ruptions of water under the form of a reptile, once started, was not forgot ten; and, as the powers required to compel rivers to retreat into their channels were not less miraculous than those which were necessary to destroy a dragon, both feats are sometimes attributed to the same person. The sanctity of Romanus, a saint of the seventh century, was sought to be exalted by this means. He is said, on one occasion, to have delivered Rouen from a monstrous dragon, of which the popular name Gargouille, a derivative from gurges, proves its intimate connexion with another of his miracles in causing the Seine to re-enter its bed when about to overwhelm that city. The first is but the emblem of the second miracle, which is described in the strophe of a hymn to the saint, quoted by Salverte from Sauteuil : "Tangit exundans aqua civitatem; In examining the legend of St George and the Dragon, Gibbon, for whom the voluminous Acta Sanctorum of the Bollandists, and the Byzantine historians, seem to have possessed equal charms, slightly alludes to the fable of Perseus, but attempts to explain the symbolical dragon in a mystical sense, which its early narrators would scarcely have comprehended. He says, in a dissertation among his Miscellaneous Works, that "The genius of chivalry and romance mistook the symbolical representations, which were common to St George of Cappadocia, and to several other saints; the dragon painted under their feet was designed for the devil, whom the martyr transpierced with the spiritual lance of faith, and thus delivered the church, described under the figure of a woman. But in the time of the crusades, the dragon, so common in Eastern romance, was considered as a real monster slain near the city of Silena in Lybia, by the Christian hero, who (like another Perseus) delivered from his fury a beautiful and real damsel, St Margaret." This mystical sense, however, is not to be traced in any of the legends of the numerous saints who triumphed in a similar manner over dragons and serpents. It was too refined to be understood by any but men of more cultivated minds than the writers, who evidently intended their legends to be considered as accounts of real occurrences, though they did not always pretend to rest them upon the authority of history. Thus the writer of the life of St Marcellus, Bishop of Paris, in the fifth century, confesses that he owes to no other record than popular tradition the facts and circumstances of the holy champion's miraculous conquest of a serpent, which committed great havoc in the suburbs of that city. The fortunate islands of Great Britain have been particularly free from these destructive beings; and owing to this immunity, it is probable, that these legendary victories might receive a rational, though erroneous, interpretation. It is certain that our forefathers looked upon the dragons, borne by them at no distant period in the processions of the Rogations, about the middle of spring, in much the same light as that in which Gibbon regards the dragon of St George. Among us," says Mr Fosbrooke, "a figure of Christ was hung up to represent the Ascension. In some churches, a dragon with a tail filled with chaff was exhibited and emptied on the third day, to show that the devil, after prevailing on the first or second day before, or under the law, was on the thyrde daye of grace, by the passion of Jhesu Criste, put out of his reame.' 66 The principal narrations of miraculous encounters with monsters by men whose sanctity acquired them celebrity, seem to have been founded on the curiously united achievements of St Romanus. A horrible dragon, which had its retreat in a temple of Jupiter, at the village of Artois near Montoire, and which represents the irruptions of the Loire in the vicinity, is related to have been slain by St Julian, bishop of Mans, in the year 95. The ravages of the same river are emblematized by a dragon fifty or sixty feet in length, which was vanquished by St Bie, near Vendome, in the fifth century. The irruptions of the Clain were represented by the dragon of Poitiers, which concealed itself in a cavern on the banks of the river, and which was destroyed by St Radegund in the sixth century. The destructive inundations of the Garonne have for their emblem the dragon of Bourdeaux, yielding to the potency of St Martin's rod in the eleventh century, and that of Comminges, subdued by the Bishop St Bertrand in 1076. M. Champollion explains the hieroglyphics of two enormous serpents, with human heads, in the church of St Laurent at Grenoble, by the proverb, Serpens et draco devorabunt urbem," which is popular ly expressed in the distich,— "Lo Serpein et lo Dragon Mettront Grenoble en savon." This alludes to the site of Grenoble, at the entrance of the Drac into the Isere, represented by the serpent, whose winding motion this river seems to imitate in its tortuous course. The history of the dragon of Tarascon, which St Martha killed with her garter, and of which the representation, called the Tarasque, is still borne there on Whit-Monday, is explained by the irruptions of the Rhone. Another