Through the whole of the romance period of European literature, nothing figures but serpents, “white and red,” toiling and fighting underground,—thus producing earthquakes, as in the story of Merlin and the building of Stonehenge. Flying monsters, griffins and others, which now live only in the meaningless embellishments of heraldry, appear to have been conceived by the earlier races of men as the representatives of power. Curious is it, too, to find the same class of ideas prevailing in the East. The monster dragons of the Chinese, blazoned on their standards and ornamenting their temples;—the Buddaical superstition that the world is supported on a vast elephant, which stands on the back of a tortoise, which again rests on a serpent, whose movements produce earthquakes and violent convulsions;—the rude decorations also of the temples of the Aztecs, which have been so recently restored to our knowledge by the adventurous travellers of Central America,—all give expression to the same mythological idea.
Do not these indicate a faint and shadowy knowledge of a previous state of organic existence? The process of communion between man of the present, and the creations of a former world, we know not; it is mysterious, and for ever lost to us. But even the most ignorant and uncultivated races of mankind have figured for themselves the images of creatures which, whilst they do really bear some resemblance to things which have for ever passed away, do not, in the remotest degree, partake of any of the peculiarities of existing creations.
The ichthyosaurus, and the plesiosaurus, and the pterodactylus, are preserved in the rude images of harpies, of dragons, and of griffins; and, although the idea of an elephant standing on the back of a tortoise was often laughed at as an absurdity, Captain Cautley and Dr. Falconer at length discovered in the hills of Asia the remains of a tortoise in a fossil state of such a size that an elephant could easily have performed the feat.[247]
Of the ammonites, we have more exact evidence; they were observed by our forefathers, and called by them snake-stones. According to the legends of Catholic saints they were considered as possessing a sacred character:—
“Of these and snakes, each one
Was changed into a coil of stone
When holy Hilda prayed.”
And in addition to this petrifying process, one of decapitation is said to have been effected; hence the reason why these snake-stones have no heads.
We also find, in the northern districts of our island, that the name of “St. Cuthbert’s beads” is applied to the fossil remains of encrinites.