CHAPTER IX.

THE COCK AND THE HEN.

SUMMARY.

Alektrüon, a satellite of Mars, the lover of Venus, becomes a cock.--Indras, the lover of Ahalyâ as a cock; Ahalyâ turned to stone.--Indras as a eunuch or as a ram.--Pragâpatis loves his daughter the aurora, and becomes a goat.--Ahalyâ in the ashes, like Cinderella.--The thunder and the eggs; the iron nail and the laurel in the nest.--To be made of stucco, to be turned to stone by the thunder which astonishes.--It is a sacrilege to kill cocks and hens.--The cock Parodars in the _Avesta_.--The cock chases the demons away.--The cock wakens the aurora and arouses mankind.--Christus and the cock as _cristiger_, _cristatus_, _cristeus_.--The cock sacred to St James, to St Christopher and Donar.--St James as a cock.--The hen crows like a cock.--Men turned to stone, and the cock who calls them to life again.--The cock as a devil.--The enchanted hut stands upon a hen's little feet.--Cocks killed as a form of witches.--The _lapillus alectorius_; the same enclosed in a ring.--To dream of brood-hens with chickens.--The egg is more cunning than the hen.--The golden cock on the rock; marvels come out of the rock.--The egg which becomes a girl.--The cock on the top of high buildings, to indicate the winds, and also the hours.--The black cock and the red one.--The black hen.--The cock sacrificed.--The cock, son of Mars.--Cockfights.--Auguries taken from cocks and hens; these auguries held up to derision.--The hen's egg; "Gallus in sterquilinio suo plurimum potest."--The pearl is an egg; the hen's egg in the sky is the sun.--The white hen.--Easter eggs.--The golden egg.--The cosmic egg.--It is an excellent augury to begin with the egg; "Ab ovo ad malum."--To begin _ab ovo_.

Alektrüon (the Greek name of the cock) was the companion and satellite of Mars. When Mars wished to spend the night with Venus during the absence of Vulcan, he placed Alektrüon to watch at the door. Alektrüon, however, fell asleep; and Mars, surprised by the returning husband, and full of indignation, transformed Alektrüon into a cock, in order that it might learn to be watchful; whence Ausonius--

"Ter clara instantis Eoi Signa canit serus, deprenso Marte, satelles."

According to a Pâuranic legend, Indras, the Indian Mars, enamoured of Ahalyâ, the wife of Gâutamas, and accompanied by Candras (the moon), assumed the form of a krikavâkas (cock or peacock), and went to sing at midnight near the dwelling of Ahalyâ, whilst her husband was absent. Then, divesting himself of the form of a cock (or peacock), he left Candras at the door to watch, and united himself with Ahalyâ (the hen). Meanwhile Gâutamas returns; Candras not having warned the lovers of his approach, the saint turns Ahalyâ to stone, and scatters over the body of Indras a thousand wombs; which, being submerged in the waters, the pitying gods subsequently changed into a thousand eyes (sahasrâkshas is one of the Hindoo names of Indras and of the peacock). According to a variety of this legend,--which is analogous to the fable of the Zeus as a quail, the seducer of the sister of Latona, or of Latona herself, changed into a stone and submerged in the waters,--Indras becomes a eunuch, and obtains, as we have already seen, in compensation, two ram's testicles. In the _Âitareya Br._, the god Brahman Pragâpatis becomes a goat or a roebuck (riçyas), in order to lie with his own daughter Aurora. In the thirty-second and thirty-third hymn of the eighth book of the _Rigvedas_, the god Indras and the god Brahman change places. Indras is at first beautiful (çiprin); he afterwards becomes a woman (strî hi brahmâ babhûvitha). In the _Râmâyanam_,[421] Gâutamas condemns Indras to become powerless, and Ahalyâ to remain hidden in the forest, lying in the ashes (bhasmaçâyinî), until Ramas comes to deliver her. The ashy sky, the stony sky, the watery sky, are identical; Ahalyâ (the evening aurora) in the ashes is the germ of the story of Cinderella, and of the daughter of the King of Dacia, persecuted by her lover, her father himself.

