We have already seen Indras as a ram or pluvial cloud; and the goat with only one foot (ekapâd aǵaḥ), or he who has but one goat's foot, who supports the heavens, who lightens and thunders,[780] is a form of the same pluvial Indras who supports the heavens in the rainy season. We have seen the Açvinâu compared to two goats, two horns, two hoofs; each, therefore, would seem to have but one horn, but one goat's foot (which might perhaps explain the ekapâd aǵaḥ); hence on one side the cornucopia, and on the other the lame goat.[781] The nymph Galathea (the milky one), who loves a faun (or one who has goat's feet), seems to be a Hellenic form of the loves of Esmeralda and the goat with Quasimodo. The goat loves him who has goat's feet; the solar hero (or heroine) in the night has goat's feet; he is a satyr, a faun, a he-goat, an ass; he is deformed and foolish, but he interests the good fairy, who, in the form of a she-goat (as the moon and as the milky way), guides him in the night, and, as the dawn (white aurora) in the morning, saves him and makes him happy. In the German legend, the poor princess who, with her son, is persecuted in the forest, is assisted now by a she-goat, now by a doe, which gives milk to the child; by means of this animal, which serves as his guide, the prince finds his lost bride. This guiding she-goat, or doe, the nurse of the child-hero, which Servius recognised in the constellation of the goat (with respect to Zeus, who is essentially pluvial, as the Vedic Indras has the clouds himself for his nurses), must have generally represented the moon. But even the milky way of the sky (the bridge of souls) is the milk spilt by the she-goat of heaven; the white morning sky is also the milk of this same she-goat. The horned moon,[782] the milky way, and the white dawn are represented in the form of a beneficent she-goat which assists the hero and the heroine in the forest, in the darkness; whilst, on the contrary, the sun enclosed in the cloud, the darkness, or the starry sky of night (with the insana capræ sidera), is now a good and wise he-goat or ram, full of good advice, like the ram who advises the king of India in the Tuti-Name,[783] and now a malignant monster, a demoniacal being. Inasmuch as the goat gives light and milk, it is divine; inasmuch as it conceals the beauty of the young hero or heroine and opposes them, it may be considered demoniacal.

The connection between the she-goat and the milky way can also be proved from the name St James's Way, given by the common people to the galaxy, or galathea, or way of milk;[784] and it is interesting to learn from Baron Reinsberg,[785] how, in several parts of Bohemia, it is the custom on St James's Day to throw a he-goat out of the window, and to preserve its blood, which is said to be of potent avail against several diseases, such, for instance, as the spitting of blood. In the Lezioni di Materia Medica of Professor Targioni-Tozzetti,[786] we also read that the he-goat's blood was known by no less a name than manus Dei, and believed to be especially useful against contusions of the back, pleurisy, and the stone. But the disease of the stone was supposed to be cured by the stone called capra (goat), which was said to be found in the bodies of some Indian goats. Targioni-Tozzetti himself seriously describes the goat-stones as follows:—"These stones are usually clear on their surface, and dark-coloured; they have an odour of musk when rubbed and heated by the hands. In them (the stone Bezoar[787]) analeptic and alexipharmic virtues were supposed to exist, which were able to resist the evil effects of poison and contagious diseases, the plague not excepted, and to save the patient by causing an abundant and healthy perspiration to break out on his skin. For this reason these stones were sold very dear. The same virtues are attributed to those found in the West, but in a much less degree." When the heavenly goat dissolves in rain or in dew, when moisture comes from the goat-cloud, the mountain-cloud, or the stone-cloud, these humours are salutary. When St James, who is joined with the goat and the rain, pours out his bottle, as the Piedmontese people say, the vapour which falls from the sky on these days is considered by the peasants, as in fact it is for the country, and especially for the vines, a real blessing. In the fable of Babrios, the vine, whose leaves are eaten by the he-goat, threatens it, saying that it will nevertheless produce wine, and that when the wine is made (i.e., at the Dionysian mysteries), the goat will be sacrificed to the gods. In the spring, on the other hand, or on the Easter of the resurrection, it was the custom to sacrifice in effigy the Agnus Dei, in the belief that it would serve to defend the fields and vineyards against demoniacal wiles, thunderbolts and thunder, facilitate parturition, and deliver from shipwreck, fire, and sudden death.[788] In the Witches' Sabbath in Germany, it was said that the witches burned a he-goat, and divided its ashes among themselves.[789]

The cunning she-goat is an intermediate form between the good wise fairy and the witch who is an expert in every kind of malice. In the same way as the hero, at first foolish, learns malice from the devil, to use it afterwards against the devil himself, it may be presumed that the hero, in his form of a goat, has learned from the monsters all that cunning by which he afterwards distinguishes himself. The Vedic ram, Indras, also uses magic against the monster magicians.

In the second of the Esthonian stories, we read that the king of the serpents has a golden cup containing the milk of a heavenly goat; if bread is dipped into this milk, and put into the mouth, one can discover every secret thing that has happened in the night, without any one perceiving how.

