I 2 2 TJie Poets Beasts. 



intend any disparagement of the Prophet's favourite horse 

 when he named his own donkey Duldul after it? Thus 

 prized, the wild ass soon came under domestication, and 

 the under-sized drudge of the London streets is the latest 

 and most degraded variation of the species. But inter- 

 mediate between the proud vagabond of the desert and the 

 coslermonger's "moke" come many animals more worthy, 

 physically, of their lineage. In Egypt, the white ass still 

 claims something of the respect, and fetches the high price, 

 of olden days ; and during the Egyptian war I remember 

 seeing more than one of these animals figuring conspicuously 

 in the British camp. A distinguished general, a baronet, 

 and two M.P.'s, rode to the front, as used to ride the fifty 

 sons of Jair. All over Asia Minor the donkey of superior 

 caste is the recognised "hack" of the well-to-do, and I have 

 seen them not only in the Levant, but in Southern Europe 

 and in Eastern Africa, sumptuously caparisoned as steeds, 

 and of a size and form that dignified their ofifice far better 

 than some of the ponies of the Cossacks of the Don, the 

 tattoos of India, the bronchos of Western America, or the 

 rat-like chargers of Beluchi warriors. 



And I have overwhelming authority from the Past for 

 my respect for donkeys. The purely stupid ass was un- 

 known to antiquity. Take Hindoo mythology alone. There 

 we find the donkey in divine, demoniacal, or Ghandarvic 

 aspects — that is, benign, malign, or merely vagabond and 

 loose-moralled — but never ignominious or ridiculous. The 

 ass of Indra is a potent personage, and, as the warrior that 

 conquers at Yama, rises to the dignity of the Solar Hero, 

 the Sun itself. Or, if you will, take the more familiar 

 Greek and Latin. What was the ass Lucius but the Sun ? 

 Sacred to Bacchus, it paced along triumphant in Dionysic 

 feasts ; it was honoured, as it well deserved, in the worship 

 of Vesta, and sacrificed as a worthy offering to the God of 

 War. 



