Lochia

“ After a short altercation with Lucilla she left her, sought her companion Claudia, told her what she intended doing, dismissed that lady's remonstrance with a very positive command, gave orders herself to the house-steward to have horses put to a chariot and reached the imperilled palace an hour and a half after Verus.
An endless, many-headed crowd of people besieged the narrow end of Lochias on the landward side and the harbor wharves below, where some stores and shipyards were in flames. Boats innumerable were crowded round the little peninsula. ”

“ When the basin is filled, and she turns to empty it in the tar-black river that flows through that home of horrors, the terrible venom falls upon his unprotected face, and Loki writhes and shrieks in fearful agony, until the earth around him shakes and trembles, and the mountains spit forth fire, and fumes of sulphur-smoke. ”

“ The swarms of Locusts in Africa will sometimes cover many hundred square miles of surface, and in this space not a vestige of any vegetation would remain after their visit. The description of the prophet Joel is sublime: "The land is as the garden of Eden before them, and behind them a desolate wilderness: yea, and nothing shall escape them.... The earth shall quake before them, the heavens shall tremble: the sun and the moon shall be dark, and the stars shall withdraw their shining."
FIG. 21.—LOCUST (Locusta Migratoria) . ”

“ Through Loki evil entered into the Northern world; Prometheus’s gift of fire brought the same curse down upon the Greeks. The punishment inflicted by the gods upon both culprits is not unlike, for while Loki is bound with adamantine chains underground, and tortured by the continuous dropping of venom from the fangs of a snake fastened above his head, Prometheus is bound to Caucasus by adamantine fetters also, and a ravenous vulture continually preys upon his liver. ”

“ The Locust mother is not a model of affection.
Others do not forsake their eggs so recklessly. I can name the ordinary Locust with the blue wings striped with black (Œdipoda cœrulescens, Lin.) ; also Pachytylus nigrofasciatus, De Geer, whose cognomen lacks point, for it ought to suggest either the malachite-green patches of the costume or the white cross of the corselet.
Both, when laying their eggs, adopt the [382] same attitude as the Italian Locust. The abdomen is driven perpendicularly into the soil; the rest of the body partly disappears under the sliding sand. ”

“ From her inch-high turret, the Lycosa lies in wait for the passing Locust. She gives a bound, pursues the prey and suddenly deprives it of motion with a bite in the neck. The game is consumed on the spot, or else in the lair; the insect's tough hide arouses no disgust. The sturdy huntress is not a drinker of blood, like the Epeira; she needs solid food, food that crackles between the jaws. She is like a Dog devouring his bone.
Would you care to bring her to the light of day from the depths of her well? Insert a thin straw into the burrow and move it about. ”

“ Loki is the Fire-God, that delights in mischief, bene servit, male imperat. When by immoderate heat he has burned off the hair of Sif, her husband compels him so by temperate heat to warm the moisture of the earth, that its former products may spring up more beautiful than ever. The boar is given to Freyr, to whom and his sister Freya, as the gods of animal and vegetable fecundity, the northern people offered that animal, as the Italian people did, to the earth. ”

“ Then sat the gods on their seats of justice and entered into consultation, inquiring of one another who among them could have advised to give Freya away, or to plunge the heavens in darkness by permitting the giant to carry away the sun and the moon.
They all agreed that no one but Loki, the author of so many evil deeds, could have given such bad counsel, and that he should be put to a cruel death if he did not contrive some way to prevent the artificer from completing his task and obtaining the stipulated recompense. ”

“ Loki was an evil deity, the contriver of all fraud and mischief. He was very handsome, but of fickle and malicious temper. Loki had three children, the wolf Fenris, the Midgard serpent, and Hela, or Death. The gods were not ignorant that these monsters were growing up, and would one day bring much evil upon gods and [Pg 248] men. Odin, therefore, sent a messenger to bring them to him. When they came, he threw the serpent into the deep ocean by which the earth is surrounded. The monster soon grew to such an enormous size, that, holding his tail in his mouth, he encircled the whole world. ”

