| In the Scandinavian and Norse traditions, the lynx was sacred to the Goddess Freyja, and her chariot was sometimes depicted as being drawn by a lynx. The Greeks believed the lynx could see through solid objects. It was named for Lynceus, a mythological character who could also do this. The Ancient Greeks also believed that amber was petrified lynx urine. In 1603 Italian scholars formed the Academy of Lynxes, dedicated to the search for truth and the fight against superstition. Galileo was a member, and its symbol was that of a lynx tearing Cerberus with its claws. The implication was that knowledge would end darkness and suffering. When the French first settled Canada, they believed the lynx to be half domestic cat and half wolf. Dream of the Lynx ~ John Haines: Beside a narrow trail in the blue cold of evening, the trap is sprung, and a growling deep in the throat tells of life risen to the surface of darkness. The moon in my dream takes the shape of animals who walk by its light and never sleep, whose yellow eyes are certain of what they seek. Sinking, floating beneath the eyelid, hairy shape of the slayer appears, a shadow that crouches hidden in a thicket of alders, nostrils quivering; and the ever-deepening track of the unseen, feeding host. I know of course this cat's origin - the incubation of 'greybeard' The cat was gotten on a stove - has a girl's nose, a hare's head, A tail of snake's venom, claws of a viper, Feet of cloudberries, the rest of its body is of the wolf's race. A Chippewa tale of Lynx: There is a place in the Deep Canadian Shield. This is place where the Lynx roam, with all the magical creatures of the forest. The Lynx is a proud animal, he never lets anyone walk in front of him. The Lynx chases Raven as Raven taunts and goes in front of him on the path through the forest. One night while the Proud Lynx slept Raven tired of being made fun of and chased away by the Lynx, pecked at the ears of Lynx. He pulled on them both until they were but tufts on Lynx's Head. When Lynx awoke all the forest animals were around him laughing! He ran into the forest! Now the Lynx is still Proud but he doesn't mess with Raven anymore! The Temagami, indigenous Canadians, have tales involving both Lynx and The Giant Lynx: Rabbit, Lynx, Fisher: At the time of which my story speaks Lynx and Fisher had the same sharp nose and face. Fisher used to jump right through a big boulder as high as a man whenever he wanted to. One day he told Lynx to try to beat him and jump through. So Lynx tried to do it and smashed his face flat, as it is now. He went away very sore. Soon he met Rabbit. "Kwe, kwe," Lynx asked Rabbit, "where are you going?" Rabbit answered, "I am going to the short flat-faced country." Lynx did not understand the joke, and he let Rabbit pass. Lynx went on and came to a stream into whose waters he looked, and saw some flints. He tried to reach some to pick them up and beheld himself in the water. He discovered how ugly he was. "I'm so ugly. That is what Rabbit meant when he met me. I'll fix him." So he went back, struck Rabbit's trail and followed him. He followed the trail until it went into a hole in the snow under a bush. Lynx looked in and saw Rabbit sitting there, reading. He asked Rabbit, "Has anybody been passing here lately? Hee!" Rabbit made no answer. Lynx asked this question twice and at last Rabbit spoke. "Tse, tse, it's Sunday to-day." Lynx asked the same question again and received the same reply. Then Rabbit said, "Why don't you go around and find his track?" When Lynx went around, Rabbit ran out and off. When Lynx saw him run, he chased him and caught him. "Can you talk white?" "Yes," answered Rabbit. "Well, if you don't talk white, I'll kill you." So Rabbit had to talk white. "Well, what do you call 'fire' in English?" "Waya'kabi'te' (people sitting around a fire)", answered Rabbit. "How do they say 'axe' there?" "Me'matowes'ing' (noise of chopping)". "What do you call a knife?", asked Lynx. "Taya'tacki'wagis`e' (sliced meat)", answered Rabbit. "You are a liar," said Lynx. "Ki`ningwa`zem, you are a liar." And he killed Rabbit. Nenebuc Wounds the Giant Lynx, Disguises Himself in a Toad's Skin, and Finally Slays Her: He had his bow and arrow with him, and as he went along he saw a great snake. He shot it with his arrow (the big snake became a high rocky ridge on the protage south of Soothwater lake). He came to a big lake with a nice, sandy shore, where he saw Giant Lynxes (also known as mici'bizi'w or Michipeshu). He couldn't shoot them with his arrowas they were too far away, nor was there any place where he could hide himself until they came to sun themselves by the shore, when they felt too cold in the water. Finally he