And never again did he ravage the country round Tarascon or carry off so much as a single babe, after St. Martha had pointed out to him, with her usual sweet reasonableness, how wrong-headed and how essentially immoral such conduct had been.
It is disappointing to be told by an innovating savant that this sweet lady was not St. Martha at all, but merely the Christianised form of the ancient Phœnician goddess Martis, the patroness of sailors, who had for her symbols a ship and a dragon. What _is_ one to be allowed to believe?
The Phœnicians, one has to admit, plied a busy trade along these coasts. Their language has left traces in the Provençal dialects, and images have been found at Marseilles of Melkarth and Melita, or Hercules and Venus, known in the Bible as Baal and Ashtaroth. There has even been discovered a tariff for sacrifices in the temple of Baal, giving a list of dues legally established for the payments of the priests.
(Barbara was utterly confounded to find these distinctly Biblical deities figuring so far from home.)
The tariff is a long affair, and goes into all possible details. But the following extract maybe worth quoting:--
"For an entire ox, the ordinary sacrifice, the priests are to receive 10 shekels. At the sacrifice, in addition, 300 shekels of flesh," and so on.
But it does not follow, from all this, that St. Martha did not subdue the Tarasque. Moreover, Tarasques are being subdued every day by Marthas not by any means arrived at saintship. The old legend, be its origin Christian, Phœnician, Celtic or classic, reads almost like a parable by which to convey the old truth that love and kindness have power to subdue evil which force has failed to overcome.
St. Martha's tomb and shrine are in the church dedicated to her at Tarascon, and, until lately, there were yearly processions through the city, in which the gigantic creature was paraded in triumph, the legs of the man inside being ingeniously "dissimulated by a band of stuff."
"... les porteurs dansent et cabriolent de façon à faire agiter le queue et a renverser les curieux trop voisins. (Pour queue une poutre droite.)"
The Tarasque is furious on the second Sunday after Pentecost. But later, on the day of St. Martha, he passes, gentle as a lamb, led by a young girl. The man inside, with his "dissimulated legs," curvets and gambols amiably. And the people sing the "Lagagdigadeu," a song invented, it is said, by King René himself, inspired perhaps by the tumult of the _fête_ passing his castle down by the Rhone. Or just the swish of the waters as they sweep past the walls of the donjon might easily set fancies ringing in a head like King René's, who saw things as they are, with the song and the radiance in them.