SUPERSTITIONS ABOUT THE DOLPHIN'. Sg^ 



this was believed, it became a sure evidence to the Greeks that the 

 animal must have once been a man, one of the wild, piratical, Tyrrhe- 

 nians whom Dionysus in punishment changed into a dolphin. Out of 

 this grew the idea of the moral attributes that were ascribed to the 

 animal, its parental love, its humors, etc. Thus it became still more 

 appropriately a symbol of the sea and a constant companion of Nep- 

 tune, while its speed was compared with that of the horse, a creature 

 of Neptune's. It was the dolphin that hunted up Amphitrite when 

 she fled to the depths of the sea to avoid a marriage with Neptune, 

 and guarded her till the god led her home as his spouse ; and Nep- 

 tune, in recognition of its skill and fidelity, made it his sacred animal, 

 and set it as a constellation in the northwestern sky. Thus it came 

 also that Ulysses, the ideal sailor, carried the symbol of the dolphin on 

 his shield and wore it engraved on his signet-ring. 



These mystic views of the animal were impressed on other people, 

 and found expression in new tales and forms. Conrad, of Megenburg, 

 the first German naturalist, introduced them to the Germans in the 

 fourteenth century, to whom he described the dolphin as an animal 

 without malice, living to be a hundred years old, loving music and 

 friendly to men, and told the story of Arion and the boys with the 

 dolphin. The Greek myths were also translated to the Christian 

 saints' legends, and we have in the latter stories of wonderful deliver- 

 ances of God-beloved persons, like those which had so often appeared 

 in the Hellenic epics of a thousand years before ; and the dolphin thus 

 found its way into the ancient Christian symbolism, where it figured 

 as an emblem of love, of marriage-fidelity, and of the Christian ; for it 

 was regarded as a fish, and the fish was used (after the text in Matthew 

 iv, 19, " I will make you fishers of men ") to designate souls gained by 

 baptism or conversion. Therefore it is often found on baptismal ba- 

 sins, and on grave-stones in the catacombs to indicate that the person 

 resting there was a Christian ; and it occurs, with an anchor, on the 

 lids of Christian coffins. This curious and peculiar symbolism is less 

 wonderful when we reflect that ancient Christian art was wont, in its 

 dread of anthropomorphism, to betake itself to zoomorphism, and that 

 it represented Christ himself by a fish. In the Belgian legends, the 

 largest fish of the country, the sturgeon, figures instead of the dolphin 

 as the deliverer and leader, and carries St. Amalberga over the Thames 

 when she wishes to go to a cloister. In the German legend, Notburga 

 is assisted across the Neckar by a stag. 



These considerations will help to explain much that is mysterious in 

 myth, legend, and art, in reference to the dolphin. It is quite obvious 

 also that ancient artists prized this animal the more because it belonged 

 to the beautiful forms of nature. The graceful lines of its body, con- 

 trasted with the relatively monotonous outlines of the fishes, com- 

 mended it to their regard, and were appreciated by artists on account 

 of the animation which the animal's movements in the water imparted 