A popular Italian belief, which has been mentioned by Pliny and Columella, says that when it thunders while the hen is sitting on her eggs, they are spoiled. To remedy this evil, Pliny advises to put under the fodder of the eggs an iron nail, or else some earth taken up by a ploughshare. Columella says that many put little branches of laurel and roots of garlic, with iron nails. These are all symbols of the sulphureous thunderbolts (because of their strong smell), and of the thunderbolt conceived of as an iron weapon; the remedy recommended is according to the principle of _similia similibus_, for the same reason as the devil is prayed to in order to keep him away. In Sicily, when a hen is setting on her eggs, they put at the bottom of the nest a nail, which has the property of attracting and absorbing every kind of noise that may be noxious to the chickens. Now it seems interesting to me to find an analogous belief in Vedic antiquity. A strophe, where the word _andâ_ may be rendered eggs as well as testicles, which therefore leads us to think of oviparous birds and chickens no less than men, invokes Indras, the thunder-god, as follows:--"Do not harm us, Indras; do not destroy us; do not take from us our beloved enjoyments; do not break, O great one, O strong one, our eggs (or testicles); do not ruin the fruits of our bowels."[422] Indras can not only become a eunuch himself, but he can make others become eunuchs; thunder makes us astonished, and as we also say, by an analogous expression, in Italy, makes us of stucco or turn to stone.

The cock and the oviparous hen, as birds which are as egg-yielding symbols of abundance, and which personify the sun, were and are sacred in India and in Persia, where it is considered a sacrilege to kill them. Cicero, in his _Oratio pro Murena_, writes that among the ancients he who ultroneously killed a cock did not sin less than he who suffocated his own father. In Du Cange we read that Geoffrey I., Duke of Brittany, whilst he was on a journey to Rome, was slain with a stone by a woman, one of whose hens had been killed by the Duke's sparrowhawk. The same superstition about hens is still observed in Italy by a great number of housewives.

In the _Avesta_ the crow of the cock accompanies the flight of the demons, wakens the aurora, and arouses mankind.[423] Even the Christian poet Prudentius, who still sees a solar symbol in the _Christus_, compares him to the cock, also called _cristiger_, _cristatus_, _cristeus_,[424] prays to Christ to chase away sleep, to break the fetters of night, to undo the old sin, and to bring the new light, after having said of the cock--

"Ferunt vagantes dæmones, Lætos tenebris noctium Gallo canente exterritos Sparsim timere et cedere. ... omnes credimus Illo quietis tempore Quo gallus exsultans canit Christum redisse ex inferis."

We have seen in the preceding chapter, the crested lark in connection with St Christopher. In Germany, on the 25th of July, sacred to St James[425] (the saint who empties the bottle, as they say in Piedmont), to St Christopher, and the ancient god of thunder, Donar, cocks were made to dance, and then sacrificed. Donar carries Oerwandil on his shoulders across rivers, as the giant Christopher carries Christ.

There is a superstition which is widely diffused in Italy, Germany, and Russia, according to which a hen that begins to crow like a cock is of the worst omen; and it is the universal persuasion that it ought to be killed immediately, in order not to die before it. As the same belief exists in Persia, the discussion of Sadder with regard to it is interesting, to prove that the hen which crows like a cock must not be killed, because, if it become a cock, that means that it will be able to kill the demon, (therefore at Persian tombs they were accustomed to set a cock free). Having regard to the superstitious Eastern and European beliefs, the worthy Professor Spiegel will now find, I hope, the following passage, which appeared rather obscure to him, a little clearer:--"Qui religione sinceri sunt ludificationes expertes, quando percipiunt ex gallina vociferationem galli non debent illam gallinam interficere ominis causa, quia eam interficiendi jus nullum habent.... Nam in Persia si gallina fit gallus, ipsa infaustum diabolum franget. Si autem alium gallum adhibueris in auxilium, ut cum gallina consortium habeat, non erit incommodum ut tunc ille diabolus sit interfectus." According to a Sicilian proverb, the hen that crows like a cock must neither be sold nor given away, but eaten by its mistress.[426]

In the forty-fifth story of the fifth book of _Afanassieff_, the cocks crow, and the devil's smoke disappears. In the fortieth story of the same book, the cock crows, and the devil disappears from the kingdom in which he made every man and every thing turn to stone. The son of a peasant, staying to pray all through the night with lighted candles, alone escapes from the devil's evil works; after three nights of similar penitence, all the men who were turned to stone come to life again, and the young and pious peasant espouses the king's beautiful daughter.

