Pisces: piscatorial tales: "Come now, it's time to leave"

Pisces is the final sign of the zodiac in my blogs (and here it seems I have two ideas weaving about).

Pisces - the two fish - is the largest of the constellations and features in ancient mythology, the earliest known example of its symbol found on an Egyptian coffin lid  c. 2300 BC.   Many thousand years later, the fishes appear on the coinage of the Mogul Emperor, Jahangir:  he believed in divination to guide his actions so astrological symbols were an essential part of his environment.

Mogul gold coin from c. 1569 - 1627

In classical Greek myth, the two fish represent Aphrodite and Eros, escaping into the river Euphrates (like Pan or Capricorn) from the giant Typhon, and are usually shown joined with ribbons.  I rather liked this cheerful image from a 14th century manuscript:

Breviari d'amor, French early 1300s, M. Ermengau

© British Library

The Pisces myth seems to be closely linked with two great rivers of the ancient world, the Nile and the Euphrates, along with many ancient stories of magic fish.  In the biblical Apocrypha the Euphrates was where Tobias, guided by his angel, caught his giant fish; and the Euphrates runs through regions which were the source of many stories gathered together in the The Thousand and One Nights. Based on a lost book of Persian tales, the Hazar Asfanah,  Antoine Galland's French translation from a ninth century Arabic version was published early in the eighteenth century.

Edwardian children would have read these stories in Andrew Lang's famous fairy books,  particularly The Arabian Nights Entertainments published in 1898.  The books are also known for their dramatic and detailed illustrations by Henry Justice Ford.

Colour-plate illustration for "The Girl-Fish" by H.J. Ford, from The Orange Fairy Book 

Here is one of Ford's line drawings illustrating the tale of magic fish in "The Vizir who was Punished" from the Arabian tales.  "When the cook was about to turn them on the other side, the wall opened, the damsel appeared, addressed the same words to the fish ['Fish, fish, are you doing your duty?'], received the same answer, and then overturned the pan, and disappeared."

Even in this poorly scanned image you can sense the drama and see Ford's wonderful evocation of exotic eastern palaces, in the Princess's Egyptian-style dress and the Islamic tiled fireplace.

"The Girl Upsets the Frying Pan" in Lang's The Arabian Nights Entertainments, H. J. Ford  1898

Henry Justice Ford was born into a London solicitor's family on 5th February 1861 (not quite a Piscean) and after leaving Cambridge with a classics degree he studied art at the Slade and then at Hubert von Herkomer's Art School.  Between 1894 and 1916 his studio was in Edwardes Square, Kensington, a short walk from the Victoria and Albert Museum, where he could have seen this Turkish fireplace, acquired in 1891.

Tiled fireplace, possibly from the palace of Fuad Pasha, Istanbul, c. 1731
© Victoria and Albert Museum

The detail in Ford's drawing even indicates a frieze of arabic writing just above the chimney opening. 

In the V&A's fireplace, seven cartouche tiles list the names of the legendary seven Sleepers of Ephesus, another story from the Near East found in Christian and Islamic legend.   Similar stories of heroes sleeping under the earth to be awakened, cross many ages and cultures and, like tales of enchanted fish, inspire artists and writers.

"But come now, it's time to leave;

the Fish glitter on the horizon,

the Bear is right over Caurus

and over there we can climb down."

Dante, Inferno, Canto XI (trans. © Steve Ellis)

Capricorn: the goat with a tail

This month sees Capricorn the goat usher in the winter, although unlike this image from a medieval manuscript, the true sign is a sea-goat, with coiled serpent-like hindquarters.  As a goat, it is linked in classical myth with the god Pan (who leapt into a river and grew a fishtail, to escape the giant Typhon), and with the forest satyrs, or is shown drawing Bacchus' chariot, and is a symbol of lust to be overcome in christian art.

Capricornus, from a medieval calendar book

Capricorn appears with serpent tail in Henry VIII's great clock at Hampton Court Palace ( seen just above Sagittarius with his arrow). With its many dials, the clock shows the phases of the moon and the times of high tide at London Bridge - essential knowledge for river transport to and from the Palace.

Hampton Court Palace astronomical clock, by Nicholas Oursian, 1540

The zodiacal Capricorn image with coiling tail was also chosen by the Florentine ruler, Cosimo I de Medici, Grand Duke of Tuscany, as his impresa, or personal device, together with his motto, "Fidem fati virtute sequemer" : I shall pursue with valour the promise of Destiny.  He believed the influence of the stars had brought him victory against Siena under the sign of Capricorn.

Cosimo's capricorn impresa in the Laurentian Library, Florence 

Designed by Michelangelo, the library was opened by Cosimo in 1571.  The stained glass windows, after drawings by Vasari, were added later.  Here the Capricorn figures act as supporters to the central Medici coat of arms.

A Musical Instrument

"What was he doing, the great god Pan,
Down in the reeds by the river?
Spreading ruin and scattering ban,
Splashing and paddling with hoofs of a goat,
And breaking the golden lilies afloat
With the dragon-fly on the river.

He tore out a reed, the great god Pan,
From the deep cool bed of the river:
The limpid water turbidly ran,
And the broken lilies a-dying lay,
And the dragon-fly had fled away,
Ere he brought it out of the river.

High on the shore sate the great god Pan,
While turbidly flowed the river;
And he hacked and hewed as a great god can,
With his hard bleak steel at the patient reed,
Till there was not a sign of a leaf indeed
To prove it fresh from the river.

He cut it short, did the great god Pan,
(How tall it stood in the river!)
Then drew the pith, like the heart of a man,
Steadily from the outside ring,
And notched the poor dry empty thing
In holes, as he sate by the river.

'This is the way,' laughed the great god Pan,
(Laughed while he sate by the river)
'The only way, since gods began
To make sweet music, they could succeed.'
Then, dropping his mouth to a hole in the reed,
He blew in power by the river.

Sweet, sweet, sweet, O Pan!
Piercing sweet by the river!
Blinding sweet, O great god Pan!
The sun on the hill forgot to die,
And the lilies revived, and the dragon-fly
Came back to dream on the river.

Yet half a beast is the great god Pan,
To laugh as he sits by the river,
Making a poet out of a man;
The true gods sigh for the cost and pain --
For the reed which grows nevermore again
As a reed with the reeds in the river."


The Musical Instrument   Elizabeth Barrett Browning