“ There are even other species of which the females at least are without wings or elytra, and which perfectly resemble the larva of the Locust; such are the species named Locusta aptera and Locusta Puppa by Fabricius. But I am more inclined to consider the Saddle-locust, or the Locusta ephippiger, as the Gaza of the Bible, than either of the two other species that I have mentioned. Of all the species of creeping locusts the ephippiger is that which I have most frequently found upon the vine, though never in sufficient abundance to produce much injury ”

“ Then Loki pulled the net up out of the water, and grasped the helpless fish in his right hand. But, lo! as he held the struggling creature high in the air, it was no longer a fish, but the cunning dwarf Andvari.
“Thou King of the Elves,” cried Loki, “thy cunning has not saved thee. Tell me, on thy life, where thy hidden treasures lie!”
The wise dwarf knew who it was that thus held him as in a vise; and he answered frankly, for it was his only hope of escape, “Turn over the stone upon which you stand. Beneath it you will find the treasure you seek.” ”

“ The crafty fish never [Pg 141] moved from his deep, dark pool. Then Loki saw that further attempts would be useless unless he had help from some one with magic skill, so he determined to seek the aid of Queen Ran and her wonderful net.
Leaving the cave, he hurried down to the sea, and for many hours he walked along the shore, searching carefully among the rocks for the hiding place of the cruel ocean queen. Somewhere here, or upon the jagged reefs, he would be sure to find her spreading a net for her prey. ”

“ And after awhile Loyka began to speak again almost meekly, as though he were fit to cry. “What injury have I done you, my neighbours, that ye have leagued yourselves against me with yonder fellow. I always avoid you all, I do not get in any one’s way, I do not beg anything at your hands, I creep away like the field mouse beneath the hedgerow, for many years ye have not heard my voice, I suffer and am mute; what do ye find so sickening in me that you come to the cemetery against me as against a savage beast.” ”

“ Then they remembered that it was Loki who had made the plan; it was he who had insisted that it be carried out and they blamed him for all the trouble.
45 "It is your counsels, Loki, that have brought this danger upon us," quoth Father Odin, frowning. "You chose the way of guile, which is not our way. It now remains for you to help us by guile, if you can. But if you cannot save for us Freia and the Sun and Moon, you shall die. This is my word." ”

“ Loki is fire, and Lox, when killed in another tale, is revived by heat. He is carried off by the Culloo, or cloud, and let fall, typifying fire or lightning coming from a cloud. Again, in another story he dies for want of fire. And he twice dies by drowning; that is, the fire is quenched by water.
In one of the Passamaquoddy versions of this tale, which is, though less detailed, far superior in humor to the Micmac, the Loon is cheated by his two nephews, the Assoops, a species of loon, who steal the Weasels from him. He revenges himself, not by murdering, but by merely frightening them. ”

“ Yonder boy,” said she, pointing to little Thule, “has saved me. I was, and still remain, an elf of [Pg 133] light, as playful and harmless as sunshine. The merciless Loki, enraged at the love I bear the children of men, changed me to a little alder-tree, which is the emblem of girlhood. But he had no power to keep me in that form forever. He was obliged to make a condition, and he made the hardest one that his artful mind could invent: ‘Since you love mortals so dearly,’ said he, ‘no one but a mortal shall free you from your imprisonment. ”

“ Cap. xxxii.—Of the multitude of locusts which are in the country, and of the damage they do, and how we made a procession, and the locusts died.
In these parts and in all the dominions of Prester John there is a very great plague of locusts which destroy the fresh crops in a fearful manner. Their multitude, which covers the earth and fills the air, is not to be believed; they darken the light of the sun. I say again that it is not a thing to be believed by any one who has not seen them. ”

“ Below we see Loki, the murderer of the holy Baldur, the blasphemer of the gods, bound by strong chains to the sharp edges of a rock, while as a punishment for his crimes a snake drops poison upon his face, making him yell with pain, and the earth quakes with his convulsive tremblings. ”

“ There may be a connection between the final punishment of Loki and the idea embodied in the carvings mentioned above as being at, among other places, Wells, York, and Glasgow, and which have been considered as conceptions of Remorse. Loki was condemned to be fastened to a rock to helplessly endure the eternal dropping upon his brow of poison from the jaws of a serpent; only that there is neither in these carvings, nor any others noted to the present, any indication of the presence of the ministering woman-spirit who for even the fiend Loki stood by to catch the death-drops in a cup of mercy. ”