In the thirtieth story of the fifth book of _Afanassieff_, when the cock begins to crow, the old man becomes of a sudden at once rigid and silent. Here, perhaps, there is an allusion to the old sun of evening, and to the cock's crowing in the evening. The cock of night, therefore, assumes sometimes a diabolical form. In the twenty-second story of the fifth book of _Afanassieff_, the devil becomes a cock in order to eat the corn into which the young man who was first turned into a gold ring, has been at length transformed. But this cock of night, being demoniacal, although his crest (the sun) is always red, is of a black colour. The cock is red in the morning and in the evening; in the night it is black, with its red crest turned now to the east, now to the west; it is upon the little feet of a hen,[427] that the little movable enchanted Russian hut stands, which the young heroes and young heroines on a journey meet with in the forest, and cause to turn in the direction they came from.

In the ninth story of the second book of the _Pentamerone_, a queen gives orders to kill the cocks in the town, so that the crowing may cease, because as long as the cocks crow, she will, by a witch's enchantment, be unable to recognise and embrace her son. The witch herself evidently assumes here the form of the diabolical cock that crows in the night.[428]

In the first story of the fourth book of the _Pentamerone_, the old Minec' Aniello feeds a cock well, but being afterwards in want of money, sells it to two magicians, who, when walking back, say to each other that the cock is precious for the stone that it contains, which, enclosed in a ring, will enable one to obtain all that he wishes (the _lapillus alectorius_, which is said to be as large as a bean, to be like crystal, to be good for pregnant women, and for inspiring courage; it is alleged that the hero Milon owed all his strength to it). Minec' Aniello hears this, steals the cock, kills it, takes the stone, and by its means becomes young again, in a beautiful palace of gold and silver. When the magicians defraud him of this stone, enclosed in a ring, the young man becomes old again, and goes to seek his lost ring in the kingdom of the deep hole (de Pertuso cupo) inhabited by the rat; the rats gnaw the finger of the magician who has the ring; Minec' Aniello recovers his ring, and changes the two magicians into asses; he rides upon one ass, and then throws it down the mountains; the other ass is loaded with lard, and sent in gratitude to the rats. Here the cock appears as a nocturnal animal; the stone which, when enclosed in a ring, performs miracles, is the sun which comes out when invoked by the cock of night. According to the Sicilian belief, when one dreams of brood-hens with chickens in uninhabited and deserted houses, it is a sign that there are treasures hidden in these houses, and one must go to dig them up.

In the first of the Esthonian stories, the cock that crows is a spy over the old woman.[429] In the third Esthonian story, a woman gives her husband three eggs of a black hen to eat in order to obtain three dwarf heroes. In the twenty-second Esthonian story, the shepherds that watch over the son of the persecuted king, seeing the knowingness of the boy, recognise the truth of the proverb that "the egg is more cunning than the hen." In the ninth Esthonian story, a young man, after having made a compact with the devil, cheats him, giving him the blood of a cock instead of his own. In the fourth Esthonian story, when three strokes are given with a golden rod upon a rock, a large golden cock comes out and perches upon the top of it; it beats its wings and crows; at each crowing a marvel comes out of the stone, a tablecloth that spreads itself and a porringer that fills itself. In the twenty-fourth Esthonian story, an old fairy gives to the queen a little basket with a bird's egg inside; the queen must hatch it for three months, like a pearl, in her bosom; first a little living doll will be born, which, when warmed in a basket covered with wool, will become a real girl; at the same time that the doll becomes a real girl, the queen will give birth to a beautiful male child. Linda, the wife of Kalew, in Finnish mythology, is also born of the egg of a woodcock or a heathcock.

