband to lead away his daughter to spin in the forest[106] in a deserted hut. The girl finds a little mouse there, and gives it something to eat. At night the bear comes, and wishes to play with the girl at the game of blind-man's-buff (this very popular game has evidently a mythical origin and meaning; every evening in the sky the sun amuses itself by playing blind-man's-buff; it blinds itself, and runs blind into the night, where it must find again its predestined bride or lost wife, the aurora). The little mouse approaches the maiden, and whispers in her ear, "Maiden, be not afraid; say to him, 'Let us play;' then put out the fire and hide under the stove; I will run and make the little bells ring." (Mice seem to have an especial predilection for the sound of bells. It is well-known how, in the Hellenic fable, the council of mice resolve, to deliver themselves from the cat, to put a bell round its neck; no one, however, undertakes to perform the arduous enterprise.) The bear thinks he is running after the maiden, and runs, on the contrary, after the mouse, which he cannot catch. The bear tires himself out, and congratulating the maiden, says to her, "Thou art my mistress, maiden, in playing at blind-man's-buff; to-morrow morning I will send you a herd of horses and a chariot of goods." (The morning aurora comes out of the forest, delivers herself from the clutches of the bear, from the witch of the night, and appears drawn by horses upon a chariot full of treasure. The myth is a lucid one.)

In other numerous legends we have the grateful mouse that helps the hero or heroine. In the thirteenth Calmuc story, the mouse, the monkey, and the bear, grateful for having been delivered, from the rogues that tormented them, by the son of the Brahman, come to his help by gnawing and breaking open the chest in which the young man had been enclosed by order of the king; afterwards, with the assistance of the fishes, they help him to recover a lost talisman.

In the fifty-eighth story of the sixth book of _Afanassieff_,[107] the mouse, the war-horse, and the fish silurus, out of gratitude assist the honest workman who has fallen into a marsh, and cleanse him; upon seeing which the princess, that has never laughed, laughs, and thereafter marries the workman. (The young morning sun comes out of the marsh or swamp of night; the aurora, who was at first a dark, wicked, and ugly girl, marries the young sun whom the mouse has delivered out of the mud, as it delivered the lion out of the toils.)

In the fifty-seventh story of the sixth book of _Afanassieff_, it is the mouse that warns Ivan Tzarevic to flee from the serpent-witch (the black night) his sister, who is sharpening her teeth to eat him.

In the third story of the first book of _Afanassieff_, the mice help the good maiden, who had given them something to eat, to do what the witch, her step-mother, had commanded.

In the twenty-third story of the fifth book of _Afanassieff_, the mouse and the sparrow appear at first as friends and associates. But one day the sparrow, having found a poppy-seed, thinks it so small that he eats it up without offering a share to his partner. The mouse hears of it, and is indignant; he breaks the alliance, and declares war against the sparrow. The latter assembles all the birds of the air, and the mouse all the animals of the earth, and a sanguinary battle commences. In a Russian variety of the same story, instead of the sparrow, it is the mouse that breaks the compact. They collect together the provisions against winter, but when, towards the end of the season, they are all but finished, the mouse expels the sparrow, and the sparrow goes to complain to the king of the birds. The king of the birds visits the king of the beasts, and sets forth the complaint of the sparrow; the king of the beasts then calls the mouse to account, who defends himself with such humility and cunning, that he ends by convincing his monarch that the sparrow is in the wrong. Then the two kings declare war against each other, and engage in a formidable struggle, attended with terrible bloodshed on both sides, and which ends in the king of the birds being wounded. (The nocturnal or wintry mouse expels the solar bird of evening or of autumn.)

