The Divine Woman Dragon Ladies and Rain Maidens

in T ang Literature Edward H. Schafer pdf

download

https://ebookname.com/product/the-divine-woman-dragon-ladies-and-
rain-maidens-in-t-ang-literature-edward-h-schafer/

Get Instant Ebook Downloads – Browse at https://ebookname.com

Instant digital products (PDF, ePub, MOBI) available
Download now and explore formats that suit you...

The T ang Code Volume II Specific Articles Wallace

Johnson

https://ebookname.com/product/the-t-ang-code-volume-ii-specific-
articles-wallace-johnson/

The New Testament and Early Christian Literature in

Greco Roman Context David Edward Aune

https://ebookname.com/product/the-new-testament-and-early-
christian-literature-in-greco-roman-context-david-edward-aune/

Rain in the Valley 1st Edition Helen Papanikolas

https://ebookname.com/product/rain-in-the-valley-1st-edition-
helen-papanikolas/

Collaborative Futures Mike Linksvayer

https://ebookname.com/product/collaborative-futures-mike-
linksvayer/
BSAVA Manual of Feline Practice A Foundation Manual 1st
Edition Séverine Tasker

https://ebookname.com/product/bsava-manual-of-feline-practice-a-
foundation-manual-1st-edition-severine-tasker/

Gene Transfer to Animal Cells Advanced Methods 1st

Edition R. M. Twyman

https://ebookname.com/product/gene-transfer-to-animal-cells-
advanced-methods-1st-edition-r-m-twyman/

We Share Walls Language Land and Gender in Berber

Morocco Blackwell Studies in Discourse and Culture 1st
Edition Katherine E. Hoffman

https://ebookname.com/product/we-share-walls-language-land-and-
gender-in-berber-morocco-blackwell-studies-in-discourse-and-
culture-1st-edition-katherine-e-hoffman/

The Architecture of Government Daniel Treisman

https://ebookname.com/product/the-architecture-of-government-
daniel-treisman/

Eschatological Presence in Karl Barth s Göttingen

Theology 1st Edition Christopher Asprey

https://ebookname.com/product/eschatological-presence-in-karl-
barth-s-gottingen-theology-1st-edition-christopher-asprey/
Computing brain activity maps from fMRI time series
images 1st Edition Gordon E. Sarty

https://ebookname.com/product/computing-brain-activity-maps-from-
fmri-time-series-images-1st-edition-gordon-e-sarty/
 1 ·-·

'j.
rhe Divine 11Joman
~ir-~-

f,j
.,

•!

1he Divine 'Woman

DRAGON LADIES .AND RAIN MAIDENS
IN T'ANG LITERA1'URE

BY EDWARD H. SCHAFER

University of California Press J :Berkeley / Los Angeles / London

University 0£ California Press
Berkeley and Los Angeles, California
'.Jo Phyllis
University of California Press, Ltd.
London, England

Copyright © 1973, by
The Regents of the University of California

ISBN: 0-520-02465-6
Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 73-78543
Printed in the United States of America
 Contents
Introduction I

I Women, Nymphs, and Dragons 5

Women and Nymphs-Sharnank_ as-Dragons-Kraken s
-Women and Dragoris-Nu Kua-The Lao tzu God-
dess-The Divine Woman--The Hsiang Consort

2 The Medieval Cult of the Great Water Goddesses 43

Nii Kua-The Divine Woman-The Lo Divinity-The
Han Woman-The Hsiang Consort

3 The Great Water Goddesses in T'ang Poetry 70

Nu Kua-The Divine Woman-The Lo Divinity-The
Han Woman-The Hsiang Consort

4 The Goddess Epiphanies of Li Ho 104

5 Dragon Women and Water Goddesses in Prose Tales n5

Old-Fashioned Dragon Women-Kraken Women-Sea
and Lake Godclesses-Tke Romance of the Scholar and
the River Goddess-Nu Kua-The Divine Woman-
The Lo Divinity-The Hsiang Consort
Vlll Contents

6 Conclusion 146

Notes 149

Bibliography 167

Glossary A-Names of T'ang Writers 176

Glosary B--Other Names and Titles 178

180
Jntroduction
Glosary C-Place Names

Glossary D-Words and Phrases 181 This book is about 1t~rh_;tt~t'idris. It has to do with changes wrought
by early medieval poets and mythographers. It tells how drowned
Index 183 girls became goddesses, and how goddesses became drowned girls.
It tells how nymphs, through profanation by the tides of change in
literary fashion, became mere women. It has to do with the degra-
dation of images and, at the same time, with the innovation and
renovation of metaphors. The transformation of dragon into rain-
bow, or of rainbow into goddess, was a fact of customary belief
in ancient China. l3ut it became secondary to the marvelous trans-
mutations performed by the writers of T'ang.
The book, then~ is devoted to a subject exploited in literature
rather than to literature as such, or to a particular kind of litera-
ture. It is not an essay on critical theory. Rather it attempts to ex-
plore the various embodiments of a mythological subject not only in
cult but in literature, especially in narrative fiction with its cast of
characters, and in lyric poetry, whose most important character is
the masked poet himself. Consequently the text tends to drift, some-
times idly, from matters of history and philology to matters of
imagery and interpretation. Sometimes it attempts to illuminate the
synchronic by means of the diachronic; sometimes it will pause to
contemplate the internal workings of a poem in a detached, vaguely
2 l ntroduction Introduction 3
"new critical" way; sometimes, rather in the manner advocated by
SHAMANKAS
Northrop }'rye, it will seize upon an etiolated "archetype" as a
principle of coherence. In short, I have no special conceptual axe to There will be many references to shamans and shamankas, es-
grind publicly, and have preferred to take the gentler but more pecially the latter, in this book. Shamans are men who have ac-
confusing approach of employing whatever probes seemed likely to quired the power to travel in spirit worlds bearing requests and
be fruitful ones in detecting the moods of the goddesses in their commands to supernatural beings on behalf of human clients, and
many guises. Above all, I should not like anyone to think that I so they are able to help and heal. Shamankas are female shamans,
regard this study, whatever its faults or merits might be, as in any the dominant Chinese variety. I owe the word to H. R. Ellis David-
sense associated with the feeble, uninformed, cozy, fashionable, and son.3 The Chinese word is tvu (* myu). One of the goddesses promi-
in the end trivial expressions of literary piety which are more repre- nent in this book is "The Divine Woman of Shaman Mountain," or,
sentative of what falsely passes as "literary criticism" among most arbitrarily, "of Shamanka Mountain."
contemporary western students of Chinese writing.
The first chapter is introductory and perfunctory. It deals with
antiquity, not with medieval times. I do not regard myself as an
THE HO RI:VER
authority on pre-T'ang literature. Moreover, the argumentation is
highly compressed. In consequence, my pronouncements on ancient The great, troublesome river that winds down out of northeastern
dragons and the primeval ontology of femininity must be close to Tibet through the desert to debouch into th.e arid Central Plain,
obiter dicta. I hope that they are somewhat persuasive. the old Chinese homeland, was called Gha Water in medieval times.
We know it as Huang Ho or "Yellow Ho," or simply Yellow River.
In this book I shall often call it simply "the Ho,'' with good classi-
cal precedent.
cH'u Tz'u
An important source of words and ideas about ancient water deities
is the Ch'u tz'u, an anthology of literary versions of oral songs-
THE KIA.NG lllVEll
especially of shamanistic chants-edited and published at about the
beginning of our era. 1 It contains very diverse materials, probably Similarly, the great, deep, and splendid river that flows out of
from many hands, and has traditionally been associated with the Tibet, across the Szechwan plateau, and down through romantic
ancient southern state of Ch'u. Its title, as David Hawkes has rightly gorges into the green and temperate landscapes of central China
pointed out, means simply the "Words of Ch'u." That is, it is a codi- was called Kaung Water in early times. It came to be called Ch'ang
fication of surviving fragments typical of the literary tradition of Kiang or Ch'ang Chiang, that is .. Long Kiang," and in very recent
that culture. Hawkes has paraphrased the title in his translation of times-especially by foreigners--th.e Yangtze. I shall regularly style
the anthology as "The Songs of the South." 2 it "the Kiang." 4
4 Introduction Your buoyant troops on dimpling ocean tread,
Wafting the moist air from his oozy bed,
TITLES OF THE GODDESSES
AQUATIC NYMPHS!-YOU lead with viewless march
The chief personages of this essay will be ordinarily referred to The winged Vapours up the aerial arch,
with stereotyped translations of their conventional Chinese titles. On each broad cloud a thousand sails expand,
They are: And steer the shadowy treasure o'er the land,
"The Divine Woman" (shen nu); also "The Goddess of Sha- Through vernal skies the gathering drops diffuse,
rnanka Mountain" or "of Wu shan." Plunge in soft rains, or sink in silver dews.
"God's Child" (ti tzu). She is a goddess of the Hsiang River, or
ERASMUS DABWIN
one of its twin goddesses. If the latter, she is the younger of the two.
"The Economy of Vegetation"
"Hsiang Consort" (Hsiang fei); also "Hsiang Fairy" (Hsiang o):
the goddess or goddesses of the Hsiang River. If twinned, they ap·
pear sometimes as "Maiden Bloom" (nii ying) and "Fairy Radi-
ance" ( o huan g).
"Lo Divinity" (Lo shen). The goddess of the Lo River.
"Han Woman" (Han nit). The goddess of the Han River.

GLOSSARI1lS OF CHINESE EXPRESSIONS

The glossaries of Chinese words and names omit some expressions t Women, 7'rymphs,
whose graphs should be obvious to anyone who can read a little
Chinese (for example, the characters for "T'ang," or "Shan hai
ching") and some where the text provides a translation which
and Dragons
should immediately suggest the graphs (for example, Yiin-meng, or
"Cloud Dream"). Otherwise, I believe them to be reasonably corn·
plete. WOMEN AND NYMPHS

In the lines of our epigraph~ the amazing Dr. Erasmus Darwin

presents a poetic allegory of the formation of clouds, rain, snow, hail,
and dew. That he should represent the spirits of the multiple natu·
ral manifestations of water as female would have seemed entirely
natural to the ancient Chinese. Nymphs, naiads, and nereids, how-
ever exotic and strange, would have charmed them, and they could
easily have found equivalents among their own mist-clad maidens
and exalted river queens.
Dr. Darwin's purposes were "scientific" in a way that would have
6 Women, Nymphs, and Dragons Women, Nymphs, and Dragons 7
been obscure to the Chinese, and so his verses have a very different like the apsarases of India,a haunted lakes and rivers. They mani-
tone from those of the ancient poet Sung Yji, (or whoever wrote the fested themselves either happily or destructively, depending upon
poems attributed to him) and of the medieval poet Li Ho, both of whim perhaps, as in popular story, or upon the necessary readjust-
whom wrote intensely about water goddesses in their vari~~s mani- ·. ment of the balance of natural forces, as in accepted metaphysics.
festations. When Dr. Darwin hypostasized the plants and minerals So these spiritual beings might reveal themselves as the healing
of the natural world, he chose to represent them in the guise of guardians of hot springs, as Dr. Darwin's H ygeia in "her sainted
pagan deities, great and small, their substances hardened by the wells," 4 or as the Chinese nymph who haunted the medicinal pools
classical marble of the Renaissance and their contours sharpened of Mount Li and cured the first ruler of Ch'in of a loathsome
by the severe crystal of the Enlightenment. For example, when the disease-and was reported to have become his mistress.5
good doctor comes to tell how subterranean springs, passing through Abstractly, however, women represented to the Chinese the fer-
calcareous earth, supply the "bright treasure" of lime-impregnated tile, moist, receptive principle in nature. They appeared in my-
water to depleted soils, he writes : thology and in literature as visible forms of the moist soil and the
watercourses that make it wet. Both were receptive to the blazing,
0 pierce, YE NYMPHS! her marble veins, and lead
impregnating rays of the masculine sun and the benign influence of
Her gushing fountains to the thirsty tnead;
the radiant, superincumbent sky. Womankind symbolized the great
Wide o'er the shining vales, and trickling hills
Spread the bright treasure in a thousand rills.1 water cycle that lifted the moisture from seas and lakes, transmuted
it into clouds and mists, and spread it fruitfully into the dry soil. Fed
Unlike Sung Yii and Li Ho, Dr. Darwin did not infuse his per- · by countless freshets and floods after the winter solstice, when the
sonified elements with a magic glow, but like them he was able to yin energy is fullest, the woman earth permitted the softening of
realize believable figures of river goddesses and water maids that the germs of living things hidden within her and awaited the pen-
dramatized equally the truth about woman's nature and the truth etrating heat of spring and summer to bring up her crops.
about the water cycle. The cosmic expression of the female principle took on many
In the summer of A.D. 813, the T'ang empire suffered a severe other forms, but these need concern us only briefly here. What the
flood. The reigning monarch Li Ch'un, posthumously known as magical Rhinegolcl was to the devoted Rhine maidens, such was
Hsien Tsung, was persuaded that the catastrophe was a result of an the precious dragon pearl to the spirits of the waters of China.
excess of the yin part of the cosmic duality. Because the imbalance Moreover, that pearl of power stood for the universal relationship
could be corrected, partially at least, by human activity-above all between woman and pearl, and between woman and moon. Water
by the actions of the Son of Heaven-on July 21 the sovereign re- goddesses were moon goddesses in some of their phases, or had
sponded by expelling two hundred wagon loads of supertluous lunar cognates. Their festivals were love festivals. 6 J3ut a lovely
women from his palace.2 Women represented metaphysical water in goddess of the moon had developed a cult of her own in early times,
human form. and st<JOd apart from the lady spirits of the waters. Still, she and
Between these two extremes-expelled courtesans and swelling they shared a connection with the pearl, that concreted replica of
river-lay a host of spiritual beings, female or partly female in aspect Oberon's "wat'ry moon." Pearls were solidified lunar essence-and
but aqueous in nature. These were the nymphs of the Far East who, female essence. It was thought that they waxed and waned in feta!
8 Women, Nymphs, and Dragons Women, Nymphs, and Dragons 9
form within the oyster in harmony with the menstrual cycle of hu- aggressive manner, to adopt a milder attitude towards mankind. Thus
man females. In form, color, and luminescence they were miniature the shaman is a conductor of souls, healer, miracle worker and some-
versions of the moon itself. The moon in turn was the celestial im- times also priest, but he differs essentially from the priest and other
age of womankind-congealed water and ice. A woman's tears were religious functionaries through his technique of ecstasy.9
both moons and pearls. But, however strong their human and sen- Accordingly, shamans and shamankas are also public oracles,
timental significance, the cosmic meaning of pearls remained more through whose mouth the words of spirits are transmitted. It
significant. They were also supernatural tears-the tears of mer- seems to have been usual in China~ as elsewhere, for individual
maids, that is of female sea dragons or their lesser avatars-and shamans and shamankas t<> have enjoyed a special relationship with
accordingly constitute an important link, both ontological and sym- a particular spirit. An example is "The Divinity of the Heaven
bolic, between the worlds of women and dragons, the tidal flows of Metal," also known as "The Great King of the Heaven of Metal."
of ocean, and the changeless sky.7 In the mid-eighth century, a shamanka surnamed Tung had ready
access to this god.10 This kind of specialization was most useful, of
course, because anyone who ha<l a supernatural problem would con-
SHAMANKAS
sult such a specialist in preference to a shaman with only vague
claims to universal competence.
An especially privileged kind of being lived ambiguously between Chinese shamans, like, for instance, the Yakut shamans of eastern
the world of human women and the world of water women. This Siberia,11 had amorous relations with the divine beings they en-
kt. );.'.\;._~~"""' ,- w!-.'t
was the shamanka. She was a ghost seer and a god 'seer. A classical countered in their trances and mystic voyages. This characteristic
description of her may be found in a pre-Han text, the Kuo yii. It was widely adapted to the needs of Chinese erotic poets, who hap-
says, inter alia, that shamankas are persons of exceptionally acute pily paraphrased the attempts of ancient sl1amans to lure goddesses
perception who can sense things far and near: to their embraces as allegories of idealistic young men or sensitive
Their bright sight is capable of shedding light on them; their keen sovereigns seeking the love of goddesslike women, or even of actual
hearing is capable of listening to them. Since this is so, the luminous goddesses.
deities come down to them. If it is to men we call them shamans; if Because shamans had some supernormal access to goddesses, just
it is to women we call them shamankas. 8 as did shamankas to gods, they shared the divinity of the goddesses
in some degree, even allowing for the fact that their overtures were
So defined, the shamans of China fit the universal pattern very well often frustrated. Hence the divine kings of early antiquity in China
-a pattern well described in a modern account of Tibetan shamans: were themselves shamans. Their occasional role as scapegoats for the
A shaman is someone who passes through a spiritual crisis, in which people, however, was often delegated to surrogates who suffered
a vision determines his vocations, thereby acquiring the ability to con- for them, because suffering was required in return for supernatural
trol conditions of trance and ecstasy. He or she makes conscious use favors. Similarly, shamankas exercised their charms on male divin-
of this for the benefit of the community, travelling in trance to the ities, and so to some extent shared the attributes of goddesses. The
upper or the under world, accompanied by spirit helpers, there to con- literary locus classicus of these transitions and analogues is the two
vey requests to gods or spirits or to force them, sometimes in a very rhapsodies on the Kings of Cb.'u and the rainbow goddess of Wu
10 Women, Nymphs, and Dragons Women, Nymphs, and Dragons II

