48 SEA FABLES EXPLAINED. 



THE LERNEAN HYDRA. 



The mystery of the Kraken, of which I treated in a com- 

 panion volume to the present, recently published, is not 

 difficult to unravel. The clue to it is plain, and when 

 properly taken up is as easily unwound, to arrive at the 

 truth, as a cocoon of silk, to get at the chrysalis within 

 it. It was a boorish exaggeration, a legend of ignorance, 

 superstition, and wonder. But when such a skein of facts 

 has passed through the hands of the poets, it is sure to be 

 found in a much more intricate tangle ; and many a knot of 

 pure invention may have to be cut before it is made clear. 



Nevertheless, we shall be able to discern that more than 

 one of the most famous and hideous monsters of old 

 classical lore originated, like the Kraken, in a knowledge by 

 their authors of the form and habits of those strange sea- 

 creatures, the head-footed moUusks. There can be little 

 doubt that the octopus was the model from which the old 

 poets and artists formed their ideas, and drew their 

 pictures of the Lernean Hydra, whose heads grew again 

 when cut off by Hercules ; and also of the monster Scylla, 

 who, with six heads and six long writhing necks, snatched 

 men off the decks of passing ships and devoured them in 

 the recesses of her gloomy cavern. 



Of the Hydra Diodorus relates that it had a hundred 

 heads ; Simonides says fifty ; but the generally received 

 opinion was that of Apollodorus, Hyginus, and others, that 

 it had only nine. 