hit upon a plan. He took some birch bark from a rotten stump , rolled it into a hollow cylinder , and placed it, like a wigam, near the shore. He got inside and made a little hole in the bark through which to shoot and kill the Giant Lynxes. When the Giant Lynxes saw the thing on the beach they grew curious to find out what this strange thing was that was not there the day before. They sent a big snake to twist around it and try to upset it, but the snake did not succeed in doing this, for Nenebuc stood too firm. The Giant Lynxes came ashore upon the sand and Nenebuc shot of them with his arrow - a She-Lynx, the wife of the Giant Lynx Chief. He did not kill her, but wounded her badly in the side, and the flint arrow point stayed in the wound. She was very badly wounded and went back to a hole which led to a cave in a big rock where she lived. Nenebuc was sorry that he had not killed the Giant Lynx Queen. As he went along the shore, the next morning , he heard someone singing and shaking a rattle. Nenebuc stood there wondering and waiting, and pretty soon he saw and old woman making the song. So he went across to see her, and when they met, he asked her, "What are you doing?" "I'm a doctor," she answered. "The Queen of the Giant Lynxes has been shot by Nenebuc and I am going to cure her." She didn't know that it was Nenebuc to whom she was talking, for she was too old. So Nenebuc told her, "Let me hear you singing. Is that what you are going to do to cure her?" "Yes, I will sing and then pull out that arrow." The Giant Lynxes had sent for her at the foot of the lake to cure the Queen. Nenebuc picked up a club and killed her, saying, "You are no doctor (macki'ki'winini'kwe or medicine- person woman) at all." Then he discovered that she was no person at all, but a big toad (oma'kak'i). So he skinned her and put on the skin. The skin had a hole in the groin, and as he had no needle to sew it up with, his scrotum hung out when he put it on himself. This did not worry Nenebuc, for he thought, "It will be all right, unless they notice me too closely." So he walked past the cave in which the Giant Lynxes lived and kept singing and rattling all the time. When the young Giant Lynxes heard him , they said, "There 's the old medicine woman coming." They were very glad to think that their mother would be cured. So they opened the door in the rock and Nenebuc went in, and one of the daughters came to meet him and said, "Come in, old woman." They were very much pleased. Nenebuc said , "don't shut the doors. Leave them open, as the Queen needs plenty of fresh air!" (The medicine people always do that now). Then he said, "I'm hungry. I've had a long walk and I'm tired." Then they gave him a good meal first. While he was eating, he sat with open legs and the children cried out, "look at the old woman with testicles hanging out!" But the older ones told them to be silent, as they thought some old women had testicles. When he had finished eating, Nenebuc said, "Don't watch me. I'm going to pull out the arrow point. You will hear her suffering and me singing, but don't look until you hear her stop suffering. Then she will be cured, and the arrow point will be out. So don't look, for I am going to cure her." He began rattling and singing, and, as he did so, he shoved the arrow point farther into the wound of the Queen in order to kill her. When she yelled, her people thought that the hurt was caused in pulling it out. At last one of the little Giant Lynx children peeped and saw Nenebuc pushing the arrow farther in. He told his sister, "That's Nenebuc himself inside!" Then Nenebuc ran outside and the Queen Giant Lynx was dying. Nenebuc had difficulty to clear himself. He pulled off the toad skin and climbed up the rock to escape. This story concludes with: The Giant Lynx causes the World Flood and Gathers the Animals on a Raft; Muskrat Dives for Earth, which Nenebuc Transforms into a New World: As soon as the Giant Lynx Queen died, a giant stream poured out of the cave and the lake began rising. "That is going to flood the world and be the end," said Nenebuc. So he cut trees and made a kind of raft called an abi'ndasa'gan. He had his raft ready, and the end of the world came. He couldn't see any trees, water covered everything, and he made for the flood. He saw all kinds of animals swimming toward his raft and he took them on. "Come on, come on," he cried, "and stay here." For he wanted to save them, so that after the flood there would be all kinds of animals. The animals stayed on the raft with him for a long while. Some time after this he made a rope of roots and tied it to the Beaver's tail, telling him to dive and to try and reach the land underneath. He knew the water