shan, "Sh.amanka Mountain," attributed to Sung Yii. We shall inspection tour immediately south of the Yangtze in the seventh
return to them. century, was gratified to report that he had destroyed seventeen
Leaving her male counterpart aside for the moment, let us consider hundred unauthorized shrines in that region. 14 Clearly the common
briefly the history of the shamanka in China. The earliest available man still relied on the unique talents of shamans, despite their per-
evidence shows that in the society of the Chinese bronze age, the sistence in pursuing undignified deities. Even the government might,
shamanka played a highly important spiritual role. Linguistic facts in a critical time, revert to the practices of remote antiquity and
reveal the intimate interrelationships between the word wu (*myu) tacitly acknowledge the special powers of shamans. For example,
"shamanka" and such words as "mother," "dance," "fertility," "egg," during the great drought of A.D. 814, a courtier recommended the
and "receptacle." The ancient shamanka, then, was closely related to resurrection of ancient procedures to bring rain, including both the
the fecund mother, to the fertile soil, to the receptive earth. The manufacture of dragon images of clay and "the exposure of sha-
textual evidence supports these philological associations. In Shang rnankas to the sun." 15 Possibly snch events were exceptional, but the
and Chou times, shamankas were regularly employed in the inter- activities of shamans among the masses of the people in early
ests of human and natural fertility, above all in bringing rain to medieval times probably owe the little attention they have received
parched farmlands-a responsibility they shared with the ancient to the failure of documentation. What we get in the best literature
kings. They were musicians and dancers and oracles. When all of is an emphasis on the refined offshoots of shamans-the transcendent
their techniques failed to moisten the soil they were liable, like their superbeings (hsien) of Taoism. These idealized shamans were anal-
male colleagues, to suffer exposure to the blistering sun, or else to be ogous to the yogins of India and to the tantric adepts of Buddhism
burned as ritual sacrifices to the overwhelming masculine power of in their unique supernatural powers. But the lzsien had abandoned
heaven.12 In later times, these expiatory spectacles diminished in the helpful social role of the ancient shamans and, like most Taoists,
frequency, surviving chiefly in symbolic form. But they never com- looked only for their own salvation. However they had not forgotten
pletely disappeared. In some reigns, shamankas held official court ap- the archaic techniques of soul projection, and they continued to
pointments, to serve as oracles or in other traditional capacities as dream of magic flights to paradises in the sea and air.
needed. The T'ang palace, for instance, employed fifteen Lady Sha- Shamankas, then, were not only involved with gods, sometimes
mankas ( wu shih ), along with diviners of various persuasions, in the in an amorous way, but they also had some of the attributes of
office of the Grand Diviner.13 In other reigns such suspiciously au- divine consorts.They were, in fact, lesser goddesses. Although, in the
tonomous functionaries were abolished altogether. Indeed, from respectable literature of the post-Han period, the status of sha-
Han times on, when "Confucian" orthodoxy in cult matters was be- manesses appeared to have comparatively low, their fairy 11atures
coming increasingly important, it was generally considered an act sometimes show through unambiguously, even in official history. A
of public morality to demolish the little unorthodox shrines and case in point is a description in "The Book of Chin" of two pretty
fanes of the shamanesses who did not enjoy the protection of the sham.anesses~ skilled musicians and magicians, who could dance
court. Sometimes zealous magistrates destroyed them by the thou- like elves, make themselves invisible, and converse with ghosts. 16
sands during very brief tenures in rural towns. A notable example But if shamanesses had some of the attributes of goddesses, it re-
is that Ti Jen-chieh-in our own century transformed into the saga- mains to be shown whether they had also some of the attributes of
cious Judge Dee of van Gulik's detective novels-who, after an dragons.
 Women, Nymphs, and Dragons Women,Nymphs,and Dragons 13
12
are commonly regarded as rain bringers, and the rain serpent often
DRAGONS
appears to mortals in the form of a rainbow~' So itwas among the
The dragons of northern and western Europe, familiar to us as the ancient Persians and in many parts of India. In India, the naga
monster of the Beowulf epic and as the Fafnir of Wagner's operatic serpent-holy since antiquity-was a rain and water god. For ex-
romances, were treasure hoarders and fire breathers, resembling their ample, the Kuhl people call the rainbow Bu{ihi Nagin "old female
Far Eastern cousins only in their serpentine form. Like Chinese snake." In this instance, the rainbow is associated not only with
dragons, they had the power of Bight, but unlike them they shot serpent deities but with femininity-and indeed snake maidens
about like comets and falling stars-ill omened and frightful.17 are common in the tales of the Jataka. 21 With the importation of
These essentially Germanic evildoers were lurkers in barrows, Indian beliefs wholesale into China early in our era, these remotely<
where they brooded jealously over the gold and garnets buried with related cousins were partially assimilated to the Chinese lung. Fro.in
the bones of ancient kings. The Beowulf dragon was the hybrids developed the medieval dragon kings who reigned over
He who, burning, barrows seeks. the rivers and seas of the medieval Far East. In their great power,
Naked foe dragon, he flies by night, their transient benevolence, and their fierceness and energy, these
Fire-swathed. 18 beings show a greater affinity to the raging chiao (*kif.it) dragon,
whom we shall meet presently, than they do to the fructifying and
This creature is quite unlike the beneficent, rain-bringing Chinese usually well-disposed lung. Ultimately, in the eighth century, this
lung, whom we probably misrepresent with the borrowed sobriquet very masculine and imperial beast who, unlike the old, undifferen-
of "dragon." Temperamentally he was closer to the mild and gen- tiated rain-bringing serpents, regularly assumed completely human
erous fish goddesses of the Mediterranean than to the northern shape, was accepted into the official cult among the high gods who
firedrakes. He does, however, have cognates in European folklore, must be propitiated with offerings and entertained by barefooted
although these have not received the immense publicity accorded dancers in £ve-colored garments and lotus-shaped headdresses. 22
the haunters of barrows. For instance: The old un-Indianized lung, however, as the linguistic evidence
In the Alps a dragon inhabits a tarn; if a stone is thrown shows, was accustomed to display himself-or herself-as the arch
in, rain will follow, however good the weather may be.19 of the rainbow. The following words, some monosyllabic some
bisyllabic, appear to be members ()f an archaic W()rd family whose
He closely resembles the "Plumet Basilisk" of Marianne Moore, a
meaning combined "serpent" with "arch; vault." (I give a simpli-
kingly reptile:
fication of Karlgren's reconstructi()n for early seventh-century pro-
He runs, he flies, he swims, to get to his basilica- nunciations, but all must derive from an archaic original close to
'the ruler of Rivers, Lakes and Seas, *KLUNG):
invisible or visible,' with clouds to do as bid ...20
Serpents have been associated with water in early belief in most *lyong "rain serpent; 'dragon' "
parts of the world. A standard reference on folklore notes the *ghung "rainbow"
linkage in Babylon, Greece and Mongolia, and among many peo- *kyung "bow"
ples of Europe, Africa, and America. Accordingly, snakelike spirits *lyung "arched; prominent"
 Women, Nymphs , and Dragons Women ,Nymph s,and Dragons
14
*k'ung "hollow" Although in its most obvious and splendid appant10n it was a
*lyong "hillock" rainbow, its talents were by no means restricted to this. The Shuo
*lyong "mound " wen dictionary of the fast century of our era characterizes its genius
"cage; basket" for metamorphosis as follows :
*lung
*k'yung "vault; dome" Senior among the scaled creatures,
* k'wet-ly ung "cavity" Capable d ciccultation-capable of illumination,
*k'un g-lun g "hollowed" Capable of slimness -capable of hugeness,
*lyung-gyung "arched; humped" Capable of contract ion-capa ble of extension,
*k'you-lyong "hill" 23 It climbs to the sky at spring's division,
It plunges in the gulf at fall's division.27
Other possible cognates could be added to the list, for example
*kyung "house; [later] palace" (that is, hollow space for dwelling). The "divisions" of spring and autumn are the two equinoxes. At
Our Chinese dragon, then, is bent and curved like a bow and, like about the time of the spring equinox, the summer monsoon comes
the surface of the sky dome itself, hovers over the aerial hemisphere. up from the South China Sea. Then the dragon rises into the sky
The dragon in its rainbow form was widely represented in the carrying the nimbus clouds with him. In the autumn the rains fade
early art of south and east Asia. It was the makara of India which, away, and he returns to .his hiding place in pond or abyss. His vari-
like its Chinese counterpart in Han decorative art, appears as a ability reminds us of the changeability of classical sea deities--
rainbow emblem with a monstrous head at each extremity. The notably of Proteus, but also of Thetis the Nereid, who assumed a
Chinese version, with outward facing heads, even influenced the bewildering variety of shapes when seized by the hero Peleus.28
figures assumed by sea and rain dragons in Javanese and Cam- Among the lung's fantastic mutations, the reptilian ones were by
bodian sculpture of the ninth century. 24 far the most prominent. A legless serpent was an early prototype,
Sexual ambiguity is characteristic of the rain spirits of various but the lizard style finally became dominant in classical times. 21)
cultures. Among the African Bushmen, for instance, the destructive Certainly large lizards were sometimes taken to be specimens of
thunderheads that breed lightning and hail are masculine, while the fleshly dragons. An example is a creature, identified as a lung, that
soft clouds that shed fertilizing, misty rains are feminine. In the
25 was discovered in Szechwan about the beginning of the ninth cen-
earliest literature of China, however, the colored bow in the sky tury and transmitted to the imperial court in a casket. There it was
is an attribute or manifestation of a beautiful rain goddess. Never- displayed to the populace. "After being fumigated with smoke it
theless, there appears to have been a linguistic distinction between died." 30 This sounds like some strange monitor or iguana that had
male and female rainbows in early China. Some evidence indicates the bad luck to fall inte> the hands of Wei Kao, conqueror of the
that *ghung was the male and *ngei was the female. Occasionally irredentist Tibeto-Burmans on the southwestern frontier. A dragon
was the trophy of his glorious victory.
both were displayed in the sky together as the bright inner arch and
its fainter outer duplicate.26 The most conspicuous lizards of China were its alligators and
Next to its affinity to water, the most notable feature of the Chi- crocodiles. It had been observed that these reptiles, like turtles and
nese dragon was its ability to assume many different visible forms. many snakes, deposit their eggs in the ground, but the relation
16 Women,N ymphs,an d Dragons Women,N ymphs,an d Dragons

