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My nationality as a "doompt Ingleeshmaan" did not prevent the venerable Dutchman from starting a "deal," and asking for a glass of

"square face." The "deal" settled and the " square face" drunk, he became noisy, and seemed inclined to stop where he was for the night. But the old woman told me they had a twenty-mile trek before they got home, and so at last hauled him off.

Outside the store was the head of Lake Chrissie, lost in sandy shallows, the water stretching away for seven miles, shaped like a halfmoon; on the left hand a beach of hard, white sand, excellent cantering ground. High banks shut out the country round, the lake was my company. Well out in the centre the water-fowl paddled fearlessly; now and then a flight of geese would join them with a whirr and much splashing. The farther end of the lake was circular and singularly devoid of life. Altogether Lake Chrissie hardly came up to my expectations. I felt a little bit disappointed, the ride had been so long, the goal appeared so small, and I rode up the bank which enclosed my disappointment. The change was magical. Instead of the dreary veldt the country was broken into undulations crossing each other like network, the surface blackened by herds of buck. Everywhere patches of darker colour against the green, dotted with specks of white, told of their rendezvous. Each family had a patch to itself; the "spring-bok" apart from the "bless-bok"; the "reed-bok" more scattered; the tiny "oriby" in between ; farther away a line of bigger beasts with shaggy heads, and feet incessantly pawing up the turf, the prize coveted by South African sportsmen, the "blue wildebeast," the "gnu" of our childhood. I counted twenty separate herds, and there must have been many more in the hollows which I could not see. I was less than a quarter of a mile from the nearest antelope, but they took no notice of me.

· After gazing at the scene till my eyes grew dim, I turned away towards the lake, the shadows creeping across the water warning me that it was time to be off. Camp was at the store, a good eight miles' ride in a country where darkness falls quickly and the traveller misses the pleasant evening twilight.

As I rode along the beach the rush of wings overhead was continuous, the geese in long lines making for a point where they seemed to alight. This place was in a hollow, separated from the lake by sand-hills, so my approach was not observed by its visitors. The geese were so eager to reach it that they never swerved, although many of them flew very close to me. Every bird was a black and white goose, like those I had seen in the morning, and gave an occasional quack of satisfaction on sighting his roosting-place.

It was so close to me that I could not forbear from dismounting, and creeping behind the sand-hills got up to within fifty yards of the birds, a clump of rushes allowing me to see all that was going on without being seen myself. I was looking down on a long, swampy valley, perhaps half a mile in length, a pool of water winding through the middle, its line broken with clumps of rushes, the banks crowded with birds; standing, not in groups, but in one solid rank, many deep, like soldiers halted, every goose chattering, waddling, or polishing his feathers for the night. The assembly counted many thousands, and continually a fresh string would swoop down amid noisy greetings. In the gathering darkness the birds looked like rows of pigmies rather than solid geese and ganders. That marsh must have been the bedroom of every goose at the salt lakes.

It seemed a pity to disturb them in their happy home; I could have shot those nearest me with ease, but the larder was well stocked, and I had not the heart to intrude where I was not wanted. To this day I never meet roast goose without thinking of my moderation with his brethren at the salt lakes.

The ride to camp was long and a bit dreary; the night noises, always strange and weird, were multiplied in the stillness; some birds flapped across in an uncanny way; the antelope drinking at the lake flitted away more like ghosts than honest buck; the stars shone like steel points-the lake, catching their glitter, reflecting it endlessly; its dark-grey water my only guide. Night grew on apace; often I thought I saw the camp-fire ahead, but it was only a glowworm. The way seemed so long and never-ending that I began to think I should have to camp out with my saddle for a pillow, poetical enough in print, but a dreary business when you have tried it before and know how cold and damp it is. But the pony was a good one and stepped out heartily, till in front, oh, so far away! blazed out a spark, redder than the stars, a spark which the tedious lake did not reflect, a spark that grew bigger, making the pony prick his ears and quicken his pace, till it grew brighter, and the sand softer, and the pony more lumbering; then, all at once, as if by magic, the darkness melted back in a circle.round the camp-fire, from which rang out cheerful voices. The next minute I was out of the saddle, surrounded by the three young men, in shirt-sleeves, from the store, who seemed to say that dinner was ready. It was a pleasant ending to one of many pleasant days which I spent at the South African Salt Lakes.

W. E. MONTAGUE.

MYTHS OF THE STARS, LIGHT,

AND TIME.

STELLAR FIGURES IN ECCLESIASTICAL SCULPTURE-
POPULAR RHYMES.

W

HATEVER traveller may have sat among the crowded tombs of the once famous abbey of Clonmacnoise, a quiet spot above the sedgy Shannon, some few miles below Athlone, has probably spent some time in puzzling over the ancient sculptures of the "Cross of the Scriptures." Besides the scriptural subjects represented in its compartments, which give it this name, some other curious figures may be clearly made out—a hand within a nimbus or ring; heads within a sort of cable or snake-like setting; and a nondescript figure, above, a woman, below, a bellows, or something like it. There is also a cat, seemingly playing music; and this same subject is found not many miles away as a public-house sign.

