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and in substance not unlike the stones in Carps heads. This is agreeable unto the
determination of Aldrovandus, and is also the judgment of the learned Spigelius
in his Epistle unto Pignorius. If only a toad with an indurated cranium could be
discovered, everything would fall into its right place!
Through the Middle Ages men believed that the toad exercised the power of
fascination not only upon its insect prey, but upon all other creatures, including
man himself, and even so far back as the days of the classical writers it was a fully
accepted belief that whosoever had the misfortune to be looked squarely in the
eyes by a toad would find that, basilisk-like, the gaze to him meant death.
The belief that the crocodile shed tears over his prey is a very ancient one;
various motives have been assigned for this grief, but the generally accepted
belief is that the whole proceeding is a fraud, perpetrated with the idea of attracting
sympathetic passers-by within reach of his formidable jaws; hence he has been
accepted as a symbol of dissimulation. We get an excellent illustration of this in
Shakespeare s King Henry VIII., where Henry is said by Queen Margaret to be
Too full of foolish pity; and Gloster s show
Beguiles him, as the mournful crocodile
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With sorrow snares relenting passengers. 14
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Spenser, in the Faerie Queene,15 deals equally clearly and explicitly with the
same fancy in the lines
As when a wearie traveiler, that strayes
By muddy shore of broad seven-mouthed Nile,
Unweeting of the perillous wandring wayes,
Doth meete a cruell craftie Crocodile,
Which in false grefe hyding his harmefull guile,
Doth weepe full sore, and sheddeth tender teares;
The foolish man, that pities all this while
His mournful plight, is swallowed up unawares,
Forgetfull of his owne that mindes an other s cares.
Thereupon, ungallantly adds an old writer, came this proverb that is
applied unto women when they weep. Lachrymae Crocodili, the meaning
whereof is, that as the Crocodile when he crieth goeth about most to deceive, so
doth a woman most commonly when she weepeth. Thus Othello misanthropically
exclaims
If that the earth could teem with woman s tears,
Each drop she falls would prove a crocodile.
In the same spirit Barnfield, in his Cassandra, written in the year 1595, has
the following passage:
He, noble lord, fearlesse of hidden treason,
Sweetely salutes this weeping Crocodile;
Excusing every cause with instant reason
They kept him from her sight so long a while;
She faintly pardons him; smiling by art,
For life was in her lookes, death in her hart.
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The author of the Speculum Mundi, who is ever seeking a moral16 or an
opportunity of improving the occasion, declares that the crocodile when he hath
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devoured a man and eaten all up but the head, will sit and weep over it17 as if he
expressed a great portion of sorrow for his cruel feast, but it is nothing so, for
when he weeps it is because his hungrie paunch wants such another prey. And
from hence the proverb took beginning, viz. Crocodiles tears; which is then
verified when one weeps cunningly without sorrow, dissembling heaviness out
of craftinesse; like unto many rich men s heirs who mourn in their gowns when
they laugh in their sleeves; or like to other dissemblers of the like nature who
have sorrow in their eyes, but joy and craftiness in their hearts. However this
may be, the supposititious tears of the crocodile have been turned to abundant
literary and moral account. The tears of the crocodile were supposed, according
to some who were great authorities in their day and generation, to crystallize into
gems, but as supposititious tears could only produce supposititious gems the
actual value would be but small.
In an early Bestiary it states that if a crocodile comes across a man it kills him,
but it remains inconsolable the rest of its life; but why it suffers this life-long
remorse we are not told. This old writer also tells us of the hydra, a very wise
animal who understands well how to injure the crocodile. The modus operandi
is very simple, and the injury inflicted seems beyond question: When the hydra
sees the crocodile go to sleep it covers itself over with slimy mud, and wriggles
itself into the crocodile s mouth, penetrates into its stomach, and then tears it
assunder. The dolphin appears to be another foe to be by no means despised.
Pliny tells us that when these desire to pass up the Nile the crocodiles, who
regard the river as their peculiar preserve, greatly resent their presence, and
endeavour to drive them back. As the dolphins fully realize that they are no
match for their foes in fair fight, they take refuge in their superior activity and
craft, and having a dorsal fin as sharp edged as a knife, they swim swiftly beneath
the crocodiles, and as the under portion of these creatures is unprotected by the
armour that is so conspicuous on the upper parts of their bodies, with one sharp
gash they rip the crocodile completely open.
It was a Greek superstition that beneath the visible exterior of the seal was
concealed a woman, and that when a swimmer ventured too far he ran great risk
of being seized by a seal and strangled. The creature then carried the lifeless
body to some desert shore and wept over it, from which arose the popular saying
that when a woman shed false tears she cried like a seal. As the desert shore
implies absence of spectators, it seems difficult to tell what authority there is for
the statement as to what went on there, and even when this initial difficulty is
overcome it seems equally impossible to suggest any satisfactory reason for the
gruesome proceedings of this weird woman-seal or seal-woman, either in the
preliminary murderous attack or the subsequent lamentation. Whatever strange
idea may have originally started the story, it is a curious parallel to that of the
weeping crocodile.
The salamander received its full mythical development in mediaeval days,
though the older writers refer to it occasionally, and we note in the writings of
such men as Pliny the first steps taken towards the erection of that fabric of fancy
and superstition that later on became so conspicuous. The ancients asserted
that the salamander was never seen in bright weather, but only made its appearance
during heavy rain, and that it was of so frigid a nature that if it did but touch fire it
quenched it as completely as if ice were piled thereon. It was, moreover, declared to
be so venomous that the mere climbing of a tree by the animal is amply sufficient
to poison all the fruit, so that those who afterwards eat thereof perished without
remedy, and that if it entered a river the stream was so effectually poisoned that
all who drank thereof must die. Glanvil, an English writer in the thirteenth century,
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