Page:Notes and Queries - Series 12 - Volume 1.djvu/410

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NOTES AND QUERIES. [12 S.I.MAY 20.1916. and 'The Hollander':—

It is customary to speak but slightingly of Glapthorne's qualities as a dramatist, and it is therefore not without some amusement that one finds more than one critic disposed to assign to 'Revenge for Honour' a high place among Chapman's works. The writer of the memoir of Chapman in Pearson's edition of his plays says that "as far as interest of plot and variety of characters are concerned" it "ranks first in order of merit of all Chapman's dramatic compositions." The praise sounds excessive, but, however inferior the play may be to Chapman's dramas judged purely from a poetic standpoint, it seems to me to be deserved. 'Revenge for Honour' is indeed an admirable tragedy of its kind. Though certainly one of the most sanguinary of "Tragedies of Blood" (for of the six chief characters all but one meet with a violent death), it has a well-constructed plot full of surprising, but not unnatural, developments leading up to a quite unforeseen conclusion. It is sad to reflect that the establishment of its proper place amongst the works of one of the least esteemed of minor dramatists is calculated to deprive it even of such measure of attention as, through the dishonesty of its seventeenth-century publisher, it has hitherto received.

STORIES OF THE SWARMING AND ASCENSION OF FISHES.

IN Henri Cordier's ' Les Voyages en Asie en XI Ve siecle du bienheureux frere Odoric de Pordenone,' Paris, 1891, p. 188, we meet this text :

" En ce pays [le royaume de Campe] treuye on grande merveille ; car toutes manieres de poisson que on treuve en la mer vient en ce pays si que on ne voit riens en cette mer fors que poissons. Et vient chascune espece de poisson par lui, etdemeure trois jours droit a rive, et puis s'en va cette mani^re de poisson. Puis vient une autre generation et fait ce meismes, et sic de aliis jusques a tant que tous y sont venus une fois ou en ran tant seule- ment. Et quant on demande a ceaulx du pays dont ce vient et que ce monte, ilz disent que ces poissons viennent faire re"ve"rence au roy de ce pays."

From the following quotations it will be manifest that congenial beliefs were held by the olden Japanese and Chinese:

" Tema, an islet a little distance off the coast of the province Idzumo, has an old shrine of the v god Sukunabikona no Mikoto. Every last night

of the year innumerable cuttlefish swarm there- about, which fishermen busy themselves in netting. It is their opinion that every cuttlefish that has already done obeisance to the god is marked with black lots on its back, but every one caught on its way to the shrine has no such dots. The Chinese say that annually late in the spring a multitude of carps, some black and some yellow, arrive from the sea and several rivers at Lun- mun (lit., Dragon's Gate), to compete with one another to ascend the very high cataract. Those which have accomplished the feat are turned into dragons, but the unsuccessful ones retreat each with a mark set on its forehead. It should seem quite inexplicable that the Japanese cuttle- fish are marked only after their visit to the shrine, whereas the Chinese carps are marked when they have proved unable to ascend the waterfall." Kurozawa, ' Kwaikitsu Dan,' 1653.

" In the eighth moon every year, crabs become possessed in their abdomen of a spike a genuine rice spike about an inch long, which they carry eastwards as their presents to the sea-god. Before the delivery of the presents they should never be eaten." Twan Ching-Shih, ' Yu-yang-tsah-tsu,' written in the ninth century, torn. xvii.

" The Chinese work ' Han-shi ' gives this ac- count : ' Late in every autumn, when the rice ripens, crabs come out of their holes, each seizing a spike of rice, and go to render homage to their chief. Uninterruptedly for many days and nights, they run towards the river Yang-tsze, bubbling and foaming in their mouths, and grow somewhat bigger on their entrance to it. Thence they set forward towards the sea, becoming of still greater size upon entering it. Somebody says they carry rice to the sea-god, and, should you open their belly in the eighth moon, you could find in it a rice spike about an inch in length.' " Aoki, ' Kon-y6 Manroku,' written in the eighteenth century, in the ' Hyakka Setsurin,' vol. iv. p. 163, Tokyo, 1891.

In Lin Hung's ' Shan-kia-tsing-kung,' written in the Sung dynasty (961-1279), quoted in the ' Yuen-kien-lui-han,' 1703, tome ccccxliv., crabs are thus lauded. -

" Very insignificant in the scale of creation as they are apparently, they seem to have instinc- tively the sense of respect because of their doing duty to their chief with the offering of the rice spike kept in their belly."

There is no doubt that these errors arose from the Chinese confusion of the crabs' eggs with the rice spikes. For the details of similar multitudes of land crabs annually carrying on their periodic seaward march, and their especial palatableness after their en- trance to the sea, v. De Roch^fort, ' His- toire Naturelle et Morale des lies Antilles de 1'Amerique,' Rotterdam, 1665, pp. 255-7.

To the above-quoted text of Odoric, Cordier gives this note :

" Pauthier fait (' Marco Polo,' p. 577, note) la remarque. . . . ' Cette histoire des poissons, raconte"e si naivement. . . . expliquerait peut-etre 1'origine du nom de Cyamba ou Ciampa donn6 a ce pays, car dans la langue telingana, de la cdte du Coromandel,