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Although there is no tradition, new or old, to explain these figures, they have certain analogies. The legendary monster of Leitir-Dalláin, born of an unnatural union, was very much like one of the images on the stone cross, a human head upon it, the make of a smith's bellows the rest." On the cross at Durrow, in the same county, is a dog or other animal within a circle; at Glendalough, a dog within a triangle (cf. Cerberus), and other curious figures; at Templedouglas, in Donegal, a unicorn-like creature on a large arm and hand; at Cashel, a Sagittarius aiming at a lion, and a bull. A hand, three-fingered, generally within a nimbus, occurs on various French cathedrals and abbeys, e.g. Saintes.' The leaden bullae of Victor II. show such a hand issuing from a cloud and giving a key to Saint Peter.

As we find the whole zodiac sculptured, in a celebrated piece, on the porch of the cathedral of Amiens, and again on the portal of at least one old English church, there seems good reason to understand the archer, lion, and bull at Cashel as Sagittarius, Leo, and Taurus. It seems to have been a tradition of the ecclesiastical masons to beautify the terrestrial temples with celestial images.

1 Maury, Légendes Picuses du Moyen-Age, 114 n.

The dog, hand, and piping cat should belong to the same class; for it is, in the first place, unlikely that the last of these was sculptured as a joke on Saint Ciarán's cross; secondly, such matters, in ancient art, legend, or popular rhyme, are found generally to date from very old times we meet tradition everywhere, and little invention.

The cat and fiddle, cat and pipes, occur in English children's rhymes :

the cat and the fiddle;

The cow jumped over the moon;

The little dog laughed. .

...

And the dish ran away with the spoon.

We could show that such rhymes are often old mythological and astronomical relics connected with the husbandman's year. Such is the rhyme on Gilly Garter (jarretière), the garter lost in rain and afterwards ground up as corn; that on Dicky Dilver, or Delver (the husbandman), and his wife of silver, thrown by the miller (like the grain-god Tammuz) "in the river "; and that about the one-eyed gunner killing all the birds (days?) of the summer. Such is Burns's

verse, adapted from an old harvest song:

There were three kings into the east,

Three kings baith great and high,

And they hae sworn a solemn oath

John Barleycorn should die.

These three kings are the three stars of Orion's Belt, "les Trois Roys," and the Three Mowers of the French and German farmers, the "Wäinämöinen's Scythe" of the Finns.1

The piping or fiddling cat or cow is apparently one animal with the spinning sow or cow of popular tales. Now this truie qui file is again sculptured on the cathedral porches of Chartres and Saint-Polde-Leon; it occurred as a tavern sign and street name at Lyons and Dijon; and a mountebank was burned at Paris for exhibiting a living magical spinning sow there in 1466—an animal answering to the learned pig and sow of knowledge of English fairs, and of popular tradition. We will show below that the spinning or playing animal must be an old conception of the seven stars, Ursa Major. The music played or web spun is time, the seven stars being connected, as we shall find in many instances, with the week.

The "cow" in our rhyme and "little dog" suggest Ovid's description of Taurus (Fast. iv. 717):

Vacca sit an taurus, non est cognoscere promptum ;

Castren, Finnische Mythologie, 320.

Grimm.

2 Monnier, Traditions Populaires Comparées, 506, 507.

and Canicula, the dog-star. Taurus and Ursa Major seem to be confounded sometimes in mythological legend.

The "dish" is in all probability the Dervish's Dish, or Broken Dish (the Northern Crown); and the "spoon" again Ursa Major, now called the Dipper,' or ladle, in the United States.

LIVING NAMES OF ORION'S BELT.

1. Viewed severally these three stars are in Ireland The Three Wandering Brothers (Westmeath). The Greenlanders and some Red Indian tribes have a like conception; or The Three Children in the Boiler o' Lead-" God put them up there to guide the sailors." This boiler of lead figures in versions of the ancient tale The Three Children of Uisnech, and in The Black Thief. Or The Sailors' Stars, and the Leading Stars. Boys in Yorkshire call them the Sailors' Board.

2. The figure is a measuring rod, rod of rule, and ruler. The King's Rod (Slat-a'-righ, Tyrone); the Merchant's Rod (Slat-a'cheannaidhe, Mayo, Donegal, etc.); or the Pedlar's Rod, the Tailor's Yardwand, the Weaver's Yard, the Yard, the Rule of Three (Westmeath, etc.)

In Leitrim we find the old name, The Lady's Ell, implying the conception (a) of an elbow, forearm (b) of a measure, like the merchant's or tailor's wand. The foregoing names have been collected from living oral tradition.

CELTIC LEGENDS WITH STELLAR BASES-ORION'S BELT

A HAND, &c.

"The Lady's Ell" is Righ-Mná-Nuadat, the forearm of Nuada's wife, renowned in very ancient tradition, especially in connexion with the fabled breaking out of the River Boyne. The husband of the lady Bóind (whence Boyne) is Nuada Necht or Nechtán (ie. the bright or white), otherwise Nuada Silverhand (Arget-lámh). At "the Age of the World 3310" the Four Masters duly chronicle the cutting off of this Nuada's hand, and the fitting in its place of a hand of silver.

The silver hand or silver "arm "3 of Nuada, "shining hand" of

1 Webster, s. v.

sort of riddles.

Some of the popular rhymes referred to above seem to be a

? The word is glossed "clean," "snow-white."

3

O'Curry, Fate of Children of Tuirenn, 158.

VOL. CCLVIII. NO. 1853.

M M

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