[775] vii. 50, 1.—In the Classical Dictionary of Natural History of Audouin, Bourdon, &c., first Italian translation, Venice, Tasso, 1831, we read: "Goat, species of ophidian reptiles, indigenous in Congo, and also in Bengal; as yet unclassified by zoologists, and which, it is said, throw from afar a kind of saliva causing blindness."
[776] Cfr. the lacerta cornuta of the Pentamerone.
[777] vi. 42.
[778] iv. 7.
Differ opus, tunc tristis hiems, tunc pleiades instant
Tunc et in æquorea mergitur hædus aqua.
Sæpe ego nimbosis dubius jactabar ab hædis.
Nascitur Oleneæ signum pluviale capellæ.
—Ovid.
Quantus ab occasu veniens pluvialibus hædis
Verberat imber humum.
—Virgil.
[780] Pâvîravî tanyatur ekapâd aǵo divo dhartâ; Ṛigv. x. 65, 13.—Cfr. the aǵa ekapâd invoked after Ahirbudhnya and before Tritas, in the Ṛigv. ii. 31, 6, and the aǵâikapâd, a name given to Vishṇus, in the Hariv; the reader remembers also the goat-footed races of Herodotus.
[781] We also find the lame goat, or he-goat, in the legend of Thor. The god kills his he-goats, takes off their skins, and keeps their bones, to be able to resuscitate them at pleasure. His son, Thialfi, steals the thigh-bone of one of the goats, in order to go and sell it; then one of the he-goats of Thor, being resuscitated, is lame.—Cfr. for the analogous traditions the notices given by Simrock, work quoted before, p. 260.
[782] In a Russian song we read: "Moon! moon! golden horns!"