Sexual Horns: The Anatomy and Metaphysics of Cuckoldry in European Folklore

It seems remarkable how often we call “myths” the kind of arbitrary constructs in other peoples' worldview that we tend to attribute to the nature of things in our own case. Double standards may be involved, of course; but it could also be the case that one tends to miss the semiotic essence of the cultural construct one calls “reality.” As every anthropologist knows, one's most cherished cultural assumptions tend to remain implicit; otherwise put, worldview is largely unconscious. This paper explores the possibility of plumbing unconscious aspects of one's own culture in order to assess what some might call—regarding other cultures—the mythic underpinnings of worldview.


IN MEMORIAM ALAN DUNDES
It seems remarkable how often we call "myths" the kind of arbitrary constructs in other peoples' worldview that we tend to attribute to the nature of things in our own case. Double standards may be involved, of course; but it could also be the case that one tends to miss the semiotic essence of the cultural construct one calls "reality." As every anthropologist knows, one's most cherished cultural assumptions tend to remain implicit; otherwise put, worldview is largely unconscious. This paper explores the possibility of plumbing unconscious aspects of one's own culture in order to assess what some might call-regarding other cultures-the mythic underpinnings of worldview.
The pretext taken is the obscure, if unabated, folk notion of transmissible sexual horns. To clarify this notion, the following discussion engages the très longue durée of basic mental categories having endured in European folklore throughout centuries. Such a project entails taking into account ancient sources, along with modern ethnographies, to elicit immemorial folklore. But let me place a caveat here. In this exploration, tangible customs and socalled beliefs are not taken at face value; rather, they are seen as signifierspointers for a less tangible conceptual fabric of cultural meanings. Moreover, the discussion seeks such meanings in the subconscious logic of folklore imagery and customs, by trial and error, rather than in conscious rationalizations by any particular individual. Indeed, it is assumed that even the tiniest scrap of folklore teems with significance if placed in its proper mental context. But what such contexts are cannot be postulated a-priori; instead, each has to be patiently unraveled. This is why it matters to set out from a conspicuous and resilient (if obscure) notion, such as transmissible sexual horns. From the start, there are obvious clues to follow. Any attentive reader of Shakespeare may notice that the theme of cuckoldry relates the ubiquitous topic of horns to a curious birdthe cuckoo. And the quizzical reader might wonder why cheated husbands 396 0010-4175/06/396-418 $9.50 # 2006 Society for Comparative Study of Society and History should happen to be called after the he-goat (cabrón), and whether this relates to the longstanding trend of calling children "kids." By and by, the inquiry patiently follows the thread of each given problem, then weaves together individual threads in a bid for added clarification (which, in turn, occasionally brings to light new threads to be followed and eventually weaved together to produce further clarification. . .).
Such inductive procedure amounts to gradually building a heuristic frame of intelligibility in the light of which a number of obscure (if familiar) cultural notions may hopefully regain clarity and purpose. Overall, the inquiry discloses a sexual anatomy as well as a traditional metaphysics of cuckoldry and procreation. Ultimately, it is hoped that this dabbling in folklore intended to illuminate "mythic" aspects of Weltanschauung may provide modern readers with the means for looking anew at familiar things.

A S H A K E S P E A R E A N T H E M E
John Brand, the English nineteenth-century antiquarian, defines thus the scope of our problem: "The consideration of the vulgar saying, that a husband wears horns, or is a cornute, when his wife proves false to him; as also that of the meaning of the term cuckold, which has for many years been the popular indication of the same kind of infamy, which also it has been usual slyly to hint at by throwing out the little and forefinger when we point at those whom we tacitly call cuckolds." 1 It is amazing how widespread this imagery is, considering its opacity. Think of it: why should horns and cuckoos be the attributes of the unhappy husband?
Brand rightly records his perplexity that the word cuckold, "generally derived from cuculus, a cuckoo, has happened to be given to the injured husband, for it seems more properly to belong to the adulterer, the cuckoo being well known to be a bird that deposits its eggs in other birds' nests." He notes that the same applies to the saying that the cheated husband wears horns, for, "It is well known that the word horn in the Sacred Writings denotes fortitude and vigour of mind; and that in the classics, personal courage . . . is intimated by horns. Whence then are we to deduce a very ancient custom . . . of saying that the unhappy husbands of false women wear horns, or are cornutes?" 2 In the same vein, Julian Pitt-Rivers, working in the context of contemporary Spanish culture, acknowledges the "curious inversion" through which the "word cabrón (a he-goat), the symbol of male sexuality in many contexts," refers "not to him whose manifestation of that quality is the cause of the trouble but to him whose implied lack of manliness had allowed the other to replace him." To answer this question, Pitt-Rivers proposes that received horns represent the ritual defilement, or "state of desecration," of the husband unable to defend the "sanctity" of his wife's virtue. In this perspective, the cheated husband's horns are both the devil's symbol, rife with antisocial connotations (for the husband has failed to defend a vital social value), and the stigma of his fall under the male rival's domination. But this fails to explain why horns, deemed prophylactic and virile, should stand for desecration and defilement. And the basic question remains: why would the specifically phallic symbol fall upon the head of a man unable to keep his wife? 3 Pitt-Rivers actually provides a clue in saying that the transfer of horns shows the humiliated husband "has fallen under the domination of its [sic] enemy and must wear his symbol." However, to understand what is at stake we must turn to William Shakespeare's expertise in folklore. In The Merry Wives of Windsor, Shakespeare presents a lascivious knight, Falstaff, who proclaims that his cudgel "shall hang like a meteor o'er the cuckold's horns" of a certain lady's husband (2.2.250 -51). What is more, Falstaff-"disguis'd, like Herne, with huge horns on his head" (4.5.43 -44)-boasts to the two merry wives he covets that "my horns I bequeath your husbands" (5.5.24). Although one of the latter does assimilate Falstaff's horned likeness to that of the devil (5.2.13 -14), the knight himself compares it to the bull shape of amorous Jove. Moreover, the lascivious fellow's horns are variously assimilated to those of a stag, a male deer, and a buck (5.5.1 -25)-of, that is, males renowned for their sexual prowess. This said, it is important to note that the ultimate aim of the unfolding masquerade is to "dis-horn the spirit" (4.4.61); indeed, by the end of the day, the revengeful husband is in a position to call the defeated Falstaff (whose virile horns have now been removed) "a cuckoldly knave," who enjoyed from the husband not the wife, but the "cudgel" (5.5.107 -10). 