|
The rough bur thistle
spreading wide
Among the bearded bear,
I turned the weeder chips aside,
And spared the symbol dear."
BURNS.
To turn from sea to land,
round the flowers and trees about us a wealth of legend clings. They are
not only rooted in our affections as friends of our youth, but our
country's history is wreathed in them. The Rose and the Thistle now
twine together, and they foster under their prickles the Shamrock. The
Rose's entrance into Scotland was not under popular auspices. It was
that Hammer of the Scots, Edward I., who had a golden rose for his
device, perhaps derived from his mother, Eleanor of Provence. The
Thistle resented intrusion, but had for a time to succumb to the Rose.
Gradually the queen of flowers became the emblem of England. It grew
into the gage of Red and White when Henry VI. chose the one, Edward the
other, and round these rival roses raged civil war. The scented petals
of both were dyed in the life blood of Englishmen. Badges were a
necessity, for before the days when uniforms distinguished warring
companies, when mail veiled friend from foe, some mark had to be worn on
the helmet. In old- fashioned gardens a rose flourishes of blended
colours called York and Lancaster, a symbol of the unity of the two
rival factions when Henry VII. married Elizabeth of York, engrafting one
of the chief surviving branches of the White rose tree upon the rooted
stem of the Red flower, and out of that peace-making union sprang the
heraldic rose of the Tudors. The shamrock, so folk lore says, became the
symbol of the most distressful country in St. Patrick's days. He was
preaching to the Irish and could not explain to his converts the
doctrine of the Trinity, so he illustrated his meaning by plucking the
lowly trefoil at his feet, and "he assured his hearers that as in the
distinctly three cleft leaflets there was truly but one leaf, so might
this great doctrine of the Three in One be in poor fashion believed and
accepted in humble faith." As to the thistle, "poverty, ill-luck,
enterprise, and constant resolution are the fibres of the legend of this
country's history," says Conan Doyle, while another modern writer
endorses the statement, It and poverty and storm are the nurses of the
qualities which make for empire." The Scots' land, that "barren ridge of
hills between two inclement sea-ways," as Robert Louis Stevenson calls
his native country, elected for its emblematic flower no
summer-blooming, sun-nursed rose, or fond as she is of doctrine did she
choose a plant explanatory of religion, but history or tradition fixed
for the Spartanly-nursed north on the hardy, prickly thistle whose seeds
spread on the wings of the wind and which roots and flourishes in
apparently stony soil. Cackling geese saved sleeping Rome, likewise the
thistle gave Scotland timely warning, and her people were grateful to it
for averting disaster. The invading Danes had stolen on the sleeping
camp of opposing natives, but the latter were florally guarded. The
thistle undertook to act as a barbed wire entanglement. Nature reared it
in the dark ages when modern tactics were undreamt of. The thistle's
lancet-shaped foliage made the stealthily-creeping, bare-legged Danes
give tongue. The Scots heard their smothered curses, awoke, and armed.
That is how, some say, the repulsing thistle was adopted as Scotland's
insignia, along with its defiant motto, "Ye daurna meddle wi' me," which
became in the sleeker Latin tongue under the British Solomon's orders, "Nemo
me imune lacessit." In James III. 's reign the symbol of the thistle was
first mentioned among the crown jewels, and on the marriage of his son
to Margaret Tudor, Dunbar indited a prophetically-named poem "The
Thrissel and the Rose." This bride brought about the union of the sister
kingdoms, although at the time of her marriage no seer foretold that she
brought along with her dowry the succession to the crown of England. Her
great grandson followed the Stone of Destiny to Westminster when her
niece Elizabeth died. So, henceforth, the armed Thistle and the gentle
Rose grew side by side. The wild thistle had been associated before this
with fair garden flowers, for it had stood shoulder to shoulder with the
lilies of France.
"If you would France win,
Then with Scotland first begin,"
was an olden saying, and ambassadors knew
how true an adage this was, for when the Rose was a dreaded flower,
encroaching on the Thistle's domain, France was her ally and helped to
keep the Rose's roots from spreading beyond her legitimate kingdom. The
Stuarts, a century after the Rose and Thistle had entwined together, for
their special badge adopted an oak leaf in grateful recollection of the
sheltered hiding-place Charles II. had found on the tree. The leaf
proved to be a somewhat prophetically transient emblem, lacking the
tenacious staying power of the thistle. The Jacobites sadly watched it,
like their hopes, fade and wither. From the broom which Geoffrey of
Anjou plucked and put for cognisance in his helmet his race took their
name of Plantagenet. The Forbes in the north have it also for their
badge, for the heather and the broom are closely associated together
with the hills of Scotland. White heather from its scarcity is prized.
