CHAPTER V. 

 THE POETS' SNAKES. 



IN folklore the snake has, I find, three distinct and different 

 aspects. Only one of these the malignant aspect is 

 recognised in verse. 



Elsewhere, however, it is very often met with as the 

 faithful custodian of treasure, and nearly every country has 

 its Serpent which guards the all-important tree of immortality 

 and other secrets, or its dragonish thing that defends some 

 priceless possession. The Greeks only fled from Athens 

 when they heard that the snake of the city had deserted 

 the Acropolis, and it is only a few years ago in this very 

 nineteenth century of ours that the Nagas of India formally 

 surrendered to British troops because their serpent oracle 

 had escaped from its priests. For the snake is the universal 

 guardian of the under world, whether we look for it in the 

 diamond-lit caverns of Shesh in Hindostan, or under the 

 ash Ygdrasil in Norway. 



In its second aspect it is benign, and emblematical of 

 providential wisdom and a vigilant solicitude. So we find it 

 in Anantas, the infinite, lending itself to the gods, that they 

 might use its body for a rope, to be tied round the moun- 

 tain of Meru when they churned the ocean ; as the bene- 

 ficent rainbow of Africa; in the "feathered serpent" of 

 South America that taught men religion and gave them the 

 gift of wine ; in Hoa, the third person of the Babylonian 



trinity, that befriends the penitent, 



78 