between the depositor and the hatched was not always clearly Seek soon to become a dragon, then depart!
observed. In consequence, it was readily believed that the eggs of Do not swim idly in the River and J,akes!
You should know that under the fragrant sop,
crocodilians might yield alligators, tortoises, fish-or even the deadly
To slash your mouth, there is a large book.3 4
chiao dragons, which I shall call "krakens." 31 The mortal mani-
festations of the dragon have been noted in our own world too. A dragon might even assume the shape of an inanimate thing-
Consider the fantastic poet Thomas Lovell Beddoes on "A Croco- in particular a sword of power, of the kind that brings its owner
dile": to kingship. The most famous example is the pair of swords given
Hard by the lilied Nile I saw to Chang Hua, the wise man of the Chin dynasty; those swords
A duskish river dragon stretched along, changed into dragons. 35 A similar tale is told in the Chinese annals
The brown habergeon of his limbs enamelled of a slave who founded au early dynasty in Champa. He pulled a
With sanguine almandines and rainy pearl. pair of magic carp out of a mountain stream. These dragon carp
turned into iron, and he forged them into a pair of conquering
To the early Chinese, the alligator was the best known of the sau-
falchions. 36
rian tribe. It lurked in the muddy banks of the central rivers and
Any creaLure endowed with exceptional spiritual powers could
lakes, emerging and bellowing in the springtim e-a visible and
appear to the world as a dragon. In the book Pao p'u tzu, that useful
audible dragon rising to summon the monsoon rains.32
compendiu m of early Taoist belief, it is stated that the transcendent
But dragons did not disdain to take on the semblances of lowlier
beings honored in its doctrine-t he hsien-som etimes assumed a
forms of aquatic life. Carp shape might conceal dragon soul. Poets
scaly body and a snaky head, just as they sometimes took on the
in particular liked to speculate on such philosophical matters. P'i
form of a bird and were clothed in feathers. 37 But the two shapings
Jih-hsiu, that elegant stylist of the ninth century, wrote an "Ode
are not very disparate: dragons fly through the air like birds. Still,
to a Crab":
were these supermen actually dragons, or did they only seem to be?
Long before I travelled the watchet sea I knew your name. The essence of dragon nature is mutability of form, and so the
You have bones-gro wn outside your flesh. question is meaningless.
Say nothing of mindless fear of thunder and lightning!
Other than as alligators and other lizards, serpentine dragons
There, in the abode of the sea dragon king, may you sidle! a;;
were most often observed as strange celestial apparitions. We have
The crab is armored against the cold seas, not only by his horny already noted the archaic figure of the rainbow dragon. But other
shell but by the great dragon who rules it and in whose domain he strange lights in the sky might seem to be the rain lords' fleeting
crawls about safely: he is himself a miniature dragon. shapes-th e aurora borealis, Rashes of lightning, odd luminous mists,
Above the shell-covered sea dwellers was the finny tribe. In the and other unpredictable phenomena. A pre-T'ang tale tells of a
poem which follows, Li Ch'iin-yii- another, ninth-century master- young woman who, while washing clothes, was enveloped by a
exhorts a fish that he has just released into the water to swim away white mist. She became pregnant. Out of shame she committed
rapidly, like the dragon it is, far out into the sea where it will not suicide, but her slave released two dragonlets from her body by
be tempted to its destruction by the lures of mankind. It is a bit of Caesarian section, and her grave was visited regularly by a dragon. 88
allegory: This lucky-unlucky woman had been embraced by the same kind
 Women, Nymphs, and Dragons Women, Nymphs, and Dragons
18
of being that had embraced many Chinese queens to make them of a notorious skeptic who believed in their reality but doubted their
mothers of kings. Such dragon lovers were themselves kings, by power deserves notice. This unbeliever was Wang Ch'ung who, in
virtue of their power over rain and fertility, like the ancient rulers the first century A.D., wrote his great but unorthodo x-and there-
of the Middle Kingdom. fore unpopular-collection of critical essays on the beliefs of his
Strangely, rainbow dragons were not always emblems of good contemporaries. In this book~ which has yet to gain the honor it
fortune, especially among the omen readers who interpreted mete- deserves as a true classic, he included a chapter on dragons. In it he
orological events for their political meaning. This evil meaning was reports that wise and stupid men alike in his time believed that
most often attached to the "white rainbows," which were often seen dragons lurked in buildings and trees. When lightning, a sign or
at night. If the latter were halos around the moon (or an occasional summons from heaven, strikes one of these temporary habitations,
aurora?), the ones seen by day may have been aureoles of the kind the divine creature is liberated and mounts the sky with the sound
we sometimes notice around the sun when it is looked at through of thunder. Wang Ch'ung rejected this universal Han belief and
fog, mist, or haze. Such an apparition was reported when, in A.D. insisted on the truth of the more primitive idea that dragons are
712, Chinese troops were about to invade the territory of a Man- born and bred in the water, and indeed have no significant connec-
churian nation: "There was a white rainbow which lowered its tion with heaven at all. He quotes ancient sources to show that
head to the gateway of the army [camp]. The omen is: 'Blood shall their habitat is pmely terrestrial, even though aqueous. "Both
flow beneath it.'" 39 This rainbow with a dragon head suggests the kraken and dragon habitually stay in the waters of the abyss ...
old makara dragons of Han pictorial art. "The Book of T'ang" re- they are therefore akin to fish and turtles." It follows that they
ports the appearance of a "bent rainbow dragon northeast of the cannot possibly ascend to heaven. Presumably there is an occasional
sun" in 903 with the comment that "a dragon is a serpent affliction," divine dragon, just as there are some divine tortoises. But all super-
using a word which implies a scourge, a plague, a curse.40 It is not natural beings, in whatever shape, have wonderful powers, among
surprising, then, that Wang Yen-chiin -the paranoid ruler of the which is the power of flight-a talent by no means restricted to
secessionist state of Min in Fukien-sa w a red rainbow dragon in especially gifted dragons. lndeed, h.e wrote, ancient texts indicate
his room shortly before his assassination in 935. The rainbow spirit that, in the distant past, ordinary dragons had been captured and
appeared in the Min palace again in the summer of 938, during the tamed-ev en eaten. They were, in sh-0rt, unexceptional mortal
reign of his successor Wang Chi-p'eng. A shaman interpreted the creatures with an innate gift for concealing themselves-no more
apparition as ominous of treason within the royal family.41 These remarkable than a parrot's talent for speaking.43 Although, through
ill-omened mists and auras are very different from the farm- the application of common sense and reliance on ancient records,
fertilizing rain dragons. The former represented the female yin es- Wang Ch'ung had been led to doubt the divinity of most dragons,
sence at its worst, when it had taken precedence over the male and the same criteria also led him to a mistaken view of their reality
showed its power in ugly and terrifying ways. In Han times, the and history. It mattered little, because no one believed him, and
rainbow was already a "wanton and depraved" phenomenon. Its the popular myths persisted 011 all levels -0£ society.
omen was: "the wife mounts the husband: a manifestation of yin
dominating yang." 42 Female essence was a curse.
Few men doubted the reality and power of dragons. The opinions
 Women, Nymphs, and Dragons Women, Nymphs, and Dragons 2I
20
southern aborigine named Lei Man, originally a master fisher who
KRAKENS aided the Chinese in their attempts to repress his fellow tribesmen
Transient notice has been taken of a dreadful kind of dragon, no and later rose to be a privy councillor, knew the creatures well. He
rainmaker to be praised or propitiated, called chiao (*kau ). I have liked to entertain visitors by taking them to a lake which, he said,
styled it "kraken." These serpentine draculas, thirsting for human was the treasurehouse of a kraken. On one occasion he claimed that
blood, remained more or less anonymous lurkers in the waters of he could penetrate this hidden domain. Stripping himself naked,
north China until they achieved a sort of distinction in early medi- he plunged in and soon emerged with a precious utensil.45 Although
eval times. Then, in the short stories of the T'ang, they learned to this was the lair of an uncommon freshwater kraken in pagan ter-
assume human guises for their own inhuman purposes. The dis- ritory far south of the Yangtze, it had the attributes of the home
cussion of this literary stage of their evolution belongs properly to of an oceanic shark kraken.
a later place in this essay and shall accordingly be postponed. Here, The most valuable treasures of the krakens of the south, how-
where we are chiefly concerned with dragon-to-woman relationships, ever, were pearls and golden pongees. The fine pearls produced
it will be appropriate to pay some attention to the subspecies only in from the coastal waters of Lingnan in ancient times were the tears
a special role-that of the kraken woman of tropical China, a very of these shark pcople.46 The precious pongees that appeared on
different being from its formidable northern counterpart. These the Chinese market labeled "kraken silk" seem mostly to have been
southern krakens were mermaids or nereids-although apparently the cinnamon-colored cloth woven from the byssus of the pinna
both sexes existed-who inhabited the warm salt water along the mussel-the pinikon of the Greeks.47 A white variety woven in
shores of the South China Sea. They did not become involved in these same dragon palaces was said to glitter like frost. 48 The fan-
the popular prose novella. tastic poet Li Ho invented a splendid pink-patterned variety of the
The word chiao, which I am translating "kraken," is clearly cog- noble textile. He fancied it as worn by the great monarch of Ch'in
nate to chiao "shark," so that these weird ocean dwellers might aptly when, at a banquet, the king imagined himself a god roving the cos-
be styled "shark people." In T'ang times they were frequently mos.49 It was a suitable garb for a monarch with aspirations for
identified more closely with another elasmobranch, the ray. It also divinity-indeed, a dragon himself.
seems probable that they were sometimes confused with the croco- Some creatqre of the kraken type-shark or crocodile or other
diles that infested the muddy waters of the coast of Kwangtung.44 ferocious animal-lent the marrow from its bones to the shops of
The Chinese lore about these southern krakens seems to have been medieval Chinese druggists. Applied to the face it produced a lov-
borrowed from the indigenes of the monsoon coast. The old name able complexion. It was also useful in facilitating childbirth.50 It is
of the fearful species of northern dragon was naturally affixed to understandable that the innermost substance of a variety of dragon,
these alien but equally dangerous monsters, just as alligators and ultimately a promoter of fertility, would be useful both in attracting
other northern reptiles were regarded as the aeshly forms of lung love and easing the production of its fruit.
dragons in the old homeland. In the T'ang period, at any rate, these
austral krakens lived in underwater palaces, much as did the In-
dianized dragons of the north. Like them, they gloated over hoards
of treasure. But they were not immune to human predation. A
 Women, Nymphs, and Dragons
22 Women, Nymphs, and Dragons
Ordinary women too might have power over dragons. This was
WOMEN AND DRAGONS generally conceived as a kind of erotic power. A very old legend tells
how the frothy sperm of the guardian dragons of the mythical
Diviners and metaphysicians saw in many imbalances of nature and
Hsia dynasty, back at the beginning of time, was kept in a casket
weird apparitions the disproportionate presence of the yin principle
in the palace of a Chou dynasty king, many hundreds of years later.
-the principle of darkness, dampness, and submission. Such distor-
Thi~ ~ital essence escaped and congealed in dragon shape, causing
tions of the natural harmony revealed themselves in human affairs
pamc m the palace of the parvenu king. The regenerated dragons
as the unnatural prominence of women, or the flaunting and arro-
were finally e:xorcised by the imprecations of naked women-pre-
gance of female power, to the detriment of the established order.
sumably female shamans.55 But shamankas are hardly ordinary
Portents of such aberrations commonly took the form of creatures
women. Still, women of the simplest sort attracted the warm at-
and phenomena ordinarily associated with water or with dragons.
tentions of dragons. Chinese folk literature abounds in stories, some
So "The Book of T'ang" reports that in 634 "a great snake was seen
naively grotesque, some reverent and awe inspiring, of women who
several times in Lung-yu. Snakes are portents of womankind." 51
give birth to dragon children.56 Accounts of abnormal pregnancies
Similarly, when, in the summer of 713, a great snake and a large
among young women who had been bathing or laundering on a
frog with fiery eyes appeared close by a palace hall, the sooth-
ri.verbank are particularly common. In. such places attractive country
sayers noted: "Snakes and frogs are both of the yin kind. They
girls were vulnerable to the advances of water spirits. Suicide, often
have appeared at a hall of the court, which is not their proper
by drowning, was common among them, but the unfortunate girl
place." 52 Another report is even more explicit about the relationship
was ordinarily honored as a water spirit and acquired a village cult
between dragon and woman. It tells that in A.D. 7ro, upon the death
-or else her offspring, if human, became a great hero.'; 7 In the
of the sovereign Chung Tsung, Lady Wei, the mother of the late
course of time, the story of a dragon mother might generate new
emperor's fourth son, named Li Chung-mao, enthroned the lad
variations. Such was apparently the case with an ancient tale of a
and declared herself regent. She was soon overthrown and killed.
woman who found an egg by the riverside. It produced a small
friendly dragon. This miracle was supposed to have taken place i~
The hapless Chung-mao was obliged to abdicate. The dynastic his-
tory declares, under date of July 9 in that year: "A double rainbow
the days of Ch'in Shih Huang Ti. In a ninth-century version, it is a
dragon traversed the sky. A rainbow is the quintessence of the con-
widow who finds five dragon eggs and acquires miraculous powers,
stellation tou [part of our Sagittarius]. The omen reads: 'King-
along with the title "Mother of Dragons." Her cult is still alive.5 8
bearers and Consorts coerce the kingly one by means of their
It seems probable that there was an archetypal version of this story
yin.'" 58 That is, the rightful heir is dominated by a female regent.
in which the woman was no mere putative mother but actually laid
The association between dragons and high-born women was
the dragon eggs herself.
shown in still other ways. For instance, dragons were sometimes
The grandest copulations between women and dragons were those
emblematic of noble queens. Here is an example, registered for
that engendered future kings. Such a stupendous affair occurred in
June r9, 657: "There were five dragons seen at the Spring of the
the dawn of time when Shun's mother conceived after a visitation
Illustrious Genetrix in Ch'i-chou." 54 ("Illustrious Genetrix" or
by a rainbow <lragon.59 Many later instances are solemnly recorded
"Glorious Heir Giver" ( huang hou] are both possible translations of
in the Chinese dynastic histories. Two good examples have to do
the title given to the mother of the heir to the throne.)
 Women, Nymphs, and Dragons Women, Nymphs, and Dragons
with rulers of the Wei dynasty, a family of nomadic origin ( origi- affair with a dragon, a pair of dragons did preside over her parturi-
nally styled "Tabgach") who ruled the north Chinese in the fifth tion.63 Perhaps this could be construed as a symbolic act of genera-
and sixth centuries of our era. They adapted the Chinese myth of tion.
the dragon ancestor to their own ancestral legends. The first of these When virgins were sacrificed to the Nile, they were not simply
tales tells how a remote ancestor of the dynasty, a steppe-roving offerings of edible flesh but brides of the river god. The belief in
hunter, meets a mysterious beauty who announces that she has been the necessity and efficacy of such h.oly weddings is worldwide. 64
divinely ordained as his mate. After the happy union she disappears China was no exception. '"From the Shang period to the Later Han
"like wind and rain." The following year the rain goddess meets there must be hundreds of references to the sacrifice of animals,
the chieftain again in the same place and presents him with an objects, or humans by throwing or sinking them in the water (a
infant son, the destined founder of the dynasty's fortunes. 60 In custom still to be observed in the English superstition of throwing
this tradition, the divine woman, identified by the swirls of blowing pennies into wells)." 65 "Human sacrifice," of the kind that con-
rain, finds a human consort. In the other story, which tells of a cerns us here, dramatizes the tragic loves of humans and divinities.
much later time when the Wei monarchs had established their rule It is symbolized in the legend of Venus and Adonis, or, very dif-
over China, a great lady of the palace dreams that she is pursued ferently, in the death of the brides of Christ. Such survivals as these
by the sun. That luminary finds her cowering beneath her bed. It perpetuate an ancient practice, either reverently in ritual or quite
changes into a dragon and coils around her. From this strange transformed in literature.
mating came T'o-pa K'o, another monarch of Wei.61 Here the Offerings to the spirit of the Yellow River can be traced back to
woman is human, and her mate, despite his transient solar guise, Shang times. 1n the oracle bone inscriptions, they consisted at least
is a divine raill creature. Impregnation by a dragon did not preclude of animals and valuable utensils. But among these primitive and
the efficacy of normal sexual r~lations with His Human Majesty fragmentary documents there has not yet been found any evidence
of Wei. Rather it authenticated the divine source of the imperial of the sacri1ice of women, or any description of the god himself.
blood and guaranteed the legitimacy of the young prince. In the He emerges more plainly in late Chou times, in the two books
Chinese context, confirmation was particularly important in view Chuang tzu and Ch'u tz'u as "Sire of the Ho" (Ho po). It is sur-
of the doubtful nomadic origins of the dynasty. The western world, prising to find a northern and male deity so prominent in texts with
too, knows something of such unions: the god Ammon took the strong southern affinitics. 66 The southerners preferred goddesses in
form of a serpent when he visited Olympias, wife of King Philip of their rivers. Perhaps these refexences show northern influence in the
Macedon, to make her the mother of Alexander the Great. Simi- south. At any rate, the Sire of the Ho usually assumed the form of
larly, the Roman emperor Augustus was the son of a deity who a fish, or of a soft-shelled turtle, but sometimes he displayed human
manifested himself in the form of a serpent. It is said that his attributes. 67 The god dwelt in a splendid palace, constructed of
mother could never rid herself of the spots left by the creature on .fish scales and cowrie shells, surrounded by a court of shimmering
her body.62 water creatures.68 Hans Christian Andersen gave us its western
For the T'ang period, we have the ambiguous example of the counterpart:
great Li Shih-min, posthumously titled T'ai Tsung. Although the From the deepest spot in the ocean rises the palace of the sea king.
record does not show that his mother, surnamed Tou, had a love Its walls are made of coral and its high pointed windows of the clear-
 Women, Nymphs, and Dragons Women, Nymphs, and Dragons 27
est amber, but the roof is made of mussel shells that open and shut Goddess of the silver lake,
with the tide. This is a wonderful sight to see, for every shell holds Listen and save!
glistening pearls, any of which would be the pride of a queen's
The Lady of the Severn may not have been a dragon-apparent, but
crown. 69
she possessed all the attributes commonly ascribed to her submerged
Except for the amber, a rare and exotic substance in China, this Chinese sisters.
picture would have satisfied the most exacting Chinese imagination In the single case of the god of the Yellow River, then, we have
as a true account of the home of the mighty king of the Yellow a reversal of what seems to have been the general rule. The woman
River. has become the ephemeral spouse of a powerful male deity, who
The god of the Ho was given a human wife annually to share his has usurped the ancient role of female water spirits and river guard-
glittering abode. Like Andromeda, she was a sacrifice to a reptilian ians. A naiad has been displaced by a triton, swimming up, as it
water spirit, 70 but unlike that maiden there was no human hero to were, from the salty estuaries of the Ho. The later invasion of the
rescue her-unless we except the celebrated Hsi-men Pao, who is domains of the goddesses by partly lndianized dragon kings had a
credited with the abolition of the ancient ritual in toto. The Chinese precedent in him.
brides of the river were floated out, under careful shamanistic Beyond mere metaphysical principle and religious power, and even
guidance, to descend in their wedding beds to the embrace of the beyond all too human intimacies with dragons, it was possible for
finny god.71 The venerable cult and legends of the Sire of the Ho real human women, and goddesses too, to become visibly reptilian-
return us to the theme of the drowned woman, sometimes dragon·- as scaly as the inhuman dragons with which they sometimes con-
raped, who became the goddess of a lake or river. Whether honored sorted: "Blue Nereid-forms arrayed in shining scales." 72 These
bride or unhappy suicide, she gave herself to the element whose manifestations need not be transient, latent or figurative apparitions,
nature she shared and so came to reign in a palace of shell and such as serpents or rainbows, but as dragons proper. The records of
coral, attended by obsequious turtles and trains of shining ~sh. such epiphanies are very old. An unpleasant example occurs under
Thence she might come to the aid of men who traveled by water or the date of 551 ll.c. in the 7so chuan. The tale tells of a mother
persons who had acted benevolently to her or to her kin. She has jealous of the beauty of her son's wife. She has a good reason for
her western counterpart in the maiden Sabrina, elegantly represented keeping the two apart:
in Milton's Camus. A suicide by drowning, the girl was borne
It is sure that dragons and serpents are born in the depths of moun-
by water nymphs to the hall of King Nereus, where she "... un-
tains and in the great lakes. That one's beauty is such that I fear she
derwent a quick immortal change,// Made Goddess of this river." is a dragon or serpent who will bring disaster on you. 73
Her devotees addressed her in this manner:
We shall see a number of more elegant T'ang examples of such
Sabrina fair,
double nature later.
Listen where thou art sitting
Under the glassy, cool, translucent wave,
Occasionally a fi,trry creature of the river was the vehicle of a
In twisted braids of lilies knitting divine woman. She was a nymph in otter form, and accordingly
The loose train of thy amber-dropping hair; classified by the Chinese among the "water tribes," along with fishes
Listen for dear honor's sake, and the like, in the tenth-century anthology Tai p'ing kuang chi.74 ., :i';
 Women, Nymphs, and Dragons Women, Nymphs, and Dragons

