Monsters with Eyes Like Saucers April 22, 2018
Author: Beach Combing | in : Contemporary, Medieval, Modern , trackback
Introduction: Eyes like Saucers
Eyes like saucers comes up again and again in accounts of the supernatural: ghosts sometimes have them, ditto demons and ‘black dogs’ almost always have them. But why? What do these descriptions mean? Where do they come from?
Monsters
Let’s start with some typical creepy saucer descriptions. A bogey at Leigh near Worcester (1867) was ‘a strange thing like a lion, with eyes as big as saucers’. In 1871 some crazy spiritualists have an encounter with a huge creature with three legs in, err, Cornwall: ‘it has great teeth, and eyes as big as saucers; its body is larger round than an elephant’s but more the shape of a crocodile’s.’ A ghost in Bucks, England rose out of a pond dressed ‘in most hideous clothes and with eyes as big as saucers’ (1884).
There are also a series of marine references. A sea serpent in 1904 was described as having ‘eyes as big as saucers; ditto the Cornish sea serpent of 1886 ‘a trunk like an elephant, eyes like saucers, projecting from the head; short ears like those of an ox, standing out’ [a giant squid??]. these should be perhaps be associated with the diver’s encounter with a shark: ‘I saw looking out at me, from one of the furnaces, two eyes as big as saucers’ (1894) – the poor man subsequently described being flicked with the shark’s tail and knocked fifteen feet. Maybe this is, too, the place to refer to how Mary Anning, the inspiring fossil hunter, found an Ichthyosaurus with ‘eyes as big as saucers’ (1954).
The horror stuff naturally tips over into children’s literature. Crucially and much quoted, in Hans Christian Anderson there is ‘the dog with eyes as big as saucers’ who has to be moved by the hero. It would be interesting to know what the Danish is behind this translation from 1876. There are many, many others. I have, for example, a reference to an ogre from 1929 whose ‘eyes were as big as saucers’.
Surprise and Shock
Before we get onto the reason for saucer monsters it might be worth looking at other meanings. First, saucers eyes denote surprise, shading into shock. Children at the theatre gaze with eyes like saucers during the ‘transformation scene’ (1864): I remember that feeling. After some conjuring tricks (1896) there is silence. ‘The Indians, with eyes as big as saucers, stood in awe and astonishment, and shook their heads. Bargain hunters (1939) are a ‘crowd of buffaloes rushing in and round about, with eyes as big as saucers for the nearest bargain’. An alternative comedian, meanwhile, ‘looked like he’d escaped from an institution, eyes as big as saucers’ (1996 sic).
Sexual Saucer Eyes
The other meaning is sexual, though, as we shall see contradictory. Was it attractive for a woman to have saucer eyes? Well, it depends on whom you ask. ‘many a modern girl’ 1883, ‘would ask her fairy godmother… to give her eyes as big as saucers and hands as small as those of a doll.’ In a 1939 novel one character tries to tempt over a predatory male ‘There’s a little one with brown eyes as big as saucers you ought to take a look at.’ There is vampish ‘cunning Elise, with her eyes as big as saucers’ (1898): long before Mrs Beach came to save me, I used to know a girl called Elise…. An innocent girl is described in 1895 as ‘a purty girl with blue eyes as big as saucers and golden hair down her back…’ In 1881 we even read of the ‘baby stare’:
It is affected by young misses, and consists in opening the eyes as widely as possible without raising the brows, and slightly turning the corners of the mouth upwards…. It must be a touching spectacle to see a young lady before her glass making her eyes like saucers, and carefully noting the contortions of her lips.
Yuk!
But then there are other comments that make the saucer-eyed unattractive. Consider this bitchy comment: ‘I know she is only jealous… for her five daughters have figures like broomsticks, eyes like saucers, and hair as lank as a horse’s tail’ (1901). There is also a sublime legal case from 1864 when a neighbour is summoned for some petty violence and insults. The court case includes the sentence: ‘both denied that Mrs. Jones was taunted with having eyes like saucers, and a mouth like a frying pan’!
History
How old are these phrases? Well, the word ‘saucer’ dates back to the 1300s, whether or not another equivalent word in Old English or Anglo-Norman or Latin was used with eyes before then I don’t yet know. The longer Oxford English Dictionary claims that the first use in English of saucer eyes appears in a fourteenth-century metrical romance: ‘With eghen that war ful bright and clere, And brade, ilkone, als a sawsere’; though this seems positive it is associated with a monstrous character. The next reference comes in 1598: ‘Her eyes like siluer saucers fayre beset With shining Amber and with shady Iet’; this is unambiguously about an attractive woman. Then we have our first ‘modern’ supernatural use, Dryden in 1663: ‘We met three or four hugeous ugly Devils, with Eyes like Sawcers’. I may have found an earlier 17C example ‘for fear of hell and the devils, who I thought I saw every foot in several ugly shapes and forms, according to my fancies, and sometimes with great rolling, flaming eyes like saucers…’
Explanation
So much for the history and range of the phrase why are monsters given eyes like saucers? I’m sure readers will do better, but I’d make three points here.
First, obviously there is the question of size. My guess is that in 17C England, say, there was not much else that was circular and the dimensions of a saucer. An animal with saucer eyes is, by definition, enormous.
Second, eyes are not perfect circles; a saucer is circular and is uniform in colour and texture. There is something otherworldly and unnatural here.
Third, monstrous, attractive and surprised/shocked might seem to be bewildering different meanings but there is a connection. If you are so shocked that your eyes open wide you have momentarily lost sense of yourself; the saucer-eyed girl is perhaps attractive to a certain kind of man because there is nothing there. She projects not just innocence but useful absence. At that point the saucer-eyed monster is also lacking soul: perhaps the closest among modern monsters would be the zombie with wide, staring eyes…
Other thoughts: drbeachcombing AT gmail DOT com
Leif, 24 April 2018, writes: ‘The literal translation of the phrase from Hans Christian Andersen’s Fyrtøjet (Tinderbox). Går du ind i det første kammer, da ser du midt på gulvet en stor kiste, oven på den sidder en hund; han har et par øjne så store som et par tekopper, men det skal du ikke bryde dig om! If you walk into the first room, you’ll see a large chest in the middle of the floor. On it sits a dog; He has a pair of eyes as store as a pair of teacups. But don’t worry about that.’
Angel Eyes, 24 April 2018, suggests that the 1127 Wild hunt includes dogs with saucer eyes. This is incorrect, though thanks to Angel Eyes. The translation is ‘here hundes ealle swarte & bradegede’ ‘their hounds all black and wide-eyed’
Bruce, 24 April 2018, points out that some earlier aliens had ‘saucer like eyes’.
