CHAPTER V.

ANIMALS.

Animal demons distinguished--Trivial sources of
Mythology--Hedgehog--Fox--Transmigrations in Japan--Horses
bewitched--Rats--Lions--Cats--The Dog--Goethe's horror of
dogs--Superstitions of the Parsees, people of Travancore,
and American Negroes, Red Indians, &c.--Cynocephaloi--The
Wolf--Traditions of the Nez Perces--Fenris--Fables--The Boar--The
Bear--Serpent--Every animal power to harm demonised--Horns.


The animal demons--those whose evil repute is the result of
something in their nature which may be inimical to man--should
be distinguished from the forms which have been diabolised by
association with mythological personages or ideas. The lion, tiger,
and wolf are examples of the one class; the stag, horse, owl, and
raven of the other. But there are circumstances which render it very
difficult to observe this distinction. The line has to be drawn, if
at all, between the measureless forces of degradation on the one side,
discovering some evil in animals which, but for their bad associations,
would not have been much thought of; and of euphemism on the other,
transforming harmful beasts to benignant agents by dwelling upon some
minor characteristic.

There are a few obviously dangerous animals, such as the serpent,
where it is easy to pick our way; we can recognise the fear that
flatters it to an agathodemon and the diminished fear that pronounces
it accurst. [88] But what shall be said of the Goat? Was there really
anything in its smell or in its flesh when first eaten, its butting,
or injury to plants, which originally classed it among the unclean
animals? or was it merely demonised because of its uncanny and
shaggy appearance? What explanation can be given of the evil repute
of our household friend the Cat? Is it derived by inheritance from
its fierce ancestors of the jungle? Was it first suggested by its
horrible human-like sleep-murdering caterwaulings at night? or has it
simply suffered from a theological curse on the cats said to draw the
chariots of the goddesses of Beauty? The demonic Dog is, if anything,
a still more complex subject. The student of mythology and folklore
speedily becomes familiar with the trivial sources from which vast
streams of superstition often issue. The cock's challenge to the
all-detecting sun no doubt originated his ominous career from the
Code of Manu to the cock-headed devils frescoed in the cathedrals of
Russia. The fleshy, forked roots of a soporific plant issued in that
vast Mandrake Mythology which has been the subject of many volumes,
without being even yet fully explored. The Italians have a saying that
'One knavery of the hedgehog is worth more than many of the fox;' yet
the nocturnal and hibernating habits and general quaintness of the
humble hedgehog, rather than his furtive propensity to prey on eggs
and chickens, must have raised him to the honours of demonhood. In
various popular fables this little animal proves more than a match
for the wolf and the serpent. It was in the form of a hedgehog that
the Devil is said to have made the attempt to let in the sea through
the Brighton Downs, which was prevented by a light being brought,
though the seriousness of the scheme is still attested in the Devil's
Dyke. There is an ancient tradition that when the Devil had smuggled
himself into Noah's Ark, he tried to sink it by boring a hole; but
this scheme was defeated, and the human race saved, by the hedgehog
stuffing himself into the hole. In the Brighton story the Devil would
appear to have remembered his former failure in drowning people,
and to have appropriated the form which defeated him.

