The Ass and the Harp

Author(s): Helen Adolf

Source: Speculum, Vol. 25, No. 1 (Jan., 1950), pp. 49-57
Published by: The University of Chicago Press
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 THE ASS AND THE HARP
BY HELEN ADOLF

PEOPLE look at pictures before they learn how to read; sometimes they never turn
to books at all. As the statuary of the Gothic cathedrals were called Biblia
pauperum, so we have now libri pauperum in the American funnies. Transmission
of ideas through pictures is therefore nothing unusual, nor is their deformation:
even entirely new concepts may arise from wrong interpretation. Examples are
furnished by comparative religion,' but also by Arthurian Romance. Thus,
Yvain's lion was originally an Egyptian cat deity (Ra) opposing the serpent
(apophis),2 Arthur's Round Table was perhaps derived from iconography of the
Last Supper,3 and (si parva licet componere magnis) Wolfram von Eschenbach's
expression 'diu hoehste hant' was probably a verbal rendering of that Hand of
God which in early Christian art was a symbol of God the Creator,4 after having
been a symbol of solar activity.5 It is our contention that also 'the Ass and the
Harp' was such a time-honored hieroglyph.
In the Middle Ages, it represented Ignorantia, and as such found a place both
in missals and on church fronts,6 particularly in Burgundy, but also elsewhere,
e.g., at Nantes and on the south fagade of the old spire at Chartres.7 It is gener-
ally agreed that those sculptures were illustrations of the Greek proverb 'oios
M'pas (supply &KOVWP or aKpoaT's),8 well-known to the Romans, which, from its
use in Boethius' De Consolatione Philosophiae,9 became a household word to the
Middle Ages down to the time of Erasmus.'" There also exists a fable by Phaedrus,
Asinus ad lyram," which may have circulated at that time;'2 but the name 'Ass
of Boethius' given to those carved quadrupeds by a thirteenth century author'3
clearly speaks in favor of the proverb. It seems that in this case the picture fol-
lowed the word. But we have not yet traced the starting-point of both proverb
and fable.
In the Museum of the University of Pennsylvania there is a reconstruction of a
Babylonian (Sumerian) lyre, parts of which were found by the Joint British and
American Expedition to Ur of the Chaldees, 1922-1929. It dates from about
3000 B.C.14 and shows a gold bull's head, with lapis lazuli beard, surmounting a
sounding-box covered with a shell plaque.'5 On this shell plaque are four animal
scenes, perfectly preserved and of splendid craftsmanship. The first scene from
the top represents a hero, Gilgamesh, fighting with two human-headed bulls;
in the second scene a dog (mastiff?), wearing a belt with a dagger and carrying a
table on which are joints of meat, is followed by a lion bearing a lamp and a
large vase in a wickerwork frame. In the third, a donkey sits upright on its tail
and plays a big harp decorated with a bull's head - just like the harp to which
the shell plaque belonged - while a jackal shakes a sistrum with one hand and
with the other plays some other instrument resting on his knee, and a bear, who
also seems to support the lyre, dances to the tune. In the last scene, a monster
with a human head and a scorpion's body walks, delicately followed by a gazelle,
on its hindlegs, carrying two tumblers which he has seemingly filled from a tall
vase standing on the ground behind him.'8
49

