Sea^ Serpents and Religion 1 79 



darkling caves of ocean, a sight of which would justify 

 any Sea-serpent yarn, however Munchausenlike, and 

 I should not like to question the existence of enormous 

 individuals of Regalecus or oar-fish, of which Dr. Goode 

 says that ' it seems quite safe to assign to this group 

 all the so-called Sea-serpents which have been described 

 as swimming rapidly near the surface, with a horse-like 

 head raised above the water, surmounted by a mane- 

 like crest of red or brown.' But from a Regalecus 

 of twenty feet long to a Sea-serpent capable of carrying 

 his head sixty feet out of water is so long a step that 

 I do not think we shall ever take it. 



The great difficulty about our acceptance of Sea- 

 serpent stories to-day is the aroma of mediaeval 

 superstition which surrounds them. We cannot help 

 remembering that there belongs, as of right, to all Sea- 

 serpent stories of the Olaus Magnus order, a relation- 

 ship to serpent worship, to the hideous old m5d;hologies 

 of the past, having, if not their origin, at least their 

 early history enveloped in a mist of blood and human 

 agonies. We may interest ourselves in serpent lore 

 connected with religion as much as we wiU, and find 

 it terribly interesting, if only from the fact that almost 

 all early religions have some trace of it. That in the 

 case of peoples who knew the sea the fabled Sea-serpent 

 should become of vast and awful size and aspect, was 

 perhaps only natural, since the connexion of it with 

 the sea, itself a place of superhuman dread and 

 mystery, became perhaps inevitable. The avatar of 

 the fish from the Mahaharata of the Hindus is a 

 case in point, elaborated with all the fulness of gro- 

 tesque detail that these ancient people love, as well 

 as a boundless exaggeration. The puny efforts of 

 our romancers must recede into obscurity before the 

 tale of a Sea-serpent a million leagues long, and 