The Fox, as incarnation of cunning, holds in the primitive belief of
the Japanese almost the same position as the Serpent in the nations
that have worshipped, until bold enough to curse it. In many of
the early pictures of Japanese demons one may generally detect amid
their human, wolfish, or other characters some traits of the kitsune
(fox). He is always the soul of the three-eyed demon of Japan
(fig. 7). He is the sagacious 'Vizier,' as the Persian Desatir
calls him, and is practically the Japanese scape-goat. If a fox
has appeared in any neighbourhood, the next trouble is attributed
to his visit; and on such occasions the sufferers and their friends
repair to some ancient gnarled tree in which the fox is theoretically
resident and propitiate him, just as would be done to a serpent in
other regions. In Japan the fox is not regarded as always harmful,
but generally so. He is not to be killed on any account. Being thus
spared through superstition, the foxes increase sufficiently to supply
abundant material for the continuance of its demonic character. 'Take
us the foxes, the little foxes that spoil the vines,' [89] is an
admonition reversed in Japan. The correspondence between the cunning
respected in this animal and that of the serpent, reverenced elsewhere,
is confirmed by Mr. Fitz Cunliffe Owen, who observed, as he informs
me, that the Japanese will not kill even the poisonous snakes which
crawl freely amid the decaying Buddhist temples of Nikko, one of the
most sacred places in Japan, where once as many as eight thousand
monastic Buddhists were harboured. It is the red fox that abounds
in Japan, and its human-like cry at night near human habitations is
such as might easily encourage these superstitions. But, furthermore,
mythology supplies many illustrations of a creditable tendency among
rude tribes to mark out for special veneration or fear any force in
nature finer than mere strength. Emerson says, 'Foxes are so cunning
because they are not strong.' In our Japanese demon, whose three
eyes alone connect it with the præternatural vision ascribed by that
race to the fox, the harelip is very pronounced. That little animal,
the Hare, is associated with a large mythology, perhaps because
out of its weakness proceeds its main forces of survival--timidity,
vigilance, and swiftness. The superstition concerning the hare is found
in Africa. The same animal is the much-venerated good genius of the
Calmucs, who call him Sákya-muni (Buddha), and say that on earth he
submitted himself to be eaten by a starving man, for which gracious
deed he was raised to dominion over the moon, where they profess to
see him. The legend is probably traceable back to the Sanskrit word
sasin, moon, which means literally 'the hare-marked.' Sasa means
'hare.' Pausanias relates the story of the moon-goddess instructing
exiles to build their city where they shall see a hare take refuge in
a myrtle-grove. [90] In the demonic fauna of Japan another cunning
animal figures--the Weasel. The name of this demon is 'the sickle
weasel,' and it also seems to occupy the position of a scape-goat. In
the language of a Japanese report, 'When a person's clogs slip from
under his feet, and he falls and cuts his face on the gravel, or when
a person, who is out at night when he ought to have been at home,
presents himself to his family with a freshly-scarred face, the wound
is referred to the agency of the malignant invisible weasel and his
sharp sickle.' In an aboriginal legend of America, also, two sister
demons commonly take the form of weasels.

The popular feeling which underlay much of the animal-worship in
ancient times was probably that which is reflected in the Japanese
notions of to-day, as told in the subjoined sketch from an amusing
book.

'One of these visitors was an old man, who himself was at the time a
victim of a popular superstition that the departed revisit the scenes
of their life in this world in shapes of different animals. We noticed
that he was not in his usual spirits, and pressed him to unburden his
mind to us. He said he had lost his little son Chiosin, but that was
not so much the cause of his grief as the absurd way in which his
wife, backed up by a whole conclave of old women who had taken up
their abode in his house to comfort her, was going on. 'What do they
all do?' we asked sympathetically. 'Why,' he replied, 'every beastly
animal that comes to my house, there is a cry amongst them all,
'Chiosin, Chiosin has come back!' and the whole house swarms with
cats and dogs and bats--for they say they are not quite sure which
is Chiosin, and that they had better be kind to the lot than run the
chance of treating him badly; the consequence is, all these brutes are
fed on my rice and meat, and now I am driven out of doors and called
an unnatural parent because I killed a mosquito which bit me!' [91]

The strange and inexplicable behaviour of animals in cases of fear,
panic, or pain has been generally attributed by ignorant races to
their possession by demons. Of this nature is the story of the devil
entering the herd of swine and carrying them into the sea, related
in the New Testament. It is said that even yet in some parts of
Scotland the milkmaid carries a switch of the magical rowan to expel
the demon that sometimes enters the cow. Professor Monier Williams
writes from Southern India--'When my fellow-travellers and myself
were nearly dashed to pieces over a precipice the other day by some
restive horses on a ghat near Poona, we were told that the road at
this particular point was haunted by devils who often caused similar
accidents, and we were given to understand that we should have done
well to conciliate Ganesa, son of the god Siva, and all his troops
of evil spirits, before starting.' The same writer also tells us
that the guardian spirits or 'mothers' who haunt most regions of
the Peninsula are believed to ride about on horses, and if they are
angry, scatter blight and disease. Hence the traveller just arrived
from Europe is startled and puzzled by apparitions of rudely-formed
terra-cotta horses, often as large as life, placed by the peasantry
round shrines in the middle of fields as acceptable propitiatory
offerings, or in the fulfilment of vows in periods of sickness. [92]

This was the belief of the Corinthians in the Taraxippos, or shade
of Glaucus, who, having been torn in pieces by the horses with which
he had been racing, and which he had fed on human flesh to make more
spirited, remained to haunt the Isthmus and frighten horses during
the races.

