Kraken

“ The kraken, that hugest of living things, was still supposed to cumber the recesses of the Northern Ocean; and often, when some fog-bank covered the sea at a distance, the eye of the experienced boatman saw the horns of the monstrous leviathan welking and waving amidst the wreaths of mist, and bore away with all press of oar and sail, lest the sudden suction, occasioned by the sinking of the monstrous mass to the bottom, should drag within the grasp of its multifarious feelers his own frail skiff. ”

“ So the grand old kraken, the great sea-worm, remains still without identity; and though I trust humanity will never abandon any of its “glorious old traditions,” especially such a fascinating one as the sea-serpent, I would caution it in the matter of any kraken professing to be more than a hundred yards long, lest it should be said of them that they prefer “the excitement of the imagination to the satisfaction of the judgment.”
For monster cuttle-fishes, however, the public has the permission of science to believe anything it likes; and, in fact, the more the better. ”

“ No matter, he has supplied a long-felt want; but the curious fact remains that he is not a discovery, but a re-appearance. The gigantic cuttle-fish of actual, indisputable fact is, in all respects except size, the Kraken; and any faithful representation of him will justify the assertion that no imagination could add anything to the terror-breeding potentialities of his aspect. That is so, even when he is viewed by the light of day in the helplessness of death or disabling sickness, or in the invincible grip of his only conqueror. ”

“ I shall deliver the monster to Kraken, who will stay him with his flashing sword. For I tell thee that the noble Kraken, who was believed to be dead, will return among the Penguins and he shall slay the dragon. And from the creature’s belly will come forth the little children whom he has devoured.”
“What you declare to me, O virgin,” cried the apostle, “seems wonderful and beyond human power.”
“It is,” answered the virgin Orberosia. ”

“ According to some old writers the kraken, when floating on the surface of the sea, stretched to a length of about a mile and a half, and appeared like an island. It is a difficult problem to say which would be the most embarrassing position—for a seaman to find himself stranded on the creature’s back on its sudden arrival at the surface, or to be engulfed in the whirlpool that would arise from its sinking again into the depths of ocean. ”

“ But among sea-folk, as among all people leading lives in close contact with the elemental forces of Nature, legends persist with marvellous vitality, and so the story of the Kraken is to be found wherever men go down to the sea in ships, and do business in great waters. ”

“ If this last be the case they know that the Kraken is raising himself nearer the surface, and then it is not time for them to stay any longer; they immediately leave off fishing, take to their oars, and get away as fast as they can. When they have reached the usual depth of the place, and find themselves out of danger, they lie upon their oars, and in a few minutes after they see this enormous monster come up to the surface of the water; he there shows himself sufficiently, though his whole body does not appear, which, in all likelihood, no human eye ever beheld. ”

“ A thousand huge monsters lay there, glaring with fixed and solemn eyes through the tenebrous gloom. I saw the kraken with its hundred arms, the great whale, the sea bear, and others unknown to dwellers upon the earth. Voiceless they glided through the regions of eternal silence, and the black billows broke far above them in the midst of loneliness and solitude. Unutterable were the feelings with which I viewed the foundation of the everlasting hills, and beheld the trackless pathways of the unfathomed sea. Lustrous gems glittered on every side; groves of coral begirt each rock ”

“ An arena, round and symmetrical, as high as a Jungfrau, only submerged; an oceanic coliseum, seen by the diver in the vision-like transparency which ingulfs him,—such is the Shambles shoal. There hydras fight, leviathans meet. There, says the legend, at the bottom of the gigantic shaft, are the wrecks of ships, seized and sunk by the huge Kraken, also known as the devil-fish. ”

“ The kraken would scarcely have been described without any reference to these fearful feelers, armed with double rows of suckers, if the myth had had the origin that has been in several directions claimed for it. The belief in the kraken chiefly springs, probably, from that delight in something tremendously big that has also given us the roc carrying away elephants in its talons, or the serpent [Pg 151] that encompasses the world in its folds, so that we need not then too anxiously strive to find any counterpart of it in nature. ”

“ It is easy to recognise in Pontoppidan's description of the Kraken, the form and habits of one of the "Cuttle-fishes," so-called. The appearance of its numerous arms, with which it gathers in its food, and which grow thicker and thicker as they rise above the surface, is just what would take place in the case of one of the pelagic species of these mollusks raising its head out of the sea. ”

“ At times we gasped for breath at an elevation beyond the albatross—at times became dizzy with the velocity of our descent into some watery hell, where the air grew stagnant, and no sound disturbed the slumbers of the kraken. ”

“ But their energetic use of teeth and jaws had a result entirely unforeseen by them. Gradually the prey they sought, the larger fish and smaller sea-mammals, disappeared from the shallow seas adjacent to the land, from whence the whales had been driven; and in order to satisfy the demands of their huge stomachs, they were fain to follow their prey into deeper and deeper waters, meeting as they went with other and stranger denizens of those mysterious depths, until at last the sperm whale met the Kraken. There in his native gloom, vast, formless, and insatiable, brooded the awful Thing. ”

“ Ages of such experiences as these had left the Kraken defenceless as to his body. The absence of any necessity for exertion had arrested the development of a backbone; the inability of any of the sea-people to retaliate upon their sateless foe had made him neglect any of those precautions that weaker organisms had provided themselves with, and even the cloud of sepia with which all the race were provided, and which often assisted the innocent and weaker members of the same great family to escape, was only used by these masters of the sea to hide their monstrous lures from their prey. ”

“ If ever, however, the cuttle fish should reach its fullest length and greatest bulk, the sea-serpent itself would have but a poor chance with it, so that we have, after all, the satisfaction of knowing that, though science forbids us to possess a kraken, we do possess in actual fact another monster which, if the kraken did exist, could probably catch it and eat it up. ”

