Kitabı oku: «The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction. Volume 19, No. 541, April 7, 1832», sayfa 2

THE COSMOPOLITE

SUPERSTITIONS, FABLES, &C. RELATIVE TO ANIMALS

(Continued from page 180.)

The following curious notice of the Acherontia Atropos, or Death's-head Moth, we extract from "The Journal of a Naturalist:"—"The yellow and brown-tailed moths," he observes, "the death-watch, our snails, and many other insects, have all been the subjects of man's fears, but the dread excited in England by the appearance, noises, or increase of insects, are petty apprehensions compared with the horror that the presence of this Acherontia occasions to some of the more fanciful and superstitious natives of northern Europe, maintainers of the wildest conceptions. A letter is now before me from a correspondent in German Poland, where this insect is a common creature, and so abounded in 1824 that my informant collected fifty of them in a potato field of his village, where they call them the 'death's-head phantom,' the 'wandering death-bird,' &c. The markings on the back represent to their fertile imaginations the head of a perfect skeleton, with the limb bones crossed beneath; its cry becomes the voice of anguish, the moaning of a child, the signal of grief; it is regarded, not as the creation of a benevolent being, but as the device of evil spirits—spirits, enemies to man, conceived and fabricated in the dark; and the very shining of its eyes is supposed to represent the fiery element whence it is thought to have proceeded. Flying into their apartments in an evening, it at times extinguishes the light, foretelling war, pestilence, famine, and death to man and beast. * * * This insect has been thought to be peculiarly gifted in having a voice and squeaking like a mouse when handled or disturbed; but, in truth, no insect that we know of has the requisite organs to produce a genuine voice; they emit sounds by other means, probably all external."

The Icelanders believe Seals to be the offspring of Pharaoh and his host; who, they assert, were changed into these animals when overwhelmed in the Red Sea. The Grampus, Porpoise, and Dolphin, have each from the earliest ages been the subject of numerous superstitions and fables, particularly the latter, which was believed to have a great attachment to the human race, and to succour them in accidents by sea; it is a perfectly straight fish, yet even painters have promulgated a falsity respecting it, by representing it from the curved form in which it appears above water, bent like the letter S reversed. "The inhabitants of Pesquare," says Dr. Belon, "and of the borders of Lake Gourd are firmly persuaded that the Carp of those lakes are nourished with pure gold; and a great portion of the people in the Lyonnois are fully satisfied that the fish called humble and ernblons eat no other food than gold. There is not a peasant in the environs of the Lake of Bourgil who will not maintain that the Laurets, a fish sold daily in Lyons, feed on pure gold alone. The same is the belief of the people of the Lake Paladron in Savoy, and of those near Lodi. But," adds the Doctor, "having carefully examined the stomachs of these several fishes, I have found that they lived on other substances, and that from the anatomy of the stomach it is impossible that they should be able to digest gold." This fable, therefore, with that of the Chameleon living on air only, and some others which we shall have occasion to mention, may be regarded amongst those exploded by science.

The fable of the Kraken has been referred to imperfect and exaggerated accounts of monstrous Polypi infesting the northern seas; how far may not the Cuttle-fish have given rise to this fiction? In hot countries (our readers will remember that in a late paper, Mirror, vol. xvii. pp. 282-299, we directed their attention to the similarity of superstitions in every country of the world, hence infering a common, and most probably oriental origin for all)—in hot countries cuttle-fish are found of gigantic dimensions; the Indians affirm that some have been seen two fathoms broad over their centre; and each arm (for this kind is the eight-armed cuttle-fish) nine fathoms long!!! Lest these animals should fling their arms over the Indians' light canoes, and draw them and their owners into the sea, they fail not to be provided with an axe to chop them off.

The ancients believed that the oil of the Grayling obliterated freckles and small-pox marks. The adhesive qualities of the Remora, or Sucking-fish, and its habit of darting against and fixing itself to the side of a vessel, caused the ancients to believe that the possessors of it had the power of arresting the progress of a ship in full sail.

Some Catholics, in consequence of the John Doree having a dark spot, like a finger-mark, on each side of the head, believe this to have been the fish, and not the Haddock, from which the Apostle Peter took the tribute-money, by order of our Saviour. The modern Greeks denominate it "the fish of St. Christopher," from a legend which relates that it was trodden on by that saint, when he bore his divine burden across an arm of the sea. Some species of Echini, fossilized, and seen frequently in Norfolk, are termed by the ignorant peasantry, and considered, Fairy Loaves, to take which, when found, is highly unlucky.

The Amphisbaena, from its faculty of moving backwards or forwards at pleasure, has been thought to have a head at either extremity of its reptile body, but close inspection proves this opinion false. The fascinating power of the Rattlesnake, of which so many stories have in times past been related, and which was asserted to exist in its glittering eyes, has been of late years resolved into that extreme nervous terror of its victim (at sight of so certain a foe) which deprives it of the power of motion, and causes it to fall, an unresisting prey, into the reptile's jaws. We may here pause to observe, en passant, that the antipathy which people of all ages and nations have felt against every reptile of the serpent tribe, from the harmless worm to the hosts of deadly "dragons" which infest the torrid zone, and the popular opinion that all are venomous, often in spite of experience, seems to be not so much superstition, as a terror of the species, implanted, since the fall, in our bosoms, by the same Divine Being who at that period pronounced the serpent to be the most accursed beast of the field.

(To be continued.)