There is a modern legend in the Far West (America) of a horse called
'The White Devil,' which, in revenge for some harm to its comrades,
slew men by biting and trampling them, and was itself slain after
defying many attempts at its capture; but among the many ancient
legends of demon-horses there are few which suggest anything about
that animal hostile to man. His occasional evil character is simply
derived from his association with man, and is therefore postponed. For
a similar reason the Goat also must be dealt with hereafter, and
as a symbolical animal. A few myths are met with which relate to
its unpleasant characteristics. In South Guinea the odour of goats
is accounted for by the Saga that their ancestor having had the
presumption to ask a goddess for her aromatic ointment, she angrily
rubbed him with ointment of a reverse kind. It has also been said that
it was regarded as a demon by the worshippers of Bacchus, because
it cropped the vines; and that it thus originated the Trageluphoi,
or goat-stag monsters mentioned by Plato, [93] and gave us also the
word tragedy. [94] But such traits of the Goat can have very little
to do with its important relations to Mythology and Demonology. To
the list of animals demonised by association must also be added the
Stag. No doubt the anxious mothers, wives, or sweethearts of rash
young huntsmen utilised the old fables of beautiful hinds which
in the deep forests changed to demons and devoured their pursuers,
[95] for admonition; but the fact that such stags had to transform
themselves for evil work is a sufficient certificate of character to
prevent their being included among the animal demons proper, that is,
such as have in whole or part supplied in their disposition to harm
man the basis of a demonic representation.

It will not be deemed wonderful that Rats bear a venerable rank in
Demonology. The shudder which some nervous persons feel at sight
of even a harmless mouse is a survival from the time when it was
believed that in this form unshriven souls or unbaptized children
haunted their former homes; and probably it would be difficult to
estimate the number of ghost-stories which have originated in their
nocturnal scamperings. Many legends report the departure of unhallowed
souls from human mouths in the shape of a Mouse. During the earlier
Napoleonic wars mice were used in Southern Germany as diviners,
by being set with inked feet on the map of Europe to show where the
fatal Frenchmen would march. They gained this sanctity by a series of
associations with force stretching back to the Hindu fable of a mouse
delivering the elephant and the lion by gnawing the cords that bound
them. The battle of the Frogs and Mice is ascribed to Homer. Mice are
said to have foretold the first civil war in Rome by gnawing the gold
in the temple. Rats appear in various legends as avengers. The uncles
of King Popelus II., murdered by him and his wife and thrown into a
lake, reappear as rats and gnaw the king and queen to death. The same
fate overtakes Miskilaus of Poland, through the transformed widows and
orphans he had wronged. Mouse Tower, standing in the middle of the
Rhine, is the haunted monument of cruel Archbishop Hatto, of Mainz,
who (anno 970) bade the famine-stricken people repair to his barn,
wherein he shut them fast and burned them. But next morning an army
of rats, having eaten all the corn in his granaries, darkened the
roads to the palace. The prelate sought refuge from them in the Tower,
but they swam after, gnawed through the walls and devoured him. [96]

St. Gertrude, wearing the funereal mantle of Holda, commands an army
of mice. In this respect she succeeds to the Pied Piper of Hamelin,
who also leads off children; and my ingenious friend Mr. John
Fiske suggests that this may be the reason why Irish servant-maids
often show such frantic terror at sight of a mouse. [97] The care
of children is often intrusted to them, and the appearance of mice
prognosticated of old the appearance of the præternatural rat-catcher
and psychopomp. Pliny says that in his time it was considered
fortunate to meet a white rat. The people of Bassorah always bow to
these revered animals when seen, no doubt to propitiate them.