ideal monster, also called the Turasque, is exhibited in the procession on the day of St Francis d'Assise, at Lima, which lies at no great distance from the sea, and is watered by a river that supplies every house. The time of this procession, October 4, being the entrance of spring in that country, agrees with the period of the procession at Tarascon; and thus, whether by accident or design, those who transported the dragon of the north into the southern hemisphere, have caused it nearly to coincide with its original intention and signification. Every church had its symbolical dragon in the processions of the Rogations, which, derived from the Roman ambarvalia, always occurred about the middle of spring, when the victory of the sun over winter is complete, and when rivers, the most swollen by the melting of the snow or the rains of that season, have entirely receded into their channels. As the inundations and ravages, typified by dragons, could not have happened every where at the same time, it would be difficult to conceive how in places so different, the inhabitants should concur in representing like events by the same emblems, if we had not the agreement of the time universally adopted for the commemoration of their delivery from disasters, and if we did not possess the astronomical theme, which is the basis of the whole. As to the dragon of St George, the learned Pettingal shows that this symbol is merely a relic of the ancient amulets, invented by Oriental nations to express the virtues of Mithras, the sun, and the confidence which they reposed in that great luminary. "From the Pagans," he says, "the use of these charms passed to the Basilidians, and, in their Ab raxas, the traces of the ancient Mithras and the more modern St George are equally visible. In the dark ages, the Christians borrowed their superstitions from the heretics, but they disguised the origin of them, and transformed into the saint the sun of the Persians and the archangel of the Gnostics." Thus we arrive at the same conclusion, though by a less di rect route. About the ninth century, the glory of the miraculous exploits attributed to human beings, whose superior piety had secured them a reputation for the possession of greater powers than fell to the lot of their fellow-creatures, began to be coveted by warriors, and the honours of similar achievements were awarded by gratitude or flattery to men, exalted by their rank, or already sufficiently distinguished by their prowess. The genius of chivalry and romance ransacked the lore of mythology for adventures which might be adapted to real or fabulous heroes. The cultivators of romance decorated the saints to whom remarkable triumphs over the monsters of Oriental fiction had been ascribed with the honours of knighthood, and even borrowed their adventures for men of no pretensions to their sanctity. Of this description was St Bernard, one of the last miraculous victors of serpentine monsters. From Moreri, it appears, that he was the grandson of a Count of Toulouse, and consequently belonged to the illustrious class. Ariosto, who freely employed the traditions and romancing chronicles of the eleventh century in his poetical narratives, has not scrupled in this manner to transfer to Rolando the exploit of St Pol, a young nobleman at the Isle de Batz. Even the brave Arnold de Winkelried, who nobly sacrificed himself at the battle of Sempach in 1386, for the preservation of his fellow patriots, has his history embellished, or rather defaced, by a victory over a dragon, whose den near Stanz, the capital of the Nieder Unter Walden, is still shown to the traveller. An equivocal term of architecture among the northern nations gave rise to a number of adventures in romance, similar to those of saints and knightserrant, whose names and existence were neither known to them nor suspected, and covered the events of real history with the dark veil of romance. "The fortresses of the Goths," says Mallet, "were only rude castles seated on the summitts of rocks, and rendered inaccessible by thick misshapen walls. As these walls ran winding round the castles, they were often called by a name which signified serpents or dragons; and in these buildings they usually secured the women and young virgins of distinction, It was this custom which originated so many fables concerning princesses of great beauty guarded by dragons and afterwards delivered by invincible champions." Mallet might have added that both in history and romance, the owners of these serpentine fortresses were themselves frequently denominated dragons. The Romance of the Horny Siegfried contains several adventures with dragons, who are no other than powerful castellans; one instance will suffice. Chrymhild, the beautiful daughter of King Gybich at Worms on the Rhine, was carried off by a monstrous dragon, who conveyed her to his Dragon-stone, a stone about a quarter of a mile long, on the top of a high mountain, where she was confined three months until Easter Day, when the dragon was transformed into a man. Siegfried having learned from a knight the place of her concealment