A STRANGE TRADITION. 357 



To begin with the beginning the origin of insect vermin. 

 There is given by a certain traveller 1 the following curious 

 tradition, as preserved amongst a sect of Kurds who dwelt at 

 the foot of Mount Sindshar : 



" When Noah's ark sprang a leak by striking against a 

 rock in the vicinity of Mount Sindshar, and Noah despaired 

 altogether of safety, the serpent promised to help him out of 

 his mishap, if he would engage to feed him upon human flesh 

 after the deluge had subsided. Noah pledged himself to do 

 so ; and the serpent, coiling himself up, drove his body into 

 the fracture and stopped the leak. When the pluvious element 

 was appeased, and all were making their way out of the ark, 

 the serpent insisted upon the fulfilment of the pledge he 

 had received ; but Noah, by Gabriel's advice, committed the 

 serpent to the flames, and, scattering its ashes in the air, there 

 arose out of them flies, fleas, lice, bugs, and all such sorts of 

 vermin as prey upon human blood ; and in this manner was 

 Noah's pledge redeemed." 2 



According to the above tradition, human flesh alone would 

 have been heir to the debt for which, in his dire extremity, the 

 venerable Noah was induced to give a bond ; but as all beasts, 

 birds, and creeping things, were sharers in the preservation 

 wrought by the cunning stopper of their leaky vessel, it is but 

 fair that they also should pay a part of the tribute prospectively 

 exacted. At all events, we find that throughout each order of 

 animated being, from man down to the meanest insect, there is 

 scarcely one exempt from some tormenting infestor which lives 

 upon its vital juices. Scarce anybody who has ever noticed 

 at all either a common black beetle or a humble-bee, can 

 have failed to observe the shining mail of the one and the 

 downy doublet of the other covered with a living load of small 

 white or brownish insects, from whose attacks they are some- 



1 Eulia, quoted in the " Mirror." 



a There is also a Hindu tradition, in which the serpent, instead of saving, is 

 represented as trying to wreck the Ark. 



M M 



