The Praise of Method.

53

example, "shall address himself to write of Matters of Instruction, or of any other Argument of Importance, it behoveth him that he should resolutely determine with himself in what Order he will handle the same, so shall he best accomplish that he hath undertaken, and inform the Understanding and help the Memory of the Reader." In the spirit of this teaching we would humbly desire to walk, and having quite resolutely determined the order of our going we will endeavour so far as in us lies to make our labour a profit to those who honour us with their perusal.

CHAPTER II.

THE pygmies-Ancient and modern writers thereon--Conflicts with the cranes-Counterfeits-Modern travel, confirming the statements of the ancient geographers-Pygmy races now existing-The "Monstrorum Historia of Aldrovandus-Crane-headed men-Men with tails-The Gorilloi -The dog-headed people-The canine king-The manyeyed men- -The giants of Dondum-The snake-eatersThe Ipotayne-Mermaids--Syren myth-Storm-raisers— The mermaids of artists and poets-Shakespeare thereupon -As heraldic device-The mermaids of voyagers-The seal and walrus theory-Mermaids in captivity-Mermaids as food-Counterfeit mermaids-Mermaid in Chancery— The "Pseudodoxia Epidemica" of Browne-Oannes or Dagon-Mermaids and Matrimony-Lycanthropy-The "Metamorphoses" of Ovid-The fate of Lykaon-Nine years of wolfdom-Wehr-wolves-Mewing nuns-Olaus Magnus-The doctrine of metempsychosis-Influence of enchantment - The dragon maiden-The power of a kiss— Witchcraft-Scot and Glanvil, for and against it-The good old times.

Shakespeare, whose writings form a mine of wisdom from which one can dig an appropriate wisdom-chip for every occasion, avers truly enough in the "Merchant of Venice," that "Nature hath fram'd strange fellows in her time," while the credulity of mankind has added to this goodly company many others too impossible even for the wildest freaks of nature to be held responsible for.

Of some of these abnormal forms we propose now to treat, and commence our chapter with some short reference to the pygmies. References

The Conflict of Authorities.

55

to these are to be found in the works of many of the ancient writers, such as Homer, Pliny, Herodotus, Philostratus, Oppian, Juvenal and Aristotle. Strabo mentions them in his geography, but regards the belief in them as a mere fable, while some of the older authors suggest that very possibly exceptionally large monkeys* might have been mistaken for exceptionally small men. While most writers affirmed that such a race was to be met with in Africa-Aristotle, for instance, locating them at the head of the Nile -some authors placed them in the extreme north, where the rigour of the climate was held a sufficient explanation of their stunted growth. Philostratus assigned them a home on the banks of the Ganges, and Pliny gave them local habitation in Scythia. Shakespeare, not only the fount of countless stores of quotation, but also the storehouse of ancient and medieval lore, mentions the pygmies, though he gives us no hint as to their home. "Will your Grace command me any service to the world's end? I will go on the slightest errand now to the Antipodes that you can devise to send me on: I will fetch you a toothpicker now from the furthest inch of Asia; bring you the length of Prester John's foot; fetch you a hair off the great Cham's beard; do you any embassage to the Pygmies!"

Homer, in the third book of the Iliad, refers

* There can be little question but that the ancient fictions of satyrs, cynocephali and other supposed monstrous forms of humanity arose in vague accounts of different species of apes.

to the conflicts between the pygmies and the

cranes :

"When inclement winters vex the plain

With piercing frosts, or thick-descending rain,
To warmer seas the cranes embodied fly,
With noise and order,* through the midway sky:
To pygmy nations wounds and death they bring."

Our readers may possibly wonder, as we have done, why the cranes should bear the pygmies such ill-will, but Pliny in his seventh book supplies the justification for the feud, as it appears that in the springtime the pygmies sally forth in great troops, riding upon goats, searching for and devouring the eggs of the cranes, a state of things that no creature of proper parental instincts could be expected to submit quietly to.

Sir Thomas Browne, in his excellent book on vulgar errors, says that errors, says that "Homer, using often similes as well to delight the ear as to illustrate his matter, compareth the Trojanes unto Cranes when they descend against the Pigmies; which was more largely set out by Oppian, Juvenall and many Poets since; and being only a pleasant figment in the fountain, became a solemn story in the stream and current still among us. He declines to give credence to the pygmies and the tales that appertain to

*

Marking the tracts of air, the clamorous cranes
Wheel their due flight in varied ranks descried;

And each with outstretched neck his rank maintains

In marshalled order through the ethereal void."

†The word is spelt sometimes as pigmy, and at others as pygmy; the latter is the more correct, as the word is from the Greek name for them, the pygmaioi.

Maundevile on the Pygmies.

57

them and says that "Julius Scaliger, a diligent enquirer, accounts thereof but as a poeticall fiction. Ulysses Aldrovandus, a most careful zoographer, in an expresse discourse thereon, concludes the story fabulous. Albertus Magnus, a man ofttimes too credulous, was herein more than dubious," and though he quotes the statement of Pigafeta that pygmies were found in the Moluccas, and that of Olaus Magnus as to their being encountered in Greenland, he declares that "yet wanting confirmation in a matter so confirmable, their affirmation carrieth but slow perswation."

Maundevile, of course, is as fully prepared to believe in the existence of pygmies as of most other things, provided they be sufficiently outside ordinary experience. In his book he takes us "throghe the Lond of Pigmaus, wher that the folk ben of lytylle Stature, that ben but three span long; and thei ben right faire and gentylle. Thei maryen hem whan thei ben half Yere of Age, and thei lyven not but six yeer or seven at the moste, and he that lyvethe eight yeer men holden him there righte passynge olde. Thei han often times Werre with the Briddes of the Contree that thei taken and eten. This litylle folk nouther labouren in Londes ne in Vynes, but thei han grete men amonges hem, of one Stature, that tylen the Lond and labouren amonges the Vynes for hem. And of the men of our Stature han thei as grete skorne and wondre as we wolde have among us of Geauntes if thei weren among us. And alle be it that the Pygmeyes ben lytylle yet thei ben full resonable aftre