170 The Poets Beasts. 



horns " — beguiled into the forest depths to the hunter's 

 woe. In our own ballads, momentous disasters sprang 

 from "the hunting of the deer." And in semi-sacred 

 legends what an important place it holds, the cross-bearing 

 stag, the celestial hind. And how European history would 

 have been altered if kings had never chased the deer. In 

 the East it is even more fateful. Many princes'have come 

 by their adventures following the deceptive quarry. The 

 whole "Ramayana" turns upon the hero being beguiled 

 from his leafy hermitage in pursuit of the silver-spotted 

 stag. In fact, the deer of myth, whether "stag," "hind," 

 "gazelle," or "antelope," is a thing universally desired, but 

 almost invariably the cause of perplexity and trouble to its 

 pursuer. 



Superstitions about them are very frequent. They are 

 captivated by music, as several poets tell us, and when 

 wounded — 



" For his secure an herb can find 

 The arrow to withdraw." 



Some say this is the " Lancashire asphodel," but others that 

 " the hart, wounded with an arrow, runs to the herb dittany 

 to bite it, that the shaft may fall out."^ Every one knows, 

 too, that a hart's horn burnt drives all the snakes away from 

 the neighbourhood, and that the deer is the most dreaded 

 foe of the serpent, for it sucks up the air out of the snake- 

 holes, and the snakes cannot help but follow ; and then, 

 when the snake appears, the deer eats it like a stalk of 

 celery. So if you wear deerskin no snake will ever touch 

 you. But deer folk-lore, if it were collected, would be 

 found to be prodigious in quantity and traversing half our 

 philosophies. Dig deep into the earth under the roots of 

 the dread ash Ygdrasil, and you will find four stags on 

 the guard there. Look up above you into the sky, and 



' This healing lierb has many pretty Icjjends. 



