"Ter clara instantis Eoi
Signa canit serus, deprenso Marte, satelles."
According to a Pâuranic legend, Indras, the Indian Mars, enamoured of Ahalyâ, the wife of Gâutamas, and accompanied by Ćandras (the moon), assumed the form of a kṛikavâkas (cock or peacock), and went to sing at midnight near the dwelling of Ahalyâ, whilst her husband was absent. Then, divesting himself of the form of a cock (or peacock), he left Ćandras at the door to watch, and united himself with Ahalyâ (the hen). Meanwhile Gâutamas returns; Ćandras not having warned the lovers of his approach, the saint turns Ahalyâ to stone, and scatters over the body of Indras a thousand wombs; which, being submerged in the waters, the pitying gods subsequently changed into a thousand eyes (sahasrâkshas is one of the Hindoo names of Indras and of the peacock). According to a variety of this legend,—which is analogous to the fable of the Zeus as a quail, the seducer of the sister of Latona, or of Latona herself, changed into a stone and submerged in the waters,—Indras becomes a eunuch, and obtains, as we have already seen, in compensation, two ram's testicles. In the Âitareya Br., the god Brahman Praǵâpatis becomes a goat or a roebuck (ṛiçyas), in order to lie with his own daughter Aurora. In the thirty-second and thirty-third hymn of the eighth book of the Ṛigvedas, the god Indras and the god Brahman change places. Indras is at first beautiful (çiprin); he afterwards becomes a woman (strî hi brahmâ babhûvitha). In the Râmâyaṇam,[421] Gâutamas condemns Indras to become powerless, and Ahalyâ to remain hidden in the forest, lying in the ashes (bhasmaçâyinî), until Ramas comes to deliver her. The ashy sky, the stony sky, the watery sky, are identical; Ahalyâ (the evening aurora) in the ashes is the germ of the story of Cinderella, and of the daughter of the King of Dacia, persecuted by her lover, her father himself.
A popular Italian belief, which has been mentioned by Pliny and Columella, says that when it thunders while the hen is sitting on her eggs, they are spoiled. To remedy this evil, Pliny advises to put under the fodder of the eggs an iron nail, or else some earth taken up by a ploughshare. Columella says that many put little branches of laurel and roots of garlic, with iron nails. These are all symbols of the sulphureous thunderbolts (because of their strong smell), and of the thunderbolt conceived of as an iron weapon; the remedy recommended is according to the principle of similia similibus, for the same reason as the devil is prayed to in order to keep him away. In Sicily, when a hen is setting on her eggs, they put at the bottom of the nest a nail, which has the property of attracting and absorbing every kind of noise that may be noxious to the chickens. Now it seems interesting to me to find an analogous belief in Vedic antiquity. A strophe, where the word aṇdâ may be rendered eggs as well as testicles, which therefore leads us to think of oviparous birds and chickens no less than men, invokes Indras, the thunder-god, as follows:—"Do not harm us, Indras; do not destroy us; do not take from us our beloved enjoyments; do not break, O great one, O strong one, our eggs (or testicles); do not ruin the fruits of our bowels."[422] Indras can not only become a eunuch himself, but he can make others become eunuchs; thunder makes us astonished, and as we also say, by an analogous expression, in Italy, makes us of stucco or turn to stone.
The cock and the oviparous hen, as birds which are as egg-yielding symbols of abundance, and which personify the sun, were and are sacred in India and in Persia, where it is considered a sacrilege to kill them. Cicero, in his Oratio pro Murena, writes that among the ancients he who ultroneously killed a cock did not sin less than he who suffocated his own father. In Du Cange we read that Geoffrey I., Duke of Brittany, whilst he was on a journey to Rome, was slain with a stone by a woman, one of whose hens had been killed by the Duke's sparrowhawk. The same superstition about hens is still observed in Italy by a great number of housewives.
In the Avesta the crow of the cock accompanies the flight of the demons, wakens the aurora, and arouses mankind.[423] Even the Christian poet Prudentius, who still sees a solar symbol in the Christus, compares him to the cock, also called cristiger, cristatus, cristeus,[424] prays to Christ to chase away sleep, to break the fetters of night, to undo the old sin, and to bring the new light, after having said of the cock—
"Ferunt vagantes dæmones,
Lætos tenebris noctium
Gallo canente exterritos
Sparsim timere et cedere.
... omnes credimus
Illo quietis tempore
Quo gallus exsultans canit
Christum redisse ex inferis."
We have seen in the preceding chapter, the crested lark in connection with St Christopher. In Germany, on the 25th of July, sacred to St James[425] (the saint who empties the bottle, as they say in Piedmont), to St Christopher, and the ancient god of thunder, Donar, cocks were made to dance, and then sacrificed. Donar carries Oerwandil on his shoulders across rivers, as the giant Christopher carries Christ.
There is a superstition which is widely diffused in Italy, Germany, and Russia, according to which a hen that begins to crow like a cock is of the worst omen; and it is the universal persuasion that it ought to be killed immediately, in order not to die before it. As the same belief exists in Persia, the discussion of Sadder with regard to it is interesting, to prove that the hen which crows like a cock must not be killed, because, if it become a cock, that means that it will be able to kill the demon, (therefore at Persian tombs they were accustomed to set a cock free). Having regard to the superstitious Eastern and European beliefs, the worthy Professor Spiegel will now find, I hope, the following passage, which appeared rather obscure to him, a little clearer:—"Qui religione sinceri sunt ludificationes expertes, quando percipiunt ex gallina vociferationem galli non debent illam gallinam interficere ominis causa, quia eam interficiendi jus nullum habent.... Nam in Persia si gallina fit gallus, ipsa infaustum diabolum franget. Si autem alium gallum adhibueris in auxilium, ut cum gallina consortium habeat, non erit incommodum ut tunc ille diabolus sit interfectus." According to a Sicilian proverb, the hen that crows like a cock must neither be sold nor given away, but eaten by its mistress.[426]
In the forty-fifth story of the fifth book of Afanassieff, the cocks crow, and the devil's smoke disappears. In the fortieth story of the same book, the cock crows, and the devil disappears from the kingdom in which he made every man and every thing turn to stone. The son of a peasant, staying to pray all through the night with lighted candles, alone escapes from the devil's evil works; after three nights of similar penitence, all the men who were turned to stone come to life again, and the young and pious peasant espouses the king's beautiful daughter.
In the thirtieth story of the fifth book of Afanassieff, when the cock begins to crow, the old man becomes of a sudden at once rigid and silent. Here, perhaps, there is an allusion to the old sun of evening, and to the cock's crowing in the evening. The cock of night, therefore, assumes sometimes a diabolical form. In the twenty-second story of the fifth book of Afanassieff, the devil becomes a cock in order to eat the corn into which the young man who was first turned into a gold ring, has been at length transformed. But this cock of night, being demoniacal, although his crest (the sun) is always red, is of a black colour. The cock is red in the morning and in the evening; in the night it is black, with its red crest turned now to the east, now to the west; it is upon the little feet of a hen,[427] that the little movable enchanted Russian hut stands, which the young heroes and young heroines on a journey meet with in the forest, and cause to turn in the direction they came from.