Some folk say it is the print left by the resting fairies. When the
heather was on fire the blaze meant in days of yore, unsheathed swords
in the Highlands. It was a beacon for the clans—
"To arm and make ready then,
Sons of the mountain glen."
In Scottish song we meet ofttimes with the
birks. On the grave of true lovers whom death has not divided the birk
and the briar flourish together, as when the actors in the tragedy of
Douglas are laid to rest.
"Lord William was buried in St. Marie's
kirk,
Lady Margaret in St. Marie's quire,
And out of her grave there grew a birk
And out of the knight's a brier."
When the Black Douglas came along full of
vengeance, for had not his daughter's lover fought and slain his seven
sons— "He pull'd up
the bonny brier
And flang it in St. Marie's Loch."
To "pu' the birks sac green" is an ill omen.
So we read in one version of "The Dowie Dens of Yarrow"; in others it is
heather. There was a wife who dwelt by Usher's Wells in ballad story—
"A wealthy wife was she,
She had three stout and stalwart sons
And sent them o'er the sea."
They returned to her from the dead and in
their hats were branches from a birch.
"It neither grew in syke nor ditch
Nor yet in any sheugh;
But at the gates o' Paradise,
That birk grew green eneuch."
Though presaging ill in dreams to see it
green it is a popular favourite, so it may well grow gracefully on its
silvery stem, humbly drooping its branches at Heaven's gate.
The cross of the Saviour, tradition says,
was made of the bourtree (elder). It is not misliked, often being
planted about dwellings, but it is deemed unlucky to cut it. Before
trimming it to shoot out anew in spring, it was customary to mention the
fact to the free-growing elder in the following words:-
"Bourtree, bourtree crooked
'N'ever straight and never strong,
Ever bush and never tree
Since our Lord was nailed on thee."
That rhyme exonerated the gardener from ill
intent. The ever-quivering aspen twists, so the story sayeth, for ever
restless with the shame that it was the tree Judas chose. The poet sings
in "Gloomy winter's now awa" of "the silver saughs with downy buds," the
precursors of spring gleaming and shining against the grey skies of
February. Saughs have stood for sorrow ever since by the waters of
Babylon the harps were hung on their branches. All the flowers which
Goethe classes as the beautiful hieroglyphics of Nature, by which she
indicates how much she loves us," are easily understood by unlettered
children, and round the blooms they love the best they have woven
garlands of association which remain perennial throughout life.
Daisies, the wee modest crimson-tipped
flowers, smiling up into little faces, have been always prime
favourites. They are forged into chains by tiny fingers. Bairnwort it is
called in the borderland, for it is indeed the children's playmate. "The
gowans fine" are dear to Scots the world over. Whether the gowan is the
larger, long-stemmed species, or the bright- faced, simple floweret—the
day's eye—smiling up from out of the carpet of grass at us from dawn to
dusk, from earliest spring to the season's end, we know not. It is a
lesson to many— humble, contented, with its unflinching gaiety, its
bright eye, always admired and popular with young and old. The anemone
of our April woods was patronised by our good neighbours the fairies.
Inside its drooping bells, which promptly closed around them, they took
their beauty sleep, clasped in its petals, when weary of dancing in the
glades or wind-swept moors. Some old people remember in their time
Easter eggs were invariably dyed by its juice, and at the spring
festival of the church this blue Pasque " flower, as it was called, was
worn. The pretty name ' windflower,'" says Mrs. Miller Maxwell in
Children's Wild Flowers, "is as old as the centuries, for it comes to us
echoing down from that mysterious Egypt where, while regarded with
tenderness, it yet appeared as the emblem of sickness and suffering.
Later on the Romans, ever borrowers of other customs, wore wreaths of
anemone only, which they called Egyptian garlands, when entreating the
favour of the gods for some beloved sick one's loss. Constantly we find
joy and sorrow intermingled, for this same anemone, if mixed with other
blooms, was worn at feasts and merry makings, these wreaths having been
hung round the statues of Venus, their particular patroness. A special
significance was given to the first anemone of the year. The flower was
plucked with reverence and religious ceremony, and the magic words
repeated, 'Anemone, I gather thee for remedy against all disease,' and
then the blossom was put carefully away and kept in its hiding- place
till illness threatened."