would get lower afterwards. The Beaver couldn't reach the land and he came up to the surface of the water again. Seven days after this he allowed the Muskrat to try and bring the land. Muskrat dove and they waited for a long time, but he didn't come up. This Muskrat doubled up and put his nose into the hair of his breast which enabled him to breathe by the bubbles clinging there. By doing this he could rest and dive still deeper. At last he used up all air in his breast hair and could only grab a little piece of mud. Then he started up to the surface of the water, but drowned before he reached the raft. Nenebuc pulled the Muskrat in and he was still holding the mud. Nenebuc said, "I am going to dry this. As soon as it is dry, you can all run around again and have this world." So he dried it, but not entirely, and that is the reason why some parts of the world are swampy and wet, while others are dry like this. So the animals had the earth again and the world was made. According to the extensive work of French anthropologist Claude Levi-Straus, among the Salish-speaking tribes of indigenous Canadians (Tlingit, Kaska, Tahltan, Tsetsaut, Haida, Tsimshian, Bella Coola, Kwamutl, Nootka, Shuswap, Lilloet, Thompson, Okanagan, Coast Salish, Southern Okanagan Sanpoil, Kalispel Spokane, Coer d'Alene, Flathead), there was from the beginning a great animosity between Lynx and Coyote. Coyote hated Lynx for always foiling his plots. There was a link between Lynx, fog, and steam among the Salish-speaking people; steam in relation to the Sweat Lodge in particular. From the Snohomish of the Coast Salish comes the following: In olden days, in a village populated by animal creatures, lived Lynx. He was a hideous old man covered with sores, and he was constantly scratching himself with his cane. From time to time a girl (the chief's daughter), who lived in the same cabin,would grab the cane, also to scratch herself. In vain, Lynx kept trying to talk her out of it. At night he accidentally impregnated the chief's daughter with his saliva. One day the young lady found herself pregnant, unsure of how she became pregnant in the first place; she gave birth to a boy who cried constantly. Coyote, a neighbor, ordered all of the men of the village in turn to take the baby in their arms. Coyote himself planned to pacify the child by surreptitiously putting bone marrow in the baby's mouth, thus to be acknowledged as his father; but the ploy failed. One after the other of the men failed. Lynx requested a feather blanket so as not to contaminate the child when taking it in his arms. The child calmed down immediately. Coyote became indignant. He talked all of the population into going to live elsewhere and abandoning the old Lynx, his wife, and their child to their fate. Luckily, neighbor Raven hid an ember in the blanket so they could relight the fire. Old Lynx wanted to free the woman from his presence and left. Filled with pity, she went looking for him (even though he had ordered her not to) and after several days found him in a sweat lodge, where he had become young and handsome. But because she arrived too soon, Lynx kept a sore on his forehead. Lynx then transformed the garbage in the old village into human beings of all ages and all social conditions, and they built cabins, carved canoes, plaited baskets, and wove blankets. This was the origin of the arts of civilization. Following this, Coyote's village disintegrated and the villagers were forced to return to the old one. Lynx decided that the sweat bath should be of the greatest use to the people. Everybody could see what it had done for him. It had cured all his sores and made him young. It should do this in the future. The sweat bath shall make people clean and shall let them regain their strength. In conclusion: one must respect the elders. The following are two stories of the caracal (caracal caracal), the lynx's African cousin: Lynx and the Morning Star, by Laurens Van Der Post: This story is concerned with the morning star or, as he called it far more feelingly, the Dawn's Heart. The old bushman father in the desert had already described the star to me as the greatest of all hunters in the sky, saying that when it appeared the black night whisked about, the red dust spurting at its heels. In the imagination of the vanished Bushmen of my part of Africa the morning star was a hunter too, but it was also a person of the early race. As a person he had come down to earth, fallen in love, and taken as his natural bride the Lynx, also at that time a person. This marriage of a star to a Lynx is perhaps the most inspiring example I know of the extraordinary precision of language when the first spirit of life forged in the fire