Baldanders
Baldanders (whose name we may translate as "Soon-another"
or "At-any-moment-something-else") was suggested to the
master shoemaker Hans Sachs (1494-1576) of Nuremberg
by that passage in the Odyssey in which
Menelaus pursues the Egyptian god Proteus, who changes
himself into a lion, a serpent, a panther, a huge wild boar, a tree,
and flowing water. Some ninety years after Sachs's death, Baldanders makes a new appearance in the last book of the
picaresque-fantastic novel by Grimmelshausen,
The
Adventuresome Simplicissimus (1669). In the
midst of a wood, the hero comes upon a stone statue which seems to him an idol from some old Germanic temple. He touches it and
the statue tells him he is Baldanders and thereupon takes the forms
of a man, of an oak tree, of a sow, of a fat sausage, of a field of
clover, of dung, of a flower, of a blossoming branch, of a mulberry
bush, of a silk tapestry, of many other things and beings. And then,
once more, of a man.
Kujata
The Moslem cosmology, Kujata is a huge bull endowed with
four thousand eyes, ears, nostrils, mouths and feet. To get from
one ear to another or from one eye to another, no more than
five thousand years are required. Kujata stands on the back
of the fish Bahamut; on the bull's back is a great rock of ruby,
on the rock an angel, and on the angel rests our earth.
Under the fish is a mighty sea, under the sea a vast abyss of
air, under the air fire, and under the fire a serpent so great that
were it not for the fear of Allah, this creature might swallow up
all creation.
Haokah, the Thunder God
Among the Dakota Sioux, Haokah used the wind as sticks to
beat the thunder drum. His horned head also marked him as
a hunting god. He wept when he was happy and laughed in
his sadness; heat made him shiver and cold made him sweat.
The Troll
In England, after the advent of Christianity, the Valkyries
(or "Choosers of the Slain") were relegated to the villages
and there degenerated into witches; in the Scandinavian
countries the giants of heathen-myth, who lived in Jotunnheim and
battled against the god Thor, were reduced to rustic Trolls.
In the cosmogony opening the Elder Edda, we read that in
the Twilight of the Gods, the giants, allied with a wolf and a
serpent, will scale the rainbow Bifrost, which will break under
their weight, thereby destroying the world.
The Trolls of popular superstition are stupid, evil elves who
dwell in mountain crannies or in ramshackle huts. Trolls of
distinction may bear two or three heads.
Hochigan
Ages ago, a certain South African bushman, Hochigan, hated
animals, which at that time were endowed with speech.
One day he disappeared, stealing their special gift. From then
on, animals have never spoken again.
Descartes tells us that monkeys could speak if they wished to, but
that they prefer to keep silent so that they won't be made to
work. In 1907, the Argentine writer Lugones published a story
about a chimpanzee who was taught how to speak and died
under the strain of the effort.
Borges, ah! A related if bulkier tome is Manguel and
Guadalupi's recently (1999) updated