In the French mediæval poem of Ysengrin,[790] the she-goat deceives the wolf in a way similar to that in which, in the first number of Afanassieff's stories, the peasant cheats the bear, and in the Italian stories the same peasant defrauds the devil. The she-goat shows a fox-like cunning, keeping for itself the leaf of the corn, and leaving the root for the wolf. Hence, in my eyes, the origin of the Piedmontese proverbial expression, "La crava a l'à mangià la föja" (the goat ate the leaf), and even the simple one of "Mangé la föja" (to eat the leaf), meaning to understand cunning.[791] I heard from a certain Uliva Selvi, at Antignano (near Leghorn), the narrative of a witch who sent a boy every day to take the she-goat to the pasturage, ordering him to pay attention that it should eat well, but leave the corn alone. When the goat returned, the witch asked it—

To which the goat answered—

Then the boy was put to death by the witch. It happened thus to twelve boys, until the thirteenth, more cunning, caressed the goat and gave it the corn to eat; then the goat answered to the witch's question—

And the boy, too, was well treated.

The devil's pupil always outwits his master; the she-goat beguiles the wolf to its destruction. We have seen this in the Russian story, and it is confirmed in the legend of Ysengrin. The peasants of Piedmont and of Sicily have, for this reason, so much respect for the goat, that they consider it brings a blessing to the house near which it is maintained; and if, by chance, they show a perverse nature, this perversity is attributed to the devil himself, who, they believe, has maliciously taken possession of them. A few years ago, a goatherd of the Val di Formazza, in the Ossola in Piedmont, had two goats which he believed to be possessed by some evil spirit, for which reason they always wandered about, in order, as he thought, that the demon might at last be able to throw them down some abyss. One day the two goats were lost; the goatherd searched for them for a short time, but finding his search bootless, he resolved to go and make a vow to the Madonna of Einsiedlen. Chance so arranged it, that at the very moment in which he was returning from his pious pilgrimage, his two goats also approached the door of his house; therefore, of course, this was declared to be a miracle in Formazza, and as such it is still believed in that district.[792]

In the preceding chapter we saw the ass represented in two aspects, as regards its generative capabilities; that is, it is now represented as an ardent, insatiable, and competent fœcundator, and now as a ridiculous imbecile, and powerless to generate. We also saw the ass closely connected with the satyrs with goat's or he-goat's feet. The he-goats and rams, too, have a double and self-contradictory reputation. We know, for instance, that the god Thor, the god of the Scandinavians, who thunders in the cloud, is drawn by he-goats (the vessel of Thor and Hymir, the cloud, is called in the Edda a navigating ram or he-goat, in the same way as the Vedic Indras is represented as a god-ram); he is, moreover, the protector of marriages. Scandinavian mythology, therefore, appears to regard the goat as essentially the one that makes fruitful, as a pluvial cloud. In the Hindoo mythology of the brâhmanic period, the god Indras loses, on the contrary, his divine power, becomes stupid and obscure, and is lost in his form of a ram. In one of his Passeggiate nel Canavese, Signor A. Bertolotti recently observed, at Muraglio, a curious custom which is observed by the young men of the country when a projected wedding falls through; they run up to the bride's house and obstreperously demand her to give her sheep up to them, upon which they go to the bridegroom's house and cry out, "Vente a sarrar quist motogn" (come and shut up these rams). Here the ram represents the husband, and the sheep the wife. In Du Cange the name of goat (caper) is given to the "in pueris insuavis odor cum ad virilitatem accedunt."[793] In Apuleius, unmeasured lasciviousness is called "cohircinatio." According to Ælianos, the he-goat, at the age of seven days (of seven months according to Columella), already yearns for coition.

But in the same way as the ass is the stupid patient animal, the ram is the stupid quiet one. The he-goat is said to be an indifferent husband, who allows his she-goats to be covered by other goats without showing a sign of jealousy; hence our expressions, "horned goat," and simply "horned," to indicate the husband of an unfaithful woman, that is, of a woman who makes him wear horns, like the goat, and the Italian proverb, "E meglio esser geloso che becco" (it is better to be jealous than a he-goat). This reputation, however, as assigned to the he-goat, is contrary to all that has been said and written, and that is known concerning the lust of the he-goat. On the contrary, Aristotle says explicitly that two he-goats, which have always lived together in concord at the pasturage, fall out and fight with violence in the time of coition. Moreover, the verse of Pindaros is well known, in which he makes he-goats unite even with women. It is also said that Hermês, or Zeus, assuming the form of a he-goat, united himself with Penelope, whence was born the great goat-footed satyr, Pan; that Hêraklês (as an ass, in his lion's skin) competed with a he-goat in phallical powers (in Athenaios he joins himself with fifty virgins in the space of seven nights); that, in Ælianos, a jealous he-goat punished with death the goatherd Crathis, who had incestuously joined himself with one of his she-goats. Nevertheless, the Greeks already called by the name of aix, as we Italians by that of capra, a woman of an immoral life, or an adulteress. Columella gives us the key of the enigma, observing that the he-goat, by abuse of the Venus, which he uses too soon (like the ass), becomes powerless before the age of six years, so that it is not out of indifference that he is simply a spectator of his she-goat's infidelity, but only because he cannot do otherwise. Hence the application of hircosus, which Plautus gives to an old man.

