Chapter IV

The Sheep, the Ram, and the Goat.

SUMMARY.

The sun-shepherd, and the sun-lamb, ram, or goat.—The dark-coloured he-goat.—The goat-moon.—Aǵas; explanation given by Professor Bréal; the Finnic aija.—Meshas; she-goat, ram, skin, sack.—The ram Indras.—The goats Açvinâu.—The he-goat Veretraghna.—The lamb and the goat in the forest opposed to the wolf.—The apple-tree and the she-goat; the cloud and the apple-tree.—The goat, the nut-tree and the hazel-nuts.—The wolf assumes the goat's voice; the wolf in the fire.—The witch takes the voice of the little hero's mother; the child born of a tree.—The hero among the sheep, or in the spoils of the sheep, escapes from the witch.—Pûshan aǵâçvas and his sister.—The brother who becomes a kid while drinking; the sister in the sea.—The husband-goat; the goat's skin burned; the monster appears once more a handsome youth; the funereal mantle of the young hero; when it is burned, the hero lives again handsome and splendid.—The children changed into kids.—The cunning Schmier-bock in the sack.—Aǵamukhî—Ilvalas and Wâtâpis.—Indras meshâṇḍas, sahasradhâras and sahasradâras.—The rams of the wolf eaten.—The goat of expiation, the goat and the stupidity of the hero disappear at the same time.—The devil-ram; the putrid sheep that throws gold behind it.—The goat which deprives men of sight.—The young prince, riding on the goat, solves the riddle.—The spy of heaven; the eye of God.—The constellation of the she-goat and two kids.—The lame goat.—The heroine and the goat her guide and nurse.—The milky way and the she-goat.—The goat's blood, manus Dei; the stone bezoar.—The cunning goat.—The goat deceives the wolf; the goat eats the leaf.—The she-goat possessed of a devil.—The ram-vessel.—Ram and he-goat fœcundators.—The he-goat and the horned husband.—Zeus he-goat and the satyr Pan; Hêraklês the rival of a goat; the old powerless man called a he-goat.—Hellenic forms of the myth of the goat.—Phrixos and Helle; Jupiter Ammon; the altar of Apollo; the fleece of the Iberians; the golden ram of Atreus; Aigüsthos; Diana and the white sheep; Neptune a ram; satyrs and fauns; Hermês krioforos; the sheep of Epimenis; lambs, rams, and he-goats sacrificed; aixourania and the cornucopia.—The mythical goat; its threefold form; black, white, and light-coloured lambs.—Pecus and pecunia.

When the girl aurora leads out of the stable in the morning her radiant flock, among them there are found to be white lambs, white kids, and luminous sheep; in the evening the same aurora leads the lambs, the kids, and the sheep back to the fold. In the early dawn all this flock is white, by and by their fleeces are golden fleeces; the white, and afterwards the golden heavens of the east (or the west) constituting this white and golden flock, and the sun's rays their fleeces. Then the sun himself, who steps forth from this flock, is now its young shepherd-king, and now the lamb, the ram, or he-goat. When the sun enters into the region of night, the he-goat or lamb goes back to the fold and becomes dark-coloured; the sun veiled by the night or the cloud is a dark-coloured ram, he-goat, or she-goat. In the night, says the proverb, all cows are black; and the same might be said of goats, except in the case of the goat, luminous and all-seeing, coming out of the nocturnal darkness in the form of the moon. We must, therefore, consider the sheep or goat under a triple aspect; the principal and most interesting aspect being that of the sun veiled by the gloom, or by the cloud, which wears often a demoniacal form, such as that of the ass or of the hero in hell; the second being that of the grey-white, and afterwards golden sky of morning, or of the golden and thereafter grey-white sky of evening which, as a luminous, is therefore generally a divine form of the goat; and the third aspect being that of the moon.

The richest myths refer to the sun enclosed in the cloud or the shades of night, or to the cloud or darkness of night closing round the sun. The shifting shadow and the moving cloud on the one side, the damp night and the rainy cloud on the other, easily came to be represented as a goat and as a ram. In the Indian tongue, or even the Vedic, aǵas is a word which means, properly speaking, pushing, drawing, moving (agens), and afterwards he-goat; the he-goat butts with its horns; the sun in the cloud butts with its rays until it opens the stable and its horns come out.[747] The ram is called meshas, or mehas, that is, the pourer or spreader, mingens (like the ass ćiramehin), which corresponds with the meghas, or cloud mingens. Moreover, as in Greek from aix,[748] a goat, we have aigis, a skin (Ægis), so in Sanskṛit from aǵas, a goat, we have aǵinas, a skin; and from meshas, a ram, meshas, a fleece, a skin, and that which is formed from it; whence the Petropolitan Dictionary compares with it the Russian mieh (Lithuanian, maiszas) skin and sack.

Let us now first of all see how these simple images developed themselves in the Hindoo myth.