SPIRIT OF THE PUBLIC JOURNALS

TAIT'S EDINBURGH MAGAZINE

Nothing if not political appears to be the order of the new magazine and other literary enterprises of the present day. Is this good policy in itself? it may be so from the vivifying aid it lends to the springs of imaginative writing. We have therefore no right to complain of the leaven of Mr. Tait's Magazine: it is anything but dull: e.g. the life and jauntiness of the following paper is very pleasant, shrewd, and clever:

The Martinet.

The "Martinet" is the name of a genus, not of a species; the title of a race variously feathered, but having specific qualities in common. There is your military martinet, your clerical martinet, your legal martinet, and the martinet of common life, ("Gallicrista fastidiosa communis," Linnaeus would class him,) who is to the others what the house-sparrow is to the rest of his tribe. It is with him alone we have to do. The "martinet" is a person who is all his life violently busied in endeavouring to be a perfect gentleman, and who almost succeeds. He misses the point by over-stepping it. He is like one of those greyhounds which outrun the hare fleetly enough, but cannot "take" her when they have done so. They have a little too much speed, and a little too little tact. The martinet is always bent upon thinking, saying, doing, and having, every thing after a nicer fashion than other people, until his nicety runs into downright mannerism; all his ideas become "clipped taffeta," and all his eggs are known to have "two yolks." He rarely comes of age or is thoroughly ripe till near forty, before which he may be a little of the precise fop, and after which he changes to the somewhat foppish precisian, which is the best definition of him. He would be an excellent member of society were he not a little too nice for its every-day work, which, to speak a truth in metaphor, will not always admit of white gloves. He is remarkably consistent in all his proceedings, however, and the outward man is a perfect and complete type of the inward, and vice versa. His soul is never out of pumps and silk stockings, and picks its way amidst the little mental puddles and cross-roads of this world with a chariness of step, which is at once edifying and amusing. Of inward show he is not less "elaborate" than of outward; and, though a descendant of Eve, takes equal care of the clothing of both mind and body.

Were his tailor to be abandoned enough to attempt to palm upon him a coat of the very best Yorkshire, instead of the very best Wiltshire broad-cloth, (an enormity of which—horresco referens—he was once very near being the victim,) the one would be sure to lose, if discovered, the best of his customers, and the other the best of a month's sleep. If he wears a wig, his expenditure with his peruquier is never less than five-and-twenty guineas a-year. His cigars, though he smokes little, cost him nearly as much. His hat is water-proof; his stop-watch and repeater are of a scapement that never varies more than six seconds in the twelve months from the time-piece at the Observatory at Greenwich, where he has a friend, who is so good as sometimes to compare notes with him. By the advice of his boot-maker—who, by the way, has some knowledge of the length of his foot—he never puts on a new pair until they are at least a year old; and he parted with his last footboy because he one day discovered a perceptible difference between the polish of the right and left foot. In winter, he wears and recommends cork soles. His toilet is no sinecure; and on the table are always to be found, besides his dressing-box, which contains an assortment of combs, scissors, tweezers, pomades, and essences, not easily equalled, a bottle of "Eau de Cologne, veritable," a Packwood and Criterion strop; a case of gold-mounted razors, (the best in England,) which he bought, nearly thirty years ago, of the successor of "Warren," in the Strand, and a silvered shaving-pot, upon a principle of his own, redolent of Rigges' "patent violet-scented soap." His net-silk purse is ringed with gold at one end, and with silver at the other; and although not much of a snuff-taker, he always carries a box, on the lid of which smiles the portrait of the once celebrated and beautiful, though now somewhat forgotten, Duchess of D–, or the equally resplendent Lady Emily M–.

His table is of the same finish with his wardrobe. If he sat down to dinner, even when alone, in boots, that visitation which Quin ascribed to the prevalent neglect of "pudding on a Sunday"—an earthquake might be expected to follow. His spoons and silver forks are marked with his crest; and he omits no opportunity to inform his friends, that the right of the family to the arms was proved at Herald's College by his great uncle John. He has receipts for mulligatawny and oyster soups, not to be equalled; and another for currie-powder, which a friend of his obtained, as the greatest of favours, from Sir Stamford Raffles, and which, though bound in honour not to make known, he means to leave to his son by will, under certain injunctions. His cookery of a "French rabbit," provided the claret be first-rate, is superb; and on very particular occasions, he condescends to know how to concoct a bowl of punch, especially champagne punch, for the which he has a formula in rhyme, the poetry of which never, as is its happy case, losing sight of correctness and common-sense, comes, as well as its subject matter, home to "his business and his bosom." His "caviar" is, through the kindness of a commercial friend, imported from the hand of the very Russian cuisinier, who prepares it (unctuous relish!) for the table of the Emperor himself. His cheese is Stilton or Parmesan.

Like "Mrs. Diana Scapes," he is also "curious in his liquors," and, in despite of Beau Brummell, patronizes "malt," as far as to take one glass of excellent "college ale,"—which he gets through his friend Dr. Dusty of All Souls—between pastry and Parmesan. After cheese, he can relish one, and only one, glass of port—all the better if of the "Comet vintage," or of some vintage ten years anterior to that. His drink, however, is claret, old hock, Madeira, and latterly, since it has become a sort of fashion, old sherry. In these he is a connoisseur not to be sneezed at; and if asked his opinion, makes it a rule never to give it upon the first glass, invariably observing, that "if he would he couldn't, and if he could he wouldn't!" He produces anchovy toast as an indispensable in a long evening, after dinner, and to it he recommends a liqueur-glass of cherry-brandy, which he believes is of that incomparable recipe, of which the late King was so fond. If he be a bachelor, he has, in his dining-room, a cellaret, in which repose this, and other similar liquid rarities, and beneath his sideboard stands a machine, for which he paid twelve guineas, for producing ice extempore.