mutilations of savages is that of stretching the ears to an enormous size by weights or coils, and it is thus verbally quite true that there are men whose ears hang down upon their shoulders. Yet without explanation such a phrase would be understood to describe, not the appearance of a real savage with his ear-lobes stretched into pendant fleshy loops, but rather that of Pliny's Panotii, or of the Indian Karnaprâvarana, 'whose ears serve them for cloaks,' or of the African dwarfs, said to use their ears one for mattress and the other for coverlet when they lie down. One of the most extravagant of these stories is told by Fray Pedro Simon in California, where in fact the territory of Oregon has its name from the Spanish term of Orejones, or 'Big-Ears,' given to the inhabitants from their practice of stretching their ears with ornaments.[1] Even purely metaphorical descriptions, if taken in a literal sense, are capable of turning into catches, like the story of the horse with its head where its tail should be. I have been told by a French Protestant from the Nismes district that the epithet of gorgeo negro, or 'black-throat,' by which Catholics describe a Huguenot, was taken so literally that heretic children were sometimes forced to open their mouths to satisfy the orthodox of their being of the usual colour within. On examining the description of savage tribes by higher races, it appears that several of the epithets usually applied only need literalizing to turn into the wildest of the legendary monster-stories. Thus the Burmese speak of the rude Karens as 'dog-men;'[2] Marco Polo describes the Angaman (Andaman) islanders as brutish and savage cannibals, with heads like dogs.[3] Ælian's account of the dog-headed people of India is on the face of it an account of a savage race. The Kynokephali, he says, are so called from
- ↑ Plin. iv. 27; Mela, iii. 6; Bastian, 'Oestl. Asien,' vol. i. p. 120; vol. ii. p. 93; St. John, vol. ii. p. 117; Marsden, p. 53; Lane, 'Thousand and One N.' vol. iii. pp. 92, 305; Petherick, 'Egypt, &c.' p. 367; Burton, 'Central Afr.' vol. i. p. 235; Pedro Simon, 'Indias Occidentales,' p. 7.
- ↑ Bastian, 'Oestl. Asien,' vol i. p. 133.
- ↑ Marco Polo, book iii. ch. xviii.