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 50 The Ass and the Harp

But this so-called second lyre from the tomb of

Royal Cemetery at Ur is not the only instance of animal musicians in archaeology.
There are others on Babylonian seals belonging to strata older than the Royal
Cemetery, on slabs found at Tell Halaf, on the slate palette of Hierokonpolis
in Egypt ('a jackal playing the flute'),'7 among the animal scenes depicted in the
Egyptian papyri now at Turin and at the British Museum.'8
What do these figures mean? Do they evoke mythology, like that of Gilgamesh,
or some folklore cycle admitted into the orthodox religion and not preserved
elsewhere?'9 Are they illustrations of fairy tales, or parodies of religious motives?20
Do their hands imply that they are men in animal disguise, exorcising ghosts from
the proximity of the dead by the sound of music?2' The Egyptian papyri with
their lighter execution, with their pictures of a topsy-turvy world where cats are
chased by geese or attacked by rats and an ass is enthroned, look indeed like
satires - almost like satires against royalty and religion.22 But the Babylonian
shell plaque with its elaborate execution was part of a harp used to accompany
the sacred prayers,23 and therefore does not invite such an interpretation.
It may help if we follow up a line of thought already touched upon by Woolley,
Legrain, Gadd :24 the analogy to the ancient and mediaeval 6vos v'pas. The
learned authors who investigated the origins of the Greek and Latin fable (Mar-
chiano, Wienert) did not go farther than this proverb. If they had been in a posi-
tion to know of the Ur excavations, maybe they would have done what I am
proposing now: to see in the Babylonian picture of the Ass and the Harp the
fountainhead of the Greek proverb and all its progeny.
Mythological tales about the ass are conspicuously missing in Babylonia and
Egypt, but they abound in Greece,25 and these tales and the Oriental pictures
mutually explain each other. There is Marsyas, an Armenian or Phrygian deity
- the 'divine Ass' flayed by Apollo and hanged up as a sacrifice;28 Midas, who
for having backed Marsyas, got asses' ears from Apollo - which probably means
that he was a theriomorph god or hero first. Midas, on the other hand, was the
favorite of Dionysos, to whom the ass was sacred: the god himself escaped on
such a mount; his friend Silenus is represented riding it. Apollo's hostility to this
animal, apparent also from the tale that hecatombs of asses were offered up by
the Hyperboreans,27 does not simply reflect the Pythagorean view that it alone
of all animals was not built according to harmony.28 We may rather assume that
a new cult had been superimposed upon an old one, the Phrygian (Oriental) ass
worship giving way to more humanized forms of worship. Later on, the rivalry
between two instruments of equal antiquity, the lyre (harp) and the flute, added
to the antagonism.
It is possible that those Phrygian cults with their ass-shaped divine singers
hark back to Babylonia. Since it is now an accepted theory that Aesop's fables
were influenced by the Babylonian Words of Ahikar29 or even were a rendering of
them - even the name for 'ass' in the Indo-European languages seems to be a
Sumerian loanword30 - a cultural flow of such direction existed. Moreover, if we
look at the Latin fable, we cannot fail to notice that it is less a well-knit story
than the interpretation of an 64tv,opop or of a paradoxical picture:

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 The Ass and the Harp 51

Asinus ad lyram.
Asinus iacentem vidit in prato lyram.
Accessit tentavitque chordas ungula;
Sonuere tactae. Bella res, mehercules,
Male cessit, ait, artes quia sum nescius.
Si repperisset aliquis hanc prudentior,
Divinis aures oblectavisset cantibus.

A different explanation appears in the fairy tale, Die Bremer Stadtmusikanten,3'

and in the fourteenth century Latin poem where a prince is born in ass-shape
and taught music and arts.32 Behind them, as more directly behind the fable,
seems to hide an Oriental animal god, inventor of music. Nor would such a figure
be an isolated occurrence. Support comes from the field of totemism, where con-
jecture reaches into a past more remote than does the spade of the archaeologist.
In a study written on the Jewish shofar or ram's horn, oldest and queerest of wind
instruments, Th. Reik reaches strange conclusions concerning the ram (jo3bel),
whose voice sounded on Mount Sinai (Exodus, 19.9). We are here only interested
in his statement that Jubal, son of Lamech (Genesis, 4. 19-21), who 'was the
father of all such as handle the harp and organ,' bears a name meaning 'ram's
horn' or simply 'ram' (identified with jobel, whence English jubilee) and therefore
points to a ram inventor of music.33
Let us therefore assume that the ass played once a similar r6le in Babylonia.
Then we face the question: why the sad decline in the reputation of this animal?
Even apart from the field of music, 'asinine,' ever since Plato,34 has been a con-
demnation and an insult. It has been suggested that the depreciation of the ass
came to Greece from India,35 or from India and Egypt,36 and that the African ass
differed from his Asiatic brother. But I think that the appreciation of both de-
pended on one fact: whether horses were available or not. Numbers of proverbs
in various languages attest that 'the better is the enemy of good': 'Aiz eseln kan
niht rosse werden' (Hugo v. Trimberg, Renner, v. 17342); 'ab equis ad asinos,'
etc.37 Now it is obvious that in Ur the ass was the only or most dignified mount,
since Queen Shubad had her team of asses buried with her38 - which means that
she intended using them in the hereafter. For the same reason - because horses
were rare - the Asiatic tribe of the Carmanians used asses even in war.39 We
know, on the other hand, that the horse was introduced into Egypt between 1780
and 1580 B.C.; ass worship remained in the older religion only, that of Seth-
Typhon in the eastern part of the delta, and both the god and his animal became
loathsome to the Horus-Osiris religion of the South.40 One can guess what would
happen in Greece, where the horse was considered a gift of Poseidon, second only
to Athena's olive tree, or in India, where ashvakovidas, 'expert in horses,' is used
as epitheton ornans.41 Residues of the former appreciation of the humbler animal
linger in proper names,42 in corners of mythology or religion: thus, it is on a
donkey that Dionysos, Silenus, Vesta, Mary and the Christ child escape their
enemies. The old opinion and the new clash curiously on mediaeval All Fools'
Day, feast of the sub-deacons, where in memory of Balaam's ass such a braying
prophet was admitted into church.43 On the whole, the one time inventor of