A companion to the fairy-cradling anemone,
which also, slender of stem, braves the breeze on the wind-shorn uplands
and decks the sea-braes revelling in the briny air, is the bluebell. It
nods among the grasses on the auld fail dyke, roots on the sandy bank by
the wayside, and is a welcome flower where'er it blows. It is lengthily
named by botanists camtanula roundifolia, but its folk-lore name of
harebell tells how it tinkles warningly to the beasts who crouch in
their lair near to where it springs, and it sings to them a soft, low
melody. Scott speaks of—
"The slight Harebell that raised its head
Elastic from her airy tread,
For waving on its thin tall stern,
It bends before the gale which breaks
The wind-resisting forest trees."
The bluebell's elegant, thimble-like flowers
the fairies loved, and pranked along on pageants becapped with harebell
hats. The white species is considered lucky when found growing wild. The
commoner blue was said to be worn in honour of St. George, but St.
George's Day is in April, and the old rhyme likely enough applies to the
wild turquoise-coloured hyacinths which at this season Tennyson says are
like the heavens upbreaking through the earth.
Ash trees were lucky to have planted around
a dwelling. They defended the householder from witches, but as a green
shade they are unsatisfactory, being not only loth to clothe themselves
with leaves, but shedding them early in the season again. Throughout the
Highlands, often the very stones of a deserted cottage or a clachan of
hill-side homes have been carted away to mend walls, and a grassy mound
and a few lonely ash trees only remain to tell where there had been many
a poor black cottage grimy with peat smoke. The old folks, the kind
folks who loved the place of old are overseas. The rowan, the ash's
relative, is nurtured too by the cottage door. Its red berries make
necklets for the children. There lingers since the Roman era a belief in
red as an amulet, a preventive of evil. Coral was worn for this reason
and holly berries prized therefor. Tennant in his Tour through Scotland
mentions that farmers placed boughs of the mountain ash in their
cow-houses on the second of May to protect the beasts from malign
influence. It was an antidote to all the wiles of witchcraft. A branch
of it above the dairy doorway kept the milk sweet. The staff of the
churn was made of it so that evil spirits would play no pranks with the
butter. The ash was sought for for a Yule log, for the giant tree
Yggdrasil which roofed the gods in Asgard was the ash.
Christianity adopted the flowers and used
them as emblems of their saints, flowering at the time of their
particular festival, so many flowers became herbs of grace bracketed
with holy names. For instance, June 24 is St. John's Day, and the yellow
flower (hybericum perjorctum) became associated with that feast time.
The common fern on St. John's Eve was pulled in the height of summer
when witches were abroad; it was a panacea against their incantations.
St. Peter's wort was the cowslip, and the bunch of yellow blooms his
keys. Southern- wood, whose sweet scent savours of a country church, has
also the name apple-ringie. It is the herb of St. Ninian, Saint Rin's
wood. The "apple" is from an old word, aplen, for church, or house of
the church, so maybe St. Ninian grew the fragrant wood at his home, and
it smells still of the kirk and summer. Many flowers with lady in their
name had been adopted by the Church and consecrated to the Virgin. The
crown imperial lily has its blooms turned down and in the depth of its
bell-shaped flowers are great spots. It is said to have assumed this
shape for shame at not having bowed to the Lord, and the drops in the
depth of its cup are the everlasting tears it sheds in contrition. The
flowers throughout the year make us enjoy the friendship of the seasons.
They are, as " one who dwelleth by the castled Rhine" said, "stars that
in earth's firmament do shine." They lighten and gladden our way, and no
place is so exposed, so stony, but they thrive and glow, in some cases
turning wastes into fields of cloth of gold. No wonder Linnaus fell on
his knees and gave thanks for the " mountain gorses ever golden " so
gallantly blooming the whole year long.
There are delicate flowers which cannot face
the nipping winds, but peep out at us from nooks where they are cosseted
by stronger brothers, or seek shelter in the woodland dells where "spunkies
dance." The fragrant violets' scent recalls—
"The sweet South,
That breathes upon a bank of violets,
Stealing and giving odour."