Indras, the pluvial and thundering god, is represented in the first strophe of a Vedic hymn as a very celebrated heroic ram;[749] in the second strophe, as the one who pours out ambrosial honey (madaćyutam); in the third strophe, as opening the stable or precinct of the cows to the Añgirasas;[750] in the fourth strophe, as killing the serpent that covers or keeps back; in the fifth strophe, as expelling the enchanters with enchantments, and breaking the strong cities of the monster Piprus;[751] and in the sixth strophe, as crushing under his foot the giant-like monster Arbudas[752] or monster serpent. Thus far we have two aspects of the myth, the ram which pours out ambrosial honey, and the ram which opens the gate and crushes with its foot. In another hymn the Açvinâu are compared to two he-goats (aǵeva), to two horns (çṛiñgeva), and to two swift dogs.[753] A third hymn informs us that Indras by means of a ram killed a leonine monster.[754]

Here we evidently have a heroic he-goat or ram.

Let us compare it with other traditions. In the Khorda Avesta[755] we find Veretraghna (the Zend form of Indras, as Vṛitrahan) "with the body of a warrior he-goat, handsome, and with sharpened horns."

In the Russian tale given by Afanassieff,[756] the lamb, companion of the bull in the wood, kills the wolf by butting against its sides, while the bull also wounds the ferocious beast with its horns. In another variation of the same story,[757] the cat is confederate with the lamb against the wolf; the lamb butts hard at the wolf, while the cat scratches it till blood flows. In yet another version, besides the lamb, the he-goat also appears; the cat twists some of the bark of the birch-tree round the horns of the he-goat, and bids the lamb rub against it to produce fire; sparks come from it, the cat fetches hay, and the three companions warm themselves. The wolves come up, and the cat makes them run, presenting them the goat as a scarecrow, and frightening them further by ominous hints as to the strength contained in its beard. Finally, we have in the Russian stories two singular variations of the fable of the goat, the kids, and the wolf.[758] The goat is about to give birth to her young ones under an apple-tree. (We have seen in Chapter I. the apple-tree, the fruit of which, when eaten, causes horns to sprout. It is well-known that in Greek, mêlon means a goat and an apple-tree, as the Hindoo masculine noun petvas, which means a ram, is in the neuter petvam = ambrosia. The mythical apple-tree is ambrosial, like the cornucopia of the goat of mythology; and it seems to me that here, too, I can find an analogy in the Slavonic field itself between the Russian words óblaka, clouds, in the plural ablaká, the clouds, and iablony, apple-tree, plural jáblogna, the apple-trees, jablok, the apple.) The apple-tree advises the goat to betake itself to some other place, as the apples might fall upon its new-born kids and kill them. The goat then goes to give birth to her young ones under an equally shady walnut-tree; the walnut-tree also advises her to go away, as the nuts might fall and do serious harm to her little ones;[759] upon which the goat goes to a deserted tent in the forest, another form of the cloud of night. When the kids are brought forth, the goat issues forth out of the tent to procure food, and cautions her children not to open to any one (the fable is well known in the West, but the Slavonic variations are particularly interesting). The wolf comes and pronounces the same password as the goat to induce the kids to open, but they perceive by the rough voice of the wolf that it is not their mother, and refuse to admit him. The wolf then goes to the blacksmith, and has a voice made for him resembling that of the goat; the deceived kids open, and the wolf devours them all except the smallest, who hides under the stove (the favourite place where the little Slavonic hero, the third brother, the ill-favoured fool, who afterwards becomes handsome and wise, is accustomed to squat). The goat returns, and learns from the kid which has escaped the massacre of its brothers. She thinks how to avenge herself, and invites her friend and gossip the fox with the wolf to dinner; the unsuspecting wolf arrives along with the fox. After dinner, the goat, to divert her guests, invites them to amuse themselves by leaping over an opening made in the floor; the goat leaps first, then the fox leaps, and then the wolf, but falls down on the burning ashes and is burnt to death, like the witch in some other stories, as the night is burned by the morning aurora; and the goat chaunts a marvellous Te Deum (ćudesnoi pamin) in the wolf's honour. The other Russian version adds some new and curious details. The goat goes to find food, and leaves the kids alone; they shut the door after her. She returns and says, "Open, my sons, my little fathers; your mother is come; she has brought some milk, half a side full of milk, half a horn full of fresh cheese, half a little horn full of clear water (the cornucopia)."[760] The kids open immediately. The second day the goat goes out again; the wolf, who had heard the song, tries to sing it to the kids; but the latter perceive that it is not their mother's voice, and do not open. Next day the wolf again imitates the mother's voice; the kids open the door, and are all devoured except one which hides itself in the stove, and afterwards narrates to the mother-goat all that has happened. The goat avenges herself as follows: She goes into the forest with the wolf, and comes to a ditch where some workmen had cooked some gruel, and left the fire still burning. The goat challenges the wolf to leap the ditch; the wolf tries and falls into it, where the fire makes his belly split open, from which the kids, still alive, skip out and run to their mother.

Another story, however,[761] affords us still more aid in the interpretation of the myth; that is, in leading us to see in the goat and her kids the sun horned or furnished with rays, as it issues radiant out of the cloud, or darkness, or ocean of night, and in the wolf, or in the wolf's skin, split open or burned, out of which the kids come, the dark, cloudy, watery nocturnal sky. Instead of the wolf we have a witch, instead of the goat a woman, and instead of the kids the young Vaniushka (Little John); the witch has a voice made by the blacksmith like that of Vaniushka's or Tereshićko's mother, and thus attracts him to her. Tereshićha says that he was originally the stump of a tree, which his father and mother, being childless, had picked up in the forest, and wrapped up and rocked in a cradle till he was born.