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52 The Ass and the Harp

Oriental music, the phallic companion of Bacchus, had become the symbol of
stupidity and sensuality." To these speculations on the origin of the 5vos AXvpas
shall be added some remarks on the use of the proverb both in the Middle Ages
and in the times that followed them.
It must be stressed, first of all, that Boethius not only gave his name to the
'Ass and Harp' but also determined its meaning: 'Sentisne haec atque animo
inlabuntur tuo, an Zv'os M'pas?' Because of these words, the oxymoron was not use
to denote the active failure at a performance, but passive inability as a listener.
It is not an insult, but an attempt at describing a mental process. Philosophy,
finding her former disciple despondent and in tears, reminds him in powerful
language of the basic tenet of Stoicism: 'Dismiss hope and fear, and you will be
invulnerable!' And she continues: 'Can you grasp this, or does such knowledge
transcend your understanding?' Exactly the same thing is intended by Chaucer,
where Pandarus addresses Troilus: 'Or artow lik an asse to the harpe, that hereth
sown whan men the strenges plye; But in his mynde of that no melodie May
sinken, hym to gladen, for that he So dul is of his bestialite.'45
This idea of knowledge that transcends was further strengthened by the pictorial
representations of the 5vos Xbpas. For on church fronts and in missals, it obviously
could not mean exclusion of those with a low I.Q. - since the poor in spirit and
those who became like little children were to inherit the Kingdom of Heaven.46
Here the allegorical interpretation was ready at hand; the ass was the pagan
mind, said the commentaries to Matthew, 21.5: 'Asinus est populus gentilis,'47
whereas among the baptized he represented the carnal man as opposed to the
spiritual one (e.g., Romanm, 8.1-9).48 We find this explicitly stated by Hugo von
Trimberg:
Ein man mac sich wol selbe touben,
der einen esel wil harpfen leren
Und s6getine liute wil bek6ren:
Wenne sant Paulus geschriben hat
In stnen briefen an einer stat:
"Ein vihelich mensche verst6t des niht,
Daz von gotes geiste geschihtt,
Gein sUezer andAht ist ez laz
Stn fleischlich dumpheit fiueget daz," etc.49

Thus the four-legged musician must have appeared as the opposite of David with
the Harp, that inspired singer whose place was not only among the kings of
Judah and the ancestors of Christ, but who also represented music itself or the
spirit that perceives the harmony of the universe.50
It must be granted that not everyone saw or accepted such an explanation or
else the anonymous thirteenth century writer quoted by Delisle5' would not have
complained about mythological and legendary animals invading the churches.
Maybe allegory was but a pretext for admitting all kinds of Oriental guests, for
as MAle said, in the statuary of the early Middle Ages the Orient triumphs over
Greece. Thus only it could happen that two scenes from the Sumerian shell plaque
mentioned above found their way into European art: not only No. 3, the playing
ass, but also No. 1, Gilgamesh with two lions.52

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 The Ass and the Harp 53

Whatever the reason for the presence, in stone,

that mediaeval authors did not take the scene at its face value: denoting active
incompetence at some performance. For such a concept, they preferred another
metaphor which did not bear the double stamp of Boethius and theology: the
singing of an ass, an ox, or a cuckoo, e.g.53
Let us look at the Roman de Thebes, where lines 13 ff. read:
Or s'en voisent de tot mestier,
Se ne sont clerc e chevalier,
Car aussi pueent escouter
Come li asnes al harper.54