The Lion is a symbol of majesty and of the sun in his glory (reached
in the zodiacal Leo), though here and there his original demonic
character appears,--as in the combats of Indra, Samson, and Herakles
with terrible lions. Euphemism, in one sense, fulfils the conditions
of Samson's riddle--Sweetness coming out of the Strong--and has
brought honey out of the Lion. His cruel character has subtly fallen
to Sirius the Dog-star, to whom are ascribed the drought and malaria
of 'dog-days' (when the sun is in Leo); but the primitive fact is
intimated in several fables like that of Aristæus, who, born after
his mother had been rescued from the Lybian lion, was worshipped in
Ceos as a saviour from both droughts and lions. The Lion couching at
the feet of beautiful Doorga in India, reappears drawing the chariot
of Aphrodite, and typifies the potency of beauty rather than, as
Emerson interprets, that beauty depends on strength. The chariot
of the Norse Venus, Freyja, was drawn by Cats, diminished forms of
her Southern sister's steeds. It was partly by these routes the Cat
came to play the sometimes beneficent rôle in Russian, and to some
extent in German, French, and English folklore,--e.g., Puss in Boots,
Whittington and his Cat, and Madame D'Aulnoy's La Chatte Blanche. The
demonic characteristics of the destructive cats have been inherited
by the black,--or, as in Macbeth, the brindled,--cat. In Germany the
approach of a cat to a sick-bed announces death; to dream of one is
an evil omen. In Hungary it is said every black cat becomes a witch
at the age of seven. It is the witch's favourite riding-horse, but
may sometimes be saved from such servitude by incision of the sign of
the cross. A scratch from a black cat is thought to be the beginning
of a fatal spell.

De Gubernatis [98] has a very curious speculation concerning the origin
of our familiar fable the Kilkenny Cats, which he traces to the German
superstition which dreads the combat between cats as presaging death to
one who witnesses it; and this belief he finds reflected in the Tuscan
child's 'game of souls,' in which the devil and angel are supposed
to contend for the soul. The author thinks this may be one outcome
of the contest between Night and Twilight in Mythology; but, if the
connection can be traced, it would probably prove to be derived from
the struggle between the two angels of Death, one variation of which
is associated with the legend of the strife for the body of Moses. The
Book of Enoch says that Gabriel was sent, before the Flood, to excite
the man-devouring giants to destroy one another. In an ancient Persian
picture in my possession, animal monsters are shown devouring each
other, while their proffered victim, like Daniel, is unharmed. The
idea is a natural one, and hardly requires comparative tracing.

Dr. Dennys tells us that in China there exists precisely the same
superstition as in Scotland as to the evil omen of a cat (or dog)
passing over a corpse. Brand and Pennant both mention this, the
latter stating that the cat or dog that has so done is killed without
mercy. This fact would seem to show that the fear is for the living,
lest the soul of the deceased should enter the animal and become one
of the innumerable werewolf or vampyre class of demons. But the origin
of the superstition is no doubt told in the Slavonic belief that if
a cat leap over a corpse the deceased person will become a vampyre.

In Russia the cat enjoys a somewhat better reputation than it does
in most other countries. Several peasants in the neighbourhood of
Moscow assured me that while they would never be willing to remain in
a church where a dog had entered, they would esteem it a good sign if
a cat came to church. One aged woman near Moscow told me that when the
Devil once tried to creep into Paradise he took the form of a mouse:
the Dog and Cat were on guard at the gates, and the Dog allowed the
evil one to pass, but the Cat pounced on him, and so defeated another
treacherous attempt against human felicity.

The Cat superstition has always been strong in Great Britain. It is,
indeed, in one sense true, as old Howell wrote (1647)--'We need not
cross the sea for examples of this kind, we have too many (God wot)
at home: King James a great while was loath to believe there were
witches; but that which happened to my Lord Francis of Rutland's
children convinced him, who were bewitched by an old woman that was
a servant of Belvoir Castle, but, being displeased, she contracted
with the Devil, who conversed with her in the form of a Cat, whom she
called Rutterkin, to make away those children out of mere malignity
and thirst of revenge.' It is to be feared that many a poor woman
has been burned as a witch against whom her cherished cat was the
chief witness. It would be a curious psychological study to trace how
far the superstition owns a survival in even scientific minds,--as
in Buffon's vituperation of the cat, and in the astonishing story,
told by Mr. Wood, of a cat which saw a ghost (anno 1877)!

