Part 18

As I have said, there are several delineations of this Borametz or Borometz, but there is one, a frontispiece to the 1656 edition of the Paridisi in Sole--Paradisus Terrestris, of John Parkinson, Apothecary of London, in which, together with Adam and Eve, the lamb-tree is shown as flourishing in the Garden of Eden; and Du Bartas, in “His divine WEEKES And WORKES” in his poem of Eden, (the first day of the second week), makes Adam to take a tour of Eden, and describes his wonder at what he sees, especially at the “lamb-plant.”

“Musing, anon through crooked Walks he wanders, Round-winding rings, and intricate Meanders, Fals-guiding paths, doubtfull beguiling strays, And right-wrong errors of an end-less Maze: Not simply hedged with a single border Of Rosemary, cut-out with curious order, In Satyrs, Centaurs, Whales, and half-men-Horses, And thousand other counterfaited corses; But with true Beasts, fast in the ground still sticking, Feeding on grass, and th’ airy moisture licking: Such as those Bonarets, in Scythia bred Of slender seeds, and with green fodder fed; Although their bodies, noses, mouthes and eys, Of new-yean’d Lambs have full the form and guise; And should be very Lambs, save that (for foot) Within the ground they fix a living root, Which at their navell growes, and dies that day That they have brouz’d the neighbour grass away. O wondrous vertue of God onely good! The Beast hath root, the Plant hath flesh and blood The nimble Plant can turn it to and fro; The nummed Beast can neither stir nor go: The Plant is leaf-less, branch-less, void of fruit; The Beast is lust-less, sex-less, fire-less, mute; The Plant with Plants his hungry panch doth feed; Th’ admired Beast is sowen a slender seed.”

Of the other kind of “lamb-tree,” that which bears lambs in pods, we have an account, in Sir John Maundeville’s Travels. “Whoso goeth from Cathay to Inde, the high and the low, he shal go through a Kingdom that men call Cadissen, and it is a great lande, there groweth a manner of fruite as it were gourdes, and when it is ripe men cut it a sonder, and men fynde therein a beast as it were of fleshe and bone and bloud, as it were a lyttle lambe without wolle, and men eate the beaste and fruite also, and sure it seemeth very strange.”

And in the “Journall of Frier Odoricus,” which I have incorporated in my edition of “The Voiage and Travayle of Syr John Maundeville, Knight,” he says: “I was informed also by certaine credible persons of another miraculous thing, namely, that in a certaine Kingdome of the sayd Can, wherein stand the mountains called Kapsei (the Kingdomes name is Kalor) there groweth great Gourds or Pompions, (pumpkins) which being ripe, doe open at the tops, and within them is found a little beast like unto a yong lambe.”

THE CHIMÆRA.

Aldrovandus gives us the accompanying illustration of a Chimæra, a fabulous Classical monster, said to possess three heads, those of a lion, a goat, and a dragon. It used so to be pictorially treated, but in more modern times as Aldrovandus represents. The mountain Chimæra, now called Yanar, is in ancient Lycia, in Asia Minor, and was a burning mountain, which, according to Spratt, is caused by a stream of inflammable gas, issuing from a crevice. This monster is easily explained, if we can believe Servius, the Commentator of Virgil, who says that flames issue from the top of the mountain, and that there are lions in the vicinity; the middle part abounds in goats, and the lower part with serpents.

THE HARPY AND SIREN.

The conjunction of the human form with birds is very easy, wings being fitted to it, as in the case of angels--and as applied to beasts, this treatment is very ancient, vide the winged bulls of Assyria, and the classical Pegasus, or winged horse. With birds, the best form in which it is treated in Mythology is the Harpy. This is taken from Aldrovandus, and fully illustrates the mixture of bird and woman, described by Shakespeare in Pericles (iv. 3):--

“Cleon. Thou’rt like the harpy, Which to betray, dost, with thine angel’s face, Seize with thine eagle’s talons.”

Then, also, we have the Siren, shown by this illustration, taken from Pompeii. These Sea Nymphs were like the Harpies, depicted as a compound of bird and woman. Like them also, there were three of them; but, unlike them, they had such lovely voices, and were so beautiful, that they lured seamen to their destruction, they having no power to combat the allurements of the Sirens; whilst the Harpies emitted an infectious smell, and spoiled whatever they touched, with their filth, and excrements.

Licetus, writing in 1634, and Zahn, in 1696, give the accompanying picture of a monster born at Ravenna in 1511 or 1512. It had a horn on the top of its head, two wings, was without arms, and only one leg like that of a bird of prey. It had an eye in its knee, and was of both sexes. It had the face and body of a man, except in the lower part, which was covered with feathers.

Marcellus Palonius Romanus made some Latin verses upon this prodigy, which may be thus rendered into English:--

A Monster strange in fable, and deform Still more in fact; sailing with swiftest wing, He threatens double slaughter, and converts To thy fell ruin, flames of living fire. Of double sex, it spares no sex, alike With kindred blood it fills th’ Æmathian plain; Its corpses strew alike both street and sea. There hoary Thetis and the Nereids Swim shudd’ring through the waves, while floating wide The fish replete on human bodies----. Such, Ravenna, was the Monster which foretold Thy fall, which brings thee now such bitter woe, Tho’ boasting in thy image triumph-crowned.

THE BARNACLE GOOSE.