Its companion, the primrose, has become the
badge of the Conservatives on the supposition that it was Beaconsfield's
favourite flower. For on April 19 it is torn from its home on dells and
braes and sent up to towns in ton loads to do honour to the great
leader's name, yet only once in his writings did D'Israeli mention the
pale floweret and pronounce it good for flavouring a salad.
Forget-me-nots of Heaven's divinest blue mark the streamlet's course,
where they grow profusely " for happy lovers." Blue is the sweetest
colour that is worn, green is the emblem of grief, and yellow is
forsworn or false, so lovers' knots and lovers' bouquets are of the
forget-me-not's true blue. Every flower we tread on, from the
butter-coloured celandine, the herald of wild spring, which appears
before even the "maids of February" whiten the garden with their snowy
bells, all through the seasons till "the reed is withered from the lake
and no bird sings," there is on moor and bosky shelter some plant
abloom, some tree overhead, which folk lore and association has endeared
to us. As well as legend and wood myth to interest us, beauty to please
the eyes, the flowers have been given powers to heal bodily ailments.
Nature has placed the antidote near the bane. If you have not grasped
the nettle like a man of mettle, but handled it gently and been stung
for your pains, the soothing dock is near. There is a balm as well as
beauty in every flower. Foxgloves relieve the heart-sore. The poppies
wave among the wheat—together grow the tall, cultivated staff of life,
and, planted by Nature among the straight cereal, ripples the scarlet
wave of sleep. As Hamilton Aide says:—
When on some fevered bed perchance,
The corn will not avail,
Nor wine nor any potions deep,
To call one little hour of sleep
Over the eyelids pale;
'Tis then those useless scarlet coats
(Like some of human kind),
Prove their strong hearts can soothe distress,
For all they wear a gaudy dress
That flutters in the wind;
Their sundried leaves have not in vain
Outlived the harvest day,
If life has gained one hour of peace,
If troubles for a moment cease
Under the poppies' sway."
The queen of flowers, the rose, stands for
the emblem of silence—sub rosa is a secret message. Eros in Greek
mythology presented a rose to the god of silence, and from the East
comes another proverb, A little bird told me." It is a saying often in
our mouths to-day, and in ballad story we read how Johnnie of Breadeslee,
when he and his "gude graiehounds" lay aweary with the chase and glutted
with venison they were shot by the seven foresters, Johnnie cried:-
"O, is there nae a bonny bird,
Can sing as I can say,
Could flee away to my mother's bower
And tell to fetch Jonnie away?
The starling flew to his mother's window stane,
And it whistled and it sang,
And aye the ower word o' the tune
Was 'Johnnie tarries lang.'"
The bird as a messenger is a relic of the
days when man and beast spoke together. Birds were the swift messengers
that sped from country to country. They flutter about us still, for any
one who reads the fables of old finds from east to west our little
brothers of the air bulk largely in fairy story. In Egypt to-day they
say God blesses the house on which the birds build, and we look for a
stroke of good fortune when the swallow nests in the eaves. In Scotland
the old "doocot," surviving the manor house to which it belonged, stands
alone in a field. Superstition would not allow of its being destroyed
despite its feathered inmates being voracious poachers among the
farmers' new-planted crops. It is still held it forbodes ill to strip
the pigeon house, so the feathered poachers have a roof kept over their
heads though the chimney stone is cold in the manor. Piebald birds or
beasts, by reason of their " kenspeckle" coats, are subject to notice,
and round them the country people built a host of superstitions. The
pert pyots (angiice, magpies) foretell, according to their number,
birth, death, marriage, or an heir:—
"One's joy, two grief,
Three's a wedding, four's a birth."
Or,
"One bodes grief, two's joy,
Three's a marriage, four's a boy."
Sir Humphrey Davy believed in two magpies
promising well for anglers in spring. It is held to be unlucky to see
one, the reason being, so Sir Humphrey says, in cold and stormy weather
one only leaves the nest in search of food:—
"Man on the pict horse,
What's good for the kink host?"
Dr. Jameson says a friend of his often was
asked, and the rider of the parti-coloured steed used to amiably order,
candy. Folks in spring when they first hear or see summer's heralds note
how to meet them:-
"Sit to see the swallows fly,
Stand to hear the cuckoo cry.
Is the foal before its mother's eye,
A happy year will come and fly."