Habitat and supernatural affiliation were more important than lakes, and marshes. In common belief as in literature, the dark, wet
morphology. Her hidden identity, as that of other water witches, side of nature showed itself alternately in women and in dragons.
was frequently detected by a shamanka. The great water deities of Chinese antiquity were therefore snake
The ideal dragon woman appeared also, as was to be expected, in queens and dragon ladies: they were avatars of dragons precisely
poetry. An instance is a stanza by the tenth-century poet prelate because they were equally spirits of the meres and mists and nimbus
Kuan-hsiu, who wrote of a fairylike rainbow maiden: "The lovely clouds. Despite their natural affinity to women, dragons appear in
person is like a roving dragon." 75 It is not always easy to say many tales as fertilizing males and sometimes as powerful dragon-
whether such figures are metaphors or true survivals from primitive kings. Eut these too were part of the rain cycle. The women (god-
religion. The edges between poetry and belief arc blurred, as they desses, human lasses, shamankas) were the repositories of moisture
are elsewhere in the ancient world. The Libyan snake goddess -the cool, receptive loam, or the lake or marsh; the virile dragons
Lamia was toughened into a fiend thirsting for the blood of chil- were the active, falling rain. Both were manifestations of the in-
dren in Greek mythology 76 and was softened into a lovely be- iinite transmutations of the water principle. The masculinity of
witched maiden by John Keats. Unfortunately, the forms of these some medieval dragons is probably also due to Indian influence.
strange female beings have not survived in Chinese art. If we can Doubtless in early antiquity the sex of dragons was ambiguous and
believe the catalogues of paintings that have come down to us variable, with the yin and feminine attributes dominant. In me-
from medieval times, the painters of those centuries were much dieval literature, the ya1ig and masculine attributes come somewhat
more interested in edifying representations of pious and dutiful to the fore, although they never quite submerge the ancient core of
women than in depictions of mutating goddesses. Indeed, I find ym.
no record at all for the Tang period that such a painting existed.
Even more-painted representations of any sort of goddess, other
than Buddhist divinities, seem to have been rare. However, shortly NU KUA
after the fall of T'ang, the painter Wang Ch'i-han-who served the
rulers of Southern T'ang and later those of Sung-composed a pic- One prestigious larnia outlived the suppression or secularization of
ture of "A Dragon Woman" which survived to be gathered into the the archaic serpent women of China. This was Nii Kua. That
famous collection of Sung Hui Tsung. 77 But no icon of her fan- powerful goddess was commonly represented as half serpent, half
tastic lineaments remains in our era. She lives now only as a dream woman. Orthodox belief, from Han times on, found difficulties in
evoked by poetry and classical prose. reconciling this zoomorphic deity with the ideal but artificial hero
To sum up: the Chinese dragon shares, with many supernatural or heroine to which her name was finally applied, in accordance
snakes of the western world, its serpentine shape as well as the at- with the new "Confucian" insistence on euhemerization. Her
tributes of rain bringer and woman nature. The scaly sisters of the gradual degradation from her ancient eminence was partly due to
Indian snake girls and the lamias of Europe wriggle abundantly the contempt of some eminent and educated men for animalian
through the pages of early Far Eastern literature. In China, dragon gods, and partly to the increasing domination of masculinity in
essence is woman essence. The connection is through the mysterious elite social doctrine. Akin to the nymphs of Greece, she survived
powers of the fertilizing rain, and its extensions in running streams, in folk memory. But her public cult was constantly diminished, and
 Women, Nymphs, and Dragons Women, Nymphs, and Dragons

