CHAPTER VIII.

THE LARK AND THE QUAIL.

SUMMARY.

The lark the first of animals.--It existed before the earth.--It buries its father in its own head.--The lark sings the praises of God.--Pragâpatis creates the stomas first.--The crested sun.--Christos and crista; the crested lark and St Christophoros.--Alauda the lauder.--The lark upon the father's tomb.--The mother-lark.--The lark announces morning and summer.--Bharadvâgas, the bringer of food, the bringer of good things and of sound.--Bharadvâgas as a mythical singer or poet, nourished by a lark; the son of Brihaspatis.--The old Bharadvâgas ascends into heaven in union with the sun.--The quail.--Vartikâ, vartakas, wachtel, perepiolka.--The quail and the wolf in the _Rigvedas_.--The wise girl upon a hare, with a quail tied to her hand.--Jove as a quail.--The quail sacred to Hercules.--The moon and the quail.--The quail becomes a stone.--The quail believed to eat poisonous hellebore.--The quail as a sacred bird.--The game of the quail.--The quail and the cock.--The quail as a prophetic bird.--The quail puts a price upon corn.

To the crested lark, in the _Ornithes_ of Aristophanes, the name of king is given, and the same virtue of funereal charity is attributed to it which we have already seen in the redbreast of winter, in the stork, and in the crested whoop. According to Aristophanes the lark was not only the first of animals, but it existed before the earth and before the gods Zeus and Kronos and the Titans. Hence, when the lark's father died, there was no earth to bury him in; then the lark buried its father in its own head (or in its pyramidal crest). Goropius explains the belief that the lark existed before the earth, by observing that the lark sings seven times a day the praises of God in the high air, and that prayer was the first thing which existed in the world. In Hindoo cosmogony, when Pragâpatis, the creator, wishes to multiply himself, he begins by creating the stomas or hymn.[414] The father of the lark is therefore the god himself. The crested lark is the same as the crested sun, the sun with his rays. In the legend of St Christopher, I see an equivoque between the word _Christos_ and the word _crista_, and, either way, I see the sun personified. St Christopher, in the legend, carries Christ, and is associated with the lark. Goropius, when a child, on seeing a picture representing St Christopher, marvelled that the lark did not flee from the tree-staff of St Christopher, whilst the sparrows, instead, fled before him as soon as he approached; he was answered that the lark is not afraid of St Christopher, because it sees on the saint's shoulders its own creator, God. Christ, the father of the lark, dies, and the lark buries him in its crista. In the same way an equivoque in speech made of the lark (alauda) the lauder (laudatrix) of God; thus it seems to me that the equivoque between _crista_ and _Christos_ passed into the legend of St Christopher. In the nineteenth Mongol story, the poor young man makes his fortune when he hears a lark upon his father's tomb, which has come and placed itself upon the loom. The lark is a form of the young man himself, the young sun who from poor becomes rich; the loom upon which the lark perches is the sky. The Greek name of the crested lark (korüdalos) corresponds to the Latin _galerita_. The lark with the crest or with the tuft explains the custom of the Gauls, recorded by Suetonius in the Life of Julius Cæsar, of representing a crested lark upon their helmets. The Æsopian fables of the mother-lark with its young ones, and of the lark with the birdcatcher, show us this bird full of cunning and wisdom. As the larks sing the praises of God only when the sky is serene, and as they announce the morning[415] and the summer, they represent the crested sun which illumines all, which is all-luminous, all-seeing, (the Vedic _viçvavedas_), the golden sun. In the thirteenth Esthonian story, the maiden that sleeps will waken when she hears again the summer song of the larks. (Here the maiden is the earth, which wakens in the spring.)

The Hindoo name of the lark is no less interesting than the Latin _alauda_. Bharadvâgas, or the lark, may mean the bringer of food or of goods (as the sun), as well as the bringer of sound (the singer of hymns) and the sacrificer. In this triple interpretation which can be given to the word _bharadvâgas_, nearly all the myth of the lark seems to be contained. Bharadvâgas, afterwards, also becomes the name of a celebrated poet, and of one of the seven mythical sages, who, according to the legend, was nourished by a lark, and who is said to be the son of Brihaspatis, the god of sacrifice, Fire, identified with Divodâsas, one of the favourites of the god Indras, who destroys for him the strong celestial cities of Çambaras. The _Tâittiriya-brâhmanam_ also shows us the wise Bharadvâgas in connection with Indras. Bharadvâgas has become old whilst travelling three degrees of the life of a studious penitent; Indras approaches the aged sage, and asks him, how, if he still had many years to live, he would employ his lifetime? The sage answers that he would continue to live in penitence and in study. In the three first degrees of his life, Bharadvâgas has studied the three Vedâs (the _Atharva-veda_ having come afterwards, or not being as yet recognised as a sacred book). In the fourth period, Bharadvâgas learns universal science (çarvavidyâ), becomes immortal, and ascends into heaven in union with the sun (âdityasya sâyugyam).

