"Sirenum voces et Circes pocula nosti."
Pliny, who believed that they existed in India, attributed to them the faculty of lulling men to sleep by their songs, in order to tear them to pieces afterwards; they calmed the winds of the sea by their voices, they knew and could reveal every secret (like the fairy or Madonna moon). Some say that the sirens were born of the blood of Acheloos, defeated by Hêraklês; others, of Acheloos and one of the Muses; others, again, narrate that they were once girls, and that Aphroditê transformed them into sirens because they wished to remain virgins. In the sixteenth Esthonian story, the beautiful maiden of the waters, daughter of the mother of the waters, falls in love with a young hero with whom she stays six days of the week; the seventh day, Thursday, she leaves him, to go and plunge into the water, forbidding the youth to come and see her: the young man is unable to repress his curiosity, surprises the maiden when bathing, and discovers that she is a woman in her upper and a fish in her lower parts—
"Desinit in piscem mulier formosa superne;"
the maiden of the waters is conscious of being looked at, and disappears sorrowfully from the young man's sight.[330]
[CHAPTER III.]
THE WREN, THE BEETLE, AND THE FIREFLY.
SUMMARY.
Rex and regulus.—Iyattikâ çakuntikâ.—The wren's testament.—Vasiliskos; kunigli.—The wren and the eagle.—The wren and the beetle.—The death of Cæsar predicted by a wren.—Equus lunæ.—Indragopas.—The red-mantled beetle.—The little cow of God in Russia.—The chicken of St Michael in Piedmont.—The cow-lady.—The Lucía and St Lucia.—The little pig of St Anthony; the butterfly as a phallical symbol.—The cockchafer.—St Nicholas.—Other popular names of the coccinella septempunctata.—The ladycow tells children how many years they have to live.—The firefly and the refulgent glowworm.—The firefly flogged; it gives light to the wheat; the shepherd's candle.