In the _Batrachomyomachia_, attributed to Homer, the royal mouse Psicharpax (properly ravisher of crumbs), the third son of Troxartes (eat-bread), boasts to Phüsignathos (he who inflates his cheeks), the lord of the frogs, that he does not fear the man, the point of whose finger (akron daktülôn) he has bitten while he was asleep; whilst, on the other hand, he has for his enemies the falcon (which we have already, in the Hindoo story, seen let the mouse fall from its beak) and the cat. The frog, who wishes to entertain the mouse, invites it to get upon his back, to be carried to his royal mansion; at first the mouse is amused with its ride, but when the frog makes it feel the icy water, the poor mouse's heart begins to fail; finally, at the sight of a serpent, the frog forgets its rider and runs away, throwing the mouse head-over-heels into the water to be the prey of the serpent. Then, before expiring, remembering that the gods have an avenging eye, it threatens the frogs with the vengeance of the army of the mice. War is prepared. The mice make themselves good boots with the shells of beans; they cover their cuirasses of bulrushes with the skin of a flayed cat; their shield is the centre knob of the lamps (lüchnôn to mesomphalon, _i.e._, if I am not mistaken, a fragment of a little lamp of terra-cotta, and, properly speaking, the lower and central part); for a lance they have a needle, and for a helmet a nutshell. The gods are present at the battle as neutrals,--Pallas having declared her unwillingness to help the mice, because they stole the oil from the lamps burning in her honour, and because they had gnawed her peplum, and being equally indifferent to the frogs, because they had once wakened her when returning from war, and when, being tired and weary, she wished to rest. The battle is fiercely fought, and is about to have an unfavourable result for the frogs, when Zeus takes pity upon them; he lightens and hurls his thunderbolts. At last, seeing that the mice do not desist, the gods send a host of crabs, who, biting the tails, the hands, and the feet of the mice, force them to flee. This is undoubtedly the representation of a mythical battle. The frogs, as we shall see, are the clouds; the night meets the cloud; the mouse fights with the frog. Zeus, the thunder-god, to put an end to the struggle, thunders and lightens; at last the retrograde crab makes its appearance; the combatants, frogs and mice, naturally disappear.

The mouse is never conceived otherwise than in connection with the nocturnal darkness, and hence, by extending the myth, in connection also with the darkness of winter, from which light and riches subsequently come forth. In Sicily it is believed that when a child's tooth is taken out, if it be hidden in a hole, the mouse will take it away and bring a coin for the child in compensation. The mouse is dark-coloured, but its teeth and fore-parts are white and luminous. The mouse Hiranyakas, or the golden one, in the _Pancatantram_, is the black or grey mouse of night. It is the red squirrel that, in an Æsopian fable, answers to the query of the fox why it sharpens its teeth when it has nothing to eat, that it does so to be always prepared against its enemies. In the _Edda_, the squirrel runs upon the tree Yggdrasil, and sets the eagle and Nidhögg at discord.

The mole and the snail are of the same nature as the grey mouse. The Hindoo word _âkhus_, or the mole (already spoken of as a demon killed by Indras, in the _Rigvedas_[108]), properly signifies the excavator.

In the _Reineke Fuchs_ the mole appears as a gravedigger, as the animal that heaves the earth up, and makes ditches underground; it is, in fact, the most skilful of gravediggers, and its black colour and supposed blindness are in perfect accordance with the funereal character assigned to it by mythology. In an apologue of Laurentius, the ass complains to the mole of having no horns, and the monkey of having a short tail; the mole answers them--

"Quid potestis hanc meam Miseram intuentes coecitatem, hæc conqueri?"

According to the Hellenic myth, Phineus became a mole because he had, following the advice of his second wife, Idaia, allowed his two sons by his first wife, Cleopatra, to be blinded, and also because he had revealed the secret thoughts of Zeus.[109]

In Du Cange I find that even in the Middle Ages it was the custom on Christmas Eve for children to meet with poles, having straw wrapped round the ends, which they set fire to, and to go round the gardens, near the trees, shouting--

"Taupes et mulots Sortez de nos clos Sinon je vous brulerai la barbe et les os."

We find a similar invocation in the seventh story of the second book of the _Pentamerone_. The beautiful girl goes to find maruzze, and threatens the snail to make her mother cut off its horns--

"Iesce, iesce, corna Ca mammata te scorna, Te scorna 'ncoppa l'astreco Che fa lo figlio mascolo."

In Piedmont, to induce the snail to put its horns out, children are accustomed to sing to it--

"Lümassa, lümassora, Tira fora i to corn, Dass no,[110] i vad dal barbé E it tje fass taié!"