The quail is also in intimate relation with the summer sun, but especially with the moon.

Vartikâ and vartakas are its Indian names, which may mean both she who is turned towards, the animated one, the ready, the swift, the watchful (cfr. the German _Wachtel_), and the pilgrim (cfr. the Russian _perepiolka_). In the _Rigvedas_, the Açvinâu deliver the quail from torments; they release the quail from the rage of the wolf; they liberate it from the jaws of the wolf that is devouring it.[416] In the forty-first story of the sixth book of _Afanassieff_, the wise girl comes upon a hare with a quail tied to her hand, and presents herself before the Tzar, whose riddle she must solve in order to marry him. This quail is the symbol of the Tzar himself, or the sun; the wise girl is the aurora (or the spring), who arrives near the sun upon the hare, that is, upon the moon, traversing the shadows of night (or winter). The Greeks and Latins, observing, perhaps, that the moon takes sleep away from the quail, believed that the quail was sacred to Latona, and relate that Jove became a quail to lie with Latona, of which union Diana and Apollo (moon and sun) were born.[417] Others also affirm that the quail was sacred to Hercules, who, by the scent of a quail, recovered his life, which had been taken from him by Tüphon. It is believed that when the moon rises, the quail cries out and is excited to agitation against it, and that the quail's head increases or diminishes according to the moon's influence. As the quail seems to represent the sun, and loves heat, it fears the cold moon. From these mythical relations of the quail was doubtless derived the fear which the ancients had for the quail, which they believed to eat poisonous hellebore during the night, and to be therefore poisonous and subject to epilepsy. Plutarch, in the _Apophtegmata_, relates that Augustus punished with death a president of Egypt who had eaten a quail which had carried off the prize in the fight; for it was long the custom to make quails fight with one another, in the same way as at Athens the game of the quail was a favourite diversion, in which several quails were placed in a circle, and he who hit one carried off all the others. According to Artemidoros, quails announced to their feeders the evils by which they would be visited from the side of the sea. The quail which agitates itself against the moon (thus Ælianos writes that the cock excites himself and exults when the moon rises[418]) presages the bad season, the pluvial or wintry season, and makes use of its own presage to migrate to warmer regions. The quail watches, travels, and cries out during the night; from the number of times that it cries out in succession in the fields, the peasants of Tuscany infer the price of corn; as the quail generally renews its cry three, four or more times, when it cries three times they say that corn will be cheap, and that, when it cries out four or more times, it will be dear; and so they say that the quail puts a price upon corn.[419] The quail arrives with the sun in our fields in spring, and goes away with the sun in September. In the _Mahâbhâratam_,[420] when the hero Bhîmas is squeezed by an enormous serpent, a quail appears near the sun, dark (pratyâdityamabhâsvarâ), with only one wing, one eye, and one foot, horrible to the sight, vomiting blood (raktam vamantî). This quail may represent either the red sky of evening, in the west, or the red heavens at the conclusion of summer.

FOOTNOTES:

[414] _Tâittiriya Yagurv._ vii. 1, 4.

[415] Hence Gregory of Tours relates, in _Du Cange_: "In Ecclesia Arverna, dum matutinæ celebrarentur Vigiliæ, in quadam civitate avis Corydalus, quam Alaudam vocamus, ingressa est."

[416] Vartikâm grasitâm amuncatam; _Rigv._ i. 112, 8.--Amuncatam vartikâm anhasah; i. 118, 8.--Âsno vrikasya vartikâm abhîke yuvam narâ nâsatyâmumuktam; i. 116, 14.--Vrikasya cid vartikâm antar âsyâd yuvam çaçîbhir grasitâm amuncatam; x. 39, 13.

[417] The same fable is also related in a different way: Jove cohabits with Latona, and subsequently forces her sister, Asterien, who is, in pity, changed by the gods into a quail. Jove becomes an eagle to catch her; the gods change the quail into a stone--(cfr. the stories of Indras as a cuckoo and Rambhâ, of Indras as a cock and Ahalyâ. It is a popular superstition that quails, like the crane, when they travel, let little stones fall in order to recognise on their return the places by which they passed the first time)--which lies for a long time under water, till by the prayer of Latona it is taken out.

[418] Ælianos says that the cock is in the moon's favour, either because it assisted Latona in parturition, or because it is generally believed (as a symbol of fecundation) to be the facilitator of childbirth. As a watchful animal it was natural to consider it especially dear to the moon, the nocturnal watcher.--The cock, as an announcer of news, was sacred to Mercury; as the curer of many diseases, to Æsculapius; as a warrior, to Mars, Hercules, and Pallas, who, according to Pausanias, wore a hen upon her helmet; as an increaser of the family, to the Lares, &c. Even Roman Catholic priests will deign to receive with especial favour, ad majorem Dei gloriam, the homage of cocks, capons, and chickens.

[419] This year, my quails cried out six times; and the corn in Italy is very dear, the spring having been a very rainy one.

[420] iii. 12,437.