4 So, horned Falstaff is variously assimilated to the devil, the Wild Hunter, and the amorous mode of Jupiter consorting with human maidens. His horns connote transgressive virility, the otherworldly origin of which is clear. Thus, the harassing rogue is horned, and to "dis-horn the spirit" amounts to neutralizing his amorous drive. The second thing to note is that to make another man a cuckold entails passing on one's own horns. Hence, the enterprising knight intends to turn cheated husbands into cuckolds by bequeathing them his horns, and he is defeated as he fails to do so. Third, to pass on horns implies asserting male supremacy over one's rival. This is why the lecherous knight would like to put the cuckolded husband under the dominion of his "cudgel," and why his inability to do so amounts to being bested by the victorious husband's "cudgel." In short, Shakespeare's usage of horns imagery suggests that a man, in seducing another's wife, transfers his own horns of virility onto the cheated husband's head even as he asserts male supremacy over the cuckold. The convergence with Pitt-Rivers' contemporary Iberian data is striking; indeed, Pitt-River's intuition that a man's inability to defend his wife's chastity amounts to incapacity to defend his own honor is best understood in light of Shakespeare depiction of cuckoldry in the terms of a man having his "gates open'd," even as his wife is "sluiced," by another man (The Winter's Tale 1.2.191 -8). In other words, the unfaithful wife's openness to another man is that of the cuckold himself, which explains the feminization of the latter in regard of his "sluicing" rival. 5 Now we are ready to consider Alan Dundes' proposition that the basic message of bequeathing horns is that the husband "is a male without horns, without a functioning phallus," for it is the rival enjoying his wife "who has the horns and who is providing the horns" for him. This insight must, I think, be taken one step further. The issue is not simply that the seducer is affirming his virility at the expense of the husband but that a transfer of virility supposedly takes place between the two men. To put it differently, the notion of a transfer of horns between two rivals entails that the seducer grants the stuff of virility to the husband, who appears feminized in that-to use Shakespearean terminology-his own "gates" are symbolically opened to his rival's "sluicing." In short, one reason why the wronged husband gets on his head the unmistakable attribute of masculinity even while being feminized is that the passing of horns symbolizes a transfer of substance between two men. 6 Note a crucial specification. Even though in Shakespearean usage the cuckoldry horns are those of animals deemed particularly virile-bull, deer, elk, buck-it is specifically buck horns that Falstaff plans to bequeath on the merry wives' husbands (Merry Wives 5.5.22-25); indeed, Falstaff's disguise includes a "buck's head." This is significant, for elsewhere Shakespeare sums up the very least noble aspects of "whoremaster man" in the expression "goatish disposition" (King Lear 1.2.112 -21). Isidore of Seville links such disposition to sexual intemperance as he writes, "the he-goat is a luscious and shameless beast, always anxious to copulate . . . its phallus is so burning that its blood can dissolve a diamond." (Etymologies 12.14). In the same vein, a seventeenth-century work in Latin (cited by Brand) proposes that the attribution of horns to the cheated husband "derives from an insensibility peculiar . . . to the he-goat, who will stand looking on while another is possessing his female." This is confirmed by modern ethnological fieldwork. 7 Anton Blok notes that Mediterranean societies generally posit a contrast between the ram, regarded as the model of the sort of masculinity that involves controlling the females under one's guard, and the he-goat, represented as the paradigm of male lasciviousness and permissiveness. What is more, Blok suggests this polarity is part of a wider system of classification that places rams (and sheep generally) on the side of honor, masculinity, virility, and so forth; and he-goats (and goats generally) on the side of shame, women, cuckolds, and so on. This presupposes the goats' well-established reputation for concupiscence, which befits Shakespeare's use of the expression "goatish disposition" to sum up the least noble human aspects. In this light, we have the means to understand the conflation (noted by Pitt-Rivers) of the wronged husband and the seducer under the cabrón epithet insofar as the he-goat metaphor is all about the coexistence of two males peacefully sharing a female, consequently assimilated to a she-goat-the standard epithet for fickle women in southern Iberia. 8 Overall, the classificatory scheme pinpointed by Blok makes a sharp distinction between the kind of persons who indulge in amorous triangles, therefore assimilated to goats as a species, and individuals who go for matrimonial steadfastness, on the model of sheepish women and their fierce ram-like protectors, and are consequently assimilated to sheep as a species. Note one consequence. While males who behave as rams conduct their virility in a controlled and vigilant way-the hallmark of honorable masculinitymales behaving like he-goats display the kind of shameful, uncontrolled sexuality allegedly characteristic of femininity. This means the sexuality of men branded as he-goats is deemed unmanly. Not surprisingly, both the wronged husband and the horny seducer-classified together on the side of goats, not sheep-present female traits on closer examination. Indeed, not only is the 7 Shakespeare, Complete Works, 87, 1133. I am translating from the fine bilingual edition of San Isidoro de Sevilla, Etimologías, J. Oroz Reta, and M. A. Marcos Casquero, eds., vol. 2, Libros Xl -XX (Madrid: Biblioteca de Autores Cristianos, 1994). The Latin text in question is quoted, translated into English, in Brand and Ellis, Observations, 2: 184. Jones likewise shows that the horns of several animals (goats, bulls, stags) will do for the cuckold in medieval Italy, and he provides an example in which an artist specifically depicts "the cuckold's horns as those of the goat" (Secret Middle Ages, 68). 8 In Portuguese the term veado, "deer," is sometimes used to designate the horned cuckold, also dubbed corno, "horn," but otherwise more commonly named cabrão. Anton Blok, "Rams and Billy-Goats: A Key to the Mediterranean Code of Honour," Man 16, 3 (1981): 428-31. Pitt-Rivers, "Honour," 48, 63. husband unmistakably feminized even as he gets virile horns; the bestowing of these implies the feminization of the horny seducer. 9 In sum, we have seen that (i) horned animals in general-including bulls, rams, and he-goats-are clear and constant symbols of virility, but (ii) there is a basic difference between rams and he-goats: while the latter are promiscuous, thus shameful, the former are fiercely exclusive and thus honorable. From these assessments, two corollaries may be drawn.