Sicilian children terrify the snail by informing it that their mother is coming to burn its horns with a candle--

"Nesci li corna ch 'a mamma veni E t' adduma lu cannileri."

In Tuscany they threaten the white snail (la marinella), telling it to thrust out its little horns to save itself from kicks and blows--

"Chiócciola marinella, Tira fuori le tue cornella, E se tu non le tirerai Calci e pugni tu buscherai."

In Tuscany it is believed, moreover, that in the month of April the snail makes love with the serpents, and is therefore venomous; hence they sing--

"Chi vuol presto morire Mangi la chiocciola d' aprile."[111]

The snail of popular superstition is demoniacal; hence it is also invoked by children in Germany by the name of the funereal St Gertrude--

"Kuckuck, kuckuck Gerderut Stäk dîne vêr Horns herut."[112]

FOOTNOTES:

[72] Vriddhasya cid vardhato dyâm inakshatah stavâno vamro vi gaghâna samdihah; _Rigv._ i. 51, 9.

[73] Vamrîbhih putram agruvo adânam niveçanâd dhariva â gabhartha; _Rigv._ iv. 19, 9.--Another variation is the hedgehog, which, as we have seen in Chapter V., forces the viper out of its den.

[74] The dwarf-hermits, who transport a leaf upon a car, and are about to be drowned in the water contained in the foot-print of a cow, and who curse Indras, who passes smiling without assisting them, in the legend of the _Mahâbhâratam_, are a variety of these same ants.--Cfr. the chapters on the Elephant and on the Fishes, where we have Indras who fears to be submerged.

[75] Fa cunto ca no le mancava lo latto de la formica; _Pentamerone_, i. 8.

[76] _Biblion Istorikon_, xii. 404.--In the _Epist. Presb. Johannis_, we find also:--"In quadam provincia nostra sunt formicæ in magnitudine catulorum, habentes vii. pedes et alas iv. Istæ formicæ ab occasu solis ad ortum morantur sub terra et fodiunt purissimum aurum tota nocte--quærunt victum suum tota die. In nocte autem veniunt homines de cunctis civitatibus ad colligendum ipsum aurum et imponunt elephantibus. Quando formicæ sunt supra terram, nullus ibi audet accedere propter crudelitatem et ferocitatem ipsarum."--Cfr. _infra._

[77] Of this expression a historical origin is given, referring it to a Bolognese doctor of the twelfth century, named Grillo.--Cfr. Fanfani, _Vocabolario dell 'uso Toscano, s. v._ "grillo."

[78] Here are the words of the song of this curious wedding, which I heard sung at Santo Stefano di Calcinaia, near Florence:--

"Grillo, mio grillo, Se tu vuoi moglie, dillo; Se tu n' la vuoi, Abbada a' fatti tuoi. Tinfillulilalera Linfillulilalà.

"Povero grillo, 'n un campo di lino, La formicuccia gne ne chiese un filo. D'un filo solo, cosa ne vuoi tu fare? Grembi e camicie; mi vuo' maritare. Disse lo grillo:--Ti piglierò io. La formicuccia:--Son contenta anch' io. Tinfillul., &c.

"Povero grillo, 'n un campo di ceci; La formicuccia gne ne chiese dieci Di dieci soli, cosa ne vuoi tu fare? Quattro di stufa, e sei li vuo' girare. Tinfillul., &c.

"Povero grillo facea l'ortolano L'andava a spasso col ravanello in mano; Povero grillo, andava a Pontedera, Con le vilancie pesava la miseria. Tinfillul., &c.

"Povero grillo, l'andiede a Monteboni, Dalla miseria l'impegnò i calzoni; Povero grillo facea l'oste a Colle, L'andò fallito e bastonò la moglie. Tinfillul., &c.

"La formicuccia andò alla festa a il Porto, Ebbe la nova che il suo grillo era morto La formicuccia, quando seppe la nova La cascò in terra, stette svenuta un 'ora. La formicuccia si buttò su il letto, Con le calcagna si batteva il petto. Tinfillul.," &c.

[79] Cfr. Zacher, _Pseudo-Callisthenes_, Halle, 1867.

