precautions against the removal of the knife, for if anyone should withdraw it you will end your days a wolf.

Compare also Malory's "Morte Arthur," book xix. c. 11, and supra, p. 151, note 2. Lycaon, King of Arcadia, was changed by Jupiter into a wolf in punishment for his cruelties.-Ovid. Pliny says that one of the family of Antæus was chosen annually by lot for the fate of being a wolf for nine years. The Neuri had the faculty of assuming the form of wolves,—Herodot. (iv. 105). Tiridates, King of Armenia, a persecutor of the Christians, was, according to legend, changed into an animal by St. Gregory the Illuminator, the apostle of Armenia, but finally converted and baptized; and there is a story of St. Patrick having changed a Welsh chief Vereticus into a wolf. There is a passage in the Otia Imperialia of Gervase of Tilbury which mentions the common belief in lycanthropy, and associates the transformation with the moon's phases, as is also done in the curious story of the lupis-homem in J. Latouche's "Travels in Portugal," third edition, pp. 25-34. In the lastnamed instance the blood of a new-born infant, if sucked by the werwolf, effects its disenchantment and return to human shape. See a note on the word "Werwolf," by Sir F. Madden, prefixed to the Romance of William of Palerme (otherwise known as William the Werwolf). Edited by W. Skeat for the Early English Text Society; London, 1867.-W. Hertz, Der Werwolf, Stuttgart, 1862.

CUPID AND PSYCHE (p. 112).

Ritual or ceremonial observances to celebrate the disappearance of the cold and the advent of the warm season, may be traced in various "games" or customs still extant in different parts of Europe. An effigy is borne in procession and festally burned or drowned, after which a lord or queen of May is chosen, crowned, and led in triumph. See Grimm (Teutonic Mythology, ii. p. 763, etc.), and Freytag, De initiis scenicae poesis apud Germanos; Berlin, 1838, p. 13. There is an analogous Slavonic custom of celebrating the exit of Winter and entrance of Spring observed in the month of March,—a straw effigy of Morana (Death) is taken to a field and there burned or torn to bits, or dragged into a river and bonfires are lighted in token of triumph. Some analogy may be traced between the story of Apuleius and the Norwegian folk tale, Eastwards from the Sun and Westwards

from the Moon (Asbjörnson and Moe, ii. p. 102); o Principe das Palmas Verdes, No. 44 of A. Coelho's “Contos Populares Portuguezes," Lisbon, 1879; and the Sicilian King Porco (Gonzenbach, No. 42, i. p. 285). See also the essay on Cupid and Psyche in Friedländer's "Darstellungen aus der Sittengeschichte Roms. Anhang.,” i. p. 509-548, fourth edition; see also Creuzer, Symbolik und Mythologie, B. iii. ch. 6, § 5, 6. Boccaccio says (Gen. Deorum, lib. v. c. 22) that a whole volume would be required for the complete explanation of this allegory. Landau (Quellen, pp. 311, 314), shows how closely Boccaccio (Decameron, v. 10 and vii. 2) has followed Apuleius, as has likewise Mr. Robert Bridges in his poem, Eros and Psyche; London, 1886. See F. Liebrecht, Zur Volkskunde, p. 377, Maibaum, and the same writer's Amor und Psyche, Zeus und Semele, Purûravas und Urvaçî, in the Zeitschrift für vergleichende Sprachforschung, xviii. 56, etc.

BRITISH EMIGRATION TO ARMORICA (p. 118).

See L'Emigration bretonne en Armorique du Ve au VII* siècle de notre ère, par J. Loth; Paris, Picard, 1883, where the whole question of this flight is carefully discussed, as well as the causes which led to it, the districts whence the emigrants came, the way in which the island Britons took possession of Western Armorica, the extent of the territory occupied by them, and their distribution therein, etc. See Romania, 1884, 436, etc. Romania, xii. 367, etc.

DRAGON (pp. 125, 126, 405).

That the idea of the dragon was imported at one epoch or another from the East can hardly be doubted. But whether the figment was suggested by the remains of gigantic paleozoic saurians and pterodactyls to which the researches of modern naturalists have accustomed our eyes, or whether the strength and ferocity of the crocodile (see note on the story of St. Helenus in chap. ix.) seemed an apposite emblem of evil might, to which the fancy superadded wings, or whether the small dragon reptile (lacerta volans) magnified by imagination was a fictive development of the serpent, one of the oldest typifications of evil power, seems unprofitable to speculate.

That the Crocodile was used in Egypt to typify Set we can see in the note to the legend of St. Helenus. The Egyptians painted

the malevolent deity Apophis as a serpent, which Horus pierces with his lance (G. Wilkinson, Customs and Manners of the Ancient Egyptians, iv. p. 243-435). In India Vishnu, the second person of the Hindu trinity, slays the serpent Caliya. In Persia, too, Ahriman, the evil principle, was figured by the serpent. In Greece, Apollo, akin to Horus, slays the Python, and Hercules the Hydra. The Christians adopted the figure of "the dragon, that old serpent, which is the Devil and Satan" (Rev. xx. 2), which raged against him that sat on the White Horse out of heaven, who is "called Faithful and True, and in righteousness he doth judge and make war" (Rev. xix. 11). St. George mounted like Vishnu on his peculiar white charger-St. Georges belle monture (see Milles and Amys, c. vii. vol. i.)—triumphing over the dragon, is the victory of Faith and Truth, Christianity over Idolatry, achieved it may be at the sword's point, after the manner of Count Huon of Bordeaux, who would not brook the imprecations of a Moslem knight,

Herr Huon, dem es graut ihm länger zuzuhören,

Zieht sein geweites Schwert den Heiden zu-bekehren,

at the price of much carnage of Pagans, or perhaps of Christians, according to the adage, "the blood of martyrs is the seed of the Church." And it may be noted in this connection that some of the variants of the legend of St. George make him reappear on earth after his martyrdom, and conquer the dragon, and deliver the princess and her father's city from the monster. upon condition of their conversion to Christianity. The horse upon which the Saint rides may, too, be a reminiscence of the horses of the sun, familiar in Greek mythology. Compare 2 Kings xxiii. 11. The serpent or dragon typified idolatry and heresy; and it was, says Eusebius, in his Life of the Emperor Constantine, l. iii. c. iii., placed under his feet in representations of that monarch.

