By them there sat the loving pellican
Whose young ones, poison’d by the serpent’s sting,
With her own blood again to life doth bring.
St. Jerome seems to have had this version in mind when he made the Christian application, saying that as the pelican’s young, “killed by serpents,” were saved by the mother’s blood, so was the salvation by the Christ related to those dead in sin. This point is elaborated somewhat in my chapter on Symbolism.
Before I leave this bird I want to quote a lovely paragraph on pelican habits, far more modern than anything “medieval,” for it is taken from the Arctic Zoölogy (1784) of Thomas Pennant, who was a good naturalist, but evidently a little credulous, although the first half of the quotation does not overstrain our faith. He is speaking of pelicans that he saw in Australia, and explains:
They feed upon fish, which they take sometimes by plunging from a great height in the air and seizing like the gannet; at other times they fish in concert, swimming in flocks, and forming a large circle in the great rivers which they gradually contract, beating the water with their wings and feet in order to drive the fish into the centre; which when they approach they open their vast mouths and fill their pouches with their prey, then incline their bills to empty the bag of the waters; after which they swim to shore and eat their booty in quiet.... It is said that when they make their nests in the dry deserts, they carry the water to their young in the vast pouches, and that the lions and beasts of prey come there to quench their thirst, sparing the young, the cause of this salutary provision. Possibly on this account the Egyptians style this bird the camel of the river—the Persians tacub, or water-carrier.
Now let us look at the Trochilus legend, and trace how an African plover became changed into an American hummingbird. The story, first published by Herodotus, that some sort of bird enters the mouth of a Nile crocodile dozing on the sand with its jaws open, and picks bits of food from the palate and teeth, apparently to the reptile’s satisfaction, is not altogether untrue. The bird alluded to is the Egyptian plover, which closely resembles the common British lapwing; and there seems to be no doubt that something of the sort does really take place when crocodiles are lying with open mouth on the Nile bank, as they often do. This lapwing has a tall, pointed crest standing up like a spur on the top of its head, and this fact gives “point,” in more senses than one, to the extraordinary version of the Herodotus story in one of the old plays, The White Devil, by John Webster (1612), where an actor says:
“Stay, my lord! I’ll tell you a tale. The crocodile, which lives in the river Nilus, hath a worm breeds i’ the teeth of ’t, which puts it to extreme anguish: a little bird, no bigger than a wren, is barber-surgeon to this crocodile; flies into the jaws of ’t, picks out the worm, and brings present remedy. The fish, glad of ease, but ingrateful to her that did it, that the bird may not talk largely of her abroad for nonpayment, closeth her chaps, intending to swallow her, and so put her to perpetual silence. But nature, loathing such ingratitude, hath armed this bird with a quill or prick on the head, top o’ the which wounds the crocodile i’ the mouth, forceth her open her bloody prison, and away flies the pretty tooth-picker from her cruel patient.”
A most curious series of mistakes has arisen around this matter. Linguists tell us that the common name among the ancient Greeks for a plover was trochilus (τροχίλος), and that this is the word used by Herodotus for his crocodile-bird. But in certain passages of his History of Animals Aristotle uses this word to designate a wren; it has been supposed that this was a copyist’s error, writing carelessly τροχίλος for ’ορχίλος, but it was repeated by Pliny in recounting what Herodotus had related, and this naturally led to the statement by some medieval compilers that the crocodile’s tooth-cleaner was a wren. This, however, is not the limit of the confusion, for when American hummingbirds became known in Europe, and were placed by some naturalists of the 17th century in the Linnæan genus (Trochilus) with the wrens, one writer at least, Paul Lucas, 1774 (if Brewer’s Handbook may be trusted), asserted that the hummingbird as well as the lapwing entered the jaws of Egyptian crocodiles—and that he had seen them do it!
This curious tissue of right and wrong was still further embroidered by somebody’s assertion that the diminutive attendant’s kindly purpose was “to pick from the teeth a little insect” that greatly annoyed the huge reptile. Even Tom Moore knew no better than to write in Lalla Rookh of