of imagination. If there is one animal among the multitudes shining like jewels in the grass, bush, and somber forests of Africa more suitable than any other to be married to a star, it is the Lynx. In the Mountain of the Wolves, after which was named the great farm my grandfather gave my mother as a wedding present, there were several families of lynxes when I was a boy, and I had many an opportunity of observing them. I had even tried to make a pet of one, but I was forced to release it because it preferred dying to becoming reconciled to captivity. In its natural state, the Lynx made an impression of flamelike grace, courage, vitality, and instinct which no other animal has ever equaled in my experience. When it appeared in the shadows far at the back of the cave where it lived in the Mountain of the Wolves, moving towards the daylight opening, it was like a lamp being drawn up from deep down in a dark well. Other cats may have been as vivid and as graceful, but they lacked the starry being of the Lynx. The Lioness, for instance, was far too big; the mere thought of her marriage to such a star offended the sense of proportion. The Leopard was all that the Lioness was and nearer the right size, but unfortunately she was spotted: the Dawn's Heart, pure in the stainless black sky of an early African morning, could not possibly have had a spotty bride. Only the lynx satisfied all the demands of shape, size, and unblemished fiery color, so that when the marriage of the images was consummated, no wonder the Dawn's Heart loved the Lynx dearly and all other rejected females among the people of the early race were jealous. A story from Swaziland, The Wildcat and the Tree-Climbing Jackal: Jackal was well-known for playing tricks on his fellow creatures; so they mistrusted him; but in spite of this, he fooled them time and time again. The animals also disliked Jackal because he was a most annoying boaster. Now one day, while out hunting for food, Jackal met Wildcat, who was lounging elegantly on the branch of a tree. Jackal was jealous, as this was something he could not do. "Why do you climb trees, Wildcat?" he asked. Wildcat responded that it gave her an excellent view, so that she could see friend or foe coming from a long way off. Also, climbing trees was a handy way of escaping from the dogs which were forever chasing her. "Oh, what a coward you are Wildcat!" sneered the jackal. "Only cowards, snakes, and silly birds hide in trees." Wildcat's feelings were hurt, but she kept her temper, knowing that Jackal was a nasty trickster, and thinking it would be better to keep on the right side of him. "Do not forget," she replied patiently, "I cannot run as fast as you, and dogs are my natural enemy." "I can run faster than any creature in the land," boasted Jackal, "Let those scruffy old dogs come - I'm not afraid of them - anyway, I could outrun them any day." "That may be so," replied Wildcat gently, "but the art of climbing trees has its use in times of trouble, you know. Would you like me to teach you?" Jackal considered this generous offer. "Hmm Well, knowledge can never hurt one," he replied airily, "and I've nothing better to do at the moment." Secretly, he was rather anxious to learn. Wildcat came down from her branch, and Jackal was given his first lesson. But alas, he was not a very good pupil because his claws were too blunt to grip the bark. He kept slipping, and falling on his back in the dirt. Polite as she was, Wildcat could not help laughing at the sight of Jackal, the oh-so-clever one, scrabbling furiously up the trunk of the tree and falling in a heap every time. Jackal was getting angrier and angrier, and suddenly he flew into a rage. He turned and snapped at poor Wildcat, grabbing her leg and snarling that he would kill her for making him look ridiculous. That would most certainly have been the end of Wildcat, but, fortunately for her, a pack of dogs suddenly appeared, barking furiously. Jackal took one look and instantly was no longer the brave animal of his boasting. He let go of Wildcat's leg and, as she scrambled up her tree to safety, Jackal put his tail between his legs and ran. He dived down a nearby anteater hole just as the dogs were about to catch him. The dogs tried to dig him out, but they could not reach him, so after a while they gave up and went away. Now Jackal crept out of the hole and, to his shame, saw Wildcat grinning down at him from her perch. She burst out laughing as he slunk away to mend his wounded pride. From that day on, whenever Wildcat happened to see Jackal, she took refuge in the nearest tree, for Jackal never forgot how she had seen his cowardice, and his desire for revenge was truly something to fear. |