First, the common ground between rams and he-goats suggests that all men (honored or otherwise) have their correspondents in horned animals. Here we may go back to Shakespeare, who states that "unaccommodated man is no more but . . . a . . . forked animal" (King Lear 3.4.106-7). Compare the information that in contemporary Sicily, "one expresses the worth of a child by the hardness of its small horns"; or that in Mexico, "baptism . . . causes one of the child's two horns-symbolic of his animalistic status-to fall off. Confirmation . . . completes the child's transformation into a human being . . . the parents or godparents often comment to the child . . . 'the other horn has already fallen.'" Claudine Vassas notes that the premise of a gradual metamorphosis of newborns into human shape (implied in the image of horns that fall) is current throughout Europe, where vox populi has it that the unbaptized child "belongs to the devil." Again, we meet with horns in association with the otherworld. More to the point, the image of horned babies suggests that the full human condition is a cultural development from a basic horned condition. 10 This appears to illuminate Shakespeare's statement that unaccommodated man is a forked animal. Lear actually utters this insight as he is in the process of losing his mind and of tearing off his clothes, that is, of regressing to a primordial stage-for he personifies the maxim that "old fools are babes again" (1.3.20)-figuratively expressed as one in which he leaves "his horns without a case" (1.5.39). Lear, likened to the bird that raised the cuckoo in its nest (1.4.214-15)-the very image of the cuckold-and with figurative horns exposed, personifies, then, the quintessential forked animal within humans as he regresses to the unaccommodated condition of a baby. 9 The conceptual coherence afforded by the goat model is even clearer a contrario. In the New World, the goat has been discarded as a metaphoric image, every other term becoming therefore in some measure independent of the others, and the overall articulation has lost coherence. Thus, Stanley H. Brandes, "Animal Metaphors and Social Control in Tzintzuntzan," Ethnology 23, 3 (1984): 211, reports from Tzintzuntzan, Mexico that there the promiscuous man is symbolized by the terms burro (donkey) and garañón (stag), the fickle woman is called perra (bitch), and the cuckold is a figured buey (ox)-while the toro (bull) is reserved for one always seeking a fight. 10 Shakespeare, Complete Works, 1149. Salvatore D'Onofrio, "Autour de la règle," in J.-L. Jamard, E. Terray, and M. Xanthakou, eds., En substances: Textes pour Françoise Héritier Both horned-animal metaphors and the notion that babies come horned appear, therefore, to be aspects of the single notion that humans are in essence forked animals, with an implication of otherworldly origin. This would amount to saying that animal metaphors indicate the conceptual unity of apparently different realms, transition among which shows as metamorphosis. 11 The second corollary of the conceptual relationship between rams and he-goats, bearing on their dissimilarity, is that the latter but not the former transfer horns. As we have seen, the distinctive trait of cabróns-as opposed to men likened to rams-hinges on their transfer of horns through a female. Let us take a closer look at this image by considering Andalusian data reported by Stanley Brandes. This author asserts, "never is the husband's rival spoken of as the sole source of the horns"; rather, either the wife puts horns on the husband or else the illicit couple does it. But Brandes draws from this a conclusion that appears to be less than convincing. He suggests that the cuckold is transformed into "a super goat" by wearing the horns of the woman and so symbolically becoming a woman himself. However, the plain fact that the term cabrón stands for a superlative he-goat implies that he-goat horns go onto the wronged husband's head-by way of the shared metaphorical goat-from, necessarily, the head of the cabrón rival. Recall that the notion of an amorous triangle is the crucial feature of the goat metaphor. 12 From this perspective, we can do justice to Brandes' insight that the male attitude toward horns reflects "an actual fear of playing the passive role in a homosexual encounter." But first, we must heed Brandes' own remark that the notion of horns being put on the husband's head coexists with that of horns growing "from within the cuckold." Let us tentatively combine the ideas that horns pass from one man to another through a woman, and that they stem from the husband's head. Would this combination not yield the image of horns waning on the seducer's head even while growing on the husband's? Recall Pitt-River's anecdote that an Andalusian husband, made a cuckold by a rich man, was for this reason nicknamed "the horn of gold." This would suggest that the essence of the wife's rich seducer, transmitted to the husband's head, sprouts there in the guise of a symbolic horn. In short, it now appears that the virile substance of one man streams through 11 Shakespeare, Complete Works, 1134, 1136, 1138. Concerning the notion of metamorphosis, consider the following simple example. Brandes' affirmation that "there exists an unbridgeable gap between all animals, on the one hand, and cristianos . . . on the other," must be softened in light of his following statement: "Confirmation, the second sacrament, usually following within a year or two after baptism, completes the child's transformation into a human being" (Brandes, "Animal Metaphors," 208, my italics). 12 Brandes, Metaphors of Masculinity, 90 -91, 95.