The Dog, so long the faithful friend of man, and even, possibly,
because of the degree to which he has caught his master's manners,
has a large demonic history. In the Semitic stories there are many
that indicate the path by which 'dog' became the Mussulman synonym
of infidel; and the one dog Katmir who in Arabic legend was admitted
to Paradise for his faithful watching three hundred and nine years
before the cave of the Seven Sleepers, [99] must have drifted among
the Moslems from India as the Ephesian Sleepers did from the christian
world. In the beautiful episode of the 'Mahábhárata,' Yudhisthira
having journeyed to the door of heaven, refuses to enter into that
happy abode unless his faithful dog is admitted also. He is told
by Indra, 'My heaven hath no place for dogs; they steal away our
offerings on earth;' and again, 'If a dog but behold a sacrifice,
men esteem it unholy and void.' This difficulty was solved by the
Dog--Yama in disguise--revealing himself and praising his friend's
fidelity. It is tolerably clear that it is to his connection with Yama,
god of Death, and under the evolution of that dualism which divided the
universe into upper and nether, that the Dog was degraded among our
Aryan ancestors; at the same time his sometimes wolfish disposition
and some other natural characters supplied the basis of his demonic
character. He was at once a dangerous and a corruptible guard.

In the early Vedic Mythology it is the abode of the gods that is
guarded by the two dogs, identified by solar mythologists as the
morning and evening twilight: a later phase shows them in the
service of Yama, and they reappear in the guardian of the Greek
Hades, Cerberus, and Orthros. The first of these has been traced
to the Vedic Sarvara, the latter to the monster Vritra. 'Orthros'
is the phonetical equivalent of Vritra. The bitch Sarama, mother
of the two Vedic dogs, proved a treacherous guard, and was slain by
Indra. Hence the Russian peasant comes fairly by another version of
how the Dog, while on guard, admitted the Devil into heaven on being
thrown a bone. But the two watch-dogs of the Hindu myth do not seem to
bear an evil character. In a funeral hymn of the 'Rig-Veda' (x. 14),
addressed to Yama, King of Death, we read:--'By an auspicious path
do thou hasten past the two four-eyed brindled dogs, the offspring
of Sarama; then approach the beautiful Pitris who rejoice together
with Yama. Intrust him, O Yama, to thy two watch-dogs, four-eyed,
road-guarding, and man-observing. The two brown messengers of Yama,
broad of nostril and insatiable, wander about among men; may they give
us again to-day the auspicious breath of life that we may see the sun!'

And now thousands of years after this was said we find the Dog still
regarded as the seer of ghosts, and watcher at the gates of death, of
whose opening his howl forewarns. The howling of a dog on the night of
December 9, 1871, at Sandringham, where the Prince of Wales lay ill,
was thought important enough for newspapers to report to a shuddering
country. I read lately of a dog in a German village which was supposed
to have announced so many deaths that he became an object of general
terror, and was put to death. In that country belief in the demonic
character of the dog seems to have been strong enough to transmit an
influence even to the powerful brain of Goethe.

In Goethe's poem, it was when Faust was walking with the student
Wagner that the black Dog appeared, rushing around them in spiral
curves--spreading, as Faust said, 'a magic coil as a snare around
them;' [100] that after this dog had followed Faust into his study,
it assumed a monstrous shape, until changed to a mist, from which
Mephistopheles steps forth--'the kernel of the brute'--in guise of a
travelling scholar. This is in notable coincidence with the archaic
symbolism of the Dog as the most frequent form of the 'Lares' (fig. 9),
or household genii, originally because of its vigilance. The form here
presented is nearly identical with the Cynocephalus, whom the learned
author of 'Mankind: their Origin and Destiny,' identifies as the Adamic
being set as a watch and instructor in Eden (Gen. xvi. 15), an example
of which, holding pen and tablet (as described by Horapollo), is given
in that work from Philæ. Chrysippus says that these were afterwards
represented as young men clothed with dog-skins. Remnants of the
tutelary character of the dog are scattered through German folklore:
he is regarded as oracle, ghost-seer, and gifted with second sight;
in Bohemia he is sometimes made to lick an infant's face that it may
see well.

