CAPE TIMES - 1933, July 6
Myths and fables, which in olden times were attached to
birds and beasts, were traced to their probable sources by Dr. Walter Rose in a
delightful address on “unnatural history,” containing much humour and
scholarship, to the Sons of England Lunch Club yesterday.
Beginning with the UNICORN, Dr. Rose quoted from Timon of
Atheus:
“Wert thou a unicorn, pride and wrath would confound thee
and make thine own self the conquest of thy fury.”
And from Julius Caesar:
“Unicorns may be betrayed with trees, and bears with pits.”
THE UNICORN’S HORN
According to old writers, the LION and the unicorn were
traditional enemies, and the former, on seeing the unicorn, lured him to a
tree, into which in his fury the unicorn drove his horn, rendering himself
helpless.
It was at one time believed that a cup made from a unicorn’s
horn would betray the presence of poison, but no one seemed to have been
inquiring enough to test this supposition.
In Dr. Rose’s opinion, the legend of the unicorn had its
origin, not in the RHINOCEROS, but in the NARWHAL, the horn of which animal was
used in trade. By an easy transition this horn could be imagined planted on the
brow of a mythical horse.
It was interesting to see how old tales had introduced new
words into the language. He instanced the expression “to give someone a licking”
or to “lick into shape.”
This appeared to have its origin in the strange old belief
that young BEARS were born without any shape. In Shakespeare’s play, Henry VI,
Gloucester was compared to “an unlick’d bear-whelp,” and there were other references
to a belief that a young bear was literally “licked into shape” by its mother’s
tongue.
MERMAIDS AND HARPIES
Turning next to “our old friend the MERMAID,” Dr. Rose
quoted from “A Midsummer Night’s Dream”:
“And certain stars shot madly from their spheres to hear the
sea-maid’s music.”
In olden times, the idea of making composites of men and animals
was a favourite way of peopling the world with strange forms; thus harpies; the
mand and HORSE in the centaur, and the man and GOAT in the satyr. That being
so, the imagination of creatures in the sea half-FISH and half-human was so
obvious as to discount the inaccurate explanation of the seal and the dugong.
The SHREW – really one of the most harmless of animals – was
imagined by people of a primitive day to be terribly poisonous; and it was
believed that if it ran across the legs of a cow it would cause paralysis. A
favourite old English oath was “be-shrew thee.”
Happily, there was an antidote. This was to sea up the
unfortunate shrew in a hole in a tree, where it obviously died. Subsequently,
when a cow became “paralysed” its limbs were brushed with a branch of the tree,
which became known as a shrew ash.
The ancient belief of the PHOENIX, referred to several times
in Shakespeare, was that when it felt it had lived long enough it built a fire
in which it destroyed itself, leaving in the flames an egg which produced a new
phoenix.
The PELICAN was believed of old to nourish its young with
its own blood, one explanation of the fable being that, in denuding itself of
feather to line its nest, the bird scratched its skin and bled.
The term “SWAN SONG”, now in common use, was derived from
the belief that at the time of death a SWAN was endowed with the ability to
sing as sweetly as any other bird. (“A swan-like end fading in music” – “Merchant
of Venice”).
Shakespeare appeared to have had no knowledge of the reputed
propensity of the OSTRICH for burying its head in the sand, but he was familiar
with its remarkable digestion (“I’ll make thee eat iron like an ostrich and swallow
my sword like a great pin” – Henry VI).
About the CUCKOO there had been many curious beliefs, one
being that on hearing the first sound of the bird immunity from pain in the
limbs was obtained by rolling in the dew. The KINGFISHER was used at one time
as a weathercock. Thus, Shakespeare’s reference to “time servers who turn their
halcyon beaks with every gale and vary with their masters.”
“CROCODILE TEARS”
The “precious jewel” in the head of the toad was probably,
in Shakespeare’s meaning, its eyes; but there was an old English belief that
the creature’s head contained a stone capable of extracting poison from wounds.
The expression “CROCODILE tears” was derived from a curious
belief familiar to Shakespeare, for he made Queen Margaret say of Henry VIII that
he was beguiled by Gloucester “as the mournful crocodile with sorrow snares
relenting passengers.”
The idea seemed to be that a crocodile could assume grief
until a sympathetic person, inquiring what the trouble was, came along to
satisfy its inner needs. A parallel belief was that the crocodile, having
consumed all of its victim but the head, would regard that remnant with tears.