The monster wolf, or the witch, having the faculty of simulating the voice of the goat,[762] and an especial predilection for both sheep and goats,—so much so that the witch Liho (properly Evil) keeps some in her house, and those which come out (of the dark sky) in the morning, and which re-enter (the dark sky) in the evening, are considered her peculiar property,[763]—often transforms the hero (the evening sun) into a kid (into the darkness or cloud of night). Of course, as the dark and cloudy monster is often represented as a wolf, it is easy to understand his wish that everything should be transformed into a lamb in order to eat it. But the mythical lamb or kid, the young solar hero, generally escapes out of the jaws of the wolf, out of the hands of the witch, or out of the darkness, the waters, or the cloud of night.

A Vedic hymn celebrates the strong Pûshan, who has a he-goat for his horse (or who is a goat-horse), and is called the lover of his sister. Perhaps these words contain the germ of the Russian story of Little John, brother of Little Helen, who is changed by witchcraft into a kid. I have already observed in Chapter I. how Helen, who at the commencement of the story shows affection for her brother John, ends by betraying him. The Vedic hymn would appear to contain the notion of the brother Pûshan transformed into a he-goat (the sun which enters into the cloud or darkness of night), because he has loved his sister. In another Vedic hymn we have the sister Yamî, who seduces her brother Yamas. In European fairy tales, the sister loves her brother, who is metamorphosed by the art of a witch, now into a young hog, and now into a kid. In the forty-fifth story of the fourth book of Afanassieff, Ivanushka (Little John) becomes a kid after drinking out of a goat's hoof. In the twenty-ninth story of the second book of Afanassieff, Ivanushka and Little Helen, the children of a Tzar, wander alone about the world. Ivanushka wishes to drink where cows, horses, sheep, and hogs feed and drink; his sister Little Helen advises him not to do so, lest he should turn into a calf, a colt, a lamb, or a young pig; but at last John is overcome by thirst, and, against the advice of his sister, he drinks where goats drink, and becomes a kid. A young Tzar marries the sister, and gives every honour to the kid, but a witch throws the young queen into the sea (Phrixos and Helle; in other European stories, into a cistern), and usurps her place, inducing the people to believe that she is Helen, and commanding the kid to be put to death. The kid runs to the shore and invokes his sister, who answers from the bottom of the sea that she can do nothing. The young Tzar, to whom the affair is referred, hastens to deliver Helen out of the sea; the kid can again skip about in safety, and everything is green again, and flourishes as much as it withered before; the witch is burnt alive.[764]

According to the fiftieth story of the sixth book of Afanassieff, a merchant has three daughters. He builds a new house, and sends his three daughters by turns to pass the night there, in order to see what they dream about. (The belief that the man dreamed of by a maiden during the night of St John's Day, Christmas Day, or the Epiphany, is her predestined husband, still exists in the popular superstitions of Europe.) The eldest daughter dreams that she marries a merchant's son, the second a noble, and the third a he-goat. The father commands his youngest daughter never to go out of the house; she disobeys; a he-goat appears and carries her off upon his horns towards a rocky place. Saliva and mucous matter fall from the goat's mouth and nostrils; the good maiden is not disgusted, but patiently wipes the goat's mouth. This pleases the animal, who tells her that if she had shown horror towards him, she would have had the same fate as his former wives, whose heads were impaled on a stake. The geese bring to the girl news of her father and sisters; they announce that the eldest sister is about to be married; she wishes to be present at the wedding, and is permitted by the goat to go, who orders for her use three horses as black as a crow, who arrive at their destination in three leaps (the three steps of Vishṇus), whilst he himself sits upon a flying carpet, and is transported to the wedding in the form of a handsome and young stranger. The same happens on the occasion of the second sister's marriage, when the third sister guesses that this handsome youth is her own husband. She departs before the rest, comes home, finds the skin of the goat and burns it; then her husband always preserves the form of a handsome youth, inasmuch as the enchantment of the witch has come to an end.[765]

The lamb, the he-goat, and the sheep are favourite forms of the witch. In the European story, when the beautiful princess, in the absence of the prince, her husband, gives birth to two beautiful sons, the witch induces the absent prince to believe that, instead of real sons, his young wife has given birth to pups. In the seventh story of the third book of Afanassieff, the young queen gives birth, during the king's absence, to two sons, of whom one has the moon on his forehead, and the other a star on the nape of his neck (the Açvinâu). The wicked sister of the young queen buries the children. Where they were buried a golden sprout and a silver one spring up. A sheep feeds upon these plants, and gives birth to two lambs, having, the one the moon on its head, the other a star on its neck. The wicked sister, who has meanwhile been married to the king, orders them to be torn in pieces, and their intestines to be thrown out into the road. The good lawful queen has them cooked, eats them, and again gives birth to her two sons, who grow up hardy and strong, and who, when interrogated by the king, narrate to him the story of their origin; their mother is recognised, and becomes once more the king's wife; the wicked sister is put to death.[766]

