gems, corundum, history.1, carbuncle, legends, lore, garnet, spinel

To illustrate the Gospel precept “Be ye wise as serpents” in his Confessio Amantis (I, 463 ff.), John Gower makes use of an interesting bit of folklore. It is the account of a “serpent which that Aspidis / Is cleped” whose forehead is studded with the very precious stone, the carbuncle. To procure the gem, snake charmers seek to lull the adder into insensibility. However, the clever serpent lays one ear close to the ground, stops up the other with its tail, and thus, like Ulysses among the sirens, preserves itself from seduction. Gower’s editor, G. C. Macaulay, notes that the legend is founded upon Psalm 58:4–5: “They are like the deaf adder that stoppeth her ear; which will not hearken to the voice of charmers, charming never so wisely.” To St. Augustine, Macaulay attributes the first suggestion of the serpent’s ingenious method of stopping her ears; but, the editor points out, it was to Isidore, bishop of Seville, who follows Augustine’s account in the serpent section of his Etymologiae, that the Middle Ages were indebted for their version of the legend. Macaulay might have cited, too, as a source, the description of the adder in the Physiologus, which adds many details. The enchanter in this bestiary is able to approach the adder by casting before it successive trusses of dried plants upon which the serpent exhausts her fiery breath. Then, when the adder tries to stop her ears to shut out the blandishments of the charmer, he stretches forth a rod and separates her tail from her ear. The adder dies at once, and the enchanter “takes from her whatever he wishes.”