Nargile

“ Nergal, who became the god of violent destruction in general, and, more particularly, the god of war, the god whose emblem was the lion, who was cruel and of forbidding aspect,—such a god was admirably adapted to rule those who could only look forward to a miserable imprisonment in a region filled with horror. Nergal, therefore, became the chief god of the pantheon of the lower world. ”

“ Crawling into the tepee, Narcisse turned back the blankets from the huddled body. A mat of long gray hair and beard obscured the sunken features of an old half-breed. Hurriedly he examined the body for signs of life. Detecting a faint flutter of the heart, the Company man vigorously set to work in a struggle with the white death for the life of the man he had found.
Bringing up his sled, he soon had a fire going under kettles of tea and pemican. Then he started in to rub the circulation back into the shrivelled limbs of the old breed. ”

“ Nergal, the mighty among the gods, whose conflict is irresistible, who lends me victory in his great violence, who shall consume his subjects like a weak reed, with his mighty weapon he will cut off his limbs, he shall break as an earthen image. ”

“ Long alone sat Narcisse after his friend left him. Many and far trails he travelled in memory; from a lone tepee on the Drowning River, north up the east coast, where the white lights veil the stars; south to the iron rails; west where the sun sets in the great barrens. Over these his fancy hurried him by phantom dog-team and canoe, always seeking one who eluded him. Again he lived through the torture of those goalless years as he pursued his quest. Twice in the night, when the old hate momentarily mastered the growing peace in his heart, he went to the bedside of the man he had sworn to kill. ”

“ In The Nigger of the Narcissus the death of the negro, James Wait, immediately affects the lives of a number of very ordinary human beings whose friends and intimates we have become—but that shadow that traps the feet of the negro, that alarms the souls of Donkin, of Belfast, of Singleton, of the boy Charlie, creeps also to our sides and envelops for us far more than that single voyage of the Narcissus. ”

“ O Nero, I will confess to thee that I have talked to Acte; I have talked to Christian slaves—once my fellow-slaves—in thy Palace and the household of Narcissus, and I know that the gods—or that God, if (as they say) there be but one God—is with them. ”

“ Narvasque followed into the deep jungle, unarmed as he was; there a deadly combat must have ensued, for when his cries aroused us, as we sat within the hut, we found him bitten on every part of the body, and so near death that he had only time to tell how it happened, when he expired. ”

“ In the religious texts, the cruel aspects of this god are almost exclusively emphasized. He is the one god towards whom no love is felt, for he is a god without mercy. The fierce aspects of the solar Nergal are accentuated in Nergal, the chief of the pantheon of Aralû. He becomes even more ferocious than he already was, as a god of war. His battle is with all mankind. He is greedy for victims to be forever enclosed in his great and gloomy domain. Destruction is his one and single object; nothing can withstand his attack. ”

“ Meantime the Narcissus, with square yards, ran out of the fair monsoon. She drifted slowly, swinging round and round the compass, through a few days of baffling light airs. Under the patter of short warm showers, grumbling men whirled the heavy yards from side to side ”

“ He is indeed the sun in its malevolent form, fierce and destroying, for in myth the sun can be evil as well as good. We thus find the solar power depicted as a fierce warrior slaying his thousands and tens of thousands. Again it is quite possible for a solar deity to have an underworld connexion, seeing that the sun is supposed to travel through that gloomy region during the night. We thus see how Nergal could combine so many seemingly conflicting attributes. As god of the dead he has a host of demons at his command, and it may be these who do his behests in spreading pestilence and war. ”

“ The sheykhs light their long pipes, and squatting on deck gravely wait. The men who have tobacco roll up cigarettes and smoke them. The swimmers come on board for reinforcement. The poor fellows are shivering as if they had an ague fit. The Nile may be friendly, though it does not offer a warm bath at this time of the year, but when they come out of it naked on the rocks the cold north wind sets their white teeth chartering. The dragoman brings out a bottle of brandy. ”