[80] Pliny, _Hist. Nat._ xi. 31.

[81] Iyattikâ çakuntikâ sakâ gaghâsa te visham; _Rigv._ i. 191, 11.

[82] iv. 1.

[83] _De Quad. Dig. Viv._ ii.

[84] i. 49.

[85] ii. 22.

[86] The forgetfulness of the lynx, as well as of the cat, is proverbial. St Jerome, in the Ep. ad Chrisog.--"Verum tu quod natura lynces insitum habent, ne post tergum respicientes meminerint priorum, et mens perdat quod oculi videre desierint, ita nostræ es necessitudinis penitus oblitus." Thus of the lynx it is said by Ælianos that it covers its urine with sand (like the cat), so that men may not find it, for in seven days the precious stone lyncurion is formed of this urine. The cat that sees by night, the lynx that sees through opaque bodies, the fable of Lynkeus, who, according to Pliny, saw in one day the first and the last moon in the sign of Aries, and the lynx that, according to Apollonios, saw through the earth what was going on in hell, recall to us the moon, the wise and all-seeing fairy of the sky, and the infernal moon.

[87] Quoted by Benfey in the Einleitung to the _Pancatantram_.

[88] v. 5421-5448.

[89] "Let no man, apprised of this law, present even water to a priest who acts like a cat;" iv. 192, version of Jones and Graves' _Chamney Haughton_, edited by Percival, Madras, 1863.--In a Russian story quoted by Afanassieff in his observations to the first volume of his stories, the cat Eustachio feigns itself penitent or monk in order to eat the mouse when it passes. It being observed that the cat is too fat for a penitent, it answers that it eats from the duty of preserving its health.

[90] iii. 147, Stuttgart, Cotta, 1857.

[91] Translation by Ch. Potvin, Paris and Brussels, 1861.

[92] From the peasant-woman Uliva Selvi, who told it to me at Antignano, near Leghorn.

[93] Cfr. _Afanassieff_, v. 32, where a cat is bought by a virtuous workman for the price of a kapeika (a small coin), the only price that he had consented to take as a reward for his work; the same cat is bought by the king for three vessels. With another kapeika, earned by other work, the workman delivers the king's daughter from the devil, and subsequently marries her.

[94] Cfr. analogous subjects in Chapter I., _e.g._, Emilius the lazy and stupid youth, and the blind woman who recovers her sight.

[95]

Huc quoque terrigenam venisse Typhoea narrat, Et se mentitis superos celasse figuris; Duxque gregis, dixit, fit Jupiter; unde recurvis Nunc quoque formatus Lybis est cum cornibus Ammon Delius in corvo, proles Semeleia capro Fele soror Phoebi, nivea Saturnia vacca, Pisce Venus latuit, Cyllenius ibidis alis. --v. 325-332.

[96] In the eighteenth story of the third book of _Afanassieff_ it is in company with the lamb (in the nineteenth, with the he-goat) that the cat terrifies the wolf and the bear.

[97]

"Idiot kot na nagáh, V krasnih sapagáh; Nessiot sabliu na plessié; A palocku pri bedrié, Hociet lissu parubít, Ieià dushu zagubít."

Puss-in-boots (le chat botté), helps the third brother in the tale of Perrault.

[98] In Tuscany the previously mentioned story-teller, Uliva Selvi, at Antignano, near Leghorn, narrated it to me as follows:--A mother has a number of children and no money; a fairy tells her to go to the summit of the mountain, where she will find many enchanted cats in a beautiful palace, who give alms. The woman goes, and a kitten lets her in; she sweeps the rooms, lights the fire, washes the dishes, draws water, makes the beds, and bakes bread for the cats; at last she comes before the king of the cats, who is seated with a crown on his head, and asks for alms. The great cat rings the golden bell with a golden chain, and calls the cats. He learns that the woman has treated them well, and orders them to fill her apron with gold coins (rusponi). The wicked sister of the poor woman also goes to visit the cats, but she maltreats them, and returns home all scratched, and more dead than alive from pain and terror.

[99] Cfr. Rochholtz, _Deutscher Glaube und Brauche_, i. 161.

