64 The Poets Beasts. 



Yet what a large place the bear has filled in the past. 

 And how multitudinous and honourable are its associations. 

 As the God of Thunder, the Bear-king of Storms, Bruin is 

 perfectly majestic in cloud-myths. The tempest demons, 

 black-bearded, are his children, and the thunder-clouds,  

 ragged and gloomy, go rolling and roaring and foaming 

 overboard, bears every one of them, and close on the heels 

 of their prey. Turn it round to the sun-myth, and lo ! " the 

 shining ones," the luminous sky, the bear — "Woful Calisto, 

 when that Dian grieved was." In the one aspect horrific, as 

 the bear-fiends of Dardistan or the shaggy terrors, every hair 

 of iron, that awe the Russian peasant ; in the other, benign, 

 '* the honey-finder," or in Lapland, " the dog of God," or in 

 Russia, " the old man with the fur cloak." On the one 

 hand, the cruel instrument of the prophet at Bethel, a 

 synonym for lurking mischief in the classics and in Holy 

 Writ ; on the other, the nurse of Paris and of Atalanta — 



" Folk say that her, so delicate and white 

 As now she is, a rough root-grubbing bear 

 Amidst her shapeless cubs at first did rear. 

 In course of time the woodfollc slew her nurse, 

 And to their rude abode the youngling brought, 

 And reared her up to be a kingdom's curse " {Morris) — 



the docile disciple of Saints, the gentle animal that played 

 at soldiers with the children and so prettily befriended 

 Snow-White and Rose-Red. 



Poetry, however, so diligent sometimes in availing itself 

 of legend, takes no cognisance of the unusual prominence 

 of the bear in history, heraldry, art, and folk-lore. The story 

 of Valentine and Orson affords the subject of a ballad. 



" ' But wlio's this hairy youth ? ' she said, 

 ' lie much resembles thee.' 

 ' The bear devoured my younger son, 

 Or sure that son were he.' 