Here the Boethian inability to listen is made the reason for a class distinction
well in line with the Greco-Roman separation of styles. And yet the influence of
allegory should not be excluded in this prologue. The courtly and the uncourtly
are here opposed to each other like the carnally minded and the spiritually
minded in church statuary - a transfer of theological concepts into the secular
sphere which marks the whole period of courtly literature.
The intention of the metaphor was primarily to extol the music dormant in
the harp, not to disparage the donkey. But it seems quite possible that authors
less given to allegory or more alert to the reactions of the public, would have
avoided it.
Notker III (Labeo) might be a case in point. In his Old High German transla-
tion of the Consolatio, he omits the words ANONOS LYRAS written in Greek
capital letters also in his Latin manuscript (Sangallensis 844). 1 Professor Taylor
Starck, whom I had the privilege to consult in this matter, suggests that the
words were dropped because Notker did not understand them. The alternative
would be that, like the scholiast in some of the manuscripts, the great teacher of
St Gall thought the passage sine merito - apt to encourage his students' love of
profanity. Another case of deliberate omission might be found in the Parzival
prologue. What Wolfram strives to express by means of three different meta-
phors - the scared rabbit, the reflection in the mirror, the blind man's dream -
is just that blank state of mind described by Boethius. It is unlikely that Wolfram
knew the Consolatio passage, but he most certainly was familiar with the Roman
de ThAbes, from which he derived several details of his Parzival,56 and the Ass and
Harp therein must have arrested his attention. Moreover, if it is true that the
exquisite structure of the Parzival prologue follows the pattern of a Gothic
portail figure and that for it he needed a symbol of Ignorance as well as animal
figures,57 Gothic statuary already in those times might have furnished him the
animal musician - unless such a picture seemed to him either offensive or in-
adequate as a description of his 'tumb' reader's predicament, so that he replaced
it by ideas of his own. Among them was the hare that so provoked Gottfried
(Tristan, vv. 4636 ff.). It may be mentioned here as a curious fact that the two
long-eared animals, ass and hare (modern German Langohr refers to both of
them), are often exchanged with each other in German folklore.58
After the sixteenth century, the Ass and Harp proverb drops out of use, as if it
had been part of the scholastic system. And yet it is the modern times that have

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54 The Ass and the Harp

seen the animal musician, unhampered by tradition and allegory, display his full
comical power and with it conquer the stage.
All too conscious of his own limitations, the hero of the Phaedrus fable had
been neither asinine nor funny. Bottom in his complacency is so, when utterly
unaware of his headgear, he sings his ditty to the delight of the fairy queen
(Midsummer Night's Dream, Act III, Scene 1). Handling no harp, he belongs, it is
true, to the less sophisticated race of animal singers. But let us not forget that
prior to his song, he had been an actor - and here we can see the straight line
that connects him with the Roman de Thkbes: in the eyes of fastidious people like
Hippolyta, an artisan who dared meddle with tragedy at a royal wedding, al-
ready wore an ass's head, and Puck's magic only made this fact visible to all.59
Here, too, the little mediaeval grotesque is embedded in a vaster order - but it
is no longer that of theology; it is a cosmic one, that of nature. A change of the
moon combines with a disturbance in fairyland, so that the hierarchies - fairies,
animals, cavaliers, and plebeians - get strangely entangled, with the Spirit
of Mischief exposing the tyranny of Cupid, ruler of them all ....
Something similar occurs in what could be styled the German Midsummer
Night's Dream, Richard Wagner's opera, Die Meistersinger.60 In the very storm
center of that night of confusion where two lovers plan to elope, stands one
unlovely lover playing the harp. 'Hort nur, wie der Esel schreit!' the town's
people exclaim when they hear Sixtus Beckmesser (Act II).61
No ass's head is mysteriously fixed to his shoulders, but he gets what is so often
the part of that beast of burden, a thorough thrashing. I cannot prove that
Wagner knew the Phaedrus fable, but it is noteworthy that it is Wagner who,
elaborating on the Hans Sachs plays of his two predecessors,62 made Beckmesser
find by chance the manuscript of a poem the beauty of which he was unable to
elicit, just like the asinus ad lyram.
But the master who in the Ring had peopled the stage with the different breeds
of creation, did not, in his Midsummer Night's Dream, follow the lead of Shake-
speare (except for the glowworm and its little mate!), nor did he adopt any
mediaeval allegory, in spite of the King David playing the harp - badge and
banner of the mastersingers.63 His Beckmesser is simply the foil of Hans Sachs,
insofar as citizen and critic, and the foil of Walter von Stolzing as a pedantic
bourgeois, poetaster, and elderly lover. His hatefulness is, to a considerable part,
a heritage from the two earlier plays, where the bodily defects and evil charac-
ter of the Augsburg patrician were necessary in order to make his rival, the
humble shoemaker Hans Sachs, more acceptable.64 But the mild ridicule found
there was turned by Wagner into a pitiless satire, which reminds us of another
deadly blow at Philistine virtue, Gottfried Keller's Three Righteous Combmakers,
a tale which Wagner knew and appreciated highly.5 The reason for this added
ardor is obvious: Wagner settled accounts with his personal enemies. Would
Eduard Hanslick, the overbearing Vienna critic, have fared much better than
Beckmesser murdering the Prize Song, if he had been asked to compete with
Wagner himself in operatic music? But the arrogance and wickedness of this
asinine Beckmesser - his loss of innocence as compared to Bottom - also spell
a loss of real humor: one cannot enjoy his performance.6"

