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escape, and could not stir a foot. According to some ancient writers the animal
had a stone called hyaenia in its eye, and this being placed under a man s tongue
imparted to him the gift of prophecy. Aristotle. taught that the eyes of this creature
could change colour a thousand times a day, and this is but a .sample of many
other curious and absurd stories concerning the beast. Sir Gardner Wilkinson
mentions a strange fancy believed in by the Abyssinians that a race of people
who inhabited their country had the power of changing their -form at pleasure,
being sometimes men and at others hyaenas.
In the Middle Ages the wolf seems to. have been in decidedly bad odour; he
was probably too well-known to be respected, and in the long dreary nights of
winter proved himself a terribly bad neighbour, and a very undesirable travelling
companion for those who had to cross amidst the snows the almost trackless
wastes. Amongst the Scandinavians the wolf held a conspicuous place in tradition
and mythology. Eclipses of the sun and moon were held to be caused by two
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great wolves that were always pursuing them through the heavens.19 The wolf,
too, was the companion of Odin, the god of war, and at his feet these creatures
crouched while he fed them with the flesh of his enemies.
It was an accepted belief that if a ,man encountered a wolf, and the creature
caught sight of him before he saw it, he became dumb. Scott refers to this old
notion in his  Quentin Durward, where, in the eighteenth chapter Lady Hameline
exclaims,  Our young companion has seen a wolf, and has lost his tongue in
consequence.  The ground or occasionall originall thereof, Browne in his
 Exposure of Vulgar Errors would endeavour to persuade us,  was probably the
amazement and sudden silence the unexpected appearance of wolves doe often
put upon travellers, not by a supposed vapour or venomous emanation, but a
vehement fear which naturally produceth obmutescence, and sometimes irrecoverable
silence ; but it would appear to be a still simpler procedure, and one-with a good deal to
recommend it, to deny that there is an atom of truth in the story. In another old
natural history before us, we read that  the wolf when he falls upon a hog or a goat,
or such small beast, does not immediately kill them, but leads them by the ear,
with all the speed he can, to a crew of ravenous wolves, who instantly tear them to
pieces. We should have thought that the reverse had been more probable, and
that the wolves that had nothing would have come with all the speed they could
upon their more successful comrade; but if the old writer s story be true, it opens
out a fine trait of hitherto unsuspected unselfishness in the character of the wolf.
John Leo, in his  History of Africa, declares that the dragon is the progeny of
the eagle and wolf. Perhaps this may be so, but probably the conception that
most of our readers have of the dragon is that he was a considerably more
formidable beast than such a parentage, fierce as it is, quite suggests.
An old heraldic author tells us  how that the wolfe procureth all other beasts
to fight and contention. He seeketh to deuour the sheepe, that beaste which is of
all others the most hurtlesse, simple, and void of guile, thirsting continually after
their blood. Yea, Nature hath planted so inveterate an hatred atweene the wolfe
and the sheepe, that being dead, yet in the secrete operation of nature appeareth
there a sufficient trial of their discording natures, so that the enimity betweene
them seemeth not to dye with their bodies; for if there be put vpon a harp or any
such like instrument strings made of the intrailles of a sheepe, and amongst them
but onely one made of the intraills of a wolfe, be the musician never so cuning in
his skil, yet can he not reconcile them to an vnity and concorde of sounds, so
discording alwayes is that string of the wolfe. The inveterate enmity between
the two creatures is scarcely in accordance with the facts, for the wolf, from its
appreciation of mutton as an article of diet, is really partial to the sheep, and is
always glad to make its acquaintance.
Another old herald tells us that  the wolfe loveth to plaie with a child, and will
not hurt it till it be extreme hungrie, what time he will not spare to devour it. He
dwells also upon some of the animal s prejudices, as that  he watcheth much,
and feareth fier and stones to be wherled at him, a feeling that one finds no
difficulty in sympathizing with, and adds that  there is nothing that he hateth so
much as the knocking togither of two flint stones, the which he feareth more than
the hunters.  He also mentions the curious physiological fact that  the wolf may
not bend his neck backward in no moneth of the yere but in May, but gives us no
inkling as to the reason for this.
The wearing of wolfskin was held to be a valuable preservative against epilepsy,
but those who were unable to procure this, found an equally serviceable remedy
in wearing a small portion of an ass s hoof in a ring. The wolfskin coat also was in
request as a preservative against hydrophobia, and there was nothing better in
the good old times than a wolf s head under the pillow to secure a good night s
rest. Albertus Magnus, in his work  De Virtutibus Herbarum, tells us that if we
wrap the tooth of a wolf in a bay leaf and carry it about with us no one will have
the power to vex or annoy us.
According to Porta  and he, we have seen, professes to have gone into the
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secrets of nature as deeply as most men who pose as authorities20  the rook is
killed by eating  the reliques of flesh the wolf hath fed on. This would appear to
be a discovery of Porta s own: we do not find any suggestion of it, so far as we are
aware, in any other author.
A creature called the stag-wolf, if we may credit these ancient authors (and
there is much saving virtue in this if), had the curious peculiarity that if, while he
was devouring his prey, he chanced to look backward, he straightway forgot that
he was already provided with a dinner, and would at once start off for one with
all the zeal that his supposititious famishing condition called for.
The bear has not escaped the observation of the lover of the marvellous, though
we should have thought that our forefathers, with their bear-baiting proclivities,
would have had a sufficient knowledge of the creature to protect them from
falling into gross error. One of the most firmly accepted beliefs in ancient and
mediaeval days was that the cubs were born a merely shapeless mass, and owed
what after-beauty of form they possessed to the assiduous care of their mother.
Hence, an ancient scribe hath it,  At the firste they seeme to be a lumpe of white
flesh without any forme, little bigger than rattons, without eyes, and wanting hair. [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]