In Scotland the cuckoo is called the gowk,
and in some rhymes it is well not to stand but to "gang and hear the
gowk yell." To hunt the gowk on April i, is synonymous with making a
fool of yourself, for seldom is it heard till May. A cock crowing with
its head into the door of a house was said to be a sure token that
strangers would soon cross the threshold. So prevalent was this belief,
when thus warned, the goodwife would proceed to tidy up the house and
prepare, like Leebie in Thrums, to receive visitors. A hen that crowed
brought ill luck to the owner, Sand when it evinced such an unwomanly
voice it was promptly killed. "Whistling maids and crowing hens are no
canny about a house," says the Scotch proverb. A bird coming into a
house was as a rule thought to be propitious; but if a cuckoo cried from
the chimney, it was held to be a certain sign that death would be below
that roof-tree soon. One thing in regard to this latter superstition,
the sign would seldom be heard, for the bird who has no sorrow in its
song, no winter in its year, despite its impudence in ridding itself of
the troubles of rearing its children, is a shy bird seldom seen, unique
though its marvellous monotone is, listened for as the advent of summer.
Whatever quarter you face when first in the sweet of the year you hear
the cuckoo, in that direction your steps will be led during the coming
twelve months. The robin, from its sociability and tameness, as well as
from the prominent part it played in happing up the babes in the wood
with leaves, is a prime favourite. Its breast, legend says, was dyed red
in its attempt to pluck the crown of thorns from off the Saviour's
brows. The robin by its mythical good deeds has immunity from
molestation from mankind. Even nest-hunting boys revere the home of the
red-breast. In some cases folk lore has acted as a prevention to cruelty
to birds, for rhymes threatening maledictions on those who harm popular
birds stay the hand of evildoers.
"The laverock and the untie,
The robin and the wren;
If ye harry their nests,
Ye'Il never thrive again,"
is one verse which Scotch boys believe in.
Another verse says:-
"The robin and the wren
Are God Almighty's cock and hen.
The martin and the swallow
Are God Almighty's bow and arrow."
Jenny Wren was always coupled with Cock
Robin in the popular mind, and the bustling, diminutive bird was under
the Church's protection:—
"Malisons, malisons mair than ten
That harry the Ladye of Heaven's hen."
Although folk lore preserved some birds, it
by some curious quirk has harboured the superstition that the yellow
hammer (the yorling or the yite in the Scots tongue) drank a drop of the
devil's blood on May morning. It is persistently persecuted because of
this belief. With its unlucky yellow plumage, its jerky, uncertain
flight, it is held to be of peculiar extraction:-
"Half a puddock, half a toad,
Half a yellow yorling,
Drinks a drap o' the deil's blood
Every May morning."
Its note has been translated into a threat
of retribution from its patron, the arch fiend:—
"Cis a cis a see,
If ye harry my nest
The deil will harry thee."
Alack! this menace uttered so beseechingly
by the blithe little yite (a confiding little bird, for it likes to
flutter along the hedgerows as the wayfarer plods his weary way by the
dusty highway) does not stay the boys' hand from cruelty. As if to make
lip from being withheld from plundering the robin redbreast, the yite is
sought and, when found, its nestlings are meritoriously destroyed. "When
I was young," says Mr. Napier, speaking of folk lore in the nineteenth
century, " I was present at an act of this sort, and as an illustration
of courage and affection in the parent bird, I may relate the
circumstance. The nest, with four fledglings, was about a quarter of a
mile outside the village. It was carried through the village to a quarry
as far as the opposite side. The parent bird followed the boys, uttering
a plaintive cry all the way. On reaching the quarry, the nest was laid
on the ground, and a certain distance measured off, where the boys were
to stand and throw stones at it. While this was being done, the parent
bird flew to the nest and made strenuous efforts to draw it away; and
when the stones were thrown, it flew to a little distance, continuing to
cry, and only flew away when it was made the mark for the stones. This
was but one of many such torturing scenes yorlings were doomed to
suffer, but they have survived, and their confidence in man is unshaken,
for it is as bold as the robin in seeking human companionship." The
plover was long detested in Scotland. Its wailing cry of peesweet as it
hovers overhead when its uplands are invaded by dog or man earned it
this hatred. It is a sentinel against invaders on moors and mosses. It
may well cry "about the graves of martyrs," for its warning note brought
many of them to death in covenanting times. The dragoons watched the
fluttering "teuchet" (as the plover is also called in Scotland) and knew
from its movements where their prey hid. Many a covenanting meeting had
to disperse because of the hovering, bewailing plover, fearful for their
young, clamouring overhead. There is still in some parts a traditional
antipathy to the descendants of these birds who thus unconsciously
betrayed their companions who lurked among the heather. Leyden alludes
to this long-remembered grudge against the peesweet, and, speaking of
the Presbyterian fugitives in the wilds, says:-
"The lapwing's clamorous whoop attends their
flight,
Pursues their steps where'er the wanderers go,
Till the shrill scream betrays them to the foe.