the shared woman into the other man, there to somehow crystallize in the guise of horns. 13 We may consider in this perspective Blok's rather cryptic remark that "Sicilian men rarely drink milk. In fact, they regard it as abominable. Nor do women expect them to drink it." In other words, the sort of true male who refuses to share his wife likewise refrains from drinking milk. Would this imply, conversely, that to share one's wife amounts to drinking milk? At least, we may say this much: men who would share their wives are likened to males of the species that produces such milk as true men, on the side of rams and cheese, refuse to drink. The implication seems to be that only men assimilated to he-goats would incorporate goat milk-presumably, account taken of the goatish-triangle model, he-goat "milk." 14 Fortunately, we do not have to rely on inferences in this matter. The metaphoric identity of milk and semen, which tacitly underlies the abominable status of milk for Sicilian males, comes out openly in Iberia. As Brandes explains, in Spanish "leche means 'semen' as well as 'milk'; it is, in fact, the most universally and commonly employed word to refer to male sexual fluid." In the same vein, Françoise Héritier argues that the complex array of marriage prohibitions based on milk kinship in Muslim countries must be understood in relation to the proverb that "Milk comes from the man"meaning that a woman's milk comes from her husband's semen. In Sicily itself, Salvatore D'Onofrio points out that the sort of breast milk that is deemed beneficial-being dense and creamy, like sperm-presents a definite male connotation. 15 Such widespread semen/milk homology confirms that the sharing of one's wife and the ingestion of goat milk are synonymous images for the taking in of another man's substance-metaphorical he-goat milk, so to speak. This entails that the wronged husband grows horns because he is taking the metaphorical milk of his rival, whose virile horns dwindle in tandem with the growth of the cuckold's appendages. Hence, we understand the close connection between the bequeathing of horns and the loathing of unwittingly absorbing another male's substance, which amounts to the "actual fear of playing the passive role in a homosexual encounter" noted by Brandes. (Incidentally, this 13 Brandes, Metaphors of Masculinity, 91. Pitt-Rivers, "Honour," 50; cf. Brand and Ellis, Observations, 2: 185. The idea I am proposing-that the cuckold's horns are bequeathed, waxing on the husband's head while they wane on the seducer's-seems to me more inclusive than the hypothesis by D'Onofrio that the cuckold's horns are a "regression" of the husband's seed into his own head ("Autour," 263). It also allows us to discard D'Onofrio's exegesis (contradicting his preceding one) that the bequeathing of horns consists in replacing the husband's full horns by empty ones. 14 Blok, "Rams," 431-32. 15  entrenched fear could also explain the fact that men in Andalusia decidedly avoid taking Communion: for to take in the substance of Christ is, again in Brandes' words, "unmistakably identified with being a woman or having a feminine character.") Again, Shakespeare conveys the essence of the matter in having Falstaff-in between his first defeat that results in having the "belly full of ford" (the rightful husband's name) and a second defeat that results in being mistreated by the same husband's "cudgel"-pathetically refuse to ingest eggs so as not to absorb sperm; "pullet-sperm," as he slyly chooses to allude to cock seed (Merry Wives 3.5.27 -28, 3.5.32, 5.5.109 -11). 16 And so, we appear at last to be in a position to understand why the husband is deemed feminized even while a symbol of masculinity is growing on him. The model of the bequeathing of horns implies that these wane on the head of the man who spills his seed into the shared woman and correlatively wax on the head of the husband, who (by sharing this woman) absorbs his rival's substance. Hence we return to the statement that the rival males displaying a goatish sexuality share a feminine connotation: the husband is feminized because he receives male substance, which shows in growing horns; the seducer is "dis-horned" insofar as he relinquishes his virile stuff. Shakespeare, in the Merry Wives, has brilliantly reenacted this symbolism while reversing it. Even though Falstaff (mark the pun) is dis-horned, as one might expect, he fails to seduce the merry wives he covets. Instead, he suffers the husband's "cudgel," metaphorically absorbs the rival's substance, and in the end bears the cuckold horns. In this merry play, we face the twisted image of a cuckolded seducer.

T H E M A T T E R O F T H E F A C T S
The foregoing discussion suggests that the traditional model of cuckoldry involves the notion of a sexual contact between two men, one of whom performs the abomination of "drinking" and storing the other's "milk." Remarkably, this model implies that horns are (somehow) a concentrated form of sperm and that-insofar as accumulation of sperm in one man's body entails spermatic depletion for the other man-such good exists in a limited quantity. Now we must make sense of these clues in light of underlying assumptions regarding human physiology.
Brandes reports that in Andalusia, "breast milk is a 'limited good,' in George Foster's sense of the term," and so is semen perceived "as a finite 16 Brandes, Metaphors of Masculinity, 86. The use of "cock" for the penis falls, of course, within the scope of the observation that "close animals may . . . serve as near obscene euphemisms for unmentionable parts of the human anatomy," as noted by Edmund R. Leach, "Anthropological Aspects of Language: Animal Categories and Verbal Abuse," in W. A. Lessa  substance. . .. Since people consider semen to be an essential ingredient for maintaining a man's vigor, energy, and youth, its dwindling supply can only lead to his more rapid demise." Brandes adds, "Since semen . . . exists in limited supply, men should be careful to preserve it as much as possible. This means, for male youth and unmarried men of all ages, that self-control should be exerted against masturbation." 17 This remarkable aside leads us to the matter of the facts. It invokes the widespread belief that masturbation is bad for your wits, and that even female onanism weakens all faculties insofar as it draws on the "white fluids" (to speak like nineteenth-century French hygienist Julien-Joseph Virey). Such representations suppose that the whitish matter of the brain, bone marrow, and semen are essentially similar. Hence, the notion in contemporary Sicily that fellatio involves "marrow sucking" (as in the expression mi sucò a mududda) supposes that semen comes from the spinal marrow. In the same vein, I have often heard Portuguese expressions hinging on chupar o tutano, "sucking the marrow," to denote the act of bringing about a man's sexual exertion. This trend of ideas has a venerable age, for Shakespeare describes a man's exertion in bed as "spending his manly marrow in her arms" (All's Well that Ends Well 2.3.274 -75), just like Rabelais states that the exhaustion of the spermatic vessels leaves one "unmanned" (Tiers livre 6.35). On the prophylactic side, I have been taught as a child to eat the marrow of any bones in my plate on the grounds that this is particularly strengthening. 