Snakes: Curiosities and Wonders of Serpent Life

by Catherine Cooper Hopley

‘Yes. That’s its sting. One touch of that, just one little touch, and you’re a dead man. There’s no cure for it!’

No less than four different parties made similar remarks in our hearing during our short visit to the reptile house that day, and these not of the common crowd either.

First, two lads who looked as if they ought to have known better. Next, a party of several persons, of whom the one more particularly addressed when his friend informed him, ‘That’s the sting that it jerks out so,’ replied, ‘Ah, but they extract it!’ Thirdly, a young gentleman remarked to his lady companion, ‘See how it keeps darting out its sting!’ to whom she ejaculated, ‘Oh, the fearful creature!’ Fourthly, the tall man. And all this of poor little innocent Tropidonotus (our common ring snake), with not even a fang to injure you!

Like many other of the zoological myths not yet extinct, this ‘stinging tongue’ has its origin in mystery. Long before a deadly serpent was examined by an intelligent reasoner, and the nature of its fatal stroke comprehended, the mysterious ‘dart’ was seen to play; this, to the ignorant, being the only visible and possible instrument of such fatality. But that the fable should still obtain is amazing. Even some learned men of the present century, if they do not happen to have included natural history in their studies, assist in disseminating the error. Can they, however, be acquainted with classical writers? Pliny, to whom many of the old-time errors in natural history have been traced, must be acquitted as regards the poisonous tongue; for though he speaks of the ‘sting’ of a serpent, I do not recall that he once attributed the injury to the tongue. Aristotle, whose reputation as a naturalist ranks far higher, distinctly and frequently speaks of the bite, and the degrees of injury inflicted by the various kinds of serpent bites. It is possible that some classical writers may have supposed the tongue to be an instrument of death, as it is certain that some of the sacred writers did. But our inherited faith in Bible history has, until recently, checked all doubt and even inquiry. Now, however, that a new version of Holy Writ has been deemed essential, it is to be hoped that an efficient naturalist is included in the Council.

In justification of the above criticism I may be permitted to quote just one of the many unquestioning writers. The author of the History of Egypt, W. Holt Yates, M.R.C.P. of London, President of the Royal Medical Society of Edinburgh, Physician to the General Dispensary, etc., says in a footnote (vol. i. p. 322), ‘It is a mistake to suppose that snakes hurt only with their teeth. Some have no teeth, but only hard gums. Others only attack with their tongue—the same end is attained in either case by the insertion of the poison.’

Now were you to ask that writer, as I have several times asked persons who were under the same impression, ‘What reason have you to suppose that the snake’s tongue is poisonous?’ he would very likely reply, ‘Oh! well—it is venomous. I always thought so.’ Then, reflectively, he might add, ‘Poisonous-tongued?—“whose tongue outvenoms”—“with deadlier tongue than thine, thou serpent”’—or some such familiar words, proving that his idea was poetical, imaginative, and acquired he can scarcely explain how.

What very little he knew about snakes, then, was learned from Shakspeare—we say Shakspeare, for what other author has been read and re-read, and committed to memory, and quoted during the last three centuries like the Bard of Avon? The bard, genius though he was, and wide his field of information, was certainly not a naturalist. Nor did he make any pretensions to be one. He was as unconscious of the errors in natural history which he was handing down to posterity, as he was unconscious of his own enduring fame; or that he would be ‘the immortal bard’ three hundred years later, with every probability of ever living in the human mind as such.

His idea of the poisonous tongue of a snake was the prevalent one of his day. It was an inherited prejudice, which he had never stopped to question, any more than nine hundred and ninety-nine out of every thousand of his readers have ever stopped to question the fact of an adder’s tongue being poisonous, Shakspeare having affirmed that it is so.

People do not read Shakspeare to learn natural history, you say. True; but his poetry, his similes, take hold of the mind, fix themselves in the memory, and take root; and an assertion, as in the case of the gentle little ‘blindworm,’ takes very deep root, as it seems, and thrives for three hundred years; or naturalists of the present day would not feel called upon to explain that it is neither ‘blind,’ nor ‘deaf,’ nor ‘venomous.’

Still you reject the idea that Shakspeare through his immense and universal popularity is responsible for a ridiculous error. Not Shakspeare alone, then, or culpably so. But since the idea has prevailed for thousands of years, even to the present time, and since persons are more likely to quote Shakspeare on the subject than any other author, let us glance at the literature of Shakspeare’s time, and endeavour to account for his fixed impression as to a serpent’s tongue being poisonous. Let us also try to recall from any one of the writers of the same era, or those who wrote in English previously, any single line on the present subject that has become so engrafted on the mind, so incorporated with our education, as those, for example, above quoted. There was a host of other play-writers in Shakspeare’s time, but very few naturalists.