Note 1 — Chapter V · CHARMS OR CONJURATIONS TO CURE OR PROTECT ANIMALS.

There is evidently a relation here between the dung of the she-goat and certain ancient symbols. Whatever was a sign of fruitfulness, generation, or productiveness, whether it was set forth by the generative organs, sexual passion, or even manure which fertilises, was connected with Life which is the good or vital principle opposed to death. As the goat was eminently a type of lechery, so the she-goat, owing to the great proportion of milk which she yielded, set forth abundance; hence the cornucopia of Amalthea, the prototype of the she-goat Heidrun of the Northern mythology, who yielded every day so much milk that all the Einheriar, or dwellers in Valhall, could satisfy themselves therewith.1 But the forms or deities indicating life were also those which shielded and protected from evil, therefore Here, the mother of life and of birth, had in Sparta a shrine where she-goats were sacrificed to her, while at Canuvium the statue of Juno Sospita (who was also Here), was covered with a she-goat’s skin. It is in the ancient sense of fertility identified with protection, that the she-goat’s dung is used to exorcise evil from the horse by the gypsies. There is, in fact, in all of these charms and exorcisms a great deal which evidently connects them with the earliest rites and religions.