Credulity and Animal Lore in Italy May 22, 2015
Author: Beach Combing | in : Ancient, Modern , trackback
Beach has recently been enjoying serpent folklore. This study has led him to question, as often happens to inadequate human beings when new information comes along, ‘facts’ that has been fed him in his time living in Italy: almost a decade now. Here are six involving reptiles and their relatives. Some of these Beach discounted as soon as he heard them: some he actually took seriously. To save any blushes he will just put them down without comment.
Snakes Bombs: Beach has frequently been warned by the villagers where he lives (and by his wife) that you have to be very careful walking through the undergrowth because vipers take their young into the tree and the young can drop on top of you and even down the back of your shirt.
Lizard Heart Attacks: Beach was warned by an old lady neighbour that he should drive lizards out of the house because lizards, when you are sleeping, lie on your heart and do something bad. Not really sure what, perhaps they inject poison?
Teeth Worms: The village eccentric, an old and very disturbed man has sometimes shared his sexual visions. Beach does his best to forget these, particularly the four nude Albanians. But VE once claimed that toothache was cured by driving worms out of the root of the teeth and that VE had seen these worms in the sink.
Alcoholic Vipers: Got a snake in your garden? No problem (Beach was told by a brickie a couple of years ago). Get a bottle. Put a little red wine in. Leave it somewhere out of the sun. The snake will come, attracted by the smell, and then crawl in but be unable to get out. You can then dispose of it at will.
Toads Spit Death: Mrs B has always warned Beach not to touch toads. It seems that they spit poison
Vengeful Snake Wives: This one is not from Italy, but fits… Beach was told by his grandfather, long since departed, that while in India Gramps (an Imperial sort) killed a male cobra in his villa garden. The servants warned him that the snake’s wife would come for revenge. Sure enough, the next day he was walking in the garden and he spied a raised cobra out of the corner of his eye. He brought his baton down hard and just caught her as she darted.
Could any of these have some kind of basis in reality? drbeachcombing AT yahoo DOT com
Two other comments. First, most of Beach’s experiences of snakes come from Italy: there aren’t many snakes in the UK, Ireland or the part of Spain he knows best. In his encounters, in Italy he has always been struck by the majesty of these creatures: how right Lawrence was to call them ‘the lords of life’. He has had one encounter where he felt not only the majesty but, also, ragged fear. The children were playing near a swimming pool when a long viper came to drink. Beach walked over, a little too arrogantly, to scare the snake away and the writhing thing took umbrage. It lifted itself into a striking pose, hissing. Atavistic fireworks exploded in Beach’s brain: ‘he will crush your head and you will bruise his heel’.
Second, Beach has always been jealous of those who heard about this or that fairy from nineteenth-century folk with soil under the nails who took such things for granted. Yet, here we have a series of beliefs that are just as ancient. Aristotle, credulous old fool, advises readers to catch serpents by putting wine on pottery shards: and the idea that snakes drink wine dates back, far beyond this, into primal Mediterranean times when Plato was not even a glimmer in the One’s eye, and when the Greeks were sacrificing each others’ children. How extraordinary to hear about a snake and wine from a brickie helping with a collapsed wall in 2011.
25 May 2015: First up is Ruth. Thanks to all who wrote in.
Ruth writes in: I’m not sure about vipers hiding in trees, but in Oklahoma, where I grew up, there are a type of snake that will hide in trees and drop on you. Unpleasant little boogers called Copperheads. Poisonous and bad tempered, they will chase you if you bother them whereas most snakes, even Rattlesnakes, will only crawl away. This is well documented and some of my family members have had it happen! There are also Water Moccasins which try to get in the boat with you, but those are different things. Toads frankly get a bad rap. They are useful beasties eating all sorts of pests in your garden. No, they won’t cause warts or spit poison, their skin is dry to the touch. Yes, I’ve picked them up and played with them! Now, Cane Toads are poisonous and have been introduced into many countries by idiots who let them loose, but it’s touch, not spit. Cobras do have pairs who tend to be monogamous so they could possibly attack someone who killed one of them. Here’s a good website that talks about them. I don’t think you can trap a snake with alcohol, but who knows, slugs love beer. I can understand the reaction to the snake and your kids, it would probably hit me that way, too. And I like snakes, they can be very beneficial in their place, as long as it doesn’t cross mine. I’ve handled them as an educational item when working in a park, and one of my girls had one for a pet for a time. I won’t talk about how homicidal a cricket can make me though, especially at night when I’m trying to sleep and there’s one in the house.