“ Muffled as she was in the veil, she was like to suffocate for air to breathe, yet she would not expose herself to the gaze of human beings. It was noon when she entered the square of the great gods and passed the door of the temple of Nergal, looking with weary eyes into its vast and cool interior. At some distance within was a group of priests, Sangû, Enû, and Barû, men of importance in their several stations. These the plague-stricken eyes of the woman failed in the dim light to see. ”

“ Among other nations, the sword is, similarly, the symbol of the deity, as the plague-bringer as well as the warrior.
To this day, a pestilence is the general accompaniment of war in the East, or follows in its wake. Different from Nin-ib, who is also a god of war, Nergal symbolizes more particularly the destruction which accompanies war, and not the strong champion who aids his subjects in the fight. Nergal is essentially a destroyer, and the various epithets applied to him in the religious texts, show that he was viewed in this light. ”

“ At one instant they became to his fevered fancy the fierce eyes of a savage, desert born and bred, observing his death with a curiosity at once unmoved and strangely childlike. Then he thought that he saw the eyes expand, dilate, grow enormous, the eyes of some misshapen monster thing, into whose lair he was the first man since the first dawn to penetrate. Northrup's reeling brain groped insanely for the visualization of the great body to which the eyes must belong, and which he could not see. ”

“ Narcissus, the beautiful son of a nymph and a river god, was hunting in a lonely forest one day when Echo saw him pass. To her he seemed more fair than god or man, and once she had seen him she knew that she must gain his love or die. ”

“ His death, however, had not been like that of an ordinary man; it was not Namtaru, the spirit of fate, who had taken him, nor a misfortune such as befalls ordinary men, but Nerigal's unsparing lier-in-wait—yet though Nerigal was the god of war, Enki-du had not fallen on the battlefield of men, but had been seized by the earth (apparently the underworld where the wicked are is meant) in consequence, seemingly, of some trick or trap which had been laid for him. ”

“ Our shirt, chemise, chemisette, etc., was unknown to the Ancients of Europe.
[FN#588] Arab. "Narjís." The Arabs borrowed nothing, but the Persians much, from Greek Mythology. Hence the eye of Narcissus, an idea hardly suggested by the look of the daffodil (or asphodel) -flower, is at times the glance of a spy and at times the die-away look of a mistress. Some scholars explain it by the form of the flower, the internal calyx resembling the iris, and the stalk being bent just below the petals suggesting drooping eyelids and languid eyes. ”

“ Naraini, meanwhile, behind her veil, gurgled with soft laughter, pleased at being able to test the value of her beauty on the man she meant to rule by it. So they stood--she in the shadow at one end of the alley, he in the shadow at the other; between them the scented path bordered by the runnels of water slipping by to bring a deluge to some portion of that little world. Some might have called it a pretty scene, instinct with the joy of youth; others might have turned their heads away, praying to be delivered from the world, the flesh, and the devil. ”

“ But speaks not one wise woord throughout the yeere.
But, to define a gull in tearms precise,
A gull is hee that seemes, and is not, wise."
That the play now under consideration is the work of some member or members of the college of S. John's there can be no doubt. It is, as the Prologue affirms, "Ovid's owne Narcissus," i.e., the story of Narcissus as told in the third book of the Metamorphoses, which forms the basis of the plot; and the resemblance to the Latin is in parts so close as necessarily to imply a knowledge of that language on the part of the writer. ”

“ The features of the human monster before me were mild and almost handsome; a heavy eye and a figure tending to fulness gave the impression of a quiet mind, and but for an occasional restlessness of brow and a brief glance from under it, in which the leaden eye darted suspicion, I should have pronounced Nero one of the most indolently harmless of mankind. ”

“ Echo and the other nymphs were avenged, yet when they looked on the beautiful dead Narcissus, they were [Pg 180] filled with sorrow, and when they filled the air with their lamentations, most piteously did the voice of Echo repeat each mournful cry. Even the gods were pitiful, and when the nymphs would have burned the body on a funeral pyre which their own fair hands had built for him, they sought it in vain. For the Olympians had turned Narcissus into a white flower, the flower that still bears his name and keeps his memory sweet. ”

