g the body, a serpent suddenly
came towards it and touched it. Polyeidos killed the serpent, and
immediately a second one came, which, seeing the other one lying dead,
disappeared and soon returned with a certain herb in its mouth. This
it laid on the mouth of the dead serpent, which immediately came to
life again. Polyeidos seized the herb and placed it on the mouth of
the dead boy, who was thereupon restored to life.

[18] Warnke, _op. cit._ civ.; Hertz, _op. cit._ p. 409.

[Illustration: _Photo. Macbeth._

GLAUKOS AND POLYEIDOS IN TOMB.

Greek Vase, Brit. Mus.

_To face page 52._]

This story is most graphically depicted on a fifth-century Greek vase
in the British Museum, and, whatever its real interpretation may be,
it has gained in significance since the life of the distant past of
the island has been laid bare, and large jars, which in all
probability were used for storing wine and honey and other
necessaries, and from their size and contents might well have
proved a snare to a venturesome and greedy boy, have been discovered
_in situ_. After a lapse of many centuries we find this idea of the
life-giving plant reappearing in mediaeval garb, daintily fashioned by
Marie de France.

Marie, in her story, tells us that the weasel brings a _red_ flower.
This was possibly the verbena, well known in folk-medicine as vervain,
and much used in the Middle Ages. According to one writer, the weasel
uses vervain as a preservative against snake-bites, and this idea of
its effect might easily have been extended to include death. Even so
great an authority as Aristotle mentions that the weasel understood
the potent effects of certain herbs. The intervention of a weasel
instead of the usual serpent opens up the further interesting question
as to whether this weasel incident was not imported from India, where
Greek stories had become alloyed with Indian lore. Even to-day, in
India, a mongoose, a species of weasel, is sometimes taken on
expeditions by any one fearful of snakes, and kept at night in the
tent as a protection against them.

In addition to the choice of a weasel as medium, the unusual colour of
the flower is also of interest. Giraldus Cambrensis, writing in the
twelfth century on the subject of weasels, after remarking that they
have more heart than body (_plus cordis habens quam corporis_), goes
on to say that they restore their dead by means of a _yellow_ flower,
and in the still earlier record of the L