68 The Poets Beasts, 



and marry their children to each other much as we do. I have seen a 

 bear's wedding. It was just after the Feast of Firs, and I was coming 

 back tired along the Ghilgit road from Astor across the hills when I 

 suddenly chanced upon a great convention of bears. There were a 

 hundred at least — brown and black, big and little — and they were all 

 dancing round the wood-fires which they had lighted. Some of them 

 had wreathed their heads with wisps of straw and flowers, and were 

 dancing solemnly, each by himself. Others had in their arms tussocks 

 of long grass and faggots of fir- wood which they used as partners, while 

 others danced two and three together, holding hands and going slowly 

 round and round. At each corner sate a bear crooning harmoniously 

 for the others to dance in time to. And while I was watching them 

 an old fellow, the largest bear of the com])any, got up from where he 

 had been eating honey, with a long fir-branch in his hand, and made all 

 the others fall into two long lines, and then the bride and the bride- 

 groom (who had been up a tree all the time) were called down and 

 placed at the end of the row. And they took each other's hands and 

 danced, turning slowly round and round, down between the long rows 

 of bears, and when they reached the other end all the company gave a 

 howl together, and scattering themselves among the woods began col- 

 lecting viands for the feast. As some of them came in my direction I 

 ran off as fast as I could, and saw no more." 



Sir Bruin of the Reineke Fuchs is of the common type. 

 He has great physical strength and fidelity of character, but 

 he is so simple that adversaries always outwit him. He is. 

 no match for foxes, any more than the bear-heroes Sir 

 Bors, or Jubal or Earl Arthgal of the Table Round, or any 

 of those heavy slumberous giants, upon whose persons small, 

 agile, and invincibly-armed heroes performed such prodigies 

 of valour. 



The bear is the sleepy summer thunder of Scandinavian 

 myth. It is of a mumbling grumbling kind, happy enough 

 in an old-country-gentleman sort of way when unmolested, 

 but testy in the matter of strange neighbours and trespassers. 

 It is a stubborn Conservative, a Legitimist, a protest of 

 Routine against Reform. Daniel makes it a symbol of 

 faithlessness ; but he evidently did not know as much about 

 bears as he did, or ought to have known, about lions, or he 



