Part 5 (1/2)

They seemed a boar's form To bear over their cheeks; Twisted with gold, Variegated and hardened in the fire; This kept the guard of life.

At the pile was Easy to be seen The mail s.h.i.+rt covered with gore, The hog of gold, The boar hard as iron.

In the episode relating the events attendant on the battle of Finsburgh, in the same poem, we find similar importance attached to the boar, as the warrior's protector. We read--

Of the martial Scyldings, The best of warriors, On the pile was ready; At the heap was Easy to be seen The blood-stained tunic, The swine all golden, The boar iron-hard, etc.

In the ”Life of Merlin,” Arthur and his kinsman, Hoel, are described as ”two lions,” and ”two moons.” In the same poem, Hoel is styled the ”Armorican boar.”

In the Welsh poem, ”The G.o.dodin,” by Aneurin, are several allusions to the boar and the bull, as warlike appellations:--

It was like the tearing onset of the woodland boar; Bull of the army in the mangling fight.

The furze was kindled by the ardent spirit, the bull of conflict.

And those s.h.i.+elds were s.h.i.+vered before the herd of the roaring Beli.[28]

The boar proposed a compact in front of the course--the great plotter.

Adan, the son of Ervai, there did pierce, Adan pierced the haughty boar.

Mr. F. Metcalfe, in his ”Englishman and Scandinavian,” says--”Indeed this porcine device was common to all the Northern nations who wors.h.i.+pped Freya and Freyr. The helmet of the Norwegian king, Ali, was called Hildigolltr, the boar of war, and was prized beyond measure by his victors (Prose Edda, I., 394). But long before that Tacitus (Germ., 45) had recorded that the Esthonians, east of the Baltic, wore swine-shaped amulets, as a symbol of the mother of the G.o.ds.

Tacitus adds--”This” (the wild-boar symbol) ”serves instead of weapons or any other defence, and gives safety to the servant of the G.o.ddess, even in the midst of the foe.”

This connection of the boar with the religious ceremonies and warlike exploits of our pagan ancestors is often referred to in the Edda. The valiant Norseman believed that when he entered Walhalla he should join the combats of the warriors each morning, and hack and hew away as in earthly conflict, till the slain for the day had been ”chosen,” and mealtime arrived, when the vanquished and victorious returned together to feast on the ”everlasting boar” (shrimnir), and carouse on mead and ale with the aesir. The boar's head, which figured so conspicuously in the Christmas festivities of our ancestors, is evidently a relic, like the mistletoe and the yule-log, of pagan times.

There is nothing, therefore, improbable in the proposition that the standard, totem, or helmet-crest of some devastating Teutonic chieftain like Penda, the ferocious pagan conqueror of Oswald, may have been of this porcine character. The Christian adherents of the Northumbrian king and saint would very easily confound him and the devastation attendant upon his victorious march through their country, with the dethroned and abhorred pagan deity whose emblem formed his crest or ”totem,” as well as with the older wild boar storm-fiend, or ”the monster who prowled over the neighbourhood, inflicting injury on man and beast,” and for the subdual of which the sanct.i.ty of the edifice of the saintly monarch was alone effectual. In the prophecy attributed to Merlin, King Arthur is described as the wild boar of Cornwall, that would ”devour” his enemies.

The mingling of ancient superst.i.tious fears with the more modern Christianity, especially with reference to such matters as charms, prophylactics, etc., is of very common occurrence even at the present day. Sir John Lubbock, in his ”Origin of Civilisation and the Primitive Condition of Man,” says--”When man, either by natural progress or the influence of a more advanced race, rises to a conception of a higher religion, he still retains his old beliefs, which linger on side by side with, and yet in utter opposition to, the higher creed. The new and more powerful spirit is an addition to the old pantheon, and diminishes the importance of the older deities; gradually the wors.h.i.+p of the latter sinks in the social scale, and becomes confined to the ignorant and young. Thus a belief in witchcraft still flourishes amongst our agricultural labourers and the lowest cla.s.s in our great cities, and the deities of our ancestors survive in the nursery tales of our children.