In Hungry (where a dyed tin cock is placed upon the top of high buildings to indicate the direction of the wind--this is the English and Italian weathercock; we have all heard of the cock of the tower of St Mark at Venice which makes the hours strike), it is believed that, to appease the devil, one must sacrifice a black cock to him. The red cock, on the contrary, signifies fire.[430]

In the Monferrato it is believed that a black hen split open alive in the middle, and placed where one feels the pain of the _mal di punta_, will take away the disease and the pain, on condition that when this strange plaster is taken off, the feathers be burned in the house.

The cock or fowl which, in the festive customs of Essex and of Norfolk (of which traces are preserved in the striking of the porringer by a man blindfolded at the feast of Mid-Lent in several parts of France and in Piedmont), a man blind-folded wins, if he succeeds in striking it upon the shoulders of another man (or else sometimes shut up in a porringer at the height of twelve or fourteen feet from the ground, at which projectiles are thrown[431]) is a personification of the funereal cock out of which, when struck, the daily fire is made to come. The sacrifice of a cock was a custom in India, Greece, and Germany.

In the same way as the ancients used to make quails fight against each other, so they made cocks; hence the cock was called son of Mars (Areôs neottos). We already know that the cock's crest terrifies the maned lion; the crest and the mane are equivalent; and we have also seen what heroic virtue was attributed to the _lapillus alectorius_. Plutarch writes that the Lacedæmonians sacrificed the cock to Mars to obtain victory in the battles which they fought in the open air. Pallas wore the cock upon her helmet, Idomeneus upon his shield. Plutarch says, moreover, that the inhabitants of Caria used to carry a cock on the end of their lances, and refers the origin of this custom to Artaxerxes; but it appears to be much more ancient, for the Carians wore crested helmets as far back as the time of Herodotus, for which reason the Persians gave the Carians the name of cocks. Cockfights, which became so popular in England, are also common in India. Philon, the Hebrew, relates of Miltiades, that before the battle of Marathon he inflamed the ardour of his soldiers by exhibiting cockfights; the same, according to Ælianos, was done by Themistocles. John Goropius (who gives the extravagant etymologies of _danen_ and _alanen_ from _de hahnen_ and _all hahnen_) relates that the Danes were accustomed to carry two cocks to war, one to tell the hours and the other to excite the soldiers to battle. Du Cange informs us that duels between cocks were also the custom in France in the seventeenth century, and gives some fragments of mediæval writings in which these are prohibited as a superstitious custom and one which was objectionable.

It is well known that the ancient Romans, before engaging in battle, took auguries from cocks and fowls, although this custom sometimes gave occasion to derision. Of Publius Claudius, for instance, it is said that, being about to engage in a naval battle in the first Punic war, he consulted the auguries in order not to offend against the customs of his country; but that when the augurs announced that the fowls would not eat, he ordered them to be taken and thrown into the sea, saying, "If they will not eat, then let them drink."

Part of the worship which was offered to the cock and to the hen was also rendered to the egg: the Latin proverb, "Gallus in sterquilinio suo plurimum potest," shows the great value of the egg. The pearl which the fowl searches for in the dunghill is nought else but its own egg; and the egg of the hen in the sky is the sun itself. During the night the celestial hen is black, but it becomes white in the morning; and being white, on account of the snow, it is the hen of winter. The white hen is propitious on account of the golden chickens hatched by it. In the Monferrato it is believed that the eggs of a white hen laid on Ascension Day, in a new nest, are a good remedy for pains in the stomach, head, and ears, and that, when taken into a cornfield, they prevent the blight, or black evil, from entering amongst the crops, or when taken into a vineyard, they save it from hail. The eggs which are eaten at Easter and concerning which, accompanied sometimes by songs and proverbs, so many popular customs, mythologically in accordance, are current in the various countries of Europe, celebrate the resurrection of the celestial egg, a symbol of abundance,[432] the sun of spring. The hen of the fable and the fairy tales, which lays golden eggs, is the mythical hen (the earth or the sky) which gives birth every day to the sun. The golden egg is the beginning of life in Orphic and Hindoo cosmogony; by the golden egg the world begins to move, and movement is the principle of good. The golden egg brings forth the luminous, laborious, and beneficent day. Hence it is an excellent augury to begin with the egg, which represents the principle of good, whence the equivocal Latin proverb, "Ab ovo ad malum," which signified "from good to evil," but which properly meant, "from the egg to the apple," the Latins being accustomed to begin their dinners with hard-boiled eggs and to end them with apples (a custom which is still preserved among numerous Italian families).[433]