she was never glamorized in medieval belles lettres as were the *wa in Nii Wa; also dialect word for "a beauty" in the
Divine Woman of Wu shan and the goddess of the Lo River. lower Yangtze valley
Nii Kua, in her traditional form, belongs among the unipeds- *wa "still pond; puddle; stagnant water" ·
deities with a scaly tail in place of forked legs. 78 Mermaids are a *ghwa/wa "frog"
familiar example. They occur from China to Gaul in the ancient
world. Nii Kua has a close western analogue in Echidna, a beauti- Jf etymology is significant in. this case, it indicates that the matriarch
ful woman above the waist, a serpent below, who was the consort was a spirit of rain pools, represented by the moist, slippery animals
of Typhon, mother of the Sphinx, Chimaera, Hydra, and the which live near them. If so, she is allied to the rain-bringing frogs
Dragon of the Hesperides.79 She has even stronger resemblances to of the :Bahnar tribe of Indochina. 81~ She may have been a frog god-
the Nabataean goddess Atargatis, who in turn had affinities with dess, or perhaps a sn.ail goddess, or perhaps both. In one tradition
Aphrodite. Atargatis was a cosmic mother goddess, with power she is simply a dragon. 84 But in another, familiar in the Han period
over the fertility of living things, and was represented with the tail at least, she is all woman. 85 Like so many other zoomorphic deities,
of a fish or dolphin. In this form, a grand prototype of the ordinary she appears in crude form among the many hybrid, patchwork, and
mermaid, she was worshipped at Ascalon on the coast of Palestine.80 fantastic spirits described in the Shan hai ching.86 Among her col-
leagues in that old book is the characteristic shape of a thunder god
Nii Kua was no lesser goddess.
Dragon or serpent women seem to have been worshipped as early «dragon-bodied and human-headed," who makes the thunder by
as the Shang dynasty in China.81 But there is no way of knowing drumming on his (or her?) belly.87
whether Nii Kua was then already one of their number. She turns One authority regards Nii Kua as a deified shamaness, that is, a
up regularly in the texts that survive from the late Chou and the rain dancer, with origins ia the Shang period, and also a goddess
Han, obviously a relic of considerable antiquity, but by then she of rain and fertility. 88 In this version she resembles the Snake Maid
was being edged out of the predominantly male official cult.82 Her of the Hopi Indians, "a personification of underworld life which
name presents some interesting possibilities. The nu is simply fertilizes the maize." 89 Nii Kua was also a creatrix, although she
"woman," which did not prevent the euhemerizing Confucian peda- achieved no great dignity in post-classical times as a result of that
gogues of a late age from trying to conceal her femininity under the distinguished role. Demiurges and creator deities have not enjoyed
guise of silk-robed emperor. The second element of her name has much prestige in historic China, although it appears that they may
a number of apparent cognates: have fared better in early times among the non-Chinese peoples of
the south.90 At any rate, a Han source makes her a personification
*k.wli in Nii Kua of the abstract cJeative force sometimes styled "Transformer of the
*k.wli "snail" Myriad Creatures." 91 In her cosmic aspect, she is also the creator
*wa "dimple; depression; water-worn hole" of man, although in this role she seems to have been neglected by
*wa "covert; hole; hiding place" everyone but a poet, as will appear in due time.92 Nii Kua was a
This sounds very much like the name of a snail goddess concealed wind goddess too-the euhemerizing texts give her the clan name
in her rounded apartment. But consider also the probable cognates Jeng "wind." Accordingly she was the inventor of the classical Chi-
of an alternate version of the goddess' name: nese wind instrument, the reed organ (sheng). 93
 Women'. Nymphs, and Dragons Women, Nymph.s, and Dragons 33
Although Nii Kua's legend and cult seem originally to have been palaces at the bottom of a river or to be swathed in rainbow mists-
independent of them, she was attached to or identified with various old dragon associations detached from the germinal dragons. 98
other supernatural personages in early times. Most prominent was One beginning is an inquiry into the question of the esoteric
her association with her male twin Fu Hsi-like her, a proto- religious meaning of the Lao tzu book-a task that can only be
musician and creator spirit. In Han art he is shown with his snaky touched 011 superficially here, and perhaps temporarily disposed of.
torso intertwined with hers. Such divine incestuous pairs are well Although interpretations of the Lao tzu are as variable as its in-
known among the ethnic minorities of south China, and it is pos- terpreters, it is reasonably plain that the book shows an element of
sible that the Chinese versions of them have been contaminated by mysticism, which can be ii1terpreted in a traditional way as a kind
these exotic legends. 94 They have a western counterpart in the of abstract union with an ultimate source of being, or in a more
coupled serpents of Mercury's staff, representing Ophion and his personal and fervent way as an ecstatic conjunction with some pal-
female consort.95 A modern Chinese scholar considers Nii Kua to pitating deity. Maspero has even suggested that the most important
be a variant form of the ancestral mother of the Hsia "dynasty"; clement of Taoism to be found in this archaic rhapsody is its seem-
as the goddess of Mount T'u, she seduced Yii, the flood hero.96 An- ing promise that the cosmic union might lead to the supreme goal
other modern Chinese authority identifies her with Hsi Ho, the of all Taoists-immortality.99 Many different solutions-probably
archaic sun goddess. 97 Such tantalizing suggestions remain to be there can never be a sin.gle solution-to the mystery have a certain
definitely proven, but there is no doubt that the goddess enjoyed a plausibility. Among them, one rather drastic interpretation, which
prestige in the earliest periods of Chinese history that attracted other has attracted a certain followi11g, can hardly be overlooked in an
divinities like a magnet. Naturally their identities tended to be essay on water-goddesses. It is well known that the Lao tzu text
merged with hers. abounds in female imagery. It follows, in the view transmitted here,
But this, like the myth of universal dragon mothers, proved to be that the Tao is no abstract entity like Spinoza's "God," the ultimate
a dead end in Chinese mythology. It was the tenderer figures of source of real existence, but rather a great mother, an eternal womb
rainbow maidens and river sprites that managed to survive, chiefly from which er:nerges all of the particular entities that populate this
through the help of upper-class literature. ephemeral world. As the te:xt itself says, "It is the Mother of all
under Heaven-I d<l not know its Name, but I style it 'Way shower'
[tao] ." 100 Part of the imagery which attempts to Hesh out this im-
precise entity is aqueous, and an inspection of the whole concatena-
THE LAO TZU GODDESS
tion leads one easily enough to the construction of a primitive, fe-
Now it becomes necessary to look at the ancient water goddesses male, all-enveloping ocean of fertility, something like the Baby-
of China, as preserved in classical literature, ignoring temporarily lonian goddess Tiamat.101 Anal<Jgies are also readily made with
their possible affinity or identity with dragons. Our premise is that Ishtar, a mother goddess and "daughter of the ocean stream," 102
after they became detached from their animalian personalities and with Isis, a fertility and river goddess, ruler of the Nile's flood,1° 3
figurations-a gradual process well under way shortly before the with Aphrodite, with St. Mary of Egypt, whose origin-like that of
beginning of the Christian era-they retained more pleasing but all the Marys-is pelagic, and with the Virgin Mary herself who,
equally ancient attributes. They continued to dwell in shining to the Gnostics, was "of the sea." 1·04 Attractive as this straightfor-
 Women, Nymphs, and Dragons 35
34 Women, Nymphs, and Dragons
her mountain , she enticed kings, heroes, and shamans to her em-
ward interpreta tion of the venerable book may be, the mother-
brace. Her literary prototype was the entrancin g creature extolled in
goddess thesis still awaits a thorough, well-documented, and cogent
the two celebrated poems, provided with prose introductions, at-
exposition. But conceivably such an inchoate being, not yet ready
tributed to Sung Yii, who is said to have been a court poet in the ,_,
for full resurrection, is after all the ancestress of all of the water
ancient state of Ch'u. The two compositions are called "Rhapsod y
goddesses of China.
on Kao-t'ang " (Kao t'ang fu) and "Rhapsody on the Divine
Woman" (Shen nu fu). In them she appears as the transient mate
of former kings of Ch'u who encountered her in holy places. She
THE DIVINE WOMAN never stayed with them, but always returned quickly to her foggy
home on Wu shan~ leaving them. desolate.
The most delectable but most deceptive, the most alluring but most
In the first of the two rhapsodies, the goddess is shown in her
unreliable of the old water goddesses was the being who made her
noumena l aspect, as a great creative power of nature. In the second
home on \Vu shan-"Sh amanka Mountai n"-in the dramatic Yang-
she appears in her phenome nal aspect, as a desirable fairy being-
tze gorges. Although she has always been truly anonymous, different
less cosmic, more human. But in both she is a goddess of rain and
traditions have fixed different epithets on her. One of the commonest
fertility, revealing herself to human beings as a kind of luminous
is Yao Chi-"Tu rquoise Courtesan." 105 But despite her anonymity,
nimbus or ectoplas m-a shifting misty form in which the colors of
her personality is more clearly developed than the personalities of
the other river and lake goddesses. the rainbow play. Out of this shimmer ing aureole the lovely form
of the goddess herself would sometimes take shape. The rainbow
The identity of her original mountain home is uncertain , popular
tradition and scholarly opinion being at variance on this point. One was, therefore, both her symbol and her quintessential spirit. She
was also the ancestress of the ro-yal clan. Fertilized by the sun, she
scholar wishes to fix it near the old capital of the state of Ch'u in
Hupei, 10 (J but the usual view is that the peaks of Shamank a Moun- had the power to bear di vine kings, to bring rain, and to provide
men, animals, and plants with abundant progeny.
tain overlook the swirling Yangtze higher up where it plunges
clown from Szechwan. According to venerable tradition, its peaks
In the "Rhapsody cm Kao-t'ang ," named for a holy hill in Ch'u,
are twelve in number. The T'ang poet Li Tuan wrote of them: a king, posthumously sty led "Hsiang, " is revealed strolling in the
company of Sung Yii. He is amazed to see a misty column rising
Shamanka Mountain's twelve peaks on Kao-t'ang 's eminenc e-a vapor that constantly wavers and as-
All placed amidst the cyan void. 107 sumes new but inconstan t shapes. The king asks the poet, "What
In the course of time, all of the twelve sacred summits have acquired is that vapor?" and Sung Yu replies, "It is called 'Cloud of Dawn.'"
names appropriate to an airy-fairy atmosphere and echoing common- "To what does 'Cloud of Dawn' refer?" "Once, long ago," says
place genteel sentiments about the goddess and her surround ings- Sung Yii, "a former king strolled at Kao-t'ang." He goes on to tell
names such as "Watchin g Auroral Clouds," "Dawn Clouds," "Gath- how that ancient king had once disposed himself lazily for a daytime
ering of Transcen dents," "Pure Altar," "Ascendi ng Dragon," and rest and, in a dream. or vision, had seen a woman who addressed
so on.108 him thus: "Your handmai den is the Woman of Shamank a Moun-
From the swirling mists that enveloped the Divine Woman and tain, now a visitor at Kao-t'ang. Hearing that you, milord, were
 Women, Nymphs, and Dragons Women, Nymphs, and Dragons 37
strolling at Kao-t'ang, I wished to offer myself to your pillow and Undoubtedly, then, the Divine Woman of Shamanka Mountain
mat." The king therefore gave her his favor. She left him with these was an ancient fertility goddess whose ritual mating with a shaman-
words: "On the sunlit slope of Shamanka Mountain, at the steep king was necessary to the well-being of the land. The poet makes
places of the high hill-your handmaiden is 'Dawn Cloud' in the her responsible for the generation of the myriad creatures. All phe-
morning, 'Moving Rain' in the evening. Dawn after dawn, evening nomena spring from her. She is a literary version of an ancient
after evening, below the sunlit platform!" In the morning the king cosmic myth~a nameless goddess of the formless mists, pregnant
looked for her in vain. Later he raised a temple to her and styled it with possibilities. She has much in common with the Tao, while
"Dawn Cloud." Here ends Sung Yii's historical explanation. His also reminding us of that great creatrix Nii Kua.
companion, the living king, then asks him to compose a rhapsodic In the second of the poems, "Rhapsody on the Divine Woman,"
poem about the goddess. The poet complies. In his composition he the author has brought the goddess somewhat closer to earth, with-
shows her home on \Vu shan as a kind of magic mountain, swathed out failing to invest her with unearthly glamour. She is simultan-
in potent auras. He comments on the mystic powers of the deity eously a sacred vision and an erotic dream. Here again we are
herself, embroidering the facets of her beauty, her protean shapes, shown the king and the poet walking together at a reach named
and her evanescent charms in scintillating language. She appears "Dream of Clouds." Again Sung Yu relates the story of Kao-t'ang.
almost as a meteorological phenomenon, sparkling and trembling, That night, after the king retires to bed, he dreams that the goddess
darting and quivering, like a sequence of misty rainbows, but often comes to him.109 In the morning he gives an enthusiastic report of
also like a fleeting bird. During her periods of greatest activity she his rnarvelous experience to Sung Y ii:
strikes fear into the hearts of men and beasts alike:
Her form is without 11eer!
Even Her beauty is without limit!
Eagle and osprey-
Goshawk and sparrowhawk- But, despite her divine allure, she remains unattainable. The poem
Fly aloft ends on a disconsolate note. This theme of the sorrow of leave-
Or taking after a romantic encounter sets the tone of all later poems
Cower in hiding. about Wu shan-and indeed the two rhapsodies spawned an enor-
mous progeny of imitations and a host of allusions of greater or
Nothing can withstand the might of this tender vision. She also has less subtlety in medieval verse. In these, with the passage of time,
some of the traits of a dragon: the erotic element became increasingly explicit, the supernatural
Above she belongs to the sky- element less so.
Below she appears in the abyss! The presence of the classical rainbow goddess of Wu shan-or of
a spirit very much like her-has also been detected in the most
Sung Y ii holds out hope to the king that if he makes careful cere- revered of all books of poetry, "The Canon of Odes." In medieval
monial preparation he may, like his ancestor, encounter this en- and early modem times, her presence there has hardly been dis-
chanting and powerful spirit-an experience that will purify his cernible through the opaque accretions of centuries of respectable
body and soul and bring him incredibly long life. "Confucian" commentaries. However, the lamented scholar and
 Women, Nymphs, and Dragons 39
Women, Nymphs, and Dragons
by a male shaman, whose luck was rather less than that afforded
poet Wen I-to demonstrated that she does in fact appear in that-if:
the King of Ch'u in the two Sung Yii poems.112
anthology under the epithet chi nu "nubile girl," especially when 5'1
Her vehicles are two rhapsodic masterpieces of uncertain author-
she is flaunting her charms, taking the sexual initiative, and playing
ship, despite their traditional association with the honored name of
the part of a seductive, all-too-willing maiden. In a number of the
Ch'ii Yiian. They are called "Mistress of the Hsiang" (so I shall
odes she displays her charms to entice a lover. She often appears
translate Hsiang chun) and "Lady of the Hsiang" (Hsiang ju jen ).
as a sheet of rain or a cloud of morning mist. Whatever her guise,
They elaborate on an older and presumably southern oral tradition
itself apparently a component of shamanistic practice.113 They ar~
her worship was that normally owed to a clan ancestress and fertility
goddess. Her cult was closely associated with the tribal mating rites
preserved for us in the miscellany called Ch'u tz'u, whose present
held each spring in antiquity.U0 Her associations seem to be south-
form derives from a selection edited in the first century B.c.114
ern, and it may be that, even if she is not identical with the delicious
These glittering word pictures are partly secularized-or were
goddess of the Sung Yii rhapsodies, she is a close cousin who has
interpreted as of primarily secular significance from Han times on.
somehow strayed off into the mythology and poetry of the soberer
This feat was achieved by an official policy of euhemerizing ancient
north. The identity of the divine mistress with the rainbow was still
te~ts, b: glossing un_comfortably visionary or imaginative writings
very much alive in Han times, as in such standardized conceits as
with thick layers of allegory. The new post-Chou orthodoxy frowned
a rainbow . . . is also called 'beautiful person.' " 111 This is the op-
on e:xcesses of religious expression, and so the gods and shamans had
posite face of the coin that, especially in the Han period, represented
to be explained away.
rainbow spirits as hideous affiictions-abnormal outbreaks of female
Rightly considered, the three poems of the Ch'u tz'u collection
sexuality. that refer to water .and fertility goddesses-the Hsiang chun, the
Hsiang fu jen and the Shan kttei, all of them in the subdivision
entitled "The Nine Songs"-are shamanistic paeans appealing to the
THE HSIANG CONSORT goddesses as potential mistresses. They are the transformed relics of
divine courtships, cast in dramatic form. Unhappily, the boundaries
Next only to the pastel and gossamer figure of the delicate rainbow
between dialogue and stage directions in these deformed libretti
goddess-Ishtar becomes Iris-in the affection of Chinese poets was
remain obscure for the most part.115 Although in the later, dominant
the goddess of the River Hsiang. This, the preeminent river of the
tradition, the first two of these poems refer to different goddesses of
south, flowing northward through Hunan to join the central Yangtze
the Hsiang River, treated as sisters, the better view now holds both
and its tangle of lakes, was the domain of a deity of the old state of
poems to be concerned with the unique goddess of the great river
Ch'u. Because she was, in part at least, a goddess of the Kiang, she
of the south.116
was akin to the Divine Woman, but she was not originally a con-
In the course of time their legend came to be confounded with
cubine of kings: she was the all-powerful protectress of a great body
that of another divine pair: the Mistress of the Hsiang was said to
of water. Her realm included not only the Hsiang but also the wide
be also "Fairy Radiance" (0 httang), and the Lady of the Hsiang
expanse of Lake Tung-t'ing and the central flow of the mighty
borrowed the style «Maiden l3loom" (Nii ying). In the Ch'u tz'u
Yangtze itself. Her classical version is sketched in two courtly re-
poem named for her, the Lady of the Hsiang is also referred to as
visions or imitations of shamanistic chants, in which she is wooed
Exploring the Variety of Random
Documents with Different Content
on three sides by water. The principal alley, the proper arive, runs
from the entrance in a long straight line for about half a mile. Rows
of trees, consisting chiefly of horse-chestnuts, divide it into five
alleys. The central one is entirely filled with an unceasing succession
of glittering carriages, moving slowly along its opposite sides in
opposite directions; the two on each side are filled with horsemen,
galloping along to try the capacity of their steeds, or provoking them
into impatient curvetings, to try the effect of their own forms and
dexterity on the beauties who adorn the open calèches.
The two exterior alleys are consecrated to pedestrians; but those of
the Viennese who must walk, because not rich enough to hire a
hackney-coach, are never fond of walking far, and, forsaking the
alleys, scatter themselves over the verdant lawn which spreads itself
out to where the wood becomes more dense and impenetrable. The
lawn itself is plentifully strewed with coffee-houses, and the happy
hundreds seat themselves under shady awnings or on the green
herbage, beneath a clump of trees, enjoying their ices, coffee, and
cigars, till twilight calls them to the theatre, with not a thought
about to-morrow, and scarcely a reminiscence of yesterday.
But though the extremity of this main alley be the boundary of the
excursions of the fashionable world, it is only the beginning of the
more rural and tranquil portion of the Prater. The wood becomes
thicker; there are no more straight lines of horse-chestnuts; the
numerous alleys wind their way unconstrained through the forest
maze, now leading you along in artificial twilight beneath an
overarching canopy of foliage, and now terminating in some verdant
and tranquil spot like those on which fairies delight to dance; now
bringing you to the brink of some pure rivulet, which trickles along
unsuspectingly to be lost in the mighty stream, and now stopping
you on the shady banks of the magnificent river itself.
 THE ESZTERHÁZY PALACES.
JOHN PAGET.
[Paget’s “Hungary and Transylvania” is the source of our present selection,
we having chosen, from his many pictures of Hungarian life and people, a
description of the famous Eszterházys, a family renowned particularly for its
jewels, which have been gathering for centuries in the castle of
Forchtenstein.]