We must, therefore, expect to find in each race traces--nay, more than traces--of lower religions.”

Some parties regard the Winwick sculpture as ”St. Anthony's pig,” but they acknowledge they know of no connection of that saint with the parish. But, as I have shown in the previous chapter, ”the deeds of one mythical hero are sure, when he is forgotten, to be attributed to some other man of mark, who for the time being fills the popular fancy.”

Keightley, in his ”Fairy Mythology,” says--”Every extraordinary appearance is found to have its extraordinary cause a.s.signed, a cause always connected with the _history_ or _religion, ancient or modern_, of the country, and not unfrequently _varying with the change of faith_.

The mark on Adam's Peak, in Ceylon, is by the Buddhists ascribed to Buddha; by the Mohammedans to Adam.”

Mr. Mackenzie Wallace, in his ”Russia,” speaking of the Finns and their Russian neighbours, says--”The friendly contact of two such races naturally led to a curious blending of the two religions. The Russians adopted many customs from the Finns, and the Finns adopted still more from the Russians. When Yumala and the other Finnish deities did not do as they were desired, their wors.h.i.+ppers naturally applied for protection or a.s.sistance to the Madonna and the 'Russian G.o.d.' If their own traditional magic rites did not suffice to ward off evil influences, they naturally tried the effect of crossing themselves as the Russians do in moments of danger.” In another place he says--”At the harvest festivals, Tchuvash peasants have been known to pray first to their own deities and then to St. Nicholas, the miracle-worker, who is the favourite saint of the Russian peasantry. This dual wors.h.i.+p is sometimes recommended by the Yornzi--a cla.s.s of men who correspond to the medicine men among the Red Indians.” He truly observes--”popular imagination always uses heroic names as pegs on which to hang traditions.”

Bishop Percy, in the preface to his translation of ”Mallet's Northern Antiquities,” says--”Nothing is more contagious than superst.i.tion, and therefore we must not wonder if, in ages of ignorance, one wild people catch up from another, though of very different race, the most arbitrary and groundless opinions, or endeavour to imitate them in such rites and practices as they are told will recommend them to the G.o.ds, or avert their anger.”

Jacob Grimm says (Deutsche Mythologie)--”A people whose faith is falling to pieces will save here and there a fragment of it, by fixing it on a new and unpersecuted object of veneration.”

It appears, therefore, that the Winwick monster, in this respect, is but an apt ill.u.s.tration of ordinary mythological transference of attributes or emblems, which in no way invalidates the more remote origin to which I have ascribed it, or its connection with the totem or beast symbol of the heathen warrior. The boar, indeed, has been a sacred symbol for ages amongst the Aryan nations. Herodotus (b. 3, c. 59) says that the Eginetae, after defeating the Samians in a sea-fight, ”cut off the prows of their boats, which represented the figure of a boar, and dedicated them in the temple of Minerva, in Egina.”

The Rev. Sir G. W. c.o.x, in his ”Introduction to Mythology and Folk-Lore,” referring to the Greek war G.o.d Ares, says--”In the Odyssey his name is connected with Aphrodite, whose love he is said to have obtained; but other traditions tell us that when she seemed to favour Adonis, Ares changed himself into a boar, which slew the youth of whom he was jealous.”

The Mussulman's abhorrence of roast pork is well known. Amongst the Turkomans of Central Asia (the ancient home of our Aryan ancestors) the prowess of the living animal is likewise regarded with a strange superst.i.tious dread, evidently akin to some more ancient belief in the supernatural attributes of the animal. Arminius Vambery, in his ”Travels in Central Asia” (having narrowly escaped serious injury from a wild porcine a.s.sailant), informs us he was seriously a.s.sured by a Turkoman friend that he might regard himself as very lucky, inasmuch as ”death by the wound of a wild boar would send even the most pious Mussulman nedgis (unclean) into the next world, where a hundred years' burning in purgatorial fire would not purge away his uncleanness.”

Since the above was written I have perceived a pa.s.sage in Mr. Fiske's essay on ”Werewolves,” in his ”Myths and Myth-makers,” that seems not only to strengthen the conjecture that the boar was the crest or ”totem”