But thou, our Helper, at God’s throne, do thou remember me!’
So have I told, as long ago my father used to tell,
How Pagan Abu Moslem turned and saved his soul from hell.”
This brief sketch will suffice to show that if the Moslem is not humane to animals it is his own fault, as I think it is his own fault if he is not humane to man. Teaching humanity to animals must always imply the teaching of humanity to men. This was perfectly understood well by all these Oriental tellers of beast-stories: they would all have endorsed the saying of one of my Lombard peasant-women (dear, good soul!), “Chi non è buono per le bestie, non è buono per i Cristiani”; Cristiano meaning, in Italian popular speech, a human being. Under the most varied forms, in fiction which while the world lasts, can never lose its freshness, the law of kindness is brought home. Perhaps the most beautiful of all humane legends is one preserved in a poem by Abu Mohammed ben Yusuf, Sheikh Nizan-eddin, known to Europeans as Nizami. This Persian poet, who died sixty-three years before Dante was born, may have taken the legend from some collection of Christ-lore, some uncanonical book impossible now to trace; it is unlikely that he invented it. As Jesus walks with His disciples through the market-place at evening, He comes upon a crowd which is giving vent to every expression of abhorrence at the sight of a poor dead dog lying in the gutter. When they have all had their say, and have pointed in disgust to his blear eyes, foul ears, bare ribs, torn hide, “which will not even yield a decent shoe-string,” Jesus says, “How beautifully white his teeth are!” No story of the Saviour outside the Gospels is so worthy to have been in them.
XII
THE FRIEND OF THE CREATURE
IN Hindu mythology Gunádhya attracts a whole forestful of beasts by reciting his poems to them. The power of Apollo and of Orpheus in taming beasts depended on a far less surprising modus operandi; like the greater part of myths, this one was not spun from the thin air of imagination. Music has a real influence on animals; in spite of theories to the contrary, it is probable that the sweet flute-playing of the snake-charmer—his “sweet charming” in Biblical phrase—is no mere piece of theatrical business, but a veritable aid in obtaining the desired results. I myself could once attract fieldmice by playing on the violin, and only lately, on the road near our house at Salò, I noticed that a goat manifested signs of wishing to stop before a grind-organ; its master pulled the string by which it was led, but it tugged at it so persistently that, at last, he stopped, and the goat, turning round its head, listened with evident attention. Independently of the pleasure music may give to animals, it excites their curiosity, a faculty which is extremely alive in them, as may be seen by the way in which small birds are attracted by the pretty antics of the little Italian owl; they cannot resist going near to have a better view, and so they rush to their doom upon the limed sticks.
Legends have an inner and an outer meaning; the allegory of Apollo, Lord of Harmony, would have been incomplete had it lacked the beautiful incident of a Nature Peace—partial indeed, but still a fairer triumph to the god than his Olympian honours. For nine years he watched the sheep of Admetus, as Euripides described:—
“Pythean Apollo, master of the lyre,
Who deigned to be a herdsman and among