The witch is sometimes herself (as a wolf-cloud or wolf-darkness) a devourer of young luminous kids or lambs, such as the Schmierbock in the Norwegian story. The witch carries Schmierbock three times away in a sack; the first and second time Schmierbock escapes by making a hole in the sack; but the third time the witch succeeds in carrying him to her house, where she prepares to eat him. The cunning Schmierbock, however, smuggles the witch's own daughter into his place, and, climbing up, conceals himself in the chimney (a variation of the stove, the place where the young Russian hero usually hides himself, in the same way as in the Tuscan story the foolish Pimpi conceals himself in the oven). From this post of security he laughs at the witch, who endeavours to recapture him; he throws a stone down the chimney and kills her, upon which he descends, rifles her treasure-stores, and carries off all her gold. Here the young hero is called a he-goat; in the chapter on the wolf, we shall find the witch of the Norwegian story actually bears the name of wolf. These two data complete the myth; the wolf which wishes to devour the little hero, and the witch who endeavours to eat the little lamb, are completed by the fable which represents the wolf as, at the rivulet, eating the lamb, which, in the mythical heavens, means the cloudy and gloomy monster which devours the sun.

We have seen above the witch who imitates the voice of the mother of the little hero, in order to be able to eat him, and the wolf who mimics the voice of the goat and eats the kids; but the wolf does more than assume the goat's voice; he sometimes even takes her form.

In the Râmâyaṇam,[767] Aǵamukhî, or goat's face, is called a witch, who wishes Sîtâ to be torn to pieces. In the legend of Ilvalas and Vâtâpis,[768] the two wizard brothers who conspire to harm the Brâhmaṇâs, Vâtâpis transforms himself into a wether, and lets himself be sacrificed in the funeral rites by the Brâhmaṇâs. The unsuspecting Brâhmaṇâs eat its flesh; then Ilvalas cries out to his brother, "Come forth, O Vâtâpis!" and his brother, Vâtâpis, comes out of the bodies of the Brâhmaṇâs, lacerating them, until the ṛishis Agastyas eats of himself the whole of Vâtâpis, and burns Ilvalas to ashes. The Râmâyaṇam itself explains to us why, in these sacrifices, a wether, and not a ram, is spoken of,[769] when it narrates the legend of Ahalyâ. It is said in this passage that the god Indras was one day condemned to lose his testicles by the malediction of the ṛishis Gâutamas, with whose wife, Ahalyâ, he had committed adultery. The gods, moved to pity, took the testicles of a ram and gave them to Indras, who was therefore called Meshâṇḍas; on this account, says the Râmâyaṇam, the Pitaras feed on wethers, and not on rams, in funeral oblations. This legend is evidently of brâhmanic origin. The Brâhmaṇâs, being interested in discrediting the god of the warriors, Indras, and finding him called in the Vedâs by the name of Meshas or ram, invented the story of the ram's testicles, in the same way as, finding Indras in the Vedâs called by the name of Sahasrâkshas (i.e., he of the thousand eyes), they malignantly connected this appellation with the same scandalous story of the seduction of Ahalyâ, and degraded the honourable epithet into an infamous one, he of the thousand wombs, probably by the confusion arising out of the equivoque between the words sahasradhâras, the sun (as carrying, now a thousand stars, now a thousand rays), or sahasrânçus, and sahasradâras, which has a very different meaning.

In the important 116th hymn of the first book of the Ṛigvedas, Ṛiǵrâçvas (i.e., the red horse, or the hero of the red horse) eats a hundred rams belonging to the she-wolf (in the following hymn, a hundred and one); his father blinds him on this account; the two marvellous physicians, the Açvinâu, give him back his two eyes.[770] Evidently the father of the solar hero is here the gloomy monster of night himself; the sun, at evening, becomes the devourer of the rams who come out of the she-wolf, or who belong to the she-wolf; it is for this reason that the monster wolf blinds him when evening comes. The red horse Ṛiǵrâçvas, or the hero of the red horse, who eats the rams of the she-wolf, affords a further key to enable us to understand the expiatory goat, which in the Ṛigvedas itself is sacrificed instead of the horse. We are told in a hymn, that in the sacrifice of the horse the omniform he-goat (aǵo viçvarûpaḥ) has preceded the horse;[771] and the Âitareya Br., commenting on this exchange of animals, also speaks of the he-goat as the last animal destined for the sacrifice. In the Russian stories, too, the goat has to pay the price of the follies or rogueries done by the man, and is sacrificed.[772] This sacrificed he-goat appears to be the same as the ass which undergoes punishment for all the animals in the celebrated fable of Lafontaine (which becomes a bull in the hands of the Russian fabulist Kriloff, who could not introduce the ass, an animal almost unknown in Russia); and we already know that the ass represents the sun in the cloud or the sun in the darkness; and we have also said that the ass and the fool die together in the legend. The she-goat dies in the Russian story to deliver the fool, who, after her death, is a fool no longer, his folly having died with her.[773] The popular story offers us another proof of the identity of the mythical ass and the mythical goat. We have also seen above, in the Norwegian story, how the witch possesses a treasure which is carried off by the Schmierbock, who kills her; the magician, or the devil, is always rich. The ass which the devil gives to Little Johnny throws gold from its tail; the ass personifies the devil. But the devil, as we have observed, also has a predilection to embody himself in a ram, a lamb, or a he-goat. I remember the puppets who every day improvised popular representations in the little wooden theatre on the Piazza Castello, at Turin, when I was a boy; the final doom of the personage who represented the tyrant was generally to die under the bastinadoes of Arlecchino, or to be carried to hell by the devil in the form of a bleating lamb, which came upon the scene expressly to carry him away with him, this disappearance being accompanied by much throbbing of the spectators' hearts, to whom the manager preached a salutary sermon.[774] In the twenty-first of the Tuscan stories published by me, it is not the devil, but the little old man, Gesù, who gives to the third brother, instead of the usual ass, a putrid sheep, which, however, has the virtue of throwing louis-d'or behind it. This putrid, or wet, or damp sheep represents still better the damp night.

