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NOTES AND QUERIES. do* s. n. NOV. 26, im.
his standards the pelican, on others "Pro lege, grege et rege."
Wither's 'Emblems,' p. 154 (the engravings are well known to be by Crispin de Pass), represents the parent bird feeding its three young ones in the foreground, and in the distance angels holding chalices to catch the sacred blood from the figure of the Crucified. The heading of the page is:—
Our Pelican, by bleeding, thus,
Fulfill'd the Law, and cured Vs;
and the motto, "Pro lege et pro grege." Beneath are thirty lines of appropriate verse. Another engraving of nearly equal merit is to be seen in the Plantin edition of the book called 'Physiologus,' attributed to St. Epiphanius, Bishop of Constantia (Antverpiæ, 1588). Whether rightly attributed to this author or not (Smith's 'Biographical Dictionary' does not include it among his works), the treatise is certainly of ecclesiastical origin. It consists of twenty-five short chapters, all about birds or animals, of matter largely fabulous, with a spiritual interpretation attached to each chapter, and in the Plantin edition some excellent notes.
The twenty-ninth 'Imago' of Boetius a Bolswert in his well-known illustrations to Sucquet's 'Via Vitæ Æternæ' introduces the pelican feeding its three young as a type of the solitary life.
Yet another printer adopted the pelican as his badge—one Christopher Mangius, of Augsburg. The book in which I find it is called 'Icones Sanctorum,' by Cl. Distelmair, 1610. The design is good, but inferior to that of the Paris press.
Very inferior to. all these is emblem xlv. of Riley's collection (third edition, 1779 p. 134). This is a roughly executed woodcut. The mother is feeding four young birds with as many streamlets issuing from her breast. The topic is 'Of Heavenly Love,' and the verses—
The tender Pelican with ceaseless cares
Protects her young ones and their food prepares,
From her own breast the nourishment proceeds,
With which, as with her blood, her brood she feeds
Emblem of Heav'ns supernal graces known,
And parents' love to dearest children shewn.
Moral.
To God above, and to your friends below,
Still let your breast with Zeal and Duty glow,
Much to your Parents, more to Heav'n you owe.
The note that follows is curious:—
"The Pelican is a bird known to most people It has given rise to many strange stories, the principal of which is, that of feeding its young with it blood; which, upon examination, has not proved true. But it has a bag or pouch, in which it put provision to supply their wants; doubtless the manner of the female's taking it from that repository appeared, to the first observers of it, as if she had made an opening in her breast, and nourished them with her blood."
The true pelican, with its ungainly pouch, has little resemblance to Riley's illustration, which follows the others in representing a graceful bird more like a swan.
Wilkinson (supra, p. 311) should have quoted Horapollo more at length. The pelican's principal mark of folly is, that whereas it might lay its eggs (
Greek characters), like other birds, it scrapes a hole in the ground and there brings up its brood. when when people make a circle of dry cow-dung round its nest and set it on fire, it only increases the flame by trying to flap it out with its wings, singeing them in the process. See 'Horapollinis Hieroglyphica,' ed. De Pauw (1727), and cf. Job xxxix. 13-17.
Having now had the opportunity of consulting the eleven ponderous folios of Valarsi's ' Jerome,' I am inclined to agree with B. W. that the myth is wrongly attributed to this saint. A cul-de-lampe of an aquiline "pelican" in her piety towards the end of vol. vii. is the nearest approach to mentioning the fable I can find; Jerome's remark (vol. iv. col. 810) that the eagle, aquila, is pre-eminently fond of her young coming a poor second. The two genera of onocrotalus are referred to in his 'Comment. in Sophon.' (vi. 709), and by the pseudo-Hieronymus in the 'Brev. in Psalt.' (vii., App. 271), the latter furnishing the information that one kind of pelican feeds on reptiles and the other on fish.
The earliest reference to Jerome as an authority for the myth is, so far as I know, Ponce de Leon's note to Epiphanius, 'Ad Physiologum' (1588, p. 32), which looks like a guess, and which is copied in A. Simson's 'Hieroglyphica Animalium Terrestrium,' &c. (1622, p. 31). After Epiphanius and Augustine comes Isidore, who gives the myth to the pelican, whilst elsewhere mentioning there are two kinds of onocrotalus (ed. Migne, lxxxii. 462-3). Gregory's account is also in Migne (lxxix. 610), and he, like Epiphanius, symbolizes Christ by the pelican, so that there is no need (ante, p. 311) to look upon Aquinas as Dante's authority. Finally, there may be added to the pelican aviary the owl suggested in Cheyne and Black's 'Ency. Biblica' (1902). {[sc
It is certain that no authority of any value can be quoted for the statement that "the pelican among the ancient Egyptians