But to begin _ab ovo_ also means to begin at the beginning. Horace says that he does not begin from the twin eggs the description of the Trojan war--

"Nec gemino bellum Trojanum orditur _ab ovo_,"

alluding to the egg of Lêda, to which the Greek proverb, "Come out of the egg" (ex ôou exêlthen), also alludes, said of a very handsome man, and referring to fair Helen and her two luminous brothers the Dioskuroi. But here the white cock has became a white swan, of which we shall speak in the following chapter.

FOOTNOTES:

[421] i. 49.

[422] Mâ no vadhîr indra mâ parâ dâ mâ nah priyâ bhoganâni pra moshîh ândâ mâ no maghavan chakra nir bhen mâ nah pâtrâ bhet sahagânushâni; _Rigv._ i. 104, 8.

[423] Der Vogel der den Namen Parodars führt, o heiliger Zarathustra, den die übelredenden Menschen mit den Namen Kahrkatâç belegen, dieser Vogel erhebt seine Stimme bei jeder göttlichen Morgenröthe: Stehet auf, ihr Menschen, preiset die beste Reinheit, vertreibet die Dâeva; _Vendidad_, xviii. 34-38, Spiegel's version.--The cock Parodars chases away with his cry especially the demon Bûshyançta, who oppresses men with sleep, and he returns again in a fragment of the _Khorda-Avesta_ (xxxix.): "'Da, vor dem Kommen der Morgenröthe, spricht dieser Vogel Parodars, der Vogel der mit Messern verwundet, Worte gegen das Feuers aus. Bei seinem Sprechen läuft Bushyançta mit langen Händen herzu von der nördlichen Gegend, von den nördlichen Gegenden, also sprechen, also sagend: "Schlafet o Menschen, schlafet, sündlich Lebende, schlafet, die ihr ein sündiges Leben führt." As in the song of Prudentius, the idea of sleep and that of sin are associated together; the song of Prudentius suggests the idea that it was written by some one who was initiated in the solar mysteries of the worship of Mithras.

[424] Cfr. Du Cange, _s. v._--And the same Du Cange, in the article _gallina_, quotes an old mediæval glossary in which _gallina_ is said to mean Christ, wisdom, and soul.--The cock of the Gospel announces, reveals, betrays Christ three times, in the three watches of the night, to which sometimes correspond the three sons of the legends.

[425] According to a legend of St James, an old father and mother go with their young son on a pilgrimage to Santiago de Compostella in Spain. On the way, in an inn at San Domingo de la Calzada, the innkeeper's daughter offers her favours to the young man, who rejects them; the girl avenges herself upon him by putting a silver plate in his sack, for which he is arrested and impaled as a thief. The old parents continue their journey to Santiago; St James has pity upon them, and works a miracle which is only known to be his afterwards. The old couple return to their country, passing by San Domingo; here they find their son alive, whom they had seen impaled, for which they there and then offer solemn thanks to St James. All are astonished. The prefect of the place is at dinner when the news is brought to him; he refuses to believe it, and says that the young man is no more alive than the roasted fowl which is being set upon the table; no sooner has he uttered the words, than the cock begins to crow, resumes its feathers, jumps out of the plate and flies away. The innkeeper's daughter is condemned; and in honour of the miracle, the cock is revered as a sacred animal, and at San Domingo the houses are ornamented with cock's feathers. A similar wonder is said, by Sigonio, to have taken place in the eleventh century in the Bolognese; but instead of St James, Christ and St Peter appear to perform miracles.--Cfr. also the relationship of St Elias (and of the Russian hero Ilya) feasted on the 21st of July, when the sun enters the sign of the lion, with Helios, the hellenic sun.