It was at six o’clock in the morning that the smart Presburg post-boy
sounded his bugle, to express his impatience at the half-hour we had
already kept him waiting ere we started for the Neusiedler Lake, in
the neighborhood of which we intended to pass a few days. The
journey to the end of the lake might be some sixty miles, and we
reckoned to accomplish this by post within the day.
Of all the modes of travelling in Hungary, the post is the most
expensive, and to me, at least, the most disagreeable. The supply of
horses is too scanty, and if the traveller happens to arrive before or
after the post-wagen, he must generally wait some time before he
can obtain the number he requires. There is an awkward rule, too,
which it is as well a stranger should know. If he arrives at any place
with post, he can oblige the postmaster to send him on with the
same number of horses he arrived with; but should he, as occurred
to us on the present occasion, feel a wish to leave the post-road,
and for that purpose hire private horses, at the next post-station
they may refuse him a supply, or oblige him to take as many as they
choose.
It was at Gschies we learned this rule, for the postmaster stoutly
refused to send us on with a pair of horses, which was all we had
previously required, and declared we should either take four or
remain where we were. Entirely ignorant as I then was of any other
means of getting forward, I at last consented, and desired him to
give us the four horses. “But I have only three in the stable at
present,” was his cool reply; “and you may either take those and pay
for four, or you may remain where you are until to-morrow, when
the others will come home.” Nor is this the only instance of gross
imposition I could relate. The worst of it is, there is no redress. In
one case I applied to the judge and notary of the village, and though
they had the best will to protect me, all they could do was to give
me peasants’ horses, and so enable me to avoid the like treatment
for the rest of the journey.
For the matter of speed, you get on by post at the rate of five miles
an hour, with strong, large horses, and post-boys wearing huge
cocked hats, each with a plume of feathers worthy a field-marshal,
and a red coat with purple facings. But if ever the reader should
have occasion to go from Vienna to Pesth, and is an amateur at
driving, I recommend him to what is called the bauern post,—that is,
if steamboats and railroads have not ere this entirely destroyed it.
The peasants between the frontiers of Hungary and Pesth, on the
great high-road from Vienna, combined to supply relays of horses at
a cheaper rate and better than the royal post; and though at first
opposed by government, they eventually succeeded so well that at
present the whole line is supplied by them almost exclusively. The
pace at which these men, with their four small horses, take on a
light Vienna carriage is something wonderful, especially when the
length of some of their stages is considered. The last stage cannot
be less than forty miles from Pesth, and, with a short pause of about
a quarter of an hour to water, they do it for the most part at full
gallop, and with the same horses, in four hours. It is glorious to see
the wild-looking driver, his long black hair floating in the wind as he
turns round to ask your admiration when his four little clean-boned
nags are rattling over hill and hollow in a style which for the first
time since he left home shakes an Englishman’s blood into quicker
circulation. There is certainly a pleasure in rapid motion which has
on some men almost an intoxicating effect.
 BUDAPEST
But to return to our five miles an hour. We passed through a well-
cultivated country, chiefly inhabited by Germans, who have crept in
upon this side of Hungary from Presburg nearly to the borders of
Croatia. The Neusiedler Lake, or the Fertö Tava Hungarian, which we
soon came in sight of, is about twenty-four miles long by twelve
broad, varying in depth from nine to thirteen feet. In parts,
particularly at the north end, its shores are hilly and pretty, but on
the eastern side they are flat, and terminate in a very extensive
marsh, called the Hanság.
It is supposed to be this lake which the Emperor Galerius drained
into the Danube, and which has been allowed to re-form by the
destruction of the Roman works. There is little doubt, I believe, as to
the practicability of draining the lake again, if it were desired; but, as
a neighboring proprietor observed, it would spoil some glorious
snipe-shooting....
At Eisenstadt, some short distance from the lake, is a palace of the
first of the Hungarian magnates, Prince Eszterházy. This palace,
though not remarkable for its beauty (it is in a heavy, though florid,
Italian style), is well fitted up for a princely residence. We walked
through suites of apartments innumerable; but by far the most
striking of them was the great ball-room, an elegantly-proportioned
hall of great size, and richly ornamented in white and gold. This
room was last used when the present prince was installed lord-
lieutenant of the county of Oedenburg, an office hereditary in his
family; and great is still the fame of the almost regal pomp with
which he fêted the crowds of nobles who flocked around him upon
that occasion.
The gardens, laid out in the English style, are very fine, and the hot-
houses larger than any I remember to have seen; even Alton must
bow to Eisenstadt. They contain no less than seventy thousand
exotics, and are particularly rich in New Holland specimens. One can
hardly help lamenting that so much luxury and beauty should be
wasted; for, except the inhabitants of Eisenstadt, to whom the
gardens are always open, it is rarely that the palace or its grounds
receive a visitor.
Great as is the splendor of some of our English peers, I almost fear
the suspicion of using a traveller’s license when I tell of Eszterházy’s
magnificence. Within a few miles of this same spot he has three
other palaces of equal size.
Just at the southern extremity of the lake stands Eszterház, a huge
building in the most florid Italian style, built only in 1700, and
already uninhabited for sixty years. Its marble halls, brilliant with
gold and painting, are still fresh as when first built. The chamber of
Marie Theresa is unchanged since the great queen reposed there;
the whole interior is in such a state that it might be rendered
habitable to-morrow; but the gardens are already overgrown with
weeds, and have almost lost their original form; the numberless
pleasure-houses are yielding to the damp position in which they are
placed, and are fast crumbling away; while the beautiful theatre, for
which an Italian company was formerly maintained, is now stripped
of its splendid mirrors, and serves only as a dwelling for the dormant
bats, which hang in festoons from its gilded cornices. England is
famous for her noble castles and her rich mansions, yet we can have
little idea of a splendor such as Eszterház must formerly have
presented. Crowded as it was by the most beautiful women of four
countries, its three hundred and sixty strangers’ rooms filled with
guests, its concerts directed by a Haydn, its opera supplied by Italian
artists, its gardens ornamented by a gay throng of visitors, hosts of
richly-clothed attendants thronging its antechambers, and its gates
guarded by the grenadiers of its princely master, its magnificence
must have exceeded that of half of the royal courts of Europe. I
know of nothing but Versailles which gives one so high a notion of
the costly splendor of a past age as Eszterház.
Haydn was for more than thirty years maestro di capello to Prince
Eszterházy; and, during that period, lived chiefly with the family. His
portrait is still preserved, and it is almost the only picture of much
interest the palace contains. Haydn was a very poor and obscure
person when he was appointed one of the prince’s band; so much
so, that no one thought even of giving the necessary orders for his
being admitted into the palace. The following anecdote of his
introduction to the prince is recounted by Carpani:
“The Maestro Friedberg, a friend and admirer of Haydn, lived with
Prince Eszterházy. Regretting that Haydn should be overlooked, he
persuaded him to compose a symphony worthy of being performed
on the birthday of his highness. Haydn consented; the day arrived;
the prince, according to custom, took his seat in the midst of his
court, and Friedberg distributed the parts of Haydn’s symphony to
the performers. Scarcely had the musicians got through the first
allegro, when the prince interrupted them to ask who was the author
of so beautiful a piece. Friedberg dragged the modest, trembling
Haydn from a corner of the room into which he had crept, and
presented him as the fortunate composer. ’What,’ cried the prince, as
he came forward, ‘that Blackymoor!’ (Haydn’s complexion was none
of those which mock the lily’s whiteness.) ‘Well, blacky, from
henceforth you shall be in my service; what’s your name?’ ‘Joseph
Haydn.’ ‘But you are already one of my band; how is it I never saw
you here before?’ The modesty of the young composer closed his
lips, but the prince soon put him at his ease. ‘Go and get some
clothes suitable to your rank,—don’t let me see you any more in
such a guise; you are too small; you look miserable, sir; get some
new clothes, a fine wig with flowing curls, a lace collar, and red heels
to your shoes. But mind, let your heels be high, that the elevation of
your person may harmonize with that of your music. Go, and my
attendants will supply you with all you want.’ ... The next day Haydn
was travestied into a gentleman. Friedberg often told me of the
awkwardness of the poor Maestrino in his new habiliments. He had
such a gawky look that everybody burst into a laugh at his
appearance. His reputation, however, as his genius had room to
manifest itself, grew daily, and he soon obtained so completely the
good-will of his master, that the extraordinary favor of wearing his
own hair and his simple clothes was granted to his entreaties. The
surname of the Blackymoor, however, which the prince had
bestowed upon him, stuck to him for years after.”
The only part of Eszterház at present occupied is the stables, which
had just received an importation of twelve beautiful thoroughbred
horses from England, with some very promising young stock. An old
English groom had been sent out with them, and bitterly did he
complain of the difficulties he had to encounter before he could
convince the beamters—a race of hungry stewards by whom the
estates of the nobles are mismanaged and the revenues plundered—
of the many little wants and luxuries requisite for English race-
horses.
The estates of Prince Eszterházy are said to equal the kingdom of
Würtemberg in size; it is certain they contain one hundred and thirty
villages, forty towns, and thirty-four castles! The annual revenue
from such vast possessions is said, however, not to amount to one
hundred and fifty thousand pounds per annum, though it is capable
of considerable increase. The incumbrances at the present time are
greater than with most other Hungarian magnates, few of whom are
indebted to a less amount than half their incomes.
I remember some years since an anecdote going the rounds of the
papers to the effect that Prince Eszterházy had astonished one of
our great agriculturists who had shown him his flock of two
thousand sheep, and asked him with some little pride if he could
show as many, by telling him that he had more shepherds than the
other had sheep! By a reckoning made upon the spot, with one well
acquainted, we found the saying literally true. The winter flock of
Merinos is maintained at two hundred and fifty thousand, to every
hundred of which one shepherd is allowed, thus making the number
of shepherds two thousand five hundred! But, as a spirituelle of the
neighborhood observed when we were discussing these matters,
“Les Eszterházys font tout en grand: le feu prince a doté deux cents
maîtresses, et pensionné cent enfans illégitimes!”
It is not right to leave Eszterház without mention of Hánystock, or
the wild man of the Hanság. The Hanság is a bog about twenty
miles long, on the borders of which Eszterház is built. About eighty
years since, in some part of this bog, an extraordinary creature is
said to have been found, possessing something of the human form,
but with scarcely any other quality that could entitle it to a place
among our species. It was three feet high, apparently of about the
middle age, strongly built, and said to have webbed feet and hands.
It was unable to utter any articulate sounds, lived entirely on fish
and frogs, showed no signs of any passion or feeling, except fear
and anger, and was in every respect in the lowest state of brutality.
The most curious part of its history is that no one ever heard of it till
accidentally found by a peasant in the bog, when it was brought to
Eszterház, where, after remaining fourteen months, it escaped, and
was never heard of again. I believe there is some reason to suspect
an imposition, for an Italian adventurer appeared and disappeared
about the same time with Hánystock, and though unable to cite
name or place, I feel pretty certain that a similar occurrence took
place in another part of Europe soon after.
A few miles from Eisenstadt, and just on the confines of Austria, is a
yet more interesting monument of what we should call feudal
greatness, belonging to the Eszterházy family. The castle of
Forchtenstein, built by a Count Eszterházy, is still in a perfect state of
preservation. It is placed on a bold rock, and commands a view of
the whole country to the northeast and south. It is now used as a
prison for Prince Eszterházy’s peasantry,—for he is one of the few
who retain the right of life and death, the jus gladii, on his own
estates,—and is consequently guarded by a small detachment of
very venerable-looking grenadiers.
The castle is sufficiently modern to have been laid out for the
employment of artillery, as may be seen by the heavy bastions and
long curtains, and is still sufficiently old to bear marks of the Gothic
architect about it, of which the high watch-tower is not the least
elegant. The interior has all the inconvenient straightness of a
walled-in castle, and the apartments are for the most part small and
simple. The most interesting object after the well, which is one
hundred and seventy yards deep, and said to have been worked in
the solid rock by Turkish prisoners, is the collection of arms. Besides
arms sufficient for a regiment of foot and another of horse, which
ere this an Eszterházy has equipped and maintained at his own cost,
there is the gala equipment of a troop of cavalry which attended one
of the princesses on her wedding-day, thirty pieces of artillery, suits
of plain black armor for several hundred men, many curious
specimens of early German matchlocks, and a quantity of Turkish
arms of almost every description.
One suit of armor is interesting from the tale of rude courtesy
attached to it. It formerly belonged to a Count Eszterházy who fell in
a battle against the old enemies of Hungary, the Turks. A ball from
the Pasha’s own pistol had already pierced the Count’s cuirass, but,
anxious to make more certain of his death, the Moslem leaped from
his horse and beat the helmet of the Christian till he broke open his
visor, when he discovered in the fallen foe an old friend by whom he
had been most kindly treated when a prisoner in Hungary. Faithful to
his friendship, the Turk made the only reparation in his power, for,
after treating the body of Eszterházy with every possible mark of
respect, he collected the armor in which he had died, and sent it,
with the arms which had caused his death, as a present to his
family.
A great number of banners, as well those taken from the enemy as
those under which the followers of Eszterházy fought, are hung
round the walls. It is characteristic of the times that most of the
Hungarian flags bear a painting of the cross, with a figure of Christ
as large as life.
In one room we noticed the genealogical tree of all the Eszterházys,
in which it is made out, as clearly as possible, that, beginning with
Adam, who reclines in a very graceful attitude at the bottom of the
tree, they pass through every great name, Jewish as well as
heathen, from Moses to Attila, till they find themselves what they are
now, magnates of Hungary. What is still more extraordinary, there is
a long series of portraits of these worthies from Attila inclusive, with
their wives and families dressed in the most approved fashion, and
continued down to the present century.
It is a pity the noble owner of Forchtenstein does not imbibe a little
of that Gothic mania so often ill-directed in England, and restore this
castle to its former state. As a national monument of the taste of the
Middle Ages in Hungary its restoration would be very desirable, and
it would possess peculiar attractions, not merely from being the only
castle of the kind here, but as a specimen of that mixture of the
Asiatic and Gothic which, in those days, so strongly characterized the
habits and customs of the Magyars, and the remains of which even
yet distinguish them from the rest of Europe.
The only purpose for which it is at present used, except as a prison,
is to contain the treasures of the prince. Of these I can only speak
from report, for previously to my visit I did not know that in order to
see them it is necessary to have two persons present who live at a
distance, each of whom has a key, without which the other is of no
use, and therefore had not provided against the difficulty.
The splendor of the Eszterházy jewels is no secret in England, and it
is in this good castle those heaps of treasure, which so tempted her
majesty’s fair lieges at her coronation, are commonly preserved. It is
said that each prince is obliged to add something to these jewels,
and that they can never be sold except to ransom their possessors
from captivity among the Turks. When the French entered Hungary,
a small party presented themselves before Forchtenstein and
demanded its surrender. The grenadiers, however, shut the gates,
cut the bridge, and set them at defiance; and, as the enemy had no
means of enforcing obedience, Prince Eszterházy saved his jewels.
Besides the jewels there is an extensive collection of ancient
Hungarian costumes; among others, if I recollect rightly, one worn
by King Mathias Corvinus.
 FROM HAMBURG TO STOCKHOLM.
MRS. ANDREW CROSSE.
[It is a journey in Sweden which our traveller proposes to describe in the
work from which we quote, but we find the story of her journey to Sweden
more interesting, and give her graphic account of the German cities of
Hamburg and Lübeck, and the picturesque water route along the Swedish
coast, ending with an account of what she saw of interest in Sweden’s
capital city.]

