Page:Notes and Queries - Series 10 - Volume 8.djvu/473

 10 s. VIIL NOV. 16, 1907.] NOTES AND QUERIES.

391

GAMESTER'S SUPERSTITION :

LIZARD WITH TWO TAILS.

(10 S. viii. 328.)

LIZARDS and snakes are scarcely common enough in England for there to be many popular superstitions about them, beyond snakes sucking cows dry, and such like. The superstitions have almost all arisen in warmer climates, where these reptiles are common. Snakes with double heads die very young ; specimens are to be found in Indian museums, where such abortions as double-headed goats, calves, &c., form the centre of interest to the native visitors. Lizards with bifurcated tails, probably repro- duced abnormally after an accident, are not uncommon. The Italian superstition is found in Provence, and here " Li lagre- muso qu'an la co besso passon per masco " (" The lizards that have the tail twin pass for witches "). I quote the saying because the resemblance between lagremuso, the lizard (properly the wall-lizard), and lagre- mouso, tearful, gives the probable explana- tion of " crocodile's tears." In Spanish which I venture, in all humility, to call a branch of Provenal, the central language of the Romance family, as Dutch is the central language of the Teutonic family (pity that philologists generally have so little practical acquaintance with either) we find the same coincidence of lagarto, whence aligador, the American crocodile, and lagrimoso. But Provence is not only the centre of the Romance tongues, but also the centre of Romance folk-lore. One reason for this may be that in the Camargue, at " les Saintes Maries," is the Mecca of the gipsies, where their queen is elected ; and gipsies are great disseminators of " super- stitions." EDWARD NICHOLSON. Hyeres. [The proverb about " crocodile's tears" is Latin.]

One cannot speak as to any virtue which a lizard may impart when possessed of two tails, but that lizards with two tails are by no means uncommon to-day, and that occa- sionally examples with three tails are met with, appears from some remarks of " Buckland Junior " in The People for 27 October, where they are believed to have come by their furcated appendages through injury.

" A green lizard hath a great delight to behold a man in the face, for he will lovingly fawn upon

him as a dog with the moving of his tail. And as much as in him lies, will defend him from a serpent that lies lurking in the neaths [? nests] to hurt him." Lupton's ' Notable Things,' bk. vi. 73.

In all the British folk-lore of the lizard it is, I think, the enemy not only of the serpent, but also of the scorpion. A writer, who signs himself H., in Gent. Mag., 1771, p. 251, says, while enumerating other super- stitious errors, that " the lizard is not friendly to man in particular, much less does it awaken him to the approach of a serpent," thus implying a generally existing belief in its efficacy as a counter-charm (Hughes's ' Barbadoes ' ; Brook's ' Natural History ').

All this, and much more, shows that a belief in the amuletic virtues of the lizard was general and widespread, so that it is readily intelligible why a gamester in the credulous Terra d'Otranto should resort to its agency as a protection from the serpent of deceit.

J. HOLDEN MACMlCHAEL. Deene, Streatham.

The following passage from ' An English- woman in the Philippines ' (p. 68), John Murray, 1906, seems worth quoting in con- nexion with the superstition referred to by M. P. :

" Sometimes, but very rarely, one of these lizards is found with a forked tail, and this the natives look upon as the emblem of the most extraordinary luck, and they do all they can to catch the lizara, and try to take off his forked tail, which they dry and wear for anting-anting. Any kind of luck or lucky emblem is anting-anting."

J. R. FlTzGERAU).

I cannot say whether lizards with two tails are ever seen in England or not ; but if your correspondent will refer to The Reliquary for last month he will find a very interesting article by Mr. G. Le Blanc Smith on ' Some Dragonesque Forms on and beneath Fonts,' in which salamanders with bifurcated tails from the Youlgreave, Norton, and Haddenham fonts are depicted. I cannot say whether the belief in such animals was connected with the gamester superstition to which your correspondent refers.

EMERITUS.

ASSASSINATION THE METIER or KINGS (10 S. viii. 328). Neither the present King of Italy nor his father was so stupid as to say that assassination is the profession, trade, or business of kings. What Umberto I. said was that it is the perquisite of kings ; but I am sorry I cannot say when or where, or in what precise words, he said it.

JOHN B. WAINEWRIGHT.