“ But Loki, the brewer of mischief and the sire of a bestial triad consisting of the Fenri Wolf, the Leviathan of the deep, and Hell the witch of Niflheim or the Home of Fog, was by no means pleased to see that Balder could not be hurt like others; so one day when the Anses were amusing themselves by throwing their spears and arrows at Balder, since they knew they could not hurt him, Loki went, disguised as an old woman, to where Frigg lived in the Hall of the Fen. ”

“ Loki's wife stands by with a cup to receive the venom, and when it is full she empties it; but while she is doing that, the venom drips on Loki's face and then he writhes, causing what men call earthquakes; and this goes on till the doom of the gods. That is one account; but another makes Loki, before his doom, appear among the Anses to bandy words with them, and even to boast to Frigg that he was the cause why Balder no longer rode into the hall. ”

“ Mr. Mansfield Parkyns, in his "Life in Abyssinia," mentions that the true Abyssinian will not eat the Locust, but that the negroes and Arabs do so. He describes the flavour as being something between the burnt end of a quill and a crumb of linseed cake. The flavour, however, depends much on the mode of cooking, and, as some say, on the nature of the Locusts' food.
Signor Pierotti states, in his "Customs and Traditions of Palestine," that Locusts are really excellent food, and that he was accustomed to eat them, not from necessity, but from choice, and compares their flavour to that of shrimps. ”

“ Locusts, one of the great pests of the Indian peasant’s life, are scared by shouting, lighting of fires, beating of brass pots, and in particular, by ringing the temple bell. In Sirsa, the Karwa, a flying insect which injures the flower of the Bâjra millet, is expelled by a man taking his sister’s son on his shoulder and feeding him with rice-milk while he repeats the following charm: “The nephew has mounted his uncle’s shoulder. ”

“ Loki, as a mare (he being a male god) , became, by the horse of a giant, the father of Sleipnir, Odin’s eight-footed steed. Mr. W. A. Craigie supplies this note on Loki’s analogy with Poseidon, as a horse, in the waves of corn:—
‘In North Jutland, when the vapours are seen going with a wavy motion along the earth in the heat of summer, they say, “Loki is sowing oats today,” or “Loki is driving his goats.”
‘N.B.—Oats in Danish are havre, which suggests O.N. hafrar, goats. Modern Icelandic has hafrar=oats, but the word is not found in the old language.’
Is Loki a corn-spirit? ”

“ In one of the tales of Lox, the Indian devil, also a giant, we are told that his feet are male and female. (3.) In both faiths this is the first birth on earth. (4.) The six-headed demon appears in a Micmac tale. (5.) There is in both the Eddaic and the Wabanaki account a very remarkable coincidence in this: that there is a Titanic or giant birth of twins on earth, followed by the creation of man from the ash-tree. (6.) The Evil principle, whether it be the Wolf-Lox, in the Wabanaki myths, or Loki in the Norse, often turns himself into a woman. ”

“ This was the first cloud of locusts that had come right into the town in the memory of the oldest inhabitant, though they occasionally raid the country away to the North. I am informed that when the chiefs of the Western Soudan do not give sufficient gifts to the man who is locust king and has charge of them—keeping them in holes in the [Pg 39] desert of Sahara—he lets them out in revenge. Certainly that year he let them out with a vengeance, for when I was next time down Coast in the Oil Rivers I was presented with specimens that had been caught in Old Calabar and kept as big curios. ”

“ In China and Japan it is replaced by an equally large species, M. anguillicaudatus.
Nemachilus.—No erectile sub-orbital spine. Six barbels, none at the mandible. Dorsal fin opposite to the ventrals.
The greater number of Loaches belong to this genus; about fifty species are known from Europe and temperate Asia; such species as extend into tropical parts inhabit streams of high altitudes. Loaches are partial to fast-running streams with stony bottom, and exclusively animal feeders. In spite of their small size they are esteemed as food where they occur in sufficient abundance. ”