Ṛiǵrâçvas, as we have said, eats the ram and becomes blind, his father having blinded him to avenge the she-wolf to whom the rams belonged; but the mother of the rams being the sheep, it is probable that the she-wolf who possessed the rams had assumed the form of a putrid sheep, in the same way as we have seen her above transformed into a she-goat; the father of Ṛiǵrâçvas, who avenges the she-wolf on account of the hundred rams, may perhaps himself have been a horned wolf transformed into a he-goat, and have blinded Ṛiǵrâçvas with his horns. In the popular story, the she-goat, when she is in the forest, takes a special pleasure in wounding people's eyes with her horns; hence is probably derived the name of the reptile aǵakâvas, conjured with in the Ṛigvedas,[775] as durdṛiçikas, or making to see badly, damaging the eyesight, and the name of aǵakâ, given to an illness in the eyes by the Hindoo physician Suçrutas. However, we must not forget the connection between the idea of skin and that of goat, by which the aǵakâ might mean simply the thin membrane that sometimes harms the pupil of the eye, and produces blindness. This thin membrane, stretched over the eye of the solar hero, blinds him. We shall see in the chapter on the frog and the toad, which very often represent, in the myths, the cloud and the damp night, that the toad[776] causes blindness only by means of the venom which it is fabled to exude, like the reptile aǵakâvas.

But, as the hero in hell learns and sees everything, the goat, which deprives others of sight, has itself the property of seeing everything; this is the case, because the goat, being the sun enclosed in the cloud or gloomy night, sees the secrets of hell, and also because, being the horned moon or starry sky, it is the spy of the heavens. We have already observed in the first chapter how the marvellous girl of seven years of age, to answer the acted riddle proposed by the Tzar, arrives upon a hare, which, in mythology, represents the moon. In a variation of the same story given by Afanassieff,[777] instead of riding upon a hare, the royal boy comes upon a goat, and is recognised by his father; the goat, in its capacity of steed of the lost hero, seems here to represent the moon, as the hare does.

We have already spoken of Indras sahasrâkshas, i.e., of the thousand eyes; Hindoo painters represent him with these thousand eyes, that is, as an azure sky bespangled with stars. Indras as the nocturnal sun hides himself, transformed, in the starry heavens; the stars are his eyes. The hundred-eyed or all-seeing (panoptês) Argos placed as a spy over the actions of the cow beloved of Zeus, is the Hellenic equivalent of this form of Indras. In Chapter I. we also saw the witch's daughter of the Russian fairy tale who has three eyes, and with her third eye plays the spy over the cow, which protects the good maiden. In the second story of the sixth book of Afanassieff, when the peasant ascends into heaven upon the pea-plant, and enters into a room where geese, hogs, and pastry are being cooked, he sees a goat on guard; he only discovers six eyes, as the goat has its seventh eye in its back; the peasant puts the six eyes to sleep, but the goat, by means of its seventh eye, sees that the peasant eats and drinks as much as he likes, and informs the lord of the sky of the fact. In another variation of the story, given by Afanassieff,[778] the old man finds in heaven a little house guarded in turns by twelve goats, of which one has one eye, another two, a third three, and so on up to twelve. The old man says to one after the other, "One eye, two eyes, three eyes, &c., sleep." On the twelfth day, instead of saying "twelve eyes," he makes a mistake and says "eleven;" the goat with twelve eyes then sees and secures him. The eye of God which sees everything, in the popular faith, is a variation of Argos Panoptês, the Vedic Viçvavedas, and the Slavonic Vsievedas, the eye of the goat which sees what is being done in heaven. When the moon shines in the sky, the stars grow pale, the eyes of the witch of heaven fall asleep, but some few eyes still stay open, some few stars continue to shine to observe the movements of the cow-moon, the fairy-moon, the Madonna-moon, who protects the young hero and the beautiful solar maiden lost in the darkness of night.

This spying goat's eye is perhaps connected with the constellation of the goat and two kids. Columella writes that the kids appear in the sky towards the end of September, when the west, and sometimes the south, wind blows and brings rain. According to Servius, the goat united with the two kids in the constellation of Aquarius is the same goat which was the nurse of Zeus; he says that it appears in October, with the sign of Scorpio. Ovid, in De Arte Amandi, and in the first book Tristium, and Virgil in the ninth book of the Æneid,[779] also celebrate the goat and the kids of heaven as bringers of rain. Horace, in the seventh ode, elegantly calls the goat's stars insane:—