The story of Perseus and Andromeda found a kind of allegorical application to the delivery of a country or city from idolatry, the country or city being personified by the female figure of the story; and saints whom tradition avers to have introduced Christianity and abolished idolatrous worship are often represented with the accessory emblem of a draconiform monster. St. Germain l'écossais is sculptured leading a polycephalous dragon, like the fabled Lernean Hydra slain by Hercules, or the apocalyptic

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seven-headed beast so often depicted in mediæval paintings. In one of the tales in the Indian repertory, Vikrama-Charitram, the ruler of the subterranean Patal, or Serpent-realm, is Seschnag, the thousand-headed serpent. It is significant that in many hagiographic legends, and in some variants of the story of St. George, St. Martha, St. Marcel, etc., there is no physical violence in the contest between saint and dragon; this would be naturally a Christian phase of the tradition.

In Scandinavian mythology the Serpent of Midgard (“ terrestre monstrum sive serpens, alias Midgardsormr, anguis terrenus sive terram cingens, serpens immanissimus ") is slain by Thor (see F. Magnusen, Veterum Borealium Mythologie Lexicon, 1828, p. 207). Again, Fafinis, who slew his father, Hreidmar, so that he might obtain his treasure, in order to guard which he transformed himself into a dragon or serpent, was slain by Sigurd, hence called Fafnisbane (Fafnericida) Magnusen, s. v. Fafnir. Beowulf slays the Fen-Monster Grendel, who devours thirty thanes, and sucks their blood, and dwells in the pool of the Nicors. The Golden Fleece, the Garden of the Hesperides, were guarded by dragons, and griffins hoarded the golden sand of the Scythian Arimaspians. Sometimes the dragon guards the access to some source of water, a tradition which has been interpreted as a figure of Satan, obstructing or contaminating the waters of baptism.

And here may, perhaps, lie also an analogy with the dragon guardian of the Castalian spring, whose cool waters were the fount of true poetic inspiration.

The chimeras, pythons, and hydras (Sanskt. hudras, = water animal, otter,? adder) of Greek mythology, like the Celtic Adanc and the Slavonic water-demon, are all associated with water or marsh, and imply, perhaps, on the other hand, flood or malaria, and are often the accessory characteristic of Saints who, according to legend, have banished some local scourge which has gradually taken romantic shape in popular tradition, as the dragon of Wantley exterminated by More, the Gargouille of Rouen overcome by St. Romanus, or the far-famed Tarasque which ravaged the district of Tarascon, and the reptiles permanently exiled by St. Patrick. The dragon is an attribute of numerous Celtic or Breton Saints, who have some legend of a dragon associated with their lives. In the fabulous History of Alexander, the river which separates the abodes of the men from those of the women in the land of Bramckmani, or Brahmins, is haunted by a terrible serpent, capable

of devouring a whole kila at once, who renders the river intraversable except for the interval of forty days during which he withdraws, and renders intercourse possible.

In Authot's" Traite des Dragons et des Escarboucles," p. 83, it is stated that dragonneau is the name of " un Ver qui tient depuis la teste jusques aux pieds, entre chair & cuir, cause par les mauvaises eaux que l'on boit en Asie." St. Macarius (Homil. i. pt. 5, Vis. Ezech.), compares demons to worms: “ καὶ οἱ κακοι καὶ δεινοί σκώληκες, ἅ ἐστι τὰ πνευματα τῆς πονηρίας.”

The breath or saliva of the traditional dragon is, indeed, as deadly as any malarious exhalation. A writer in the Month, October, 1886, thinks that the huge extinct animals of which skeletons remain may actually have poisoned the air with their breath for large areas. He considers that traditions of dragons may refer to remembered survivals of these monsters.

Modern stories of "sea serpents" are matched by the ancient belief in sea monsters such as that to which Psyche and Andromeda were exposed. In the last-named instance the tradition was localized to Jaffa. Pliny, that versatile gossip to whom we owe so much interesting but second-hand knowledge of antiquity, says (Nat. Hist., 1. v. c. 14) that on the rock opposite Joppa or Jaffa vestiges were still shown in his time of the chains by which Andromeda had been bound; and, in another place (Nat. Hist., 1. ix. c. 4), that M. Scaurus exhibited at Rome during his ædileship the bones said to be of the monster to which she had been exposed, and which he had brought from Joppa. They exceeded forty feet in length, the ribs were higher than those of the Indian elephant, and the backbone was a foot and a half in thickness. Cuvier, from this description, inferred they were the bones of the whale. Pliny says (Nat. Hist., viii. 14) that during the Punic war the passage of the river Bagrada, supposed to be the modern Mejèrdah, in Africa, by the Roman army under Regulus, was disputed by a serpent 120 feet long, which was overcome by the employment of siege engines. Its skin and jaws were preserved in a temple at Rome, down to the time of the Numantine war. The incident is referred to by various ancient writers, among whom Livy, 1. xviii.; Florus, ii. c. 2; Valerius Maximus, i. c. 8; Aulus Gellius, vi. c. 3.

Doubtless belief in dragons may have been much strengthened by the discovery of the remains of extinct animals of extraordinary size. Mrs. Jameson mentions that a fossil saurian skeleton was