KS writes in: Is it possible that some of these stories made their way into Italy via the “golondrinas”, the italian seasonal workers that moved back and forth between Italy and South America in the 19th century? Some of these stories have counterparts with factual (or otherwise) stories from Argentina, Uruguay and southern Brazil, the areas of south America where the italian influence is the strongest, and where there is a wide variety of dangerous reptiles. For example: Toxic toads : It doesnt spit that I know of, but the Argentine cane toad has toxin emitting glands on its back, so care is required while touching it. Eating it will kill most animals, and humans have been known to lick its back to get high (yes, really). It has done a lot of damage to the Australian ecosystems where it was introduced to control cane beetles, as it is a voracious predator and native species quickly learned not to try and eat it. Interestingly enough, in areas in Australia where it is common snakes have evolved to have smaller mouths (ie that dont fit toads).
Snake bombs : I personally know a man who was bitten on the head by a venomous snake that fell out of a tree while he was walking under it in Brazil. I dont know if it was an accident or an attack, but it happens.
Vengeful snakes : I have also heard a first hand account of this from a man who worked the cane fields in Uruguay & Southern Brazil. His story was that there was a particular type of snake (Cruzeiro if I remember correctly) that they made a point of not dragging them on the ground after killing them so that the mate could not follow the scent. Anyway, one day one was killed near the homestead where they were working and someone thought it would be a good prank to leave the dead snake on the doorstep of the house, which they did, but were careless carrying the snake and let its tail drag on the ground. When the senhora got up the next morning, there was another snake on the doorstep, and thinking it was a repeat of the previous days prank she ignored it, which proved to be a fatal error. Rightly or wrongly the workers assumed it was the mate of the first one, come looking for vengeance. I also have a vague recollection of hearing a similar story from an Australian farmer, but I dont remember any details.
LTM has referenced tooth worms from this article. Quoting:
The first and most enduring explanation for what causes tooth decay was the tooth worm, as depicted in the ivory sculptures to the left, which was first noted by the Sumerians around 5000 BC. The hypothesis was that tooth decay was the result of a tooth worm boring into and decimating the teeth. This is logical, as the holes created by cavities are somewhat similar to those bored by worms into wood. The idea of the tooth worm has been found in the writings of the ancient Greek philosophers and poets, as well as those of the ancient Indian, Japanese, Egyptian, and Chinese cultures. It endured as late as the 1300s, when French surgeon Guy de Chauliac still promoted the belief that worms cause tooth decay.
Peter G writes in: When I was a kid (in Tasmania) there was a common superstition that if you killed a snake it wouldn’t actually die until the sun went down. Snakes are very common in Tassie and people used to hang the ones they had killed over their front fences. When I first read about the post-Spartacus ornamentation that Crassus placed along the Via Appia I was reminded of those Tasmanian country roads.
30 June 2015: Southern Man wrote in with a translation from this site.
Essendo salentino mi sembra assurdo aver scoperto solo adesso, a vent’anni, che gli anziani del posto credono e alcuni dicono di aver visto (vabbè, mi dicono che conoscono gente che ha visto) enormi serpenti che chiamano Mungivacca, che dicono fossero in grado di atterrare una mucca e berle il latte. Ora, a me sà tanto di un misto di suggestione e di folklore, ma mi piacerebbe sapere se non è una credenza solo locale. Rimanendo in tema di folklore e serpenti…da queste parti dicono anche i serpenti (quelli normali) quando le contadine allattavano i bambini mentre dormivano mettessero la coda in bocca al bambino e succhiassero loro il latte.
Being from Salerno it seems absurd that I’ve only now just discovered, at twenty years og age, that the old folk here, believe in and some claim to have seen (or at least people who have known people who have seen) enormous serpents that are called Mungivacca (cowmilkers) that can bring down a cow and then drink its milk. This seems to me a mix of folklore and suggestion and I’d like to know whether it is onlyl local. Also in the locality they say that when children slept they used to put the tail in babies mouthes and suck milk.
