Diversions of a NaturalistLankester, E. Ray (Edwin Ray), Sir
History
Diversions of a Naturalist
Lankester, E. Ray (Edwin Ray), Sir
Natural history
It is true enough that the drawings from Mykenæan pots here submitted
cannot be considered as a complete demonstration that the legend of the
tree-goose originated with these drawings. But it must be remembered
that we have only a small number of examples of this pottery surviving
from a thousand years B.C. It is probable that the fanciful decorative
design of a master artist was copied and used in the painting of
hundreds of pots by mere workmen or inferior craftsmen, and that more
complete and impressive designs showing the fanciful transformation
of leaf or fruit to goose, and of goose to barnacle, existed both
before and after the making of the particular pots and jars which
have come down to us. The supposition made by M. Houssay (which I
entirely support) is that some later Levantine people--to whom these
decorated pots or copies of their decorations became known either in
the regular way of trade or as sailors' "curios"--were led to attempt
an explanation of the significance of the pictures drawn upon them,
and in accordance with a well-known and rooted tendency--interpreted
the fancies of the artist as careful representations of astonishing
fact. The existence of a tree which produces buds which become birds,
and of a barnacle which becomes transformed into a goose--is the
matter-of-fact interpretation of the few pictures of these animals
which have come down to us, modern men, painted on the few pots of that
remote Mykenæan industry now in our museums. It is not at all unlikely
that in the vast period of time between 1000 B.C. and 1000 A.D., the
more striking of these designs had been copied and familiarized in some
part of the ancient world. It is true that we do not at present know
in what part: we have not yet come across these designs of later date
than 800 B.C. The absence of the story of the tree-goose from Greek
and Roman lore is striking. Neither Aristotle nor Herodotus knew of
it, although it has been erroneously stated that they refer to it. Yet
the source of it was there in the Greek isles almost under their noses
(if one may speak of the noses of such splendid and worshipful men of
old) in the artistic work--otherwise not unknown to the Greeks--of a
civilization which preceded their own by hundreds of years. There is
other and ample evidence--as for instance that of the representation of
the "flying gallop" (see "Science from an Easy Chair," Second Series,
pp. 57 and 63), showing that Mykenæan art had little or no direct
effect on the Hellenes, although the reputation of the skill of the old
race in metal work came through many generations to them. Mykenæan art
seems to have migrated with Mykenæan settlers to the remote region of
the Caucasus. In the necropolis of Koban and other remote settlements,
Mykenæan designs in bronze and gold--including the horse in flying
gallop and octopods transformed to bull's heads--have been found and
pictured (Ernest Chantre, "Recherches anthropologique dans Caucase,"
4 vols.: Paris, 1886).
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