by a frightful dragon, of whose dragon-stone the giant Kuperan kept the key, overcame the giant by means of a cap of darkness (the invisible coat of Jack the Giant Killer). The hero, sparing his life, was conducted by him to the dragon-stone, to which he obtained entrance through a door, concealed eight fathoms under ground, and delivered the prisoner. A case from real history will show the propriety of the addition to Mallet. A Swedish prince in the minth century, according to Olaus Magnus, had brought up with his daughter Theora two serpents, who were to be the guardians of her maiden years. These monsters, arriving at an immeasurable bulk, spread death around them by their pestiferous breath. The King, in despair, promised his daughter's hand to the hero who should destroy the serpents. The perilous adventure was achieved by the Scald and warrior, Prince Regner Lodbrog, who, in consequence, became the husband of the beautiful Theora. Reverting to the romance of the Horny Siegfried, we find that, when that hero and his mistress Chrymhild were regaling themselves at a banquet in the Dragon-stone, they were violently disturbed by the dragon, attended by sixty young dragons, all of whom were clearly the castellan and the remnant of his garrison. The two serpent guardians of Theora, with their immense size and pestiferous breath, were, in like manner, two powerful and treacherous vassals of her royal parent. This construction appears from the account of the same matter in the Saga of Regner Lodbrog himself, where one guardian only is mentioned, who was the owner of a strong castle, and to whose custody the princess was committed. The vassal, falling in love with his ward, refused to restore her to her father, who, after several attempts to force the castle, promised, as stated by Olaus Magnus, that the liberator of Theora should become her husband, and that liberator was Regner Lodbrog. Johnson, an alchymist in the seventeenth century, devotes an article of his Lexicon Chymicum to " Melusina" and "Meloræ," as if the superstitions respecting those fabulous beings were once current in this country. They were, he says, princesses abandoned to sinful pleasures, who were transformed by Satan into spectres, malig. nant spirits, and horrible monsters. The Melusina and Meloræ are believed to live without a rational soul, and to be supported by the elements, with which they will pass to the Day of Judgment, unless, by chance, they marry men with whom they live in virtuous union until they die by the course of nature. They are commonly believed to infest deserts, woods, monuments, and lonely sea coasts. But to this description he has appropriated a name which belongs to Melusina, the celebrated ancestress of the noble family De Lusignan, Her story is briefly told. the daughter of the King of Albania and the fay Pressina (" Persina," Johnson), by whom she was condemned to become a serpent from the waist downwards every Saturday, until she She was should marry a man, who would never see her on that day. She married Count Raymond, who concealed himself one Saturday, and saw her transformation. Their Son was called Geoffrey with the Tooth, because a boar's tusk projected from his mouth. A figure of him, cut in stone, stood, according to Brantome, at the portal of the Melusine Tower, which was destroyed in 1574. Melusina, on the discovery, disappeared from the Castle of Lusignan, and has ever since existed as a spectre of the night, visible only when one of her race was to die at Lusignan. Towards the end of the 14th century, Jean d'Arras collected the traditions relating to her, and composed what he called her Chronicle. Stephen, a Dominican, of the house of Lusignan, took up the history written by Jean d'Arras, and cast such splendour about his heroine, that several noble houses were ambitious of showing a descent from her, as if it were a greater honour to be derived from a serpent than from a woman. Those of Luxembourg and Rohan even falsified their genealogies for that purpose; and the house of Sassenage, though it might claim a descent from a monarch, preferred Melusina; and, to gratify them, it was feigned that, when she quitted Lusignan, she retired to the grot of Sassenage in Dauphiny.* A figure of Melusina was carved on the outer gate of the Castle of Sassenage, and a medal, apparently of the 15th century, which was seen by M. Millin, exhibits on one side the head of Geoffrey à la Grand Dent, or Geoffrey with the Tooth, and on the reverse, the head of a fantastic monster. It appears also that, in ancient deeds, the name of Geoffrey's mother is written Melicendis or Milesendis, which, by the way, was not an uncommon name in England; and that the orthography of the family name appears on the legend of the medal, Godefridus de Lusinem. It would, therefore, seem that Melicendis had been confounded with Melusina, a name celebrated long before; and M. Salverte remarks, that it is only necessary to place the word mater, or mère, before the family name on the medal, in order to reproduce Merlusina, which is the vulgar pronunciation of Melusina; and, to