And so I came to Fancy's meadows, strow'd
With many a flower;
Fain would I here have made abode,
But I was quickened by my hour.
HERBERT.
Hindoos and Mahommedans have stocked their heavens not only with mythological monsters but with beautiful birds of celestial kind. They who have read Thalaba will remember the
Green warbler of the bowers of Paradise:
and they who will read the history of the Nella-Rajah,—which whosoever reads or relates, shall (according to the author) enjoy all manner of happiness and planetary bliss,—that is to say, all the good fortune that can be bestowed by the nine great luminaries which influence human events,—they who read that amusing story will find that in the world of Daivers, or Genii, there are milk white birds called Aunnays, remarkable for the gracefulness of their walk, wonderfully endowed with knowledge and speech, incapable of deceit, and having power to look into the thoughts of men.
These creatures of imagination are conceived in better taste than the Rabbis have displayed in the invention of their great bird Ziz, whose head when he stands in the deep sea reaches up to Heaven; whose wings when they are extended darken the sun; and one of whose eggs happening to fall crushed three hundred cedars and breaking in the fall, drowned sixty cities in its yolk. That fowl is reserved for the dinner of the Jews in heaven, at which Leviathan is to be the fish, and Behemoth the roast meat. There will be cut and come again at all of them; and the carvers of whatever rank in the hierarchy they may be, will have no sinecure office that day.
The monks have given us a prettier tale;—praise be to him who composed,—but the lyar's portion to those who made it pass for truth. There was an Abbot of S. Salvador de Villar who lived in times when piety flourished, and Saints on earth enjoyed a visible communion with Heaven. This holy man used in the intervals of his liturgical duties to recreate himself by walking in a pine forest near his monastery, employing his thoughts the while in divine meditations. One day when thus engaged during his customary walk, a bird in size and appearance resembling a black bird alighted before him on one of the trees, and began so sweet a song, that in the delight of listening the good Abbot lost all sense of time and place, and of all earthly things, remaining motionless and in extasy. He returned not to the Convent at his accustomed hour, and the Monks supposed that he had withdrawn to some secret solitude; and would resume his office when his intended devotion there should have been compleated. So long a time elapsed without his reappearance that it was necessary to appoint a substitute for him pro tempore; his disappearance and the forms observed upon this occasion being duly registered. Seventy years past by, during all which time no one who entered the pine forest ever lighted upon the Abbot, nor did he think of any thing but the bird before him, nor hear any thing but the song which filled his soul with contentment, nor eat, nor drink, nor sleep, nor feel either want or weariness or exhaustion. The bird at length ceased to sing and took flight: and the Abbot then as if he had remained there only a few minutes returned to the monastery. He marvelled as he approached at certain alterations about the place, and still more when upon entering the house, he knew none of the brethren whom he saw, nor did any one appear to know him. The matter was soon explained, his name being well known, and the manner of his disappearance matter of tradition there as well as of record: miracles were not so uncommon then as to render any proof of identity necessary, and they proposed to reinstate him in his office. But the holy man was sensible that after so great a favour had been vouchsafed him, he was not to remain a sojourner upon earth: so he exhorted them to live in peace with one another, and in the fear of God, and in the strict observance of their rule, and to let him end his days in quietness; and in a few days, even as he expected, it came to pass, and he fell asleep in the Lord.
The dishonest monks who for the honour of their Convent and the lucre of gain palmed this lay (for such in its origin it was) upon their neighbours as a true legend, added to it, that the holy Abbot was interred in the cloisters; that so long as the brethren continued in the observance of their rule, and the place of his interment was devoutly visited, the earth about it proved a certain cure for many maladies, but that in process of time both church and cloisters became so dilapidated through decay of devotion, that cattle strayed into them, till the monks and the people of the vicinity were awakened to a sense of their sin and of their duty, by observing that every animal which trod upon the Abbot's grave, fell and broke its leg.1 The relics therefore were translated with due solemnity, and deposited in a new monument, on which the story of the miracle, in perpetuam rei memoriam, was represented in bas-relief.
1 Superstition is confined to no country, but is spread, more or less, over all. The classical reader will call to mind what Herodotus tells happened in the territory of Agyllæi. Clio. c. 167, ἐγίνετο διάστροφα καὶ ἔμπηρα καὶ ἀπόπληκτα, ὁμοίως πρόβατα καὶ ὑποζύγια καὶ ἄνθρωποι.