“ But learn, O Mael, that I have had a revelation that as a reward for their deliverance, the Penguin people will pay to the knight Kraken an annual tribute of three hundred fowls, twelve sheep, two oxen, three pigs, one thousand eight hundred bushels of corn, and vegetables according to their season; and that, moreover, the children who will come out of the dragon’s belly will be given and committed to the said Kraken to serve him and obey him in all things. If the Penguin people fail to keep their engagements a new dragon will come upon the island more terrible than the first. ”

“ There is no worse trade than a dragon’s.”
“What does my master say?” asked the fair Orberosia.
“They fear me no longer,” continued Kraken. “Formerly everyone fled at my approach. I carried away hens and rabbits in my bag; I drove sheep and pigs, cows, and oxen before me. To-day these clod-hoppers keep a good guard; they sit up at night. Just now I was pursued in the village of Anis by doughty labourers armed with flails and scythes and pitchforks. I had to drop the hens and rabbits, put my tail under my arm, and run as fast as I could. ”

“ As readers of ancient classics well know, the fathers of literature gave much attention to the vast, awe-inspiring inhabitants of the sea, investing and embellishing the few fragments of fact concerning them which were available with a thousand fantastic inventions of their own naïve imaginations, until there emerged, chief and ruler of them all, the Kraken, Leviathan, or whatever other local name was considered to best convey in one word their accumulated ideas of terror. ”

“ By this they know that the Kraken is at the bottom. They say this creature causes those unnatural shallows mentioned above, and prevents their sounding. These the fishermen are always glad to find, looking upon them as a means of their taking abundance of fish. ”

“ I heard reports of enormous squids, the skate-whaals of the Shetlands, which may easily have given rise to the “Kraken” tale. Specimens have been seen from Zanzibar to Newfoundland, where cuttle-fish (Architeuthis monachus and A. Dux. Steenstrŭp) have been found with bodies 15 feet long by 19 inches diameter, and “extensive arms of unknown extent.” ”

“ In such cases they had to escape before the kraken should awake and sink the vessel as though it were a fragile skiff among its whirlpools of foam.
During many long years Science had laughed at the gigantic polypus and at the sea serpent, another prehistoric animal many times encountered, supposing them to be merely the inventions of an imaginative sailor, stories of the forecastle made up to pass the night-watch. Wise men can only believe what they can study directly and then catalogue in their museums.... ”

“ The fable of the Kraken has been referred to imperfect and exaggerated accounts of monstrous Polypi infesting the northern seas; how far may not the Cuttle-fish have given rise to this fiction? In hot countries (our readers will remember that in a late paper, Mirror, vol. xvii. pp. 282-299, we directed their attention to the similarity of superstitions in every country of the world, hence infering a common, and most probably oriental origin for all) —in hot countries cuttle-fish are found of gigantic dimensions; the Indians affirm that some have been seen two fathoms broad over their centre ”

“ When all was over, the sea serpent rocked itself in horrid satisfaction on the waves, and let them drive it at187 their will. But the dark rock retained the power of motion, and sank slowly down into the deep, making the waves foam and toss as they parted right and left to let it pass. Then Antonio perceived that what at a distance he had taken for a rock was a gigantic kraken, one of those sea monsters which often lie quietly for years at the bottom of the ocean, then rise to the surface and lurk with deadly purpose in the path of unsuspecting men. ”

“ There seems some ground to imagine that the great Kraken of Bishop Pontoppodan may ultimately resolve itself into Squid. The manner in which the Bishop describes it, as alternately rising and sinking, with some other particulars he narrates, in all this the two correspond. But much abatement is necessary with respect to the incredible bulk he assigns it. ”

“ Mammalia also, like the porpoise, grampus, and rorqual, require enormous supplies of fish for their sustenance, and never fail to find them. As we ascend the scale of size the struggle becomes majestic—a war of Titans, such as no arena on earth has seen since the Deluge. The imagination recoils dismayed before the thought of such a spectacle as is afforded by the gigantic cachalot descending to the murky depths where in awful state the hideous Kraken broods. ”

“ If we may rely upon certain accounts, there are creatures in the ocean, far exceeding the size of the whale; as the animal called kraken, said to exist in the northern seas, and whose circumference is half a German league. ”

“ More especially because my subject is the Kraken, and while I hold most firmly that the gigantic mollusc which can alone be given that title is the fons et origo of all true100 sea-serpent stories, it is with facts relating to the former that I have alone to deal. As might have been expected, all stories of sea-monsters have a strong family likeness, showing pretty conclusively their common derivation, with such differences as the locality and personality of the narrative must be held accountable for. ”

“ He was called Kraken, and had his dwelling on the Beach of Shadows whither the inhabitants never ventured for fear of serpents that lodged in the hollows of the rocks and lest they might encounter the souls of Penguins that had died without baptism. These, in appearance like livid flames, and uttering doleful groans, wandered night and day along the deserted beach. For it was generally believed, though without proof, that among the Penguins that had been changed into men at the blessed Mael’s prayer, several had not received baptism and returned after their death to lament amid the tempests. ”

“ As we can find no species of the Octopidæ or Sepiidæ which can furnish a pretext for the stories told of the Kraken, we must try to ascertain how far a similitude to it may be traced in the third family we have discussed, the Teuthidæ.
The belief in the existence of gigantic cuttles is an ancient one. Aristotle mentions it, and Pliny tells of an enormous polypus which at Carteia, in Grenada—an old and important Roman colony near Gibraltar—used to [Pg 31] come out of the sea at night, and carry off and devour salted tunnies from the curing depots on the shore ”