"Esse apibus partem divinæ mentis et haustus Æthereos dixere: Deumque namque ire per omnes Terrasque, tractusque maris cœlumque profundum. Hinc pecudes, armenta, viros, genus omne ferarum, Quemque sibi tenues nascentem arcessere vitas; Scilicet huc reddi deinde ac resoluta referri Omnia; nec morti esse locum; sed viva volare Sideris in numerum atque alto succedere cœlo."
The wax of bees, because it produces light, and is, moreover, used in churches,[354] must also have had its part in increasing the divine prestige of bees, and the belief in their immortality, as being those that feed the fire. According to a writing of 1482, cited by Du Cange, the sacred disease or _ignis sacer_ (pestilential erysipelas) was cured by wax dissolved in water.
In Germany the death of their master is announced to the bees in the little stick round which the honey is made in the hive. The hive or the Bienenstock, participates in the divine nature of the bees, and calls my attention to the madhumatî kaçâ or madhoh kaçâ of the _Ṛigvedas_, and of the _Atharvavedas_, attributed to the Açvinâu, and destined to soften the sacrificial butter, which is of a nature similar to the _caduceus_ of Mercury, and to the magical rod, born of all the various elements and of none in particular, daughter of the wind, and sometimes perhaps itself the wind; the _anima_, the soul (the bee), is a breath, a breeze, a wind (anemos, anilas), which changes its place, but never dies; it collects and scatters honey and perfumes, and passes away, changeful as the American flybird that sucks honey, the continual beating of whose wings resembles the buzzing of a bee; the _apis_ and _avis_ are assimilated. In Du Cange,[355] I find an oration to the mother of the bees, to call back the dispersed ones of her family, conceived thus:--"Adjuro te, Mater aviorum per Deum regem cœlorum et per ilium Redemptorem Filium Dei te adjuro, ut non te altum levare, nec longe volare, sed quam plus cito potest ad arborem venire; ibi te allocas cum omni tua genera, vel cum socia tua, ibi habeo bono vaso parato, ut vos ibi, in Dei nomine, laboretis," &c.
In the twenty-second story of the fifth book of _Afanassieff_, a bee transforms itself into a young hero, in order to prove to the old man that he is able to fetch back his son, who has remained three years under the instruction of the devil (the moon enables the old sun to find the young one; it helps the sun to cheat the devil of night). In the same story it is in the form of a gnat that the guardian-fairy perches herself upon the young hero, whom his father has to recognise amongst twelve heroes that bear the greatest resemblance to one another. In the forty-eighth story of the fifth book, the gnat distinguishes, among the twelve maidens that resemble each other extremely, the one whom the young hero loves, that is, the daughter of the priest, whom the devil had taken possession of, because her father had once said to her, "The devil take you." This indicatory gnat occurs in numerous fairy tales, and discharges the office of the fairy moon; this is the guide and messenger of the hero. We have already seen the moon as a hostess. In the thirty-first story of the fourth book of _Afanassieff_, we have the fly that entertains in its palace (according to the sixteenth story of the third book, a horse's head) the louse, the flea, the mosquito, the little mouse, the lizard, the fox, the hare, and the wolf, until the bear comes up and crushes with one paw the whole palace of the fly, and all the mythical nocturnal animals that it contains. We have also seen the hero who barters his bull for a vegetable which brings him fortune, and we have seen above the bee that is born of the dead bull. In the seventh story of the third book of _Afanassieff_, the third brother, supposed to be foolish, collects, on the contrary, flies and mosquitoes in two sacks, which he suspends upon a lofty oak-tree, where he barters them for good cattle (the moon is the pea of good fortune, the giver of abundance). We know that the moon was represented as the judge of the departed in the kingdom of the dead, and as an omniscient fairy. The industrious bees have a singular reputation for superior intelligence.[356] In the thirteenth fable of the third book of _Phædrus_, proof of the same wisdom is given by the wasp, who sits in the tribunal as a conscientious judge between the drones and the working bees in regard to the honey which the bees had collected and stored up on a lofty oak-tree, and to which the drones had pretensions.