CHAPTER IX.1

SERPENTS AND PRECIOUS STONES.

The Good Serpent or Dragon in Christian times-Emblem of Kingly Power-King Arthur-Owen's History of SerpentsMen Serpents-Moses and the Serpent-Good and Evil Serpents The former the Symbol of Gods and Benefactors— The Midgard Worm-Indian Legend-The Serpent as Guardian of Gems-Virtues of the Guardian transferred to the Gems-Legends of Gems-Abraham and the Ruby-The Gesta Romanorum-The Serpent-stone, or Bezoar-Musk as an Antidote to Snake-bites-Sculptured Snakes rendered Tombs Sacred-Legends of Serpents in connection with Rude Stone Monuments-The Serpent and Sun-worship-Serpent Mounds The Serpent Egg of the Druids, and the Mundane Egg-The Serpent Myth of Turanian Origin-Disseminated by Colonists of that Race.

ALL those who have visited the reptile house at the Zoological Gardens must have experienced, in a greater or less degree, that sensation of mingled loathing and fascination which the sight of the writhing, hissing, double-tongued monsters contained therein commonly excites in all beholders. "Cursed art thou above cattle, and above every beast of the field," seems to spring spontaneously to the lips, yet probably at least half of those who are so ready to use the words of the curse, bear about their persons, either in pin or ring, necklace or bracelet, or ear-ring, the semblance of the reptile they look upon with so much abhorrence. The lady places upon her finger, and the gentleman upon his breast, a jewel of price set in the head of a golden serpent, the valued gift probably of a lover or friend, who would

1 Reproduced in part from St. Paul's Magazine.

symbolize thereby the eternity of his or her attachment. "The serpent with a ruby in its mouth" has always been a favourite love-token, doubtless at first employed as a charm, with a deeply mystical meaning; but the modern jeweller, as he fashions the scaly monster to adorn the finger of the dainty lady or the breast of the warrior, little dreams that he is perpetuating one of the oldest superstitions of the heathen world. Had he lived in those remote ages, the lady and her lover must have been content without the coveted jewel, for the venerated form of this deadly reptile was sacred to the gods, and adorned only the images of divinities and their attendant priests, or the sovereign, who was himself looked upon as divine. He might indeed have been called upon to make a collar of gems; but it would have been to adorn the neck of the living reptile—the gift, not of a lover, but of a devout worshipper of the divinity enshrined within the writhing folds of the pampered serpent, for one of the curious anomalies in the history of this deadly reptile is, that it has ever been looked upon as god-like in all countries, the symbol of power and dominion, the revealer of hidden knowledge, the guardian of hidden treasure, and the emblem of good and beneficent gods, until gradually it became changed both in form and character, and, as the dragon, is now looked upon in Christian countries as the emblem of sin and of the devil; yet even in early Christian times it retained its character as the symbol of kingly power, for we find that pattern Christian knight, King Arthur, dreaming of himself as a great dragon, and assuming as his standard, after his father Uther Pendragon, the dragon of the great Pendragonship.

"And to his crown the golden dragon clung,

And down his robe the dragon writhed in gold,
And from the carven-work behind him, crept
Two dragons gilded, sloping down to make
Arms for his chair, while all the rest of them,
Thro' knots and ropes and folds innumerable,
Fled ever thro' the wood-work, till they found
The new design wherein they lost themselves."

And thus, in armour covered with twining dragons,

stands Arthur as one of the Christian worthies surrounding the tomb of the Emperor Maximilian at Innsbruck. In almost all ancient nations the dragon seems to have been borne as a standard, as it is at present in China, and the bearers were called Dracones. The Romans borrowed the custom from the Parthians or Assyrians, and their dracones were figures of dragons painted red on the flags; but among the Persians and Parthians they were like the Roman eagles, figures in full relievo, so that the Romans often mistook them for real dragons.1

"Among serpents," says Owen, the historian of the serpent, "authors place dragons, creatures terrible and fierce in aspect and nature. They are divided into Apodes and Pedates; some with feet and some without; some are privileged with wings, and others are destitute of wings and feet."

