One of the ten stars of the constellation of the tortoise, situated in the northern heavens—that is, in the cloudy and gloomy autumnal sky, and therefore especially ruled by the moon—was called the lyre by the Greeks, and it was fabled that the tortoise of which Hermês had made the lyre, had been transfigured into it. I may remark here that the German name for the tortoise is Schild-kröte (toad with shields), that the Koribantes[509] produced their noisy music, and accompanied their Pyrrhic dances with kettledrums and the sound of arms, and that the Kureti, in order to conceal from Kronos the birth of Zeus, struck their shields with their lances. It is interesting to observe, that in Sanskṛit also, kaććhâs is the name given to the little shields of the tortoise or kaććhapas; that kaććhapî is the term applied to the noise of the thundering Sarasvatî, or the thunder; that several Vedic poets are called Kaçyapas; that Kûrmas (another designation of the tortoise) is also the name of the Vedic poet, the son of Gṛitsamadas, and also an epithet applied to the flatus ventris, which is compared to a clap of thunder (Cfr. the roots kar, kur, gar, gur). In the chapter on the ass, we saw this flatus compared to the noise of a trumpet or a kettle-drum; here we have the thunderbolts that strike upon the shields, the spots of the celestial tortoise, of the rainy moon, upon the clouds, attracted by or formed from the moon's spots, that is, which produce the thunder. According to the Hellenic myth, the tortoise obtained from Zeus himself—that is, from the pluvial god, from the god of the clouds, the god in connection with the shield-clouds which concealed his birth, and we may add, from the god tortoise,—the power of concealing itself under shields, and of carrying its house along with it. The Romans were accustomed to bathe new-born babes in the concavity of a tortoise, as if in a shield. It was predicted that Clodius Albinus would one day attain to sovereign power, because, when he was born, an enormous tortoise was brought to his father by some fishermen. The tortoise protects Zeus, the new-born warrior-god; the tortoise, on account of its shields, makes the new-born child a warrior, and predicts dominion to him; my well-informed readers will remember how a shield, fallen from the sky, presaged to the Romans the glories they should achieve as a warlike people, according to Ovid's verses—
"... Totum jam sol emerserat orbem:
Et gravis ætherio venit ab axe fragor.
Ter tonuit sine nube Deus, tria fulgura misit.
Credite dicenti: mira sed acta loquor.
A media cœlum regione dehiscere cœpit:
Submisere oculos cum duce turba suo.
Ecce levi scutum versatum leniter aura
Decidit: a populo clamor ad astra venit."
Under this aspect the tortoise becomes the dark moon, in opposition to the luminous one, the slow moon, in opposition to the jumping one. Being slow or tardigrade, in the myths the tortoise is the moon, but the winter one; and sometimes it becomes also now the cloud, now the earth, now even the darkness (as such it appears demoniacal in a German legend, where two devils who have assumed the forms of monstrous tortoises, prevent the foundations of the cathedral church of Merseburg from being laid; the tortoises are exorcised, and their bodies slain, in memory of which circumstance it is said that the cups of these tortoises are preserved, hung up in the church; in the fourteenth fargard of the Vendidad, too, the tortoises are, as demoniacal, to be killed). We have seen in the first chapter of the first book, the hare-moon passed over and crushed by the cow's waggon, suggesting to us the cloud (as the moon, now a bridge, now an island of the sky, as sea), which passes over the moon, but he perhaps, again, of the eclipse of the moon by the means of the earth, which is also called a cow in Sanskṛit. In Sanskṛit, the earth, which comes out of waters—an island[510] (as the moon and the cloud)—is also called by the name of kûrmas, i.e., a tortoise (properly the curved, the humped, the eminent, the prominent; mantharas is a name given to the tortoise, and Mantharâ is the name of the humpbacked woman who causes the ruin of Râmas in the Râmâyaṇam). Hence we also have in the West, besides the fables of the leaping hare (the moon) and the cow, of the leaping locust (the moon) and the ant, the apologue of the hare and the tortoise who run together; the hare, relying on its swiftness, falls asleep and loses, while the tortoise by steady perseverance wins the race.
We have already seen the tortoise in the Hindoo legends as the rival of the eagle or the Vishṇuitic bird Garuḍas. The two are now identified and now fight against each other (we must remember that it was by the advice of Kaçyapas that the bird Garuḍas ravished the ambrosia from the serpents). In Greece, the proverb of the tortoise which vanquishes the eagle, was already diffused; now it is the eagle which carries the tortoise into the air, or rather makes it fly, now it is, on the other hand, the tortoise which defies the eagle to arrive first. It is interesting to compare with this the Siamese apologue published by A. Bastian in the Orient und Occident, of evidently Hindoo origin. The bird Khruth, no doubt a limited and particular form of Garuḍas, wishes to eat a tortoise (here perhaps the moon) which lies upon the shore of a lake. The tortoise consents to be eaten, under the condition that the Khruth accepts a challenge to a trial of speed, and arrives soonest on the other side of the lake, the bird to go through the air, and the tortoise through the water. The bird Khruth accepts the wager; then the tortoise calls together millions and millions of tortoises, and places them all in such a way that they surround the lake, each distant a few steps from the water. Then it gives the signal to the bird to commence the race. The Khruth rises into the air, and flees to the opposite bank; wherever he essays to alight, he finds the tortoise has been there before him. (This myth represents, perhaps, the relation of the sun to the lunations).
[CHAPTER IV.]
THE FROG, THE LACERTA VIRIDIS, AND THE TOAD.
SUMMARY.
The mâṇḍukâs or frogs as clouds in the Ṛigvedas.—Bhekas.—The frog announces the summer; the canta-rana announces Christ.—The serpent, the hero, and the frog.—The frog and the ox.—Dionysos and the frogs.—Indras and the frogs.—The dumb frogs.—Proserpina and the frog.—Rana cum gryllo.—The frog finds the sultan's ring.—The frog and the rook.—The frog as the serpent's daughter.—The demoniacal frog.—The yellow and the green frog.—The beautiful maiden as a frog.—The demoniacal toad.—The sacred toad.—The beautiful maiden as a toad.—The toad in Tuscany, in Sicily, and in Germany.—The handsome youth as a toad.—Women who gave birth to toads.—The venomous and the alexipharmic toad.—Kröte and Schildkröte.—The toad swallows the dew.—The stone of the frog.—The horned lizard.—Eidechse, hagedisse.—Apollo as sauroktanos.—The lizard on St Agnes's Day.—The little lizards must not be killed in Sicily, being intercessors before the Lord.—The amphisbhæna.—The lacerta viridis.—The couleuvre as a good fairy.