Re: The Salamandre problem
Sam;
Apparently, the French in the north of that country did not agree with their southern peers about the 'lucky-ness' of 'le salamandre' ...
The Reverend J.G. Wood (1865) quotes the following, delightfully prosy letter sent to "The Field" newspaper in 1891, which graphically illustrates the evil reputation formerly endured by the salamander.
"Returning homeward a few evenings ago from a country walk in the environs of Dieppe, I regarded in my path a strange-looking reptile which, after regarding me steadfastly for a few moments, walked slowly to the side of the road and commenced very deliberately climbing up the wall. Never having seen a similar animal, I was rather doubtful as to its properties; but reassured by its tranquil demeanor, I put my pocket-handkerchief over it, and it suffered itself to be taken up without resistance and was thus carried to my domicile. On arriving chez moi, I opened my basket to show my captive to the servants (French), when, to my surprise and consternation, they set up such a screaming and hullabaloo, that I thought they would have gone into fits.
"Oh monsieur a rafforte un source!"
"Un sourd!" cried one,
"Un sourd!" echoed another,
"Un S-O-U-R-D!!" cried they all in chorus; and then followed a succession of shrieks.
When they all calmed down into a mild sample of hysterics, they began to explain that I had brought home the most venomous animal in creation.
"Oh le vilain bete!" exclaimed one servant.
"Oh le mechant!" chimed in another, "He kills everybody that comes near him. I have known fifty people die of his bite and no remedy in the world can save them. As soon as they are bitten they gonflent, gonflent and keep on swelling till they burst, and they are dead in a quarter of an hour".
Here, I transferred my curiosity from the basket to a glass jar and put a saucer on the top to keep it safe.
"Oh monsieur, don't leave him so; if he puts himself in a rage, nothing can hold him. He has got so much force that he can jump up to the ceiling; and whenever he fastens himself he sticks like death!!"
"Ah, its all true", cried my landlady, joining the circle of gapers. "once I saw a man in a haycart try to kill one and the bete jumped right off the ground in a bound and fastened itself on the man's face, when he stood on the haycart, and nothing could detach it till the man fell down dead!"
"Ah, c'est bien vrai" cried the first servant. "They ought to have fetched a mirror and held it up to the bete and then it would have left the man and jumped at its own image".
The end of this commotion was that while I went to enquire of a scientific friend whether there was any truth in this tissue of betises, the whole household was in an uproar, tout en emoi, and they sent for a commissionaire and an ostler with a spade and a mattock, and threw my poor bete into the road and foully murdered it, chopping it into a dozen pieces by the light of a stable lantern, and then they declared that they could sleep in peace - les miserables.
But there were sundry misgivings as to my fate and as with the Apostle Paul (on the occasion of his being bitten by a viper when shipwrecked on the island of Malta), "They looked when I should have swollen or fallen down dead suddenly": and the next morning the maids came stealthily and peeped into my room to see whether I was alive or dead, and were not a little surprised that I was not even gonfle or any the worse for my recontre with a sourd.
And so it turned out that my poor little bete that has caused such a disturbance was nothing more than a salamander - a poor, inoffensive, harmless reptile, declared on competent authority to be noways venomous. But whose unfortunate appearance and somewhat satanic livery have exposed it to obloquy and persecution.
The Rev. Wood further refers to "one of the old writers" who advises anyone who is bitten by a salamander to "betake himself to the coffin winding sheet". And adds that a sufferer from the bite of this animal "needs as many physicians as the animal has spots".
It was also believed that if a salamander crawled upon the stem of an apple tree, all the crop of fruit would be withered by its deadly presence.
These superstitious beliefs about the salamander, although no longer widespread in Europe, still persist in some rural areas where it remains an object of terror to be destroyed whenever encountered.
*Wood, J.G. Rev. (1865). The Illustrated Natural History, Vol IV. George Rutlidge & Sons, London. [As submitted by Bellings, D. (The Red House Farm, Brakefield Green, Yexham, Dereham, Norfolk, NR19 15b) in HERPTILE 11(1)]