We have already seen Indras as a ram or pluvial cloud; and the goat with only one foot (ekapâd aǵaḥ), or he who has but one goat's foot, who supports the heavens, who lightens and thunders,[780] is a form of the same pluvial Indras who supports the heavens in the rainy season. We have seen the Açvinâu compared to two goats, two horns, two hoofs; each, therefore, would seem to have but one horn, but one goat's foot (which might perhaps explain the ekapâd aǵaḥ); hence on one side the cornucopia, and on the other the lame goat.[781] The nymph Galathea (the milky one), who loves a faun (or one who has goat's feet), seems to be a Hellenic form of the loves of Esmeralda and the goat with Quasimodo. The goat loves him who has goat's feet; the solar hero (or heroine) in the night has goat's feet; he is a satyr, a faun, a he-goat, an ass; he is deformed and foolish, but he interests the good fairy, who, in the form of a she-goat (as the moon and as the milky way), guides him in the night, and, as the dawn (white aurora) in the morning, saves him and makes him happy. In the German legend, the poor princess who, with her son, is persecuted in the forest, is assisted now by a she-goat, now by a doe, which gives milk to the child; by means of this animal, which serves as his guide, the prince finds his lost bride. This guiding she-goat, or doe, the nurse of the child-hero, which Servius recognised in the constellation of the goat (with respect to Zeus, who is essentially pluvial, as the Vedic Indras has the clouds himself for his nurses), must have generally represented the moon. But even the milky way of the sky (the bridge of souls) is the milk spilt by the she-goat of heaven; the white morning sky is also the milk of this same she-goat. The horned moon,[782] the milky way, and the white dawn are represented in the form of a beneficent she-goat which assists the hero and the heroine in the forest, in the darkness; whilst, on the contrary, the sun enclosed in the cloud, the darkness, or the starry sky of night (with the insana capræ sidera), is now a good and wise he-goat or ram, full of good advice, like the ram who advises the king of India in the Tuti-Name,[783] and now a malignant monster, a demoniacal being. Inasmuch as the goat gives light and milk, it is divine; inasmuch as it conceals the beauty of the young hero or heroine and opposes them, it may be considered demoniacal.

The connection between the she-goat and the milky way can also be proved from the name St James's Way, given by the common people to the galaxy, or galathea, or way of milk;[784] and it is interesting to learn from Baron Reinsberg,[785] how, in several parts of Bohemia, it is the custom on St James's Day to throw a he-goat out of the window, and to preserve its blood, which is said to be of potent avail against several diseases, such, for instance, as the spitting of blood. In the Lezioni di Materia Medica of Professor Targioni-Tozzetti,[786] we also read that the he-goat's blood was known by no less a name than manus Dei, and believed to be especially useful against contusions of the back, pleurisy, and the stone. But the disease of the stone was supposed to be cured by the stone called capra (goat), which was said to be found in the bodies of some Indian goats. Targioni-Tozzetti himself seriously describes the goat-stones as follows:—"These stones are usually clear on their surface, and dark-coloured; they have an odour of musk when rubbed and heated by the hands. In them (the stone Bezoar[787]) analeptic and alexipharmic virtues were supposed to exist, which were able to resist the evil effects of poison and contagious diseases, the plague not excepted, and to save the patient by causing an abundant and healthy perspiration to break out on his skin. For this reason these stones were sold very dear. The same virtues are attributed to those found in the West, but in a much less degree." When the heavenly goat dissolves in rain or in dew, when moisture comes from the goat-cloud, the mountain-cloud, or the stone-cloud, these humours are salutary. When St James, who is joined with the goat and the rain, pours out his bottle, as the Piedmontese people say, the vapour which falls from the sky on these days is considered by the peasants, as in fact it is for the country, and especially for the vines, a real blessing. In the fable of Babrios, the vine, whose leaves are eaten by the he-goat, threatens it, saying that it will nevertheless produce wine, and that when the wine is made (i.e., at the Dionysian mysteries), the goat will be sacrificed to the gods. In the spring, on the other hand, or on the Easter of the resurrection, it was the custom to sacrifice in effigy the Agnus Dei, in the belief that it would serve to defend the fields and vineyards against demoniacal wiles, thunderbolts and thunder, facilitate parturition, and deliver from shipwreck, fire, and sudden death.[788] In the Witches' Sabbath in Germany, it was said that the witches burned a he-goat, and divided its ashes among themselves.[789]

The cunning she-goat is an intermediate form between the good wise fairy and the witch who is an expert in every kind of malice. In the same way as the hero, at first foolish, learns malice from the devil, to use it afterwards against the devil himself, it may be presumed that the hero, in his form of a goat, has learned from the monsters all that cunning by which he afterwards distinguishes himself. The Vedic ram, Indras, also uses magic against the monster magicians.

In the second of the Esthonian stories, we read that the king of the serpents has a golden cup containing the milk of a heavenly goat; if bread is dipped into this milk, and put into the mouth, one can discover every secret thing that has happened in the night, without any one perceiving how.

In the French mediæval poem of Ysengrin,[790] the she-goat deceives the wolf in a way similar to that in which, in the first number of Afanassieff's stories, the peasant cheats the bear, and in the Italian stories the same peasant defrauds the devil. The she-goat shows a fox-like cunning, keeping for itself the leaf of the corn, and leaving the root for the wolf. Hence, in my eyes, the origin of the Piedmontese proverbial expression, "La crava a l'à mangià la föja" (the goat ate the leaf), and even the simple one of "Mangé la föja" (to eat the leaf), meaning to understand cunning.[791] I heard from a certain Uliva Selvi, at Antignano (near Leghorn), the narrative of a witch who sent a boy every day to take the she-goat to the pasturage, ordering him to pay attention that it should eat well, but leave the corn alone. When the goat returned, the witch asked it—

To which the goat answered—

Then the boy was put to death by the witch. It happened thus to twelve boys, until the thirteenth, more cunning, caressed the goat and gave it the corn to eat; then the goat answered to the witch's question—

And the boy, too, was well treated.