Poor bird! where'er the roaming swain intrudes
On thy bleak heaths and desert solitudes,
He curses still thy scream, thy clamorous tongue,
And crushes with his foot thy moulting young,
In stern vindictive mood."
To turn from superstitions connected with
the winged messengers of days of yore to quadrupeds —seers hold it is
ill to dream of cows. To meet in the flesh, sheep on the road are good,
especially if they pass you on the left. To descend to smaller beasts—a
bee, instead of being busy taxing the flowers for honey and wax, flying
straight towards one denotes important news a-coming. All children from
generation to generation have cherished the same rhyme to exhort the red
and black spotted, tortoise-shaped little insect to hasten off whenever
they meet it:-
"Ladybird, ladybird, fly away home,
Your house is afire, your children at home;
All but one, that lies under a stone,
Fly thee home, ladybird, ere it be gone."
In Germany, too, it is met with this
startling news. In some places in Scotland where this soldier-coated
beastie was made to spread its wings and fly, after it folks sang:—
"Lady, Lady Landers,
Lady, Lady Landers,
Take up your coats about your head,
And fly away to Flanders."
We also are all brought up in the belief it
is daring of the fates to kill a spider, whether it be the diminutive
scarlet one or the longer-legged, web-spinning, fly-catching species. As
Lord Rosebery says: "It is never wise to explore what has given you
pleasure and to endeavour to trace a delightful fiction to the austere
sources of fact," and the tale of Bruce and the spider is so woven into
Scottish history, I do not think we would believe King Robert himself if
he came back and told us it was all a fiction. The persistence of the
spider and the lesson it taught the disheartened king, the sermon it
preached for all, how to endure and strive till the goal is gained, is a
tale every Scotch child is told, and points a moral, and the spider
truly adorns a tale. Cobwebs the stirring housewife cannot endure, but
she dreads to slaughter the weaver of them. A cricket singing on the
hearth is believed to bring riches to the household so favoured.
There is a deal of the doctrine of
forgiveness preached in folk lore and fairy tales, despite the cold
blood case of the pitiless treatment of the yellow hammer and a
hereditary dislike to the betraying plover. It was believed evil went
into the lower animals, and by this means they saved human beings by
absorbing it. Pigs, cats, and specially hares are beasts full of ill
omen and unlucky if they cross the path of landsman or seaman setting
forth on a venture. Pussie appears in many rhymes and warnings. There
was always a suspicion hanging about a cat of being an assistant at
witchcraft, especially if black—a colour associated with the powers of
evil, the devil's livery. The grimalkin of the Herd of Men was a
somewhat sacred animal ill Catholic times. There is a game called the
Priest's Cat played by rustics at Scottish firesides in the gloamin'. A
piece of stick was made hot in the fire and handed from one to another
of the circle, idle by want of light, sitting around the hearth.
"About wi' that, about wi that,
Keep alive the Priest's cat,"
one of the party by the fireside said, and
passed the brand from hand to hand. When the flame died the person who
held the stick was liable to a fine. In days of old, when the priest's
cat in the flesh died, there was great lamentation throughout the
country-side, as it was supposed to turn into some supernatural being
who would work mischief among the human flock, so to keep the priest's
live mouse-destroyer in life was a matter of prime importance. Still in
some districts people fear to let a cat die in the house, however much
of a domestic pet poor "pussie bauldrons" may have been when well. To
avoid the catastrophe a bed in an outhouse was made so that it might not
expire under the roof tree. To the cat good treatment was as a rule
meted out, for from the East it brought with it a halo of sacredness.
With one or two exceptions, in the folk lore
of beast and bird we see the initial teaching of the fairy tales to be
kind to the lowliest of creatures, for no one knows how good a turn they
may be able to do one. The mouse can nibble the lion's bonds, the bird
fly over earthly enemies' heads and bring news of friends, forewarnings
of raids. Even the plague-carrying, hated rats leave the unsafe ship,
telling its tale of rotten timbers to those who choose to listen. |