18 These few examples are parochial instances of the wider notion that-to put it at its simplest-male seed produces the body bones, from which marrow will again flow out as seed. Such doctrine was in favor among the ancient Egyptians and the Greeks, who seemingly conceived of the spinal cord and the phallus as one single reproductive organ. Plato, for instance, speaks of marrow as seed and defines the brain as that part of the marrow where divine seed is stored (Timaeus 73 -74). Consequently, he describes generation for both sexes as a passing of marrow-in fact, seed full of soul-from the head, down the neck and along the spine, to the appropriate sex organs thereby filled with the lust of generation (91b). It is also clear for Aristotle that "the nature of the semen is similar to that of the brain," and that bones are made of "the seminal and nutritious residue" (Generation of Animals 2.6.744b, 2.7.746b, cf. 1.20.728b, 2.6.743a). 19 We face here "a physiology of fungible fluids and corporeal flux," as Thomas Laqueur puts it, which allows for variations within the bonds of its basic postulates. For example, a Hippocratic account reported by Laqueur shows a complete picture of semen derived from blood, brain, and marrow: "Sperm, a foam much like the froth on the sea, was first refined out of the blood; it passed to the brain; from the brain it made its way back through the spinal marrow, the kidneys, the testicles, and into the penis." 20 This constant view, implying that the testicles are not the ultimate organs of spermatic generation, agrees with Aristotle's point that the testes' function is mainly to keep the spermatic ducts in place so as to steady secretions, much "as women fasten stones to the loom when weaving" (Generation of Animals 1.4.717a -b). This, again, fits with Plato's explication that the brain and the spine are an integral part of the reproductive apparatus. Note the agreement between Plato's notion that in the skull lies the "divine seed," for God placed here "the sovereign part of the human soul to be the divinity of each one" (Timaeus 73c, 90a), and Aristotle's assertion that semen "must either be soul or a part of soul, or something containing soul" (Generation of Animals 2.1.733b). Indeed, Aristotle states that the region about the eyes "is, of all the head, the most seminal part" because "the nature of the semen is similar to that of the brain" (2.7.747a). He also remarks that the seminal ducts of both males and females "adhere to the back and the region of the spine" (1.13.720a). This, of course, recalls Plato's assertion that "the marrow . . . passes from the head along the neck and through the back, and . . . produces . . . a lively desire of emission, and thus creates in us the love of procreation" (Plato, Timaeus 91a -b). 21 The hoary antiquity of these representations shows in their diffusion. Not only has Richard Onians retraced on an Indo-European scale the notion that the head contains the source of procreative life-power; Lévi-Strauss has mapped all across Asia the huge ethnographic span covered by the notion that bones come from the father (and flesh from the mother), with the implication that body bones are made of the coagulated father's sperm. As far away as Papua New Guinea, we meet the notion that "when a man ejaculates, the stuff inside his skull travels down through his spine and into his penis," the idea that "fellatio is like drinking your bone" to strengthen the fellator's "bone," and the tenet that bones are built from sperm. Overall, Héritier proposes that this notion comes from the repeated empirical observation that the long body bones enclose a substance analogous, in consistency as in color, to human semen. She comments, "It is not surprising that different people observing the same phenomena in the same way have reached the same conclusion: sperm and marrow are of the same nature and contain the germ of life, stored away like kernels." And she adds, "At the core of belief what we find is matter." 22 Such matter, I propose, is of the essence of cultural facts concerning horns. Just as the early spilling of semen will weaken your brain, so an accumulation of semen will predictably show as added vitality in the head. Onians has shown that the axiom that the head is the fountainhead of seed effectively accounts for the sexual value of hair and other outgrowths on the head. the contact with air. Likewise, Aristotle states that both hair and horns are made of such "superfluous matter" as is otherwise secreted as menstrual flow and semen (Generation of Animals 1.20.728b, 2.7.747a, 4.5.774a, cf. 3.11.762a). 23 Intriguingly, Héritier quotes an ethologist's description of how the springtime-abundant vegetal protein that females of Megacerus giganteus (a large deer now extinct) turned into milk for the newborn calves was used by males for the growth of their huge antlers; then, after the fights over females were over in fall, the males' antlers fell so they could divert nourishment for the needs of semen fabrication. It is remarkable how the equivalence of antlers, the milk of females, and the sperm of males in this description fits the traditional ideas on horns we have examined. Moreover, the constant inner logic of this trend of ideas makes it clear why in the Scriptures horns should be attributed, as Frederick Elworthy notes, to remarkable persons "as a mark of distinction-something to attract attention and to bespeak respect." The short answer, as Onians puts it, appears to be that "unusual growth of life-substance . . . meant unusual greatness." 24 With this in mind, we can return to my suggestion that the husband incorporates his rival's "milk" through his wife, who "puts horns" on her husband. This implies that (i) the wife transmits horns, in accord with the goat-triangle metaphor, account taken of the fact that she-goats actually have small horns; and (ii) sexually transmitted horns come from the male seducer. To understand the matter of the facts on the feminine side of this scheme, consider Elworthy's remark that "the women of the Druses in Lebanon wear silver horns upon their heads, larger or smaller, to distinguish the married from the single." Elworthy adds that among the Jewesses of Tunis a pointed cap, standing for "the Scriptural horn," is "much higher on the matron than the maid." (Similar hats appear to have been part of European dress codes; recall Perrault's depiction of the headgear the stepsisters of Cinderella wear at the fairy-tale ball as cornettes à deux rangs, and see such horns on the head of the stepmother in Andy Tennant's film Ever After: A Cinderella Story [1998].) Such customs appear to imply that the symbolic horns of married women actually increase, certainly due to their regular sexual activity. 23  Again, underlying representations concerning body fluids can clarify this matter. 25 Héritier notes, "since Aristotle, medical writers have not ceased to remark that married women have more abundant menses than young girls, which they explained by the contribution of spermatic substance." So then, married women have been supposed to have more abundant menses as well as bigger symbolic horns because married life purportedly involves a regular absorption of sperm. This supposes that sperm can turn to surplus blood (and horns) in women's bodies, in accordance with the ancient axiom of the fungibility of body fluids. Indeed, Aristotle states that both semen and menstrual blood are residues concocted from body blood (Generation of Animals 1.18.724b -25b, 1.19.727a, 2.4.740a), and he adds that hair and horns are made of residues that would otherwise turn into semen and menses (1.20.728b). In the same vein, Dante depicts blood turning into semen in men's bodies, and back into blood in women's "natural vessel" (Purgatorio 25. 