Note 487 — Chapter I

The pike becomes in spring of an azure or bluish or greenish-blue colour; hence the name of golubbi—però (that is, of the azure or bluish fins; in German, the bluish colour is called echt-grau—that is, grey of pike; in the nineteenth of the Russian stories of Erlenwein, golden fins are ascribed to the pike), which is also given to it in Russia. Golub, or brown, violet and azure, is a name given in Russia to the dove; so in Italy we say, that the dove is pavonazzo (properly the colour of the peacock, which is generally blue and green). But in Sanskṛit, amongst the names of the peacock there is that of haris, a word which represents both the moon and the sun. By the same analogy, the bluish or greenish pike may represent the moon. But another analogy, caused by a similar conception, is found again in the word çyâmas, which means black, azure, and also silvery; whence it serves to represent the convolvolus argenteus (we must remember that the Latin name of the pike is lucius; the Greek, lükios—that is, the luminous one). The pike takes the colour of the water in which it lives, and the waters are dark, black, azure, greenish, silvery; as being azure, or greenish, or silvery, the pike represents the moon; as being dark, the tenebrific night, the cloud, the wintry season.—In the thirty-second story of the fourth book of Afanassieff, the little perch relates that the pike was once luminous (that is, in spring), and that it became black after the conflagration which took place in the Lake of Rastoff from the day of St Peter (June 29) to the day of St Elias (July 20), or in the beginning of summer. As we learn in the Pseudo-Callisthenes, near the black stone, which makes black whoever touches it, there are fishes which are cooked in cold water, and not at the fire, I recollect here also that the Hecht-könig, or king of pikes, is described as yellow and black-spotted.