“ Later in the day, however, Ohlsen, climbing a neighbouring hill to scan the horizon, and see if the ice had slackened, found the dead carcass of a narwhal—a happy discovery, which has secured for us at least six hundred pounds of good wholesome flesh. The length of the narwhal was fourteen feet, and his process, or ‘horn,’ from the tip to its bony encasement, four feet. We built a fire on the rocks, and melted down his blubber; he will yield readily two barrels of oil. ”

“ And age, like winter, robs the blooming fair. Slightly suggestive of the boy in Struwwelpeter who took root and grew sprouts because he would not move when he was told, but eminently moral.
But whether or no the flower of “vain Narcissus” fame was a polyanthus or a Poeticus, this is certain, varieties of both kinds grow in Greece, and apparently have grown there as far back as anything did. Over and over again Narcissi occur in classic literature, often with the qualifications purpled or croceum, which suggests the dark centred Poeticus. ”

“ The priests, when they spoke of Nergal, had in mind always the companionship with Allatu. But the association of ideas which thus led to assigning [Pg 584] a god who was originally a solar deity, a place in the lower world bears the impress of the schools. The popular development of Nergal ceased, when he became the local god of Cuthah. It is only as an outgrowth of the systematized pantheon that we can understand the transformation involved in making of a local deity, the head of a pantheon that is itself an outcome of the later phases assumed by the religion. ”

“ Some of these stones are in the British Museum and show no signs of anything supernatural about them, but the natives hold them in great dread and reverence.
When a man desires the death of any one, he visits the Narak—he may only desire to give him a disease, but it is usually death he is after when calling on the Narak-burner—and brings with him some hair or food or some particle of clothing belonging to the man he wishes shall suffer. ”

“ There is, after all, a mysterious horror about the lame boy,—some impish changeling of evil parentage, foisted on hell, perhaps, as Nadir thrust his earth-born baby into heaven,—who every Midsummer Night and every Christmas Eve summoned the werewolves to their secret meeting, whence they rushed ravenously over the German forests. ”

“ Most mighty one who is like thee who rivals thee?
Nergal who is like thee who rivals thee?
With the change of the invocation from “Lord” to “Most mighty one” to “Nergal” the lines undoubtedly grow in intensity until the name Nergal, which is held back until the third line, would be thundered forth in that third line with the greatest enthusiasm. Here again it seems highly probable that a choir chanted the refrain: “Who is like unto thee, who rivals thee?” The second part of this hymn consists of eighteen lines in couplets and triplets in praise of the word of Nergal. ”

“ In the heart of this mountain was a cave wherein dwelt a hermit, a wise and good man, whose name was Nagarguna. To this refuge the Prince now sped, and the hawks were almost upon him when he flew against the rough wooden door of the cave and beat his wings wildly upon it. Nagarguna opened it, the dove flew in and fell exhausted upon the floor.
“What is the matter, little creature?” said the hermit, picking up the white bird and holding him gently in his hands.
“I am pursued!” gasped the Prince, “my life is in great danger. ”

“ King Nasrulla. The Lord of the Sky rises to look on the gardens where the nightingales have been singing.
Nourmahal. But when he finds that the nightingales are silent, he passes to other gardens.
King Nasrulla. Following the song, as I follow the lisp of spring in your voice, the flutter of the wings of birds in the branches when buds are swelling.
Nourmahal. It is the flutter of wings and the song that you care for; it is not the bird. ”

“ By the clear moonlight Nadir beheld the body of the serpent, stretched along the rock, and said, "Thou hast lived for evil, but even evil pays its tribute to the will of Heaven. Man knows not its use, as the insect destroyed by the icy wind of this night knows not that that wind would dispel the clouds. ”

“ Alas! that I should ever have been the cause of such a foul effect! But let it be so; the whitest skins have moles, the sun has spots; he is my mole, my spot; and I, I am the father of the fool, Narcisse.”
Narcisse was that moment at a tavern in the beautiful village of Cote des Neiges, adjacent to Stillyside, and much resorted to by pleasure seekers from Montreal. His companions, too, were there, bewailing the loss of one of their fowling-pieces, and devising means for revenge on their interrupter and successful assailant. ”