Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 28, 1917.djvu/174

 I ^ 2 Ihill-baitino-, Bii//-raciiio\ Biili-fiohts.

In a relief on a slab found in Egypt, and now in the Louvre, a bull is goring a man who lies on the ground ; the other huntsman seems to have been tossed by the bull.-'

Again, one of the finest frescoes discovered by Schliemann in the citadel of Tiryns represents a mighty bull galloping at full speed to the left. Its body is painted a yellowish colour wath many red spots. The short head with big round eyes carries a pair of powerful horns, curved to the front. A man balances himself on its back, just touching the animal with his right knee and the tip of his toe, while he throws his other leg high up in the air, and holds on to the bull's horn with his right hand.^ On some Greek coins from Catana in Sicily we see a man-headed bull with a figure remarkably like the acrobat of Tiryns, on his back.^

In the palace at Knossos, again, Sir A. Evans discovered what has been called " The Toreador Fresco," that decorated a wall on the east side of the building. It shows a boy and two girls in male attire, performing with bulls. One of the girls is about to leap over the bull by clutching its horns, or to be tossed by the furious beast. The other girl stands with outstretched arms, ready to catch a youth who is successfully performing the dangerous leap. The composition, a whole, is admittedly a triumph of ancient art, as any one may judge from the copy now in the Ash- molean Museum.'

Needless to say, these fine works of art have given rise to speculation, and the incidents depicted have formed the subject of controversy. Some authorities are disposed to

■*Frazer, op. cit. iii. 136.

'Scliuchhardt, op. cit. 119 et seq. (with an illustration); Frazer, op. cit. iii. 229. Ivory figures of bull-fighters from Cnossos, Report British School Athens, viii. plates ii. iii. p. 72 seq. ; Schliemann, Tiryns, plate xiii.

" Schuchhardt, 120.

■^C. H. and H. B. Hawes, Crete the Forerunner of Greece, 120; Annual British School at Athens, vii. 94, viii. <^\; Journal Hellenic Society, xx. (1900) 170, xxii. (1902) 382.