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 The Ass and the Harp 55

Maybe those German authors were right who avoided using the proverb
6vos Xv'pas and its impersonation. For this metaphor has a poetical power only
where the word 'ass' is not merely an insult but retains - changed into a feeling
of general comradeship - at least part of the respect given to our brothers the
animals in the days of the Babylonian Harp.

PENNSYLVANIA STATE COLLEGE.

1 S. Reinach, Cultes, mythes et religions, iv (1912), 94 ff.: 'De I'influence des images sur Ia formation
des mythes.'
2 A. H. Krappe, 'The Hero Champion of Animals,' MLQ, iv (1943), 267-279.
3Laura Hibbard Loomis, 'The Table of the Last Supper in Religious and Secular Iconography,'
PMLA, XLI (1926), 771-784; MLN, xIv (1929), 511-519; Art Studies (1927).
4H. Adolf, 'Diu hoehste hant,' Neophilologus, xix (1933), 260-264. To the instances quoted there
should be added: the Hildesheim bronze gates, panels 7 and 8 (to the left); the goblet in Ruodlieb,
fragm. vII, v. 15 (ed. F. Seiler, Halle, 1882, pp. 101 f.: 'auf dessen Grunde die Rechte Gottes ausge-
schnitzt'). There existed Byzantine coins with a blessing hand from on high touching the emperor's
head (Ruodlieb, ibid., p. 238 f.).
I See the pictures of Amen-Hotep and his wife sacrificing to the solar disk, the latter being a plain
disk with rays ending in hands (Mythology of all races, xii, 225 (fig. 215); Hastings' Encycl. of Religion
and Ethics, under 'Egyptian Religion.'
a E. Mile, L'Art religieux du XI1P siecle en France (2nd ed., 1924), pp. 339 ff.
See 'L'Ane musicien' from the capital of a pillarbelongingto the ancient Nantes cathedral, MAle,
op. cit., p. 339, fig. 197.
8 A fuller version reads: 6vos Xbpas fKOVE Kal o-AXr77os bs ('an ass listened to a lyre, a sow to a trum-
pet'). See Liddell-Scott, A Greek-English Lexicon (Oxford, 1925-40), Pauly-Wissowa, Realencycl.
der klass. Altertumswiss., VI (1909) under 'Esel,' 13, Sentenxen und Sprichworter, and the footnotes to
Menander, 527 K and Mis. 18 (Loeb Classical Library edition) 'An ass at a musicale,' is the rendering
suggested by the translator (Menander, ibid., pp. 409 and 461).
9 A. M. S. Boethi De Consolatione Philosophiae libri V (London, 1925), i, 4 (prose): 'Sentisne, in-
quit, haec atque animo inlabuntur tuo, an oVos Xibpas?'
10 See footnote to the Boethius passage quoted above; cf. also W. Wienert, Die Typen der griech.-rom-
ischen Fabel, FF Communications, LVI (Helsinki, 1925), pp. 45 and 130 f. (Sinntypus 375, Erziihlungs-
typ 26); Bolte-Polivka, Anmerkungen zu den Kinder- und Efausmirchen der Briider Grimm, iii, 166.
"1 Phaedri Augusti liberti Fabulae Aesopiae (ed. C. Zell, Stuttgart, 1928), pp. 117 if. (Appendix
xii).