The devil's pupil always outwits his master; the she-goat beguiles the wolf to its destruction. We have seen this in the Russian story, and it is confirmed in the legend of Ysengrin. The peasants of Piedmont and of Sicily have, for this reason, so much respect for the goat, that they consider it brings a blessing to the house near which it is maintained; and if, by chance, they show a perverse nature, this perversity is attributed to the devil himself, who, they believe, has maliciously taken possession of them. A few years ago, a goatherd of the Val di Formazza, in the Ossola in Piedmont, had two goats which he believed to be possessed by some evil spirit, for which reason they always wandered about, in order, as he thought, that the demon might at last be able to throw them down some abyss. One day the two goats were lost; the goatherd searched for them for a short time, but finding his search bootless, he resolved to go and make a vow to the Madonna of Einsiedlen. Chance so arranged it, that at the very moment in which he was returning from his pious pilgrimage, his two goats also approached the door of his house; therefore, of course, this was declared to be a miracle in Formazza, and as such it is still believed in that district.[792]

In the preceding chapter we saw the ass represented in two aspects, as regards its generative capabilities; that is, it is now represented as an ardent, insatiable, and competent fœcundator, and now as a ridiculous imbecile, and powerless to generate. We also saw the ass closely connected with the satyrs with goat's or he-goat's feet. The he-goats and rams, too, have a double and self-contradictory reputation. We know, for instance, that the god Thor, the god of the Scandinavians, who thunders in the cloud, is drawn by he-goats (the vessel of Thor and Hymir, the cloud, is called in the Edda a navigating ram or he-goat, in the same way as the Vedic Indras is represented as a god-ram); he is, moreover, the protector of marriages. Scandinavian mythology, therefore, appears to regard the goat as essentially the one that makes fruitful, as a pluvial cloud. In the Hindoo mythology of the brâhmanic period, the god Indras loses, on the contrary, his divine power, becomes stupid and obscure, and is lost in his form of a ram. In one of his Passeggiate nel Canavese, Signor A. Bertolotti recently observed, at Muraglio, a curious custom which is observed by the young men of the country when a projected wedding falls through; they run up to the bride's house and obstreperously demand her to give her sheep up to them, upon which they go to the bridegroom's house and cry out, "Vente a sarrar quist motogn" (come and shut up these rams). Here the ram represents the husband, and the sheep the wife. In Du Cange the name of goat (caper) is given to the "in pueris insuavis odor cum ad virilitatem accedunt."[793] In Apuleius, unmeasured lasciviousness is called "cohircinatio." According to Ælianos, the he-goat, at the age of seven days (of seven months according to Columella), already yearns for coition.

But in the same way as the ass is the stupid patient animal, the ram is the stupid quiet one. The he-goat is said to be an indifferent husband, who allows his she-goats to be covered by other goats without showing a sign of jealousy; hence our expressions, "horned goat," and simply "horned," to indicate the husband of an unfaithful woman, that is, of a woman who makes him wear horns, like the goat, and the Italian proverb, "E meglio esser geloso che becco" (it is better to be jealous than a he-goat). This reputation, however, as assigned to the he-goat, is contrary to all that has been said and written, and that is known concerning the lust of the he-goat. On the contrary, Aristotle says explicitly that two he-goats, which have always lived together in concord at the pasturage, fall out and fight with violence in the time of coition. Moreover, the verse of Pindaros is well known, in which he makes he-goats unite even with women. It is also said that Hermês, or Zeus, assuming the form of a he-goat, united himself with Penelope, whence was born the great goat-footed satyr, Pan; that Hêraklês (as an ass, in his lion's skin) competed with a he-goat in phallical powers (in Athenaios he joins himself with fifty virgins in the space of seven nights); that, in Ælianos, a jealous he-goat punished with death the goatherd Crathis, who had incestuously joined himself with one of his she-goats. Nevertheless, the Greeks already called by the name of aix, as we Italians by that of capra, a woman of an immoral life, or an adulteress. Columella gives us the key of the enigma, observing that the he-goat, by abuse of the Venus, which he uses too soon (like the ass), becomes powerless before the age of six years, so that it is not out of indifference that he is simply a spectator of his she-goat's infidelity, but only because he cannot do otherwise. Hence the application of hircosus, which Plautus gives to an old man.

It is the Hellenic tradition which, more than any other, developed to a greater extent the myth of the goat and the sheep, under all their aspects—demoniacal, divine, and hybrid.

