Toads have long been the subjects of ancient myths and legends, and unfortunately they usually aren't portrayed in a positive way. Some of us may remember toads from stories we were told as small children that involved toads being tools of withcraft. In early European culture it was thought that inferior level demons would inhabit animal forms, usually amphibian or reptile because of their less human nature. Many believed that witches kept them in boxes (as seen on the right) to be utilized in spells for their magical properties. This trend became widespread belief because many "healers" or early doctors kept toads or unusual pets. The notion of keeping them in a box was suggested as a form or imprisoning the demon and making them manageable. Other records made mention of toad activity or presence during the execution of people accused of being a witch. Why were toads painted in this light? My guess would be it had something to do with their appearance and misunderstood biology. Toads are dark colored not bright and vibrant and have a warty or coarse appearance that may be very unpleasant to some. Also warts were are commonly associated with warts or unclean skin. Although they are not intentionally secretive, many amphibians are not commonly noticed. Toads are often on the ground and due to their color they are seldom noticed. Perhaps there habitat may also be a reason for their association with witchcraft. Toads are often times found in moist boggy areas or swampy areas that were portrayed in the middle ages as enchanted or magical, since they were creatures of this environment one may assume they also have the same enchanted properties. These are just my rationalizations they are not backed by literature in any way.
There are other mentions of toads in some cultures that were heroic rather than demonic. In Iroquois Indian culture, there is a myth that describes the toad as the creator of earth. The story goes that many different aquatic animals dove in search of mud requested by the first humans that fell from the island in the sky. Many animals tried to dive to the bottom of the ocean/body of water and retrieve mud but none was successful until the toad gave it ago. The mud was then taken and spread onto the back of a turtle until it grew to be the size of a continent. This is a much different image for our friend from the Bufonidae, which may be shared among other Native American tribes, as most of them were very respectful of nature and strove to maintain a good relationship with nature. Either way who'd of thought that so many stories would be told about our little amphibian friend?!
website references: http://dept.cs.williams.edu/~lindsey/myths/myths_12.html;
http://www.all-creatures.org/articles/rf-toads.html
3 comments:
Hi! I was a little surprised by the topic you are writing about, but it's quite curious. I loved fairy tales as a child (and still do), and because most of those are Western, I can relate to what you described very well. And then I tried to remember how they are portrayed in my own culture's "fairy tales," and I'm having trouble thinking of any. So maybe that means they are not thought of as that bad in Asia? However, not from fairy tales, they do stand for good luck for earning money at least nowadays. So it's not a surprise to see statues of them with gold coins or "yuan bao" in a Chinese restaurant or at somebody's home, even though I have no idea when that started. And all these make me want to know how other herpts are portrayed in my culture. There shall be a blog coming soon on that!
I really enjoyed this mythology post! I remember when I was younger how I always associated toads with witches due to the materialism that has used the myth for profit. I find it interesting that what you researched states that toads were thought to have magical properties and kept as pets even by doctors because of this belief, since they are mistakenly associated with people obtaining warts, which I would think be seen as a negative aspect. I have to wonder how people explained the warts (excluding the fact that warts are now known to be caused by a virus that toads do not have), that if someone kept one as a pet in order to keep the "demon" imprisoned, if they were to obtain a wart did they believe that the demon or something negative had escaped from the toad and latched onto them? Bad witches are usually portrayed with quite a few large warts on their faces and they sometimes have toads as their pets, so maybe the warts were believed to have been a manifestation of the evil escaping and becoming a part of the person who kept the toad as a pet? I only thought about this due to the memory of good witches not having any warts most of time (at least the ones I experienced as a child) even if they own a toad. Either way, thank you for the interesting post!
Perhaps toads were also viewed negatively due to their toxicity (which would also make them a valuable ingredient for witches' brews).
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