12 The thirty-two fables of the Appendix are derived from the Codex Perottinus (written ca 1450
for the nephew of Nicolas Perotto and drawn by Perotto from a subsequently lost abridgment of
Phaedrus; see J. Wight Duff, A Literary History of Rome in the Silver Age (1927), pp. 133 f.
13 MAle, op. cit., p. 339, referring to L. Delisle, Melanges de paleographie et de bibliographie (Paris,
1880), p. 206.
14 A R6sum6 of the Work of the Joint Archeological Expedition Maintained at Ur of the Chaldees from
1922-1934 by the Musum of the University of Pennsylvania and the British Museum, p. 16.
15 Leon Legrain, 'The Babylonian Collection of the University Museum,' University [of Pennsyl-
vania] Museum Bulletin, x (June 1944), fig. 11, p. 22.
16 I am following, more or less literally, the description given by C. Leonard Woolley in 'Ex-
cavations at Ur, 1927-8,' The Antiquaries' Journal, viii (October 1928), p. 437; see also pl. xLIv, 2.
For other descriptions see L. Legrain, 'L'art sumerien au temps de la reine Shubad,' Gazette des
Beaux-Arts, vi (1931), p. 9, fig. 13; p. 18, fig. 17; C. Leonard Woolley, Ur Excavations, ii (Text),
'The Royal Cemetery' (1934), p. 280, pl. 105.
7 C.Leonard Woolley, Ur Excavations, ii, 281.
18 Prisse d'Avennes, Histoire de l'Art Egyptien (Texte par P. Marchandon de la Faye, Paris, 1879),
v (Atlas), 145: 'Fragments de Papyrus satiriques ... un Ane, un lion, un crocodile et un singe forment
un quatuor avec les instruments en usage alors dans les f6tes civiles' (the ass is playing the harp!)

