Rensselaer Republican, Volume 27, Number 41, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 6 June 1895 — The Nobility of the Donkey. [ARTICLE]

The Nobility of the Donkey.

The donkey, who, rather undeservedly, has come to be considered one of the “naturals” of the animal world, was dedicated by the ancients to Bacchus, while the ass of Silenus was raised to a place among the stars. Apparently he was a more intellectual personage in early days than he Is supposed to be at present Ammonianus, the grammarian, possessed one who invariably attended bis master’s lectures on poetry, and would even leave the choicest luncheon of thistles to do so. “Wicked as a red ass” ran an old proverb, which the Copts believed in so firmly that every year they 'sacrificed an unhappy animal of the