Our route to Sweden was by Hamburg and Lübeck, for at the latter
place we were to pick up some of our party; and, indeed, under any
circumstances, it is the best route for a first visit to the country, for
then you approach Stockholm by the Baltic. The average passage
from London to Hamburg by steamer direct occupies forty hours, but
the waves and winds were favorable, and we accomplished the
distance in four hours less. However, calm as the seas were, every
tourist’s soul felt more in sympathy with Nature when we were
actually in the river Elbe. By daybreak we were steaming up towards
Hamburg, past the pleasant suburb of Blankensee, which reminds
one very much of Richmond. It is a collection of magnificent villas—
indeed, one might say palaces—built among the hanging woods of
the river-bank.
Hamburg was more worth seeing than I expected; in the older parts
there are very picturesque bits, consisting of tall, ancient houses,
leaning at different angles over the dark and busy waters of the
canal,—indeed, both streets and canals are crowded with the world’s
commerce. Everything nowadays comes from Hamburg. Chemistry
competes with the vineyards of Spain in producing what we
innocently drink as sherry. We survive it, so we must be grateful to
Chemistry for her wonderful adaptations.
The modern portion of Hamburg has been entirely rebuilt since the
memorable fire of 1842. What a useful renovator a great fire is to an
old city; there is nothing like it for a great clearing out of nuisances!
The new quarter here is extremely handsome and imposing. The
greater part of the houses built around the artificially-formed lake
called the Binnen Alster are the residences of the great citizens, for
whom nothing seems too luxurious. The Binnen Alster communicates
with the Grosse Alster, and here we saw for the first time the little
fidgety steamboat-omnibuses which later on became so familiar to
us at Stockholm.
Time did not permit us to see the Zoological Gardens, which are said
to be almost the best in Europe; for the hour for starting for Lübeck
had arrived, and we were obliged to leave the wealthy city of
Hamburg but half explored.
During our pleasant railway drive of two hours we were struck with
the immense number of birds that we saw; the whole air seemed
alive with them. Every homestead has its stork’s nest,—indeed, it
forms part of the building, which is considered incomplete without it.
The stork is held in great reverence among all the northern people,
and any stranger who is wicked or foolish enough to molest one of
these birds is sure to be severely punished. In Whitelocke’s
“Memorials,” the author mentions that, in returning by this route
from his embassy to Sweden, in the time of the Commonwealth, one
of his suite killed a stork in this very district, and that he was with
difficulty rescued by the ambassador himself from being seriously
maltreated by the natives.
Arriving at Lübeck, when the evening light was red upon the
beautiful Holstein Thor, and upon the many spires and towers of the
quaint old town, it seemed almost as if we had been dropped into
the Middle Ages. It impressed me more strongly with a sense of Old-
World life than Nürnberg, Regensburg, or any other of the German
towns that I have visited dating from about that time.
The environs of Lübeck are very pleasant in summer, for the whole
country round is so densely wooded, and there are drives in all
directions to quaint little villages that look like pictures out of the
past....
I shall never forget our first night on the Baltic. It was a veritable
poem of beauty. The sea was so tranquil that it reflected all the hues
of the gorgeous sunset, and our ship seemed as though in a
translucent medium of colored light, which came from below,
around, above us. We watched and watched till the tremulous yellow
and crimson horizon had paled in intensity, giving place to an
exquisite golden green, which lingered on till the silvery moonlight
made its path across the sea, and then we knew it must be night,
though darkness there was none. If going to bed was not a sort of
respectable duty enforced by the habits of the animal, I don’t think
we should any of us have gone below.
We did not sleep late, for six o’clock found us all reassembled again
on deck, enjoying the crisp freshness of the morning air, and the
sight of the waves dancing in the sunlight. The arrangements on
board these steamers are excellent; everything is clean and
comfortable, and the food well cooked. At six o’clock coffee and rolls
are served on deck, at nine o’clock there is a serious breakfast in the
saloon, where you have your choice of tea, coffee, or light claret,
and a taste, if you like, of the national strong waters, which every
Swede partakes of before a meal. Eggs, hot cutlets, with vegetables,
are interspersed with a variety of savory cold dishes, such as dried
salmon, reindeer tongue, or ham of bear, which is very good. The
favorite breadstuff is a sort of biscuit made with seeds; it seems
strange at first, but after a time one gets to like it very much. After
this substantial breakfast you may very well subsist till two o’clock
dinner,—a meal which occupies an hour and a half nearly. The
cuisine is excellent, and there is nothing to do particularly on deck in
the middle of the day except to select an easy seat under the shady
awning, so you submit to the table-d’hôte with admirable patience.
After dinner the Swedes regale themselves with a glass of sherry or
cognac, with a cigar, and an hour later you will see every coterie
with their glasses of seltzer water and fruit syrup. At seven o’clock
supper is served, and then “may good digestion wait on appetite,” if
happily you have any of the latter left. Before bedtime a seductive
beverage called Swedish punch is produced, which is stronger than it
seems, and should be sipped with caution. It is a noteworthy fact
that the charge for all these good things was extremely moderate,
as, indeed, prices are throughout Sweden. It seems the only cheap
place for touring left in Europe. Norway is quite a third dearer,—
thanks, I suppose, to the English invasion....
There is a peculiarity about the coast of Sweden; it is said to have
two coasts, an inner and an outer one, the latter being a fringe of
islets, so numerous that no map or chart can mark them. It is
marvellous how vessels make their way through this labyrinth. If you
leave Calmar in the evening, you find yourself the next morning in
the thick of this Skargard, or reef defence. At first the scene is very
desolate; the rocks are barren, and the only sign of life the lonely
house of a pilot, round which the sea-birds were screaming in their
whirling flight.
When about five hours’ distance from Stockholm the scene changes;
the barren desolation gives place to wooded islets clothed with the
most exquisite vegetation. The beauty of a veritable fairy-land
surrounds you. You are in the midst of floating groves and gardens.
It is quite unlike any other scenery that I know in Europe; it is not
like a lake or river, for there is no expanse of water. The steamer
threads its way among a crowd of islands; you could sometimes
touch land with a boat-hook. The character of the islets is most
varied; at one moment you pass a tiny floating meadow enamelled
with flowers, whose sweet scent is wafted in every zephyr; on the
other side is a grotesque grotto, or the semblance of a ruin, shaded
by the graceful birch-trees that group themselves together. Another
time you pass a longer island, with its belt of dark firs, intersected
with miniature fjords and little sanded bays. No pencil could do
justice to the loveliness of this changing scene.
Approaching the capital, the islands are more extensive and
numerous; pretty villas are dotted about the woods, and you see
terraced gardens and well-kept lawns. It was market-day when we
arrived, and it was very picturesque to see the boats laden with fruit,
vegetables, and other necessaries of life proceeding on their way.
Each house, or cottage, sent out its messenger boat to make
purchases at the floating market, and the scene was very animated
and amusing. In another half-hour we were passing the superb deer
park of Stockholm, and then we were under the sentinel forts of the
capital, and directly afterwards by the side of the busy quay. The
first sight of the “Venice of the North” pleased us more than the far-
famed Queen of the Adriatic, that city of souvenirs that can hardly
be seen by the “light of common day.”
Seen from the Kungsholmen, Stockholm looks like a city floating on
the sea, especially when the image of all this crowd of churches,
palaces, and towers is reflected in the blue mirror of the calm,
tideless waters.
It is the fashion to admire the Royal Palace, built on the highest of
the three islands of Stockholm, but it has too much the appearance
of a vast barrack. It was completed in 1753, from a design of Count
Tessin, a Swedish architect of renown. It seems to want towers, or
irregularities of some sort, to break the painfully straight lines of this
mass of building.
The interior bears a strong family likeness to every other palace in
Europe. The upholsterer is decidedly the presiding genius in Royal
apartments, where dazzling chandeliers, rich brocades, and
oppressive gilding are more or less the properties of all alike. In
Paris they vary the scene by turning the royal or imperial upholstery
out of the window, from time to time, and making a bonfire of the
same for patriotic reasons.
However, in the Royal Palace of Stockholm we did light upon some
individual belongings,—some instances of characteristic taste. In the
picture-gallery there was, at the time of our visit, an unfinished
painting, from the pencil of the late King Carl. It stands on the easel,
just as the master’s hand had left it, a few months only before he
passed away, in the prime of life and of popularity. The scene
selected by the royal artist is one of those forest-fringed lakes of
Dalecarlia, with a lovely and enticing vista of green valley and distant
waterfall. The solemn aspect of the pine-woods, bathed in the after-
glow of the delicious northern sunset, is well given in this picture,
breathing forth something of that mingling of mystery, beauty, and
gloom which characterizes the ancient mythology of the land. One
might quote the king’s own lines:
“Everywhere we found in Nature
Spirits fitted to interpret
Saga tales of Sweden’s childhood.”

[Our traveller here describes her visits to the scientific and educational
institutions of Stockholm, and gives some statistics which we may safely
omit.]

