[738] Laus Asini, Ludg. Batavorum, ex officina Elzeviriana.
[739] "Conferre aliquid et candori in mulierum cute existimatur. Poppaea certe Domitii Neronis conjux quingentas secum per omnia trahens fætas balnearum etiam solio totum corpus illo lacte macerabat, extendi quoque cutem credens;" Aldrov. To which custom Juvenal alludes in his 6th satire:
"Atque illo lacte fovetur
Propter quod secum comites educit asellas
Exul hyperboreum si dimittetur ad axim."
[740] "Finitis laudibus, surgit quidam archipresbyter, retro se ascendit asinum preparatum a curia; quidam cubicularius tenet in capite asini bacilem cum xx. solidis denariorum," &c.; in Du Cange, the work quoted before, s. v. cornomannia.—We also find in Du Cange that a soldier was called in the middle ages "caput asini, pro magnitudine capitis et congerie capillorum."
[741] In the Pentamerone, iii. 8, the night is called "l'aseno de l'ombre."
[742] In the Pentamerone, ii. I, we have a variation of the other Æsopian fable of the lion who is afraid of the ass. The old witch, in order to deliver herself from the lion which Petrosinella has caused to rise, flays an ass and dresses herself in its skin; the lion, believing it to be really an ass, runs off.—In the thirteenth of the Sicilian stories collected by Signora Laura Gonzenbach, and published at Leipzig by Brockhaus, the ass and the lion dispute the spoil; the young hero divides it, giving to the ass the hay that the lion has in its mouth, and to the lion the bones in the ass's mouth. But probably the lion here represents the dog, according to the Greek proverb, "Küni didôs achüra, onôi ta ostea," to express a thing done the wrong way.
[743] In the Pentamerone again, in the island of the ogres, an old ogress feeds a number of asses, who afterwards jump on to the bank of a river and kick the swans; here the ass is demoniacal, as it is in the Râmâyaṇam; the swans, as we shall see, are a form of the luminous Açvinâu.—In obscene literature, the mentula as a gardener, and the vulva as a garden, are two frequent images; cfr., among others, the Italian poem, La Menta.
[744] Cfr. the first of the Novelline di Santo Stefano di Calcinaia, in which we also find the third brother, believed to be stupid, who makes his ass throw gold from its tail; the foolish Pimpi, who kills his ass whilst cutting wood; the son of the poor man, who amuses himself by sending the ass before him tied to a string, and then making it return; the peasant who drags up the ass which had fallen into the marsh, and who then marries the daughter of the king of Russia (the wintry, the gloomy, the nocturnal one), who never laughed and whom he causes to laugh; and the ass who dies after eating a poisoned loaf.
[745] Contes et Proverbes Populaires recueillis en Armagnac, par J. F. Bladé, Paris, Franck.
[746] Cuentos y Poesias Populares Andaluces, collecionados por Fernan Caballero, Leipzig, Brockhaus, 1866.