prove that it is no other than the simple title of Mère des Lusignans, the mother of the Lusignans. Such is the convincing developement of an error on a subject which was sufficiently improbable and absurd, without becoming matter for the contest of rival houses. The fabulous Melusina, who has lent her celebrity to Melicendis, mère des Lusignans, and so called Merlusina, is herself recognised in the creations of the Greek mythologists; and, remembering the astronomical hydra, dragon, and sea-monster, we are at once conducted to Echidna, the viperous mother of a series of monsters, whose names sufficiently attest their genealogy. With regard to the name Melusina, we may also remark, even through the disguise of the Teutonic diminutive termination, its resemblance to Melissa, the ordinary appellation of the priestess of the infernal Ceres, and of the priestess of Mithras, who is sometimes emblematized as an Archimagus, with a woman near him, entwined in the folds of a serpent, to designate the principle of life attributed to the sun.† Melusina does not seem to be the only formation in the middle ages of a monster, partly human and partly savage, from the fictitious beings of Greek mythology : "Ces montagnes, ces bois qui bordent l'horison, Sont couverts des métamorphoses: Ce cerf aux pieds légers est le jeune Actéon, L'ennemi des troupeaux est le roi Lyca on. It is no extraordinary demand upon the mind to believe, that the fabled transformation of Lycaon into the wolf, which gives him that name, has been the foundation of those terrible monsters, who from men had the power of becoming wolves, and reappearing at pleasure in their natural shape. The existence of the name in the languages of countries which have lost the memory of their ra 299-309. Keightley's Fairy Mythol. vol. ii. p. These figures occur on a basso relievo, discovered under ground at York, and described by Dr Stukeley, in 1749; Phil. Trans. No. 493, Art. 5. vages, though some are still infested with the wolf, shows that there popular superstition formerly credited the possibility and reality of the metamorphosis. The Were-wolf of England seems to have been derived from the Saxon werd, a man, and wulf, a wolf. The Germans have Wärwolff, sometimes written Wehr-wolf, a manwolf, which the French express by Loup-garou. The notion proceeds immediately from the Goths, and their historian, Olaus Magnus, who understood, in a literal sense, that the Princess Theora was guarded by serpents, furnishes, in his own person, satisfactory evidence of the existence of this particular aberration of the mind. He describes the manner of effecting the transformation, and relates that, at Christmas, great multitudes of werewolves assemble at a place previously appointed among themselves, and inflict more evils upon the country, by outrages upon man and beast, than are ever suffered from natural wolves. So far Olaus mentions little more than sometimes happens in the present day during the severity of winter, when packs of half-famished wolves venture into villages; but the were-wolves attack houses, break open doors in order to destroy the inmates, and even descend into the cellars, where they drink whole tuns of mead. That it was the common belief in his time appears from several expressions in the anecdotes which he has collected, and of which the last, having the merit of brevity, may serve for proof. The Duke of Prussia having heard numerous accounts, to which he paid little attention, of the conversion of men into wolves, was at length induced to make enquiry. A man was found, who had the reputation of possessing this faculty. He gave convincing evidence of the reality of the transformation, by changing himself into a wolf before the Duke, who was perfectly satisfied, but ordered the man to be burned for sorcery. This happened so near the time of his writing, that Olaus says it was still fresh in memory. The Gothic equivoque of the serpent-stone, before noticed, is found, where it might be least expected, ingrafted upon the British legend of Merlin, the enchanter, and the wonderful grotto which he artfully constructed upon the summit of a mounVOL. XLI. NO. CCLX. tain for his mistress, the Lady of the Lake, whom he was accustomed to call the White Serpent, and who treacherously converted it into his tomb. According to Spenser, it was formed at the ancient Maridunum: "that is by chaunge of name Cayr-Merdin called." "There the wise Merlin whylome wont, they say, To make his wonne, low underneath the ground, By a deep delve, far from the view of day, That of no living wight he mote be found, When so he counsell'd with his sprights encompast round." After a very poetical description, confirmed by Camden in its essential features, of the horrid sounds which appear to issue from the cave, the author of the Faerie Queene relates the fate of the magical architect: "In the meantime, through that false lady's train, He was surprised and buried under beare." But M. le Grand, in his notes to the "Ecco nel sasso trova una caverna, In these descriptions of Merlin's wonderful structure, there is percep |