The passage in 'Faust' has been traced to Goethe's antipathy to
dogs, as expressed in his conversation with Falk at the time of
Wieland's death. 'Annihilation is utterly out of the question; but
the possibility of being caught on the way by some more powerful
and yet baser monas, and subordinated to it; this is unquestionably
a very serious consideration; and I, for my part, have never been
able entirely to divest myself of the fear of it, in the way of a
mere observation of nature.' At this moment, says Falk, a dog was
heard repeatedly barking in the street. Goethe, sprang hastily to the
window and called to it: 'Take what form you will, vile larva, you
shall not subjugate me!' After some pause, he resumed with the remark:
'This rabble of creation is extremely offensive. It is a perfect pack
of monades with which we are thrown together in this planetary nook;
their company will do us little honour with the inhabitants of other
planets, if they happen to hear anything about them.'

In visiting the house where Goethe once resided in Weimar, I
was startled to find as the chief ornament of the hall a large
bronze dog, of full size, and very dark, looking proudly forth,
as if he possessed the Goethean monas after all. However, it is not
probable that the poet's real dislike of dogs arose solely from that
speculation about monades. It is more probable that in observing the
old wall-picture in Auerbach's cellar, wherein a dog stands beside
Mephistopheles, Goethe was led to consider carefully the causes of
that intimacy. Unfortunately, and notwithstanding the fables and
the sentiment which invest that animal, there are some very repulsive
things about him, such as his tendency to madness and the infliction on
man of a frightful death. The Greek Mania's 'fleet hounds' (Bacchæ 977)
have spread terrors far and wide.

Those who carefully peruse the account given by Mr. Lewes of the
quarrel between Karl August and Goethe, on account of the opposition
of the latter to the introduction of a performing dog on the Weimar
stage--an incident which led to his resignation of his position of
intendant of the theatre--may detect this aversion mingling with
his disgust as an artist; and it may be also suspected that it was
not the mere noise which caused the tortures he described himself as
having once endured at Göttingen from the barking of dogs.

It is, however, not improbable that in the wild notion of Goethe,
joined with his cynophobia, we find a survival of the belief of the
Parsees of Surat, who venerate the Dog above all other animals,
and who, when one is dying, place a dog's muzzle near his mouth,
and make it bark twice, so that it may catch the departing soul,
and bear it to the waiting angel.

The devil-worshippers of Travancore to this day declare that the
evil power approaches them in the form of a Dog, as Mephistopheles
approached Faust. But before the superstition reached Goethe's poem
it had undergone many modifications; and especially its keen scent
had influenced the Norse imagination to ascribe to it præternatural
wisdom. Thus we read in the Saga of Hakon the Good, that when Eystein
the Bad had conquered Drontheim, he offered the people choice of
his slave Thorer or his dog Sauer to be their king. They chose the
Dog. 'Now the dog was by witchcraft gifted with three men's wisdom;
and when he barked he spoke one word and barked two.' This Dog wore
a collar of gold, and sat on a throne, but, for all his wisdom and
power, seems to have been a dog still; for when some wolves invaded
the cattle, he attacked and was torn to pieces by them.

Among the negroes of the Southern States in America I have found the
belief that the most frequent form of a diabolical apparition is that
of a large Dog with fiery eyes, which may be among them an original
superstition attributable to their horror of the bloodhound, by which,
in some regions, they were pursued when attempting to escape. Among
the whites of the same region I have never been able to find any
instance of the same belief, though belief in the presage of the
howling dog is frequent; and it is possible that this is a survival
from some region in Africa, where the Dog has an evil name of the
same kind as the scape-goat. Among some tribes in Fazogl there is
an annual carnival at which every one does as he likes. The king
is then seated in the open air, a dog tied to the leg of his chair,
and the animal is then stoned to death.