37 -48). To such persistence in time, we must add the recurrence of this notion in space. For example, Héritier witnessed in Burkina Faso the selfsame belief that: "Sexual intercourse between spouses provides the wife with a surplus of blood, the larger part of which she loses through her menses, a fact that accounts for the abundance of menstrual blood shed by adult women as compared to nubile girls." 26 What is more, Héritier points out that in Africa illnesses such as genital elephantiasis, tuberculosis, and hemoptysis supposedly indicate that a man's wife has been adulterous. She explains this in light of the constant idea that the husband, in sharing his wife with her seducer, acquires a surplus of semen/ blood that either accumulates in his genitals or else must come out in the form of spitted blood. The background rationale for such notions, according to Héritier, is that "since blood is transformed, purified into sperm, reciprocally sperm is completely altered in the female body, turning into blood." Compare Maria Cátedra's allusion to the Spanish notion that male tuberculosis originates in intercourse, especially in menstrual sex. In fact, Héritier oscillates between the notions that the semen-turned-into-blood afflicting the husband is his rival's, or else his own refluxed, so to speak, on meeting the rival's seed within the common woman. Insofar as the bequeathing of horns goes, the first interpretation is clearly to be preferred. But one may not actually have to choose. Since, in the examples adduced by Héritier, the rival is of the husband's own blood, the accumulated semen-as-blood is both his own and the rival's-which, of course, generates an image of own blood regressing upon itself, such as one finds in both incest and menstrual sex. Héritier, Two Sisters, 251. María Cátedra Tomás, "Notas sobre la envidia: Los ojos malos In short, the widespread idea that a woman bloated with blood causes her regular mate to accumulate vital fluids is implied in European elaborations concerning horns. Married women have bigger symbolic horns than maidens do because only the former are supposedly "fed" by intercourse. Nonetheless, feminine appendages are generally smaller than their male counterparts insofar as women, and only women, cyclically shed surplus blood. What is more, the notion that semen in a woman's body will revert to blood implies that a wife "sluiced" by a lover becomes bloated with blood that will again translate in her husband's body into male "milk," symbolically stored into waxing horns. Note that, even though the adulterous woman is a source of surplus juices for her husband (who starts growing horns), the female-only capacity for cyclic purging keeps in check the size of her own symbolic horns. Therefore, down to the relative size of sexual horns (she-goats having smaller horns than males), the goatish triangle expresses with precision the physiological notions underlying cuckoldry. In a nutshell, the European goatish triangle involves the transmission of male "milk" between two men, via the shared woman's womb blood.

M E T A P H Y S I C A L C U C K O L D R Y
So far, we have considered the imagery of horns-transfer on the down-to-earth level of human bodies. Now we must expand our views and take notice of the cosmic import of cyclically waning and waxing horns. Not only is the new moon recurrently declared horned; Elworthy points out that the crescent moon figure-sometimes called "the old moon in the arms of the new," conventionally represented as a dark disk within the crescent-often appears in iconography as a disk on the head of a horned animal. In light of such association between horns and the regenerating moon, a striking parallel between the waning and waxing of cuckoldry horns and lunar phases becomes clear. On the one hand, we have the image of horns waning as a man pumps away his marrow, via a feminine womb, and then waxing as another man gets stuffed with virile marrow. On the other, there is the model of the moon decreasing to subsequently increase, horned, through those "between two months" periods (as Varro, On Agriculture 1.37.1, puts it) when menstrual discharges supposedly occur (Aristotle, Generation of Animals 2.4.738a). This homology between dark moons, deemed both "old and new" (Varro, On Agriculture 1.37.1), and the regenerating womb of women brings forth a hitherto unnoticed dimension of renewal that we must take into account. 28 entre los Vaqueiros de Alzada," in C. Lisón Tolosana, ed., Temas de antropología española In France, says Pierre Saintyves, marrow and seed (along with hairs and nails) used to be deemed dependent on the moon. And, notes Brand, it used to be said in England "that to the influence of the moon is owing the increase and decrease of the marrow and brain in animals." In the same vein, a seventeenth-century play (quoted by Brand) states that "when the moon's in the full, then wit's in the wane." Keep in mind that the new moon is deemed horned on the one hand, and that women's blood supposedly overflows, to use Aristotle's imagery, when the moon is dark (that, is, "empty") on the other. It seemingly follows that when the moon fills up with milky substance, its horns wax (like the wronged husband's appendages); and it wanes (rather like the seducer's antlers) as it pumps away vital marrow. In this light, the examined sexual circulation of body fluids appears to be part of a vaster flow ruled by the ever-changing moon. This, in turn, suggests that horn-bequeathing imagery is part of a wider notion of cyclic time involving perennial dissolution and renovation. 29 A paradigmatic example of the cyclic dimension of horned cuckoldry is to be found in the twelfth-century Vita Merlini, attributed to Geoffrey of Monmouth. In this account, both Merlin's wife and the Earth-presented in a metaphoric relationship-lay wasted when Merlin withdraws to the woods. The Earth will not "produce its multi-coloured flowers" until the return of "spring or summer-and the cuckoo back in song"; just so, Merlin's wife-in fairness "beyond . . . the rose in bloom, beyond the lilies of the field," and on whom alone the splendor of spring used to shineloses her "delicate bloom" until Merlin returns home (Vita Merlini 150-81). This is to say that the wizard's marital separation amounts to winter, and his return to his wife amounts to that of spring/summer over the land. In this context, the theme of the rival sets in. When Merlin is ready to leave home once more, and his wife again collapses as if dying, Merlin allows her to marry another man on condition that this new husband "never gets in my path or comes near me" (362 -81). Since the visits Merlin pays home are tantamount to the cuckoo back in song, the suggestion appears to be that the rival can only embrace the common woman during wintertime. The equivalence between Merlin's visits and the springtime appearance of the cuckoo, in turn, sets the stage for the bequeathing of horns on the cuckold-Merlin and the newly found husband, in turns. Let us scrutinize this aspect of the story. 