[426]

La gallina cantatura Nun si vinni, nè si duna, Si la mancia la patruna.

[427] Cfr. _Afanassieff_, i. 3, ii. 30; sometimes, instead of the hen's feet we have the dog's paws; cfr. v. 28.

[428] Concerning this subject I can add an unpublished story which Signor S. M. Greco sends me from Cosenza in Calabria:--A poor girl is alone in the fields; she plucks a rampion, sees a stair, goes down, and comes to the palace of the fairies, who at sight of her are smitten with love. She asks to be allowed to go back to her mother, and obtains permission; she tells her mother that she hears a noise every night, without seeing anything, and is advised to light a candle and she will see. Next evening the girl does so, and sees a youth of great beauty with a looking-glass on his breast. The third evening she does the same, but a drop of wax falls upon the looking-glass and wakens the youth, who cries out lamentably, "Thou shalt go hence." The girl wishes to go away; the fairies give her a full clew of thread, with the advice that she must go to the top of the highest mountain and leave the clew to itself; where it goes, thither must she follow. She obeys, and arrives at a town which is in mourning on account of the absence of the prince; the queen sees the girl from the window and makes her come in. After some time she gives birth to a handsome son, and a shoemaker, who works by night, begins to sing--

"Sleep, sleep, my son; If your mother knew some day That you are my son, In a golden cradle she would put you to sleep, And in golden swaddling-clothes. Sleep, sleep, my son."

The queen then learns from the girl, that he who sings thus is the prince, who is destined to stay far from the palace until the sun rises without him perceiving it. Orders are then given to kill all the fowls in the town, and to cover all the windows with a black veil scattered over with diamonds, in order that the prince may believe it is still night and may not perceive the rising of the sun. The prince is deceived, and marries the maiden who is the fairies' favourite, and they lived happy and contented,

Whilst I, if you will believe me, Found myself with a thorn in my foot.

[429] Die schlaue Alte brachte bald heraus, was der Dorfhahn hinter ihrem Rücken der jungsten Tochter ins Ohr gekräht hatte; Kreutzwald u. Löwe, _Ehstnische Märchen_.

[430] In the annals of the city of Debreczen, in the year 1564, we read as follows: "Æterna et exitialis memoria de incendio trium ordinum in anno præsenti: feria secunda proxima ante fest. nat. Mariæ gloriosæ exorta est flamma et incendium periculosum in platea Burgondia; eadem similiter ebdomade exortum est incendium altera vice, de platea Csapo de domo inquilinari Stephani literati, multas domos ... in cinerem redegit, et quod majus inter cætera est, nobilissimi quoque templi divi Andreæ et turris tecturæ combustæ sunt, ex qua turri et ejus pinnaculo, gallus etiam æreus, a multis annis insomniter dies ac noctes jejuno stomacho stans et in omnes partes advigilans, flammam ignis sufferre non valens, invitus devolare, descendere et illam suam solitam stationem deserere coactus est, qui gallus tantæ cladis commiserescens ac nimio dolore obmutescens de pinnaculo desiliendio, collo confracto in terram coincidens et suæ vitæ propriæ quoque non parcens, fidele suum servitium invitus derelinquendo, misere expiravit et vitam suam finivit sic."

[431] Reinsberg von Düringsfeld observes (_Das festliche Jahr_), that sometimes, for jest, in North Walsham, instead of the cock an owl is put,--another funereal symbol with which we are already acquainted.

[432] Not only the egg of the hen is a symbol of abundance, but even the bones of fowls served in popular tradition to represent matrimonial faith and coition. In Russia, when two (probably husband and wife) eat a fowl together, they divide the bone of the neck, the English merrythought, between them; then each of them takes and keeps a part, promising to remember this rupture. When either of the two subsequently presents something to the other, the one who receives must immediately say, "I remember;" if not, the giver says to him, "Take and remember." The forgetful one loses the game. A similar game, called the verde or green, is played in Tuscany during Lent between lovers with a little twig of the box-tree.

[433] The sun is an egg at the beginning of day; he becomes, or finds, an apple-tree in the evening, in the western garden of the Hesperides.