The golden fleece, or the fleece of the sheep or ram which had been transported into Colchis by Phrixos, the son of Nephêlê (the cloud) and of Helle;[794] Jupiter Ammon (in the fifth book of Ovid's Metamorphoses), who, afraid of the giants (as, in the last book of the Râmâyaṇam, the gods, terrified by the monsters, transform themselves into different animals), hides himself in Lybia in the shape of a horned ram; the altar of Apollo in the isle of Delos, constructed with innumerable horns; the woolly skins in which, according to Strabo,[795] the Iberians gathered up gold, whence the Greek geographer believed the fable of the golden fleece to have arisen; the golden lamb kept by Atreus, which was to bring Thyestes to the throne, and the name of Aigüsthos, born of the incestuous loves of Thyestes with his own daughter; Pan (with goat's feet, the son of the he-goat Zeus or Hermes), who, in the fifth book of the Saturnalians of Macrobius, loves the moon and obtains its favours by means of sheep with white but rough and coarse wool; Endymion, who, according to the commentator Servius, induces the moon to love him by means of exceedingly white sheep; Neptune, who, in the form of a ram, in the sixth book of the Metamorphoses of Ovid, seduces the beautiful virgin Bisaltis; the satyrs, the fauns with goat's feet, into which the gods transform themselves in order to seduce nymphs or maidens of the earth, as, for instance, Jove again, in the same book of Ovid—

Hermês, called Krioforos, or carrier of a ram (that is, of a ram which delivers the land from the plague, a form of St James); the two predestined sheep which Epimenides sacrifices to make the Athenian plague cease, in the twenty-seventh Olympiad, in Diogenes Laertês; the bleating goats that King Priam (in the fragments of Ennius) sacrifices to dissipate the evil threatened by sinister dreams; the black sheep sacrificed to Pluto, Proserpine, the Furies, and all the infernal deities; the lamb, the ram, and the he-goat sacrificed to the genital Fates in the Sybilline verses translated by Angelo Poliziano—

the white lamb sacrificed to Hercules, to Mars, to Jove, to Neptune, to Bacchus, to Pan (the goat being sacrificed to Diana), to Apollo (i.e., when the sun shines), to Ceres (the goddess of the light-coloured ears of corn), to Venus, to the gods and goddesses; to his divine forms (similia similibus); and several other mythical notions (not to speak of the very popular legend relating to the goat Amalthea, who nourished Zeus with her milk, and was by Zeus translated for this service to the stars, under the name of Aixourania, or heavenly goat, after he had taken off one of its horns, to give, in gratitude to the two nymphs who had protected him, the faculty of pouring out everything that was wished for);[796] all these account, in an eloquent manner, for the wide-spread worship that the goat and the sheep received, even in Græco-Latin antiquity, enriching with many episodes the mythical and legendary traditions of these nations, now as the type of a god, now of a demon, and now of an intermediate being, such as the satyr, for instance.

In the same way as the mythical horse has, from evening to morning, three conspicuous moments of action—black, grey, and white or red—and as the mythical ass throws gold from behind and has golden ears, so the mythical goat and sheep, which are dark-coloured in the night or in the cloud, throw gold from behind and have golden horns which pour out ambrosia, or else have even the cornucopia itself. It is always the same myth of the cloudy and aqueous, of the nocturnal and tenebrous sky, with its two glowing twilights or auroras, or else of the luminous heavenly hero who traverses the night or the cloud (or the wintry season), disguised in the shapes of various animals, now by his own will, now by a divine malediction or by diabolical witchcraft.

In the third book of Aristotle's History of Animals, we read of the river Psikros in Thrace, that white sheep, when they drink of its waters, bring forth black lambs; that in Antandria there are two rivers, of which one makes the sheep black, and the other white, and that the river Xanthos or Skamandros makes the sheep fair (or golden). This belief involves in itself the three transformations of the celestial hero into the three he-goats or rams of different natures, of which we have spoken. The last transformation calls our attention to the sheep with golden wool, the golden lamb, and the Agnus Dei, the symbol of happiness, power and riches. Wealth in sheep, even more than wealth in cows, became the symbol of universal riches. The horn poured out every kind of treasure upon the earth, and upon the earth itself the pecus became pecunia.

END OF VOL. I.

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Transcriber's Notes

Corrected misspellings throughout the text.

There are multiple spellings of many names throughout, all of which appear valid, left per the text.

There are many words that are both hyphenated and unhyphenated in the text (i.e. cowmaid and cow-maid). Words were left to match the text.

Pg 1: Added a missing — separator (... for cows.—Cavern where ...)

Pg 24: Removed the second "the" (... it is the third sun ...)

Pg 178: Added missing period. (... him from danger. These were ...)

Pg 196: There is an unmatched round bracket starting on this page (... carried off. (This is the ...)

Pg 211: There is an unmatched round bracket starting on this page (... perfidious persecutor. (The evening ...)

Pg 313: There is an unmatched round bracket starting on this page (... called Urvâksha (a word ...)

Pg 335: Removed an extra "the" (... seizes the branch of ...)

Footnotes 59 and 433: Have no anchor in the text.

Footnotes 395 and 436: Added closing quotes to the end of the footnote.

Footnote 518: There is an unmatched round bracket in this footnote (... attonito (or, properly ...)

Footnote 558: There is an unmatched quote in this footnote (... cavalli stregari;" Prologo. 10 ...)

Footnote 579: Replaced the final comma with a period.

Footnote 612: Replaced comma with period after "i" (Tuti-Name, i. 151.)

Footnote 659: Changed "lightned" to "lightninged" (... day it lightninged and thundered.)

Footnote 715: Added second period after "v" (... Ib. v. 12. ...)