Of Six Mediæval Women; To Which Is Added A Note on Mediæval Gardens

by Alice Kemp-Welch

The other incident—the restoration to life by means of a flower or a herb—frequently occurs in classical stories and folk-lore.[18] Perhaps the most familiar example, and, owing to the recent excavations in Crete, the most interesting one, is that connected with Glaucos, son of Minos, king of Crete. In the story (Apollod. iii. 3) Glaucos when a boy fell into a cask of honey and was smothered. His father, ignorant of his fate, consulted the oracle to ascertain what had become of him, and the seer Polyeidos of Argos was named to discover him. When he had found him, Minos shut Polyeidos up in the tomb with the dead body of the boy until he should restore the latter to life. Whilst Polyeidos was watching the body, a serpent suddenly came towards it and touched it. Polyeidos killed the serpent, and immediately a second one came, which, seeing the other one lying dead, disappeared and soon returned with a certain herb in its mouth. This it laid on the mouth of the dead serpent, which immediately came to life again. Polyeidos seized the herb and placed it on the mouth of the dead boy, who was thereupon restored to life.

Photo. Macbeth.

GLAUKOS AND POLYEIDOS IN TOMB.

Greek Vase, Brit. Mus.

To face page 52.

This story is most graphically depicted on a fifth-century Greek vase in the British Museum, and, whatever its real interpretation may be, it has gained in significance since the life of the distant past of the island has been laid bare, and large jars, which in all probability were used for storing wine and honey and other necessaries, and from their size and contents might well have proved a snare to a venturesome and greedy boy, have been discovered in situ. After a lapse of many centuries we find this idea of the life-giving plant reappearing in mediæval garb, daintily fashioned by Marie de France.

Marie, in her story, tells us that the weasel brings a red flower. This was possibly the verbena, well known in folk-medicine as vervain, and much used in the Middle Ages. According to one writer, the weasel uses vervain as a preservative against snake-bites, and this idea of its effect might easily have been extended to include death. Even so great an authority as Aristotle mentions that the weasel understood the potent effects of certain herbs. The intervention of a weasel instead of the usual serpent opens up the further interesting question as to whether this weasel incident was not imported from India, where Greek stories had become alloyed with Indian lore. Even to-day, in India, a mongoose, a species of weasel, is sometimes taken on expeditions by any one fearful of snakes, and kept at night in the tent as a protection against them.

In addition to the choice of a weasel as medium, the unusual colour of the flower is also of interest. Giraldus Cambrensis, writing in the twelfth century on the subject of weasels, after remarking that they have more heart than body (plus cordis habens quam corporis), goes on to say that they restore their dead by means of a yellow flower, and in the still earlier record of the Lydian hero Tylon, where a serpent is the intermediary—and serpents are often credited with a knowledge of life-giving plants,—reference is made to a golden flower.[19] This may possibly be connected with the idea of the life-giving power of the god, since the golden flower is dedicated to Zeus. Professor J. G. Frazer thinks that a red flower may perhaps have been chosen to suggest a flow of blood—an infusion of fresh life into the veins of the dead. It is also possible that red and yellow may have been interchangeable terms, just as they are to-day amongst the Italian peasantry. The choice of colour may, however, have been derived from the red anemone, which is said to have sprung from the blood of Adonis, with whom love and life are traditionally associated. There are some, on the other hand, who ascribe to the story a deep spiritual meaning. With them it is not the flower itself which brings about resurrection from apparent death, but the spiritual truth of which the flower is but the outward symbol. It may be that the red blossom represents the joys of earth which Eliduc’s wife voluntarily renounces, and which, surrendered to her rival, in time became like a burning thing whose fiery touch awakens to life the sleeping conscience. In a story such as this, which has evidently travelled far and wide before we find it in England in the eleventh century, it is possible that any or all of these surmises may be true. The whole of this incident of the weasel and the flower, read in the original, is of extraordinary interest and beauty. What a touching picture of animal sensibility is the account of the despair of the weasel on finding its dead mate, and its tender display of solicitude and sympathy, raising the lifeless head and trying to reanimate the small inert body! Only one who loved animals and knew their habits well could have told thus tenderly and graphically a story so simple, yet so suggestive, of the love of two sentient things, a love which runs like a thread of gold through all creation and makes it one.