[511] Cfr. the first story of the fourth book of the _Pańćatantram_, where the king of the frogs invokes the help of a black serpent to avenge himself upon certain frogs who are his enemies, and, instead of this, draws down death upon all the frogs and upon his own son.
[512] Vâr in maṇḍûka ićhatîndrayendo pari srava; _Ṛigv._ ix. 112.
[513] A similar tradition was current concerning the tarantula (stellio). Ceres, being thirsty, wished to drink; the boy Stelles prevented her, and the goddess transformed him into a _stellio_. According to Ulpianus, from the _stellio_ was derived the _crimen stellionatus_.
[514] Cfr. also _Afanassieff_, vi. 55; Masha (Mary), the wife of Ivan, at first appears as a goose, afterwards as a frog, a lizard, and a spindle.
[515] In the eighth story of the first book of the _Pentamerone_ it is a lacerta cornuta (horned lizard, the moon) which watches over the destiny of the girl Renzolle (the aurora).
[516] It was thus that I heard it recited, but it should, as it appears to me, be corrected both in rhyme and sense, and _gragna_ changed into _grama_, unless _gragna_ is a verb and stands for _grandina_ (hail); in Italy, there is a superstitious belief that the toads are generated of the first large drops of rain which fall into the dust at the beginning of a tempest.
[517] A similar superstition is current in Germany, as I find in Rochholtz, the work quoted before, i. 147: "Auch die Hauskröte, Unke, Muhme genannt, wohnt im Hauskeller und hält durch ihren Einfluss die hier verwahrten Lebensmittel in einem gedeihlichen Zustand. Dadurch kommt Wohlstand ins Haus, und das Thier heisst daher Schatzkröte. In Verwechslung mit dem braunschwarzen Kellermolch wird sie auch Gmöhl genannt und soll eben so oft ihre Farbe verändern, als der Familie eine Veränderung bevorsteht."--The various popular superstitions concerning the salamander are well known,--viz., that it resists the power of fire, that it lives in fire, that it becomes like fire: "immo ad ignem usque elementarem orbi lunari finitimum ascendere" (according to Aldrovandi), and that, devoid of hairs itself, it causes the hairs of others to fall out by means of its saliva, whence Martial, cursing the baldness of a woman's head--