According to Herodotus some serpents are born with necklaces of emeralds, and in many old books of Natural History we find snakes figured with crowns on their heads, being told that they are to be met with thus adorned by nature, in the deserts of Africa. It was doubtless one of these crowned serpents which disputed the march of his brother Alexander the Great into his dominions, and kept his whole army at bay for a considerable time. I say his brother, for it is reported that both that great conqueror and Scipio Africanus claimed to be descended from serpents, sharing that enviable parentage with large tribes of high antiquity in India, Africa, and America, now almost extinct.

Of all the strange pages of the world's history, that which relates to this deadly reptile is the most romantic and contradictory. If we turn to the Bible, we find the following strange anomalies: the sinful tempter, set forth as the type of Him who was tempted, yet without sin; the most venomous of beasts presented as the image of the healer; the seducer of our first parents, proposed as an example of wisdom to Christians.

1 Encyclopædia Britannica, 8th Edition.
2 See Owen's History of Serpents.

That these apparent contradictions should have given rise to innumerable controversies is not surprising, but into these I do not wish to enter. We are all, I presume, now ready to agree with Josephus when he says, that "Moses in speaking of events which occurred after the seventh day, did so philosophically;" wherefore, we may assume his serpent to be a philosophical serpent, rather than that monster represented by later Rabbinical writers, who, according to Owen, affirm, that "Satan when he wished to tempt Eve, came riding upon a serpent of the bigness of a camel," and, doubtless, all glittering with gold and gems, or as described by Milton

"Not with indented wave,

Prone on the ground, as since, but on his rear
Circular base of rising folds, that tower'd
Fold above fold a surging maze, his head
Crested aloft, and carbuncle his eyes;
With burnish'd neck of verdant gold erect
Amidst his circling spires, that on the grass
Floated redundant; pleasing was his shape,
And lovely-"

The Universal History tells us that—

'The serpent whose body the devil possessed was not of the common kind, but something like that fiery sort which we are told are bred in Arabia and Egypt. They are of a shining yellowish colour like brass, and by the motion of their wings and vibration of their tails, reverberating the sunbeams, make a glorious appearance; these serpents are called in Scripture seraphs or seraphim, and gave name to those bright angelical beings which we commonly understand by that appellation, and it is probable that the angels when they ministered to Adam and Eve were wont to put on certain splendid forms, some of them the form of cherubim or beautiful flying oxen, and others the shape of seraphim, winged and shining serpents."

Certain it is that Moses in making the serpent the revealer of hidden knowledge, adopted a symbol easy to be understood by the Israelites after their long sojourn in Egypt, where the serpent was adored long before the

birth of Moses, as the emblem of Kneph, Cnubis, or Noum, the ram-headed divinity, supposed to be the prototype of Osiris, and of the Jupiter Ammon of the Greeks, the source of all knowledge and civilization; where also they might have become acquainted with that other serpent, the giant Apophis, slain by Horus, the emblem of evil and the evident origin of the Python of Apollo, of the serpent strangled by Hercules in his cradle, and of that slain by Krisna in India.1

Owen says "The Egyptians divided serpents into good and evil, the emblems of good and the messengers of wrath," and this double character may be traced in almost all countries, but more especially wherever the influence of Egypt extended; yet, strange as it may seem, I think that we shall find that its evil character is of a later date, and that the original conception of this much-dreaded reptile was that of a shrine or emblem of all good and beneficent gods.

Dr. Tylor, in treating of this subject, says

It is scarcely proved that savage races, in all their mystic contemplations of the serpent, ever developed out of their own minds the idea, to us so familiar, of adopting it as a personification of evil."

And again he says

Serpents hold a prominent place in the religions of the world, as the incarnations, shrines, or symbols, of high deities. Such were the rattlesnakes, worshipped in the Natchez temple of the sun, and the snake belonging in name and figure to the Aztec deity Quetzalcoatl; the snake as worshipped still by the Slave Coast negro, not for itself, but for its indwelling deity; the snake kept and fed with milk in the temple of the old Slavonic god Potrimpos; the serpent symbol of the healing god Asklepios, who abode in, or manifested himself through, the huge tame snakes kept in his temples; and the Phoenician serpent, with its tail in its mouth, symbol of the world and of the Heaven god Taaut, in its original meaning probably a mythic world snake, like the Scan

In these serpent-slayers I would see the conquerors of aboriginal tribes and founders of new dynasties.