[100] _Ib._--I find the same belief referred to in the twenty-first Esthonian story of Kreutzwald.

[101] It is almost universally believed that when the cat cleans itself behind its ears with its wet paw, it presages rain. And yet the Latin proverb says--

"Catus amat pisces, sed aquas intrare recusat;"

and the Hungarian proverb, that the cat does not die in water. It is for this reason, perhaps, that it is said, in a watery autumn the cat is worth little--("The cat of autumn and the woman of spring are not worth much;" _Hung. prov._)

[102] Polier, _Mythologie des Indes_, ii. 571.

[103] Mûsho na çiçnâ vy adanti mâdhyah stotâram te çatakrato; _Rigv._ i. 105, 8.--The commentator now interprets _çiçnâ_ by _sutrâni_, threads, and now calls the reader's attention to the legend of the mice that lick their tails after plunging them into a vase full of butter, or some other savoury substance; but here _vy adanti_ can only mean, they lacerate by biting, as in the preceding strophe we have the thought that tears by biting, as the wolf tears the thirsty wild beast (mâ vyanti âdhyo na trishnagam mrigam).--The mouse in the jar of provisions also occurs in the fable of the mouse and the two penitents in the _Pancatantram_, in the Hellenic fable of the son of Minos and of Pasiphäe, who, pursuing a mouse, falls into a jar of honey, in which he is suffocated, until recalled to life by a salutary herb.

[104] Den Mäusen pfeifen, heisst den Seelen ein Zeichen geben, um von ihnen abgeholt zu werden; ebenso wie der Rattenfänger zu Hameln die Lockpfeife bläst, auf deren Ton alle Mäuse und Kinder der Stadt mit ihm in den Berg hineinziehen, der sich hinter ihnen zuschliesst. Mäuse sind Seelen. Die Seele des auf der Jagd entschlafenen Königs Guntram kommt schlängleinartig aus seinem Munde hervor, um so in einen nächsten Berg und wieder zurückzulaufen. Der goethe'sche Faust weigert sich dem Tanz mit dem hübschen Hexenmädchen am Blocksberg fortzusetzen:--

"Den mitten im Gesange sprang Ein rothes Mäuschen ihr aus dem Munde." --Rochholtz, _Deut. Glaube u. Brauch_, i. 156, 157.

[105] i. 268.

[106] The mouse that passes over the yarn occurs again in German tradition:--"Gertrudenbuchlein ab: Zwei Mäuschen nagen an einer flachsumwundenen Spindel; eine Spinnerinn sitzt am St Gertrudentag, noch in der Zeit der Zwölften, wo die Geister in Gestalt von Mäusen erscheinen, darf gesponnen werden;" Rochholtz, _ut supra_, i. 158.

[107] Cfr. _Pentamerone_, iii. 5.--In the story, iv. 1, the grateful mice assist Minec Aniello to find the lost ring by gnawing the finger on which the magician wears it.

[108] Alâyyasya paraçur nanâça tam â pavasya (pavasva according to Aufrecht's text, and according to the commentator--cfr. Bollensen, Zur Herstellung des Veda, in the _Orient und Occident_ of Benfey, ii. 484) deva soma; âkhum cid eva deva soma; _Rigv._ ix. 67, 30.

[109] Cfr. the _Antigonê_ of Sophocles, v. 973, _et seq._

[110] This _dass no_ of the Piedmontese means "if not," and is evidently of Germanic origin. The Piedmontese dialect has also taken from the Germanic languages the final negative.--In Germany, children sing to the snails--

"Schneckhûs, peckhûs, Stäk dîn vêr hörner rût, Süst schmît ick dî in'n graven Da frêten dî de raven." --Cfr. Kuhn und Schwartz, _N. d. S. M. u. G._, p. 453.

[111] In _Rabelais_, i. 38, when Gargantua has eaten five pilgrims in his salad, another still remains hidden under a leaf of lettuce. His father says to him--"Je crois que c'est là une corne de limasson, ne le mangez point. Pourquoy? dist Gargantua, ilz sont bons tout se moys."

[112] Simrock, _Handbuch der Deutschen Mythologie_, 2te Aufl., p. 516.