Page:The Folk-Lore Journal Volume 2 1884.djvu/277

Rh Amongst creatures which come to Noah's assembly but have not the entrée of modern zoological society, we have "the huge ruck," progenitor, no doubt, of Sindbad's friends; also,

"That a Salamander is able to live in flames, to endure and put out fire, is an assertion not only of great Antiquity, but confirmed by frequent and not contemptible testimony," says Dr. Thomas Browne. " All which, notwithstanding there is on the negative authority and experience." Neither did that astute gentleman give credit to the story of the cockatrice, the half-bird, half-serpent (now only legitimately hatched at Heralds' College), which like the fabled snake, called basilisk, had death in its glance; though in the Ark, as Drayton assures us, the power was most happily suspended. I may conclude what I have to say about Noah's live stock, by mentioning that that fearsome item of folk-lore, the dragon—the fabled guardian of so many hoards of fabulous treasure—

precisely as if he were in the police force of patriarchal times; and

just as naturally as if he belonged to that of the nineteenth century.

Drayton's faith in the phœnix was completely orthodox, but he did not put her in the ark, and one wonders what became of her during the Deluge. She was, said his Owl, following Claudian de Phœnice, "parent and infant to herself alone," and it is well that she was