30 While Merlin has been leading a wintry "animal life . . . among his woodland flock," living on frozen moss in the snow and the angry blast, his wife Guendoloena becomes legally promised in marriage; thus, the time comes for the inevitable meeting of the two rivals in love (Vita Merlini 416 -20). One night, when the horned moon is shining, the prophet watches a ray from Mars and a twin beam from Venus. Together, the two shafts announce a king dead and another king to be, as well as love divided. Merlin understands that Guendoloena "perhaps . . . is happy in the close embrace of another man. So I lose, another wins her"-yet, he adds, "she may marry now the time is right, and with my permission enjoy a new husband" (424 -51). Accordingly, on the morrow, Merlin brings to the wedding place of Guendoloena a herd of stags, she-goats, and does. The prophet himself rides the first stag. This fact, taken along with the hint that he has been living an animal life amongst the woodland flock, is to be understood in light of the traditional idea that Merlin can turn into a stag. So then, a symbolically horned Merlin, amounting to the spring cuckoo, turns up at the marriage of Guendoloena. This marriage, placed under a horned moon, is the prophesized dismissal of one king by another in the context of love divided-in other words, an act of cuckoldry amounting to horns bequeathed. Indeed, as soon as Merlin beholds his rival, he wrenches off the horns of the stag he rides and throws them at the bridegroom's head, knocking him lifeless and driving his spirit to the winds (452 -70). 31 Interpretation of this episode is relatively straightforward. Given the metaphorical association between a woman and the earth, Geoffrey portrays the contrasting seasonal aspects of the earth as a wifely opening to alternate husbanding agents. As Claude Gaignebet lucidly understands, in Geoffrey's tale the transition between the seasons-impersonated by rival husbandsgoes under the sign of horns. Indeed, the act of throwing horns on a rival under the horned moon sets the horned triangle in a seasonal setting. First, Merlin goes horned while his rival cohabits with the shared woman, then Merlin returns-as the cuckoo does-to make his rival a horned cuckold and send him to the netherworld until, again, the seasons' wheel turns round. 32 This interpretation finds confirmation in that Merlin's horned-cuckoo role is well known in folklore. By Carnival in Romania, young men disguised as horned cuckoos would come out of the woods and besmirch everyone 30  In short, the notion that horned beings and cuckoos bring over renewed fertility in a cyclic framework implies that husbandmen are seasonally assimilated to cuckolds. Such assimilation is quite conspicuous in Carnival customs. This is fitting because Carnival (just like Merlin's bequeathing of horns) falls under the aegis of a horned moon in the transition between wintertime and springtime. In this perspective, Arnold Van Gennep's information that the traditional parading of "senile, beaten, or cuckolded husbands" around hamlets or towns would oftentimes take place at Carnival is all the more interesting. The life-force symbolism of horns on these occasions is striking. On the one hand, weak husbands as well as women were made to kiss horns ("the horns of the bird," says one French source); on the other, weak husbands along with the newlyweds of the year (those, that is, without any children as yet) as well as unmarried young men were paraded on donkeys and made to wear horns. In the same vein, childless Portuguese newlyweds would be paraded in March, "bound and downcast," in the guise of cuckoos. 34 33 , 1982), 189-90. Just as in the goatish metaphor the term cabrón applies to both the seducer and the cheated husband, so in Portuguese the cuckold is named "cuckoo," and in vernal processions the same Clearly, Van Gennep's view that such customs are vindictive goes only so far in explaining them. Overall, we see that people deemed in special need of virile life force-women, men still unproven in the task of begetting, and weak husbands-were placed under the aegis of horns and/or the cuckoo. This implies that men as well as women would draw fertility from their contact with horns. Again, we meet the idea of the transcendent origin of all fertility, and its implication-all successful husbandmen are cuckolds in the fundamental sense that they are indebted to horned purveyors of fertility.
In sum, at the critical juncture of winter and springtime (when there is strongest hope for renewed life-stuff), the newlyweds of the year as well as the weakest of husbands used to express the situation of metaphysical cuckoldry afflicting all husbands. One corollary is that the goatish triangle model involves (in addition to ideas regarding a flow of fungible fluids among bodies) the notion of a wider circulation of life force between the otherworld and the human realm. In other words, the imagery of cuckoldry is metaphysical in essence, in that it expresses the supernatural origin of fertility, granted by horned purveyors to human couples. If so, then the congruence between the cuckoo and the horned dispenser of life force in the goatish triangle implies that the he-goat-like the cuckoo-must be a supernatural dispenser of life force. Let us consider one well-known example from ancient Italy.
In legendary stories about the genesis of Rome, there is one striking episode. Romulus and his turbulent male companions found themselves unable to impregnate the Sabine women they had kidnapped to obtain offspring. As a consequence, the first Roman procreation required divine intervention. As Ovid tells the story, this happy occasion was made possible by Juno Lucina. Enigmatically, the goddess commanded: "let the sacred hegoat . . . go in to Italian matrons." Immediately, a certain Etruscan augur slew a he-goat and "at his biding the damsels offered their backs to be beaten with throngs cut from the hide," hence getting pregnant (Fasti 2.441, 445-46). Note three points: First, Ovid narrates this boon of fertility in the context of the February full-moon rites of "two-horned Faunus" (2.267), nicknamed Inuus from the verb inire: "to go into, to cover." Second, the poet places the consequent bounty in the context of the renewing of the moon's "horns" on 1 March. Third, this bounty is at once human and agricultural, for it comprises the divine begetting of Romulus and Remus and the supernatural impregnation of the first Roman matrons as well as the onset of springtime (3.229 -48). Overall, says Ovid, "tis right that Latin mothers should disguised person represents the newly arrived cuckoo as well as the downcast cuckold. In all cases, the horned bestower of fertility and the cuckolded husband appear to be like two halves of one dynamic entity. observe the fruitful season" (3.243), which is his way of expressing the constant homology between women and the teeming earth in their common relationship to horned providers of life force. 35 Remarkably, when the first Roman matrons got pregnant by symbolically submitting to the divine he-goat they meritoriously behaved like procreative goats. By a necessary inference, their resigned husbands acted like patient cuckolds in regard of the divine provider of fertility. The bottom line, again, is that all husbands are essentially cuckolds on the face of the horned source of supernatural life force.