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 56 The Ass and the Harp

See also M. Marchiano, L'origine della favola Greca (Trani, 1900), 118; the papyrus 'rappresentando
un asino che suono I'arpa,' is here wrongly attributed to the British Museum, instead of Turin. Ac-
cording to G. Perrot, A !Ii8tory of Ancient Egypt (tr. W. Armstrong, London, 1883), pp. 351 ff., and
J. Kenrick, Ancient Egypt under the Pharaohs, i, 269 f., there were also 'a lion and a donkey singing
their own accompaniment on the harp and the lyre respectively,' in the royal tombs at Thebes. The
rest of the description tallies with that of the Turin and British Museum papyri.
19 Ur Excavations, ii, 281.
20 The Antiquaries' Journal, ViII, 437.
21 C. J. Gadd, History and Monuments of Ur (1929-30), pp. 35 f.
22 Perrot, op. cit., p. 353.
23 The Royal Tombs of UJr of the Chaldees (Philadelphia: The Museum, 1929), p. 4.
24 C. Leonard Woolley, The Antiquaries' Journal, viii (1928), 437; L. Legrain, Gazette des Beaux-
Arts, VI (1934), 18: 'l'Ane harpiste, le chacal au sistre et l'ours dansant semblent detach6s d'un fabliau';
C. J. Gadd, op. cit., p. 35 n: 'an ass plays the harp - incongruous enough to be the proverbial 5ros
Xbpas.'
25 See Pauly-Wissowa under 'Esel' (8. 'Religiose Vorstellungen.')
26 S. Reinach, Cultes, mythes et religions, iv, 39 ff.
27 While the god 'laughs beholding the rampant wantonness of the beasts,' Pindar, Odes (tr. D. W.
Turner, London, 1868), p. 92, Pythian Ode, x, v. 88.
28 Cl. Aelianus, Peri zoon (Leipzig: Teubner, 1864).
29 U. T. Holmes, Jr, A History of Old French Literature from the Origins to 1300 (New York, 1948),
pp. 207 f.; R. Smend, 'Alter und Herkunft des Achikar-Romans und sein Verhailtnis zu Aesop,'
Beihefte zur Zeitschrift f.d. alttestamentl. Wissenchaft, xiiI (1908), 95.
30 See Ernout-Meillet, Dictionnaire etymologique de la langue latine (1939).
3' Grimm's Kinder- und Hausmdrchen, No. 27.
32 Bolte-Polivka, op. cit., iii, 152 ff.
33 Th. Reik, Ritual. Psycho-Analytic Studies (1931), pp. 221 if.
3 Theaithetos, 146a: 'Whoever fails in turn, shall go and sit down and be donkey, as the children
say when they play ball.'
33 Wagener, quoted by Marchiano, op. cit., p. 118.
36 Marchiano, ibid., with reference to Aelianus, Peri zoon, x, 28, and Plutarch, Moralia ('De Iside et
Osiride,' 80-81). Cf. G. Parthey, Plutarch, Ober Isis und Osiris (Berlin, 1850), p. 219.
3 S. Singer, Sprichworter des Mittelalters, III (1947), under 'Esel.'
3 L. Legrain, 'The Babylonian Collection,' etc., Univerity [of Pennsylvania] Museum Bulletin, x,
20.
39 Strabo (Loeb Classical Library ed.), xv, 2, 14.
40 Brockhaus, Konversationslexikon (1932), under 'Pferd,' 'Esel,' 'Haustiere'; Reinach, op. cit., I,
346; Mythology of all races, xia, 119, fig. 121: Horus executes Seth in the form of a red ass.
41 E.g. in Nala and Damayanti, v. 2.
42 See Deutsches Worterbuch under 'Esel'; cf. Latin forms like Asino, Asinius; see also Genesis 49.14
(the blessing pronounced on Isascar).
4 See E. K. Chambers, Medieval Stage, i, 275 ff., 329 ff.; iI, 55 f,
44 Cf. Otfried's Lier Evangeliorum, iv, 5, 7-9:
Esil, wizun wir thaz, theist fihu filu dumbaz;
ni miduh mih thero worto: ist huarilinaz harto.

4' G. Chaucer, Troilus and Criseide (ed. R. K. Root, 1926), i, 731.

46 Cf. E. Auerbach, 'Sacrae scripturae sermo humilis' in Neue Dante-Studien (ZUrich, 1944,) pp. 9 f.,
and Mimesis: dargestellte Wirklichkeit in der abendlandischen Literatur (Bern, 1946), pp. 150 ff., on
the difference, so vehemently felt by St Augustine, between the classical separation of styles and the
consistently humble garb of the Christian mysteries.
47 Hrabanus Maurus in Migne, PL, cx, 29 f. and PL, cxiI, 867; cf. the commentaries to Otfried, Iv,
5, 7-9; also Migne, PL, ccxx (Index), under 'Ignorantia.'
48 Also Rufinus' 'Obscurantia enim cordis est ignorantia' (Migne, PL, xxi, 687, and ccxx., 55)
seems based on St Paul (Ephesians, 4.18).