However, this is not quite the place for tabulating facts; for are we
not on a holiday trip? We English have an almost incurable habit of
trying to acquire useful information while en voyage. If a man goes
up a mountain, instead of enjoying the fresh air and exercise, he
must needs go armed with scientific apparatus enough to start a
government laboratory. Now, in Stockholm you may really enjoy
yourself thoroughly if you only keep clear of museums and learned
institutes, those traps for the unsuspecting holiday-maker, who,
before he is aware, finds himself suffering from a surfeit of useful
knowledge. Don’t look at “Murray” or “Baedeker,” but just allow
yourself to go with the tide in this pleasure-loving city. In the
forenoon one must eat ices in the delicious little café called the
Strömparterre. It is a garden by the water-side, and, though quite in
the centre of the town, bright with a profusion of flowers and waving
trees. Here you may sit and watch the little steamers coming and
going every few minutes from the Djurgárd Park. The waters are
alive with these boats, and with other craft, for the locomotion of
the city is mostly conducted by water. One can go anywhere and
everywhere, it would seem, for a few ocre, and remember there are
a hundred ocre in a riksdollar, and a riksdollar is about thirteen
pence of our money.
One of the first of many pleasant excursions that we made was to
Mariefred and the royal castle of Gripsholm. This interesting place is
on the south side of the Mälar Lake. The steamer from Stockholm
takes about three hours, and the voyage gives one an opportunity of
seeing some of the prettiest scenery in the environs of the capital.
The deep fjords, the fairy islands, the well-wooded banks of the
Mälar Lake, present an ever-changing combination of picturesque
objects. Conspicuous among the rest is the high rock of Kungshatt,
where stands a pole with a hat, to keep alive the story of some king
of old, who jumped on horseback from this giddy summit into the
water below, when pursued by enemies, and only suffered the
inconvenience of losing his hat. What a habit this must have been in
the old times! for one hardly ever sees a nasty bit of rock with an
ugly chasm yawning beneath, that you don’t hear of some ill-advised
persons taking the leap either for love or hate....
The Castle of Gripsholm was erected in the twelfth century by Bo
Jonsson Grip, a certain Crœsus of those days; in fact, he was the
most powerful noble in the land, and was selected by Alberta of
Mecklenburg to be his “all-powerful helper,” for then as now the
Swedes hated the Germans. The Rhyming Chronicler of the time
says that Bo Jonsson “ruled the land with a glance of his eye.” He
had a bad habit, however, of using his sword as well as his eye, for
history tells us how he followed his foe, knight Karl Nilsson, into the
church of the Franciscans at Stockholm, and hacked him to pieces
before the high altar!
When Gustavus Vasa became king, after his romantic wanderings
and hair-breadth escapes in Dalecarlia, he rebuilt Gripsholm, and it
became the favorite residence of royalty. These castle walls have
witnessed many dismal scenes, quite out of harmony with the lovely
and natural surroundings, for there are few fairer spots in all
Sweden.
In one of the towers Eric XIV. kept his brother John a prisoner for
several years. The latter had married a Polish princess, and was
concerned in a war against Sweden, but, falling prisoner, was sent
by the king to the castle of Gripsholm. This Eric was one of our
Queen Elizabeth’s suitors, and history records that by way of making
himself acceptable he sent ambassadors to the English court with
costly gifts, among which were eighteen piebald horses and several
chests of uncoined bars of gold and silver, strings of Oriental pearls,
and many valuable furs. Queen Elizabeth accepted the gifts, but
declined the alliance. It was a way she had.
The interior of Gripsholm is a perfect museum of curiosities: there
are nearly two thousand historical portraits, and a vast quantity of
antique furniture, old tapestry, and curious silver vessels, which had
served their time at royal banquets.
 THE MIDNIGHT SUN.
LANGLEY COLERIDGE.
[The midnight sun, as visible at the summer solstice from the North Cape of
Norway, is becoming one of the necessary spectacles of modern travel. Alike
for those who cannot and for those who hope to go there we give the
following description of what a former traveller saw from this cape and on
the way thither.]

I really cannot tell what is the great charm of Norway, nor do I think
the nameless charm is the same for each. Perhaps those who are old
travellers enjoy Norway most. It is well known that in order to do the
Whole Duty of Travel an apprenticeship must be served, by no
means an irksome one; on the contrary, full of delight; nevertheless,
it is an apprenticeship, and, until it has been served, no man can
pass as a member of the travelled community. The curriculum
includes a knowledge of Paris, of the Rhine, of Switzerland, and a
dozen regular rounds. When these have all been “done,” then comes
Norway as a land of pure delight to the traveller.
There are no picture-galleries to make one’s neck ache; no museum
to make the weary feet throb; no promenades; no sherry-cobblers to
sip while bands play in the gardens; no continuations of London and
Brighton. There are no crowds; you may see a magnificent waterfall
all by yourself, or ascend a hundred Rigis without meeting a soul.
There are no loafers; and you may get into boats and out of boats,
into carrioles and out of carrioles, without one humpbacked beggar-
boy or man with his eye in a sling to whine at you, or one officious
person getting in the way in order to be paid for it. There are no
mammoth hotels, where you have to climb a dozen flights of stairs
before you can reach your bed; no billiards when once you have left
the three chief towns; no stuffy railways to whizz you past the best
scenery; no dressing for dinner.
Now, all these things, to one who has been over and over again to
the most civilized places in the world, are very refreshing; and yet
these are perhaps but minor points, and do not explain the secret of
the great charm of Norway. Rip Van Winkle’s was a wonderful sleep;
he woke and found the world had gone forward a hundred years;
but the traveller who sleeps on the North Sea and wakes up in the
morning in Norway has had a more wonderful sleep. He wakes and
finds the world has gone back half a millennium! Southward the
countries of Europe have struggled and slaved in the race for the
perfection of civilization, while Norway is as it was in the beginning.
Southward the countries have obeyed the watchword, “Forward!”
Norway has obeyed the signal, “As you were!”
Now, fancy yourself—you, who have done as the Southerners do—
arriving at a little village in an out-of-the-way place in Norway.
Nobody flutters about your carriole to escort you to a hotel, but you
enter the “station,” a low, rambling wooden structure, with
diffidence. You see the lady of the house and shake hands with her;
you ask her to be good enough to let you stay there the night; you
enter a bedroom, where everything is plain as a deal box, but clean
as a Dutch tulip. Then you sit down with the family in the general
room to your meal. It will assuredly consist of either trout and
salmon, or salmon and trout, with perhaps an egg, perhaps
potatoes, perhaps black bread. No Bass, but perhaps some Norsk Öl,
a very pleasant beverage. After supper you will smoke a pipe with
your landlord, who will probably invite you to see the pigs, or will
lend you a hand to splice up any broken harness of your carriole.
About nine or ten o’clock you will go to bed, in the broad daylight if
it be summer-time, and in the morning you will wake up, finding the
landlady’s daughter at your bedside, with a delicious cup of hot
coffee and a natty little roll, or perchance a biscuit. And then, still
early in the morning, you will bid farewell as to old friends, you will
shake hands all round, and away in your carriole to drive through
romantic scenery, and to feel as though Norway had been made
specially for you.
Before you have been two days in the country you will love the
quaint, unsophisticated people, so hearty in their kindness, so
ungrudging in their hospitality, and their Old-World manners and
customs, so genuine in an age of sham, so solid in an age of veneer.
One great charm of Norway, then, is its people; another, and
perhaps more to be appreciated by some, is its scenery.
“Is it like Switzerland?” No; Norway is only like Norway. It is not so
grand as regards the height of its mountains, yet its grandeur is far
more solemn. It has a dozen fjords more startling than the Lake of
Lucerne; in a day’s journey you will pass waterfalls and cascades
which would make a fortune to “proprietors” in Switzerland, and are
not so much as mentioned in the Norwegian guide-books.
Switzerland is grand beyond compare, but it must be confessed it is
a monotonous grandeur. Not so with Norway: its charms of scenery
are varied as they are unique. A coast wild and rugged; mighty pine-
forests, interminable; lakes beautiful as Windermere; fjords awful in
their grandeur; valleys rich in their fertility; fjelds bare and barren;
sport with the gun, sport with the rod; these and a hundred other
charms may be entered in the catalogue.
But all these are outweighed by the strange, weird beauty and
grandeur of the neighborhood of the North Cape. I know of nothing
that comes within the range of tourist experiences that will make a
more lasting impression on the memory than a day or two in the
region of the midnight sun.
For the student, the professional man, the overworked generally,
and especially those whose brains are overworked, there is no tour
that will be more beneficial than the one I propose briefly to sketch.
Go to Christiansand. Then, if you have never been to Norway,
proceed to Christiania, and, after staying a day or two in that
interesting town and neighborhood, continue your journey either to
Trondhjem or Bergen, it matters not which, or, better still, if you can,
do both. The trip to one, the other, or both, will give you a good idea
of scenery in Norway. At either Bergen or Trondhjem take the
steamer for Hammerfest. And then will commence one of the most
delightful voyages it is possible to make.
The steamer keeps close to the shore, and the shore is the most
curious in the world; you have but to look at a map to see its
wonderful indentations; you cannot realize them until you find
yourself now in a bay or a cove, now among groups of islands, then
in the midst of a fjord, with sheer rocks rising perpendicularly from
the sea, and anon in the harbor of a little town, with groups of
wondering peasantry around you. You will see some parts of the
coast so wild that you cannot credit the fact that human beings can
be found there, and you will find verdant nooks so peaceful and
pretty that you will be tempted to think that there, away from the
world, you would like to build your house and finish up your days. At
one time you will come to the haunts of water-fowl innumerable; at
another a shoal of whales will be around you.
The towns and villages at which you will halt will have a special
charm. The curious costumes of the people; the antique architecture
of their houses and churches; the good, but old-fashioned,
contrivances connected with their fishing avocations,—all these will
be novel.
Among the red-letter days of the trip will be a sail among the
Loffoden Islands, “jagged as the jaws of a shark,” and swarming
with sea-fowl; a glimpse at the neighborhood of the Maelström, so
celebrated in fable; a visit to a Lapp encampment, and an occasional
stroll through some of the towns at which the steamer stays. Tromsö
is one of these halting-places: it is a modern town, which has grown
rapidly. It was only founded in 1794, and in 1816 had but three
hundred inhabitants; now, owing to the success of its herring-
fishery, it has grown strangely for Norway, and has a population of
over five thousand. It is charmingly situated on an island, and its
rich fertility contrasts most singularly with the wildness of the
surrounding mountains. Hammerfest, too, is interesting, not only
because it is the most northerly town in the world, and because “in
the season” it is crowded with representatives of all nations, who
come here to trade, but because here you are within the limits of the
region of the Midnight Sun, and from here you will take your boat
(unless you continue by the Vadsö steamer) for the North Cape.
The effect of the midnight sun has been variously described. Carlyle
revels in the idea that while all the nations of the earth are sleeping,
you here stand in the presence of that great power which will wake
them all; Bayard Taylor delights in the gorgeous coloring; and each
traveller has some new poetic thought to register. For myself the
midnight sun has a solemnity which nothing else in nature has.
Midnight is solemn in the darkness; it is a hundredfold more solemn
in the glare of sunlight, richer than ever is sun under tropical skies.
It is “silence, as of death;” not the hum of a bird, not the buzz of an
insect, not the distant voice of a human being. Silence palpable. You
do not feel drowsy, though it is midnight; you feel a strange fear
creep over you as if in a nightmare, and dare not speak; you think
what if it should be true that the world is in its last sleep, and you
are the last living ones, yourselves on the verge of the Eternal
Ocean?
It is amusing, afterwards, to think of the way in which you landed on
your excursion to the North Cape; how every one seemed impressed
with the same idea that it was a sacrilege to break the silence, and
the party that set forth in high spirits had settled down into the
gravity of a funeral cortége. And it is strange how the stillness and
awfulness, felt while in the little boat upon the silent sea, held you
spellbound and entranced; and the spell could not be broken until
you set to work on the difficult climb to the head of the North Cape.
And when you reached the top you felt—well, I don’t know how.
To some standing on the highest part of the plateau, a thousand feet
above the sea, and looking away to that great unknown Arctic
Ocean, it has seemed as if they had come to the end of the earth;
that they were gazing upon the confines of the eternal regions; that
they saw in the distance the outlines of the land of which it is said,
“There is no night there.”
Every tourist mind has its own particular magnet. I do not know
what event in the history of a tourist life most attracts my memory.
No one can ever forget the day when he first gazes upon Jerusalem
from the Mount of Olives; or Damascus seen from the Mount of
Mohammed; or the sunny morning when he rounds the Golden
Horn, and Constantinople bursts on the view.
These are memories which never grow dim; and I am inclined to
think that when a tourist finds himself in a small boat at midnight,
drawing near to the North Cape in the midst of the most gorgeous
sunlight ever seen, he has found a sensation which will be green in
his memory to the day of his death.
In this brief paper I have not found time to be practical. The trip to
the North Cape should be made in June or July; it may be made in
August or September, and in the latter month there is a chance of
seeing the first blushes of the Aurora Borealis. I am much inclined to
think that a winter excursion to the North Cape would be one of the
grandest sensations that the tourist’s heart could wish, but of this I
am not in a position to judge.
If my readers are like myself, they never bring one summer trip to a
close before they have arranged in their own minds for the next; and
so I throw out the hint that ere the North Cape shall be scribbled
over with the names of Smith and Jones; ere excursion boats, with
Ethiopian serenaders on board, shall put forth from Hammerfest; ere
a big hotel shall stand upon the summit, and a man shall blow a
horn to announce when “the sun is at its best,” it will be well to
consider whether a trip to the North Cape is not worth serious
consideration.
 IN THE RUSSIAN CAPITAL
SAMUEL S. COX.
[“Arctic Sunbeams,” by Hon. S. S. Cox, is full of matter of interest, the author
seeing well and telling ably. We give some of his impressions of St.
Petersburg, beginning his journey at the fortress and city of Cronstadt, the
strongly-defended port of the capital of Russia.]

Leaving the arsenals, dock-yards, wharves, batteries, and ships of

this Gibraltar of the Czar,—and but for which St. Petersburg might
have been burned, like another Moscow, by its own hands, rather
than it should have fallen into those of an invader,—our steamer
glides on what becomes a summer sea of smoothness. The few
passengers begin to appear on deck and stretch their vision for the
first glance at the imperial city. Upon the right, snug amidst its royal
greenery, lies the town of Peterhoff and its domes, minarets, and
imperial palace, with its splendid woods and waters. Our time is
opportune for a glorious sight, for it is sunset, and the sun goes
down here at a discreet hour. Bright dots of burnished gold begin
faintly to spangle the sky in front. They are domes, half hidden by
the mist and the distance. Then a tall spire, also gilded, brilliant and
needle-like, pierces the heavens! It is the Admiralty spire, or perhaps
that of the Church of the Fortress, the Westminster of Russia, the
mausoleum of its dead kings. A few moments, and St. Isaac’s
Church, the St. Peter’s of Russia, looms up in majestic and
stupendous proportions. Its copper dome is surrounded by four
others, all ablaze, like burnished gold, and surmounted by the gilded
Greek cross which towers aloft, above the bronze saints and angels
which people its architraves and its corners, its roofs and its pillared
granite cupola! Beneath it is a city whose roofs of varied hue cover
almost a million of people; a city the outgrowth from a swamp in
less than two hundred years.
Welcome to our website – the ideal destination for book lovers and
knowledge seekers. With a mission to inspire endlessly, we offer a
vast collection of books, ranging from classic literary works to
specialized publications, self-development books, and children's
literature. Each book is a new journey of discovery, expanding
knowledge and enriching the soul of the reade

Our website is not just a platform for buying books, but a bridge
connecting readers to the timeless values of culture and wisdom. With
an elegant, user-friendly interface and an intelligent search system,
we are committed to providing a quick and convenient shopping
experience. Additionally, our special promotions and home delivery
services ensure that you save time and fully enjoy the joy of reading.

Let us accompany you on the journey of exploring knowledge and

personal growth!

ebookname.com