It is the Hellenic tradition which, more than any other, developed to a greater extent the myth of the goat and the sheep, under all their aspects—demoniacal, divine, and hybrid.

The golden fleece, or the fleece of the sheep or ram which had been transported into Colchis by Phrixos, the son of Nephêlê (the cloud) and of Helle;[794] Jupiter Ammon (in the fifth book of Ovid's Metamorphoses), who, afraid of the giants (as, in the last book of the Râmâyaṇam, the gods, terrified by the monsters, transform themselves into different animals), hides himself in Lybia in the shape of a horned ram; the altar of Apollo in the isle of Delos, constructed with innumerable horns; the woolly skins in which, according to Strabo,[795] the Iberians gathered up gold, whence the Greek geographer believed the fable of the golden fleece to have arisen; the golden lamb kept by Atreus, which was to bring Thyestes to the throne, and the name of Aigüsthos, born of the incestuous loves of Thyestes with his own daughter; Pan (with goat's feet, the son of the he-goat Zeus or Hermes), who, in the fifth book of the Saturnalians of Macrobius, loves the moon and obtains its favours by means of sheep with white but rough and coarse wool; Endymion, who, according to the commentator Servius, induces the moon to love him by means of exceedingly white sheep; Neptune, who, in the form of a ram, in the sixth book of the Metamorphoses of Ovid, seduces the beautiful virgin Bisaltis; the satyrs, the fauns with goat's feet, into which the gods transform themselves in order to seduce nymphs or maidens of the earth, as, for instance, Jove again, in the same book of Ovid—

Hermês, called Krioforos, or carrier of a ram (that is, of a ram which delivers the land from the plague, a form of St James); the two predestined sheep which Epimenides sacrifices to make the Athenian plague cease, in the twenty-seventh Olympiad, in Diogenes Laertês; the bleating goats that King Priam (in the fragments of Ennius) sacrifices to dissipate the evil threatened by sinister dreams; the black sheep sacrificed to Pluto, Proserpine, the Furies, and all the infernal deities; the lamb, the ram, and the he-goat sacrificed to the genital Fates in the Sybilline verses translated by Angelo Poliziano—

the white lamb sacrificed to Hercules, to Mars, to Jove, to Neptune, to Bacchus, to Pan (the goat being sacrificed to Diana), to Apollo (i.e., when the sun shines), to Ceres (the goddess of the light-coloured ears of corn), to Venus, to the gods and goddesses; to his divine forms (similia similibus); and several other mythical notions (not to speak of the very popular legend relating to the goat Amalthea, who nourished Zeus with her milk, and was by Zeus translated for this service to the stars, under the name of Aixourania, or heavenly goat, after he had taken off one of its horns, to give, in gratitude to the two nymphs who had protected him, the faculty of pouring out everything that was wished for);[796] all these account, in an eloquent manner, for the wide-spread worship that the goat and the sheep received, even in Græco-Latin antiquity, enriching with many episodes the mythical and legendary traditions of these nations, now as the type of a god, now of a demon, and now of an intermediate being, such as the satyr, for instance.

In the same way as the mythical horse has, from evening to morning, three conspicuous moments of action—black, grey, and white or red—and as the mythical ass throws gold from behind and has golden ears, so the mythical goat and sheep, which are dark-coloured in the night or in the cloud, throw gold from behind and have golden horns which pour out ambrosia, or else have even the cornucopia itself. It is always the same myth of the cloudy and aqueous, of the nocturnal and tenebrous sky, with its two glowing twilights or auroras, or else of the luminous heavenly hero who traverses the night or the cloud (or the wintry season), disguised in the shapes of various animals, now by his own will, now by a divine malediction or by diabolical witchcraft.

In the third book of Aristotle's History of Animals, we read of the river Psikros in Thrace, that white sheep, when they drink of its waters, bring forth black lambs; that in Antandria there are two rivers, of which one makes the sheep black, and the other white, and that the river Xanthos or Skamandros makes the sheep fair (or golden). This belief involves in itself the three transformations of the celestial hero into the three he-goats or rams of different natures, of which we have spoken. The last transformation calls our attention to the sheep with golden wool, the golden lamb, and the Agnus Dei, the symbol of happiness, power and riches. Wealth in sheep, even more than wealth in cows, became the symbol of universal riches. The horn poured out every kind of treasure upon the earth, and upon the earth itself the pecus became pecunia.

END OF VOL. I.

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