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 The Ass and the Harp 57

4i Hugo v. Trimberg, Der Renner (ed. G. Ehrismann, 1908-1911), 11. 23592 ff. Cf. Alberus wider
die Carlstader (16th century, quoted by the Deutsches Worterbuch): 'der past wie der Esel zum Lauten-
schlagen; wenn solche unflatige geister von g6ttlichen dingen reden, so gemanet michs aber als keDme
ein esel uber ein harpfen und wolt uns was sonderlichs machen.'
50 Male, op. cit., p. 319: 'David est souvent au moyen Age une image de la musique. Il est evident
que l'hymne qu'il joue ici sur sa lyre est comme un 6cho du grand hymne qui sort du monde.' (This
refers to the picture in the Metz Psalter.)
51 L. Delisle, Melanges de PaUographie et de Bibliographie (Paris, 1880), p. 206: 'Dolens in sanctuario
Dei fieri picturarum ineptias,' etc. (cf. Male, op. cit., p. 339.
52 MAle, op. cit., p. 351 ff.; see especially fig. 205, p. 353, Chaldean designs on mediaeval fabrics.
53 Cf. Freidank (ed. H. E. Bezzenberger, 1872), 139, 20 f.; 140, 9 f. An ass is playing the violin,
MSH, 3452. On pigs, monkeys, goats as muscians, see M&le, op. cit., p. 339.
54 Le Roman de Thebes (ed. L. Constans, 1890).
55 See the critical edition of Boethius' De Consolatione Philo8ophiae by G. Weinberger (1937), p. 7.
51 See G. Ehrismann, Geschichte der deutschen Literatur biw zum Ausgang des Mittelalters, t. ii, sect.
ii, pt. 1 (1927), p. 243.
57 H. Adolf, 'Der Eingang zu Wolframs Parzival,' Neophilologus, xxii (1937).
58 Mannhardt in LHandworterbuch des deutschen Aberglaubens under 'Esel'; cf. also the remark by
Plutarch, Symposiacs, iv, 5, that the Jews abstained from the hare because it is 'like an ass, which
they detest.' In mediaeval allegory, on the other hand, 'lepus est quilibet iniquus, et tamen doctus in
lege.' (Migne, PL, CXiI, 984).
59 As far as I can see, Shakespearean commentators have mostly paid attention to the animal
lover (which is derived from Apuleius) and to the general belief in the possibility of such trans-
formations, expressed in books like Scot's Discovery of witchcraft (1584). See A New Variorum Edition
of Shakespeare (ed. H. H. Furness, Philadelphia, 1895), x, 123. Also the Greco-Roman mime Der
Mann mit dem Eselskopf, which H. Reich tries to reconstruct (see Jahrb. der deutschen Shakespeare
Gesellschaft, XL [19041, pp. 108-128) dealt with love, jealousy, and thrashing.
60 This rather obvious analogy has not been duly considered by critics, perhaps because Shake-
speare's play, in spite of its title, takes place the night before May Day. See Furness, op. cit., x, v f.
61 'Ass' for a poor musician also in Wagner's 'Eine Pilgerfahrt zu Beethoven,' Gesammelte Schriften
und Dichtungen (ed. W. Golther), I, 113.
62 There is no contest nor poem whatsoever in L. F. Deinhardstein's Hans Sachs, written in 1827.
In Philip Reger's libretto for A. Lortzing's opera Hans Sachs (1840), Gorg, Sachs's apprentice, appro-
priates a poem by his matter, but loses the manuscript. It is found by some imperial archers and
turned over to Emperor Maximilian. Then Eoban Hesse, the rival of Sachs, claims to be the author.
Wagner himself was at pains finding the right solution; (cf. R. M. Rayner, Wagner and Die Meister-
singer (1940), pp. 77 and 251; also E. Newman, The Life of Richard Wagner (1941), iII, 159, The
Wagner Operas (1949), pp. 289 ff.
63Mentioned by Magdalena in Act I: 'Meinst du den Ktnig mit der Harfen und langem Bart in
der Meister Schild?' The banner is displayed in Act iII. See H. Thompson, Wagner and Wagen3eil
(London, 1927), p. 23, for a description of the mastersinger awards.
64 Cf. L. F. Deinhardstein, Kiinstlerdramen (Leipzig, 1845), II, 1 f., and the score and text of A.
Lortzing's Hans Sachs (Leipzig, 1903).
66 E. Ermatinger, Gottfried Kellers Leben, i, 954; E. Newman, The Life of Richard Wagner, la, 166.
66 While serenading Evchen, Beckmesser awkwardly betrays his greed, as if he were Mime whose
intentions have become transparent for Siegfried; and, at the final contest, he gives to Walther's
rose-colored song a lugubrious meaning understandable only to him who knows the Lortzing libretto;
for there Eoban Hesse, unable to recite, without the manuscript, the birthday greeting of which he
claims to be the author, very naturally drops into the lines of his Absalom poem, with which he had
beaten Hans Sachs himself at a previous recital. The tree where Absalom was hanged seems to be re-
membered by Beckmesser. (Cf. G. Roethe, 'Zum dramatischen Aufbau der Meistersinger,' Sitz.-Ber.
d. preuss. Akad. d. Wiasen8ch., phil.-hiut. Kl., xxxvi (1919), pp. 673 ff.)

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