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CHAPTER III. 



FISHES IN RELIGION. 



Primitive Fish-Divinities — and Greco-Roman — Fish-spirits and Genii — 

 Patron Saints — Sacred fishes — Fish-totems — Fish not eaten 

 because sacred — Fish sacred because not eatable — Fish both sacred 

 and eaten — Putting off the Gods with the Worst fish — Magnifying 

 them with the Best — Rehgious Fish-legends, Savage, Hindoo, 

 Buddhist, Mahomedan — Fish as Food — Christian Legends — Holy- 

 Church perpetuating the Heathen Worship of Venus in Lent — Fish 

 a Christian Symbol. 



" When Kareya made all things that have breath, he first 

 made the fishes in the Big Water." So say the Red 

 Indians, and the legend goes on, curiously enough, to tell 

 how Kareya, in a dog-in-the-manger spirit, kept the fish 

 (they were salmon) to himself, but how man, with the help 

 of the coyote, the prairie-jackal, outwitted the Creator, and 

 got the salmon up stream. Does this point to an artificial 

 system of fish-ladders being known to the primitive savage ? 

 At any rate, it authenticates the dignity of fish in the 

 cosmogony of the aboriginal American. But, as older 

 even than this antiquity, we must accept the Polynesian 

 theory of creation. In this the Creator is himself half a 

 fish. That is to say, from the head to the feet, the left 

 side of the body is fish. Coming down, however, to more 

 recent mythologies, we find the senior of the gods of 

 Olympus, the ever-youthful Eros, is a fish, and his so-called 

 " mother " a fish also. We may note, too, that Jupiter 

 never asserted control over Neptune. On the sea-shore, 