Mark Twain [101] records the folklore of a village of Missouri,
where we find lads quaking with fear at the howling of a 'stray dog'
in the night, but indifferent to the howling of a dog they recognise,
which may be a form of the common English belief that it is unlucky
to be followed by a 'strange' dog. From the same book it appears
also that the dog will always have his head in the direction of the
person whose doom is signified: the lads are entirely relieved when
they find the howling animal has his back turned to them.

It is remarkable that these fragments of European superstition should
meet in the Far West a plentiful crop of their like which has sprung up
among the aborigines, as the following extract from Mr. Brinton's work,
'Myths of the New World,' will show: 'Dogs were supposed to stand
in some peculiar relation to the moon, probably because they howl
at it and run at night, uncanny practices which have cost them dear
in reputation. The custom prevailed among tribes so widely asunder
as Peruvians, Tupis, Creeks, Iroquois, Algonquins, and Greenland
Eskimos to thrash the curs most soundly during an eclipse. The Creeks
explained this by saying that the big Dog was swallowing the sun, and
that by whipping the little ones they could make him desist. What
the big Dog was they were not prepared to say. We know. It was
the night goddess, represented by the Dog, who was thus shrouding
the world at mid-day. In a better sense, they represented the more
agreeable characteristics of the lunar goddess. Xochiquetzal, most
fecund of Aztec divinities, patroness of love, of sexual pleasure,
and of child-birth, was likewise called Itzcuinan, which, literally
translated, is 'bitch-mother.' This strange and to us so repugnant
title for a goddess was not without parallel elsewhere. When in his
wars the Inca Pachacutec carried his arms into the province of Huanca,
he found its inhabitants had installed in their temples the figure of
a Dog as their highest deity.... This canine canonisation explains why
in some parts of Peru a priest was called, by way of honour, allco,
Dog!... Many tribes on the Pacific coast united in the adoration of
a wild species, the coyote, the Canis latrans of naturalists.' Of
the Dog-demon Chantico the legend of the Nahuas was, 'that he made a
sacrifice to the gods without observing a preparatory fast, for which
he was punished by being changed into a Dog. He then invoked the god
of death to deliver him, which attempt to evade a just punishment so
enraged the divinities that they immersed the world in water.'

The common phrase 'hell-hounds' has come to us by various routes. Diana
being degraded to Hecate, the dogs of Hades, Orthros and Cerberus,
multiplied into a pack of hounds for her chase, were degraded with her
into infernal howlers and hunters. A like degradation of Odin's hunt
took place at a later date. The Wild Huntsman, being a diabolical
character, is considered elsewhere. Concerning the Dog, it may be
further said here, that there are probably various characteristics
of that animal reflected in his demonic character. His liability
to become rabid, and to afflict human beings with hydrophobia,
appears to have had some part in it. Spinoza alludes to the custom
in his time of destroying persons suffering from this canine rabies
by suffocation; and his English biographer and editor, Dr. Willis,
tells me that in his boyhood in Scotland he always heard this spoken
of as the old custom. That such treatment could have prevailed can
hardly be ascribed to anything but a belief in the demonic character
of the rabid dog, cognate with the unconscious superstition which
still causes rural magistrates to order a dog which has bitten any
one to be slain. The notion is, that if the dog goes mad thereafter,
the man will also. Of course it would be rational to preserve the
dog's life carefully, in order that, if it continues healthy, the
bitten may feel reassured, as he cannot be if it be dead.

But the degradation of the dog had a cause even in his fidelity
as a watch. For this, as we have just seen, made him a common form
among Lares or domestic demons. The teraphim also were often in this
shape. Christianity had therefore a special reason for ascribing an
infernal character to these little idols, which interfered with the
popular dependence on the saints. It will thus be seen that there
were many causes operating to create that formidable class of demons
which were called in the Middle Ages Cynocephaloi. The ancient holy
pictures of Russia especially abound in these dog-headed devils; in
the sixteenth century they were frequently represented rending souls
in hell; and sometimes the dragon of the Apocalypse is represented
with seven horrible canine heads.