We find the same thing regarding the ritual reenactment of the impregnation of the first Roman matrons by Faunus. In the ancient festival of Lupercalia, celebrated annually on 15 February, youths wearing only goatskins about their loins would run around the ancient city of the Palatine. According to Plutarch, they would "strike all who meet them with the throngs, and young married women do not try to avoid their blows, fancying that they promote conception and easy child-birth" (Romulus 21.5). Servius confirms that girls were then "beaten with the throng of goatskin in order that they may escape barrenness and be fruitful." Moreover, a certain Anysius claims the rites were "aimed at promoting the growth of the crops." James Frazer synthesizes these representations by saying that the conspicuous dimension of annual purification of this festival was deemed to "repel the forces of evil and so to liberate the forces of good, thus promoting the fertility at once of man, of beast, and of the earth." In sum: youths incarnating he-goats, symbolically reenacting the sowing of wombs and fields by the sacred he-goat (both at the absolute origin of Rome's time cycles and at the start of each New Year), would impersonate the Shakespearean "drudge" for the benefit of Roman husbandmen. 36

S E A S O N A L B E S T I A R Y
A further word is in order regarding the stable symbolism of animals bearing these representations. Just as goatish Faunus was surnamed Lycaeus, the name Luperci applied to the young men who ran about clad in goatskins contained "wolf." The necessary inference that the Luperci figured composite figures of wolves/he-goats compares well to Michel Vulpesco's remark that in Romania, up to modern times, masked figures called Brezaia-figuring wolves, he-goats, and storks-would come out at the time of the ancient Lupercalia. What is more, Vulpesco notes that masks figuring horned cuckoos, making their appearance at Carnival, used to behave much like the ancient Luperci did. And in the Pyrenees, masks of goatskins figuring bears used to behave in the manner of Roman Luperci and Romanian cuckoos. Note that bears are supposed to leave their winter dens (just like cuckoos and storks are supposed to return from their winter abode) at the start of springtime. This perspective is useful in understanding Herodotus' information about ancient Neuri turning into wolves once a year (Histories 4.105), confirmed by an early seventeenth-century traveler who reports the belief that that the "people of Narva and Livonia become werewolves every year." In precisely this vein, a Livonian self-confessed werewolf has candidly told seventeenthcentury inquisitors that he and his companions annually strove to rescue from hell the seeds necessary for abundant crops and cattle. The implied link between wolves and the realm of the dead is confirmed, to pick but a famous example, in that the Germanic wolf Fenrir is the brother of Hell. Such data confirm the overall notion that fertility must be brought in from the otherworld every spring, oftentimes by animals that cross the fateful boundary, in association with horns. 37 Let us focus on the symbolism of the passage itself. Intriguingly, Plutarch reports that the Luperci, after slaughtering the goats, were supposed to touch the forehead of two youths of noble birth with blood and immediately wipe the stain off with wool dipped in milk; then, the youths must laugh (Romulus 21.4 -5). The hypothesis, suggested by early-day scholars, that a process of death and rebirth is enacted in this scene seems sustained in that the bear of the modern Pyrenean ritual is shaven with ewe's milk before being ritually shot and brought to life again-presumably in human shape, for (as Gaignebet shows) a bear rid of its fur shows as a human being. In the same vein, a group of Danish fairy tales (ATU 433B, King Wivern) presents a wivern being brought to human shape by discarding "shifts" until blood runs off it, and then being washed in milk or dressed in white linen. This fairytale shape shifter, like the ritual bear, regains human shape by discarding its animal envelope, and it shares with Roman youths going from blood to milk. 38 Why getting rid of an animal skin should amount to going from blood to milk is not too hard to fathom, since we have come across the notion that the body's white fluids are concoctions of blood on the one hand, and we have met a constant homology between bloody wombs and moist fields on the other. In light of the womb/field metaphor, the blood ! milk evolution outlines the growth process of both infants and seedlings. Babies evolve from feeding on womb blood to feeding on milk; seeds nurtured in the moist soil (equated to the bloody womb) develop into stalks filled with milky sap. So the seasonal passage from winter to spring, from hidden life to visible growth, is one from "blood" to "milk." What is more, birth itself involves shedding the amniotic membranes, often perceived as a second skin. 39 That the theme of skin change is central to cyclic renewal/rebirth helps explain the constant presence of werewolves-skin shifters par excellence-in association with the horned bestowers of supernatural life force.
Moreover, the homology between the Carnival bear stripped of its fur and the wivern freed of its sloughs recalls that werewolves and snakes have in common being skin shifters. And, of course, serpents are deemed chthonic animals, the sloughing of which parallels the moon's phases. (Werewolves and bears, too, have clear lunar connotations.) We have seen that the new moon, bringing new life from death, corresponds to the bleeding womb of women as well as to death turning into new life in teeming fields. 40 In sum, we find at the core of representations hinging on the goatish triangle a rejuvenating patch of earthy red associated with sloughing and the moon's phases. And we realize that representations of a transfer of horns between men through a woman imply cosmic symbolism as well as a sexual theory, under the common denominator of a wide circulation of vital force. In essence, the anatomy of cuckoldry implies a metaphysical view of procreation, unawareness of which obscures the meaning of many a resilient cultural trait. 41 40 On the connection of werewolves with the snake as well as with the moon-therefore, with vampiric imagery-see Jakobson and Szeftel, "Vseslav Epos," 64-66. É va Pócs mentions werewolf seers "characterized by underworldly 'snake-initiation,'" in Between the Living and the