Of all extraordinary beliefs, that in the Barnacle Goose, which obtained credence from the eleventh to the seventeenth centuries, is as wonderful as any. The then accepted fact that the Barnacle Goose was generated on trees, and dropped alive in the water, dates back a hundred years before Gerald de Barri. Otherwise Giraldus Cambrensis wrote in 1187, about these birds, the following being a translation:--

“There are here many birds which are called Bernacæ, which nature produces in a manner contrary to nature, and very wonderful. They are like marsh-geese, but smaller. They are produced from fir timber tossed about at sea, and are at first like geese upon it. Afterwards they hang down by their beaks, as if from a sea-weed attached to the wood, and are enclosed in shells that they may grow the more freely. Having thus, in course of time, been clothed with a strong covering of feathers, they either fall into the water, or seek their liberty in the air by flight. The embryo geese derive their growth and nutriment from the moisture of the wood or of the sea, in a secret and most marvellous manner. I have seen with my own eyes more than a thousand minute bodies of these birds hanging from one piece of timber on the shore, enclosed in shells, and already formed. The eggs are not impregnated in coitu, like those of other birds, nor does the bird sit upon its eggs to hatch them, and in no corner of the world have they been known to build a nest. Hence the bishops and clergy in some parts of Ireland are in the habit of partaking of these birds, on fast days, without scruple. But in doing so they are led into sin. For, if any one were to eat of the leg of our first parent, although he (Adam) was not born of flesh, that person could not be adjudged innocent of eating flesh.”

We see here, that Giraldus speaks of these barnacles being developed on wreckage in the sea, but does not mention their growing upon trees, which was the commoner belief. I have quoted both Sir John Maundeville, and Odoricus, about the lamb-tree, which neither seem to consider very wonderful, for Sir John says: “Neverthelesse I sayd to them that I held y^t for no marvayle, for I sayd that in my countrey are trees y^t beare fruit, y^t become byrds flying, and they are good to eate, and that that falleth on the water, liveth, and that that falleth on earth, dyeth, and they marvailed much thereat.” And the Friar, in continuation of his story of the Borometz, says: “Even as I my selfe have heard reported that there stand certaine trees upon the shore of the Irish Sea, bearing fruit like unto a gourd, which at a certaine time of the yeere doe fall into the water, and become birds called Bernacles, and this is most true.”

Olaus Magnus, in speaking of the breeding of Ducks in Scotland, says: “Moreover, another Scotch Historian, who diligently sets down the secret of things, saith that in the Orcades, (the Orkneys) Ducks breed of a certain Fruit falling in the Sea; and these shortly after, get wings, and fly to the tame or wild ducks.” And, whilst discoursing on Geese, he affirms that “some breed from Trees, as I said of Scotland Ducks in the former Chapter.” Sebastian Müenster, from whom I have taken the preceding illustration, says in his Cosmographia Universalis:--“In Scotland there are trees which produce fruit, conglomerated of their leaves; and this fruit, when, in due time, it falls into the water beneath it, is endowed with new life, and is converted into a living bird, which they call the ‘tree goose.’ This tree grows in the Island of Pomonia, which is not far from Scotland, towards the North. Several old Cosmographers, especially Saxo Grammaticus, mention the tree, and it must not be regarded as fictitious, as some new writers suppose.”

In Camden’s “Britannia” (translated by Edmund Gibson, Bishop of London) he says, speaking of Buchan:--“It is hardly worth while to mention the clayks, a sort of geese; which are believed by some, (with great admiration) to grow upon the trees on this coast and in other places, and, when they are ripe, to fall down into the sea; because neither their nests nor eggs can anywhere be found. But they who saw the ship, in which Sir Francis Drake sailed round the world, when it was laid up in the river Thames, could testify, that little birds breed in the old rotten keels of ships; since a great number of such, without life and feathers, stuck close to the outside of the keel of that ship; yet I should think, that the generation of these birds was not from the logs of wood, but from the sea, termed by the poets ‘the parent of all things.’”

In “Purchas, his Pilgrimage,” is the voyage of Gerat de Veer to China, &c., in 1569--and he speaks of the Barnacle goose thus:--“Those geese were of a perfit red colour, such as come to Holland about Weiringen, and every yeere are there taken in abundance, but till this time, it was never knowne where they hatcht their egges, so that some men have taken upon them to write that they sit upon trees in Scotland, that hang over the water, and such eggs that fall from them downe into the water, become young geese, and swim there out of the water: but those that fall upon the land, burst asunder, and are lost; but that is now found to be contrary, that no man could tell where they breed their egges, for that no man that ever wee knew, had ever beene under 80°; nor that land under 80° was never set downe in any card, much lesse the red geese that breede therein.” He and his sailors declared that they had seen these birds sitting on their eggs, and hatching them, on the coasts of Nova Zembla.

Du Bartas thus mentions this goose:--

“So, slowe Boötes underneath him sees, In th’ ycie iles, those goslings hatcht of trees; Whose fruitfull leaves, falling into the water, Are turned, (they say) to living fowls soon after. So, rotten sides of broken ships do change To barnacles; O transformation strange! ’Twas first a green tree, then a gallant hull, Lately a mushroom, now a flying gull.”

I could multiply quotations on this subject. Gesner and every other naturalist believed in the curious birth of the Barnacle goose--and so even did Aldrovandus, writing at the close of the seventeenth century, for from him I take this illustration. But enough has been said upon the subject.

REMARKABLE EGG.

No wonder that a credulous age, which could see nothing extraordinary in the Barnacle goose, could also, metaphorically, swallow such an egg, as Licetus, first of all, and Aldrovandus, after him, gives us in the accompanying true picture. The latter says that a goose’s egg was found in France, (he leaves a liberal margin for locality,) which on being broken appeared exactly as in the picture. Comment thereon is useless.

MOON WOMAN.

One would have imagined that this Egg would be sufficient to test the credulity of most people, but Aldrovandus was equal to the occasion, and he gives us a “Moon Woman,” who lays eggs, sits upon them, and hatches Giants; and he gives this on the authority of Lycosthenes and Ravisius Textor.

THE GRIFFIN.