The ass can restrain neither his voice nor his flatus; we have already seen something similar in the story of Midas, where the comber of the ass feels he will burst if he is not permitted to relieve himself of the secret of the ass. Diogenês of Laertes narrates that the fields of Agrigentum being devastated by malignant winds which destroyed the crops, the philosopher Empedocles instructed them to take asses' skins, and having made sacks of them, carry them to the summits of the hills and mountains, to chase the winds away. Ælianos, confounding one noise with another, suggests, to prevent the ass from braying, the advantage of appending a stone to its tail. This ancient Greek fable is to this day very popular in Italy, and the narrator is accustomed to furbish it up with a character of actuality, as if it had happened yesterday, and among his acquaintances.
In the Italian stories,[744] when the ass brays upon the mountain, a tail grows on the forehead of the step-mother's ugly daughter; the third crowing of the cock is the signal for the monster's death; the third braying or flatus of the ass announces the death of the fool. With the end of the night the ass disappears, and the fool also disappears or dies. The braying of the ass cannot mount up into heaven; after the ass has brayed, after the cloud has thundered, the ass comes down upon the earth, is dissolved into rain, is dispersed and dies; the dark ass cannot remain in the luminous sky, it can only inhabit the cloudy, watery, or gloomy sky of hell. The way in which the fool of the story tries to elude death resembles that which was used, according to Ælianos, to prevent the ass from braying. In a story of Armagnac,[745] Joan lou Péc runs after a man whom he believes to be a sage, and asks him when he will die; the man answers, "Joan lou Péc, mouriras au troisièmo pet de toun ase." The ass does so twice; the fool endeavours to prevent the third: "Cop sec s'en-angonc cerca un pau (a stake) bien pounchut et l'enfouncéc das un martet dens lou cu de l'ase. Mes l'ase s'enflec tant, e hasconc tant gran effort, que lou pau sourtisconc coumo no balo e tuèc lou praube Joan lou Péc."
In Herodotus, the Scythians are defeated when the asses bray, and the dogs bark among Darius's tents. The braying of the ass, the thunder of the cloud, is an oracle; the ass that brays is a judge and a prophet. In hell everything is known; the devil knows every art, every species of malice, every secret; the ass in hell participates in this knowledge. The ass Nicon, in Plutarch, in the Life of Antony, predicts to Augustus his victory at the battle of Actium; on the contrary, in the Life of Alexander, by the same author, an ass who kills with a kick a great lion belonging to the Macedonian, appears to the great conqueror in the light of an evil omen. The dying sun of evening, the old lion, is killed in the evening by the ass of night; in the morning, on the contrary, the ass of night announces his fortune to the solar hero, who again becomes luminous and wise. The ass can predict all things, because it knows all things; it knows everything, because it hears everything, and it hears everything by means of its exceedingly long ears; the ass of Apuleius says of itself: "Recreabar quod auribus præditus cuncta longule etiam dissita sentiebam." And this ass which listens from a distance reminds us again of the third brother, now a fool, and now only supposed to be a fool; to the Andalusian Oidin-Oidon, hijo del buen oidor (a relation of the already cited Vedic Indras âçrutkarṇas), of the second cuento of Caballero,[746] who hears everything that is done in the deepest parts of hell, where Lucifer sits, horned and large-eared. The hero who combats with Lucifer only thinks of cutting off his ear; the ass without ears is no longer an ass; the ears of the mythical ass are its vital and characteristic organs. Instead of ears, give horns to the mythical ass, and we have the mythical goat; take the horns away and we have now the mythical abject sheep, now the hog; this is what we shall see in the two next chapters.
CHAPTER IV.
The Sheep, the Ram, and the Goat.
SUMMARY.
The sun-shepherd, and the sun-lamb, ram, or goat.—The dark-coloured he-goat.—The goat-moon.—Aǵas; explanation given by Professor Bréal; the Finnic aija.—Meshas; she-goat, ram, skin, sack.—The ram Indras.—The goats Açvinâu.—The he-goat Veretraghna.—The lamb and the goat in the forest opposed to the wolf.—The apple-tree and the she-goat; the cloud and the apple-tree.—The goat, the nut-tree and the hazel-nuts.—The wolf assumes the goat's voice; the wolf in the fire.—The witch takes the voice of the little hero's mother; the child born of a tree.—The hero among the sheep, or in the spoils of the sheep, escapes from the witch.—Pûshan aǵâçvas and his sister.—The brother who becomes a kid while drinking; the sister in the sea.—The husband-goat; the goat's skin burned; the monster appears once more a handsome youth; the funereal mantle of the young hero; when it is burned, the hero lives again handsome and splendid.—The children changed into kids.—The cunning Schmier-bock in the sack.—Aǵamukhî—Ilvalas and Wâtâpis.—Indras meshâṇḍas, sahasradhâras and sahasradâras.—The rams of the wolf eaten.—The goat of expiation, the goat and the stupidity of the hero disappear at the same time.—The devil-ram; the putrid sheep that throws gold behind it.—The goat which deprives men of sight.—The young prince, riding on the goat, solves the riddle.—The spy of heaven; the eye of God.—The constellation of the she-goat and two kids.—The lame goat.—The heroine and the goat her guide and nurse.—The milky way and the she-goat.—The goat's blood, manus Dei; the stone bezoar.—The cunning goat.—The goat deceives the wolf; the goat eats the leaf.—The she-goat possessed of a devil.—The ram-vessel.—Ram and he-goat fœcundators.—The he-goat and the horned husband.—Zeus he-goat and the satyr Pan; Hêraklês the rival of a goat; the old powerless man called a he-goat.—Hellenic forms of the myth of the goat.—Phrixos and Helle; Jupiter Ammon; the altar of Apollo; the fleece of the Iberians; the golden ram of Atreus; Aigüsthos; Diana and the white sheep; Neptune a ram; satyrs and fauns; Hermês krioforos; the sheep of Epimenis; lambs, rams, and he-goats sacrificed; aixourania and the cornucopia.—The mythical goat; its threefold form; black, white, and light-coloured lambs.—Pecus and pecunia.
When the girl aurora leads out of the stable in the morning her radiant flock, among them there are found to be white lambs, white kids, and luminous sheep; in the evening the same aurora leads the lambs, the kids, and the sheep back to the fold. In the early dawn all this flock is white, by and by their fleeces are golden fleeces; the white, and afterwards the golden heavens of the east (or the west) constituting this white and golden flock, and the sun's rays their fleeces. Then the sun himself, who steps forth from this flock, is now its young shepherd-king, and now the lamb, the ram, or he-goat. When the sun enters into the region of night, the he-goat or lamb goes back to the fold and becomes dark-coloured; the sun veiled by the night or the cloud is a dark-coloured ram, he-goat, or she-goat. In the night, says the proverb, all cows are black; and the same might be said of goats, except in the case of the goat, luminous and all-seeing, coming out of the nocturnal darkness in the form of the moon. We must, therefore, consider the sheep or goat under a triple aspect; the principal and most interesting aspect being that of the sun veiled by the gloom, or by the cloud, which wears often a demoniacal form, such as that of the ass or of the hero in hell; the second being that of the grey-white, and afterwards golden sky of morning, or of the golden and thereafter grey-white sky of evening which, as a luminous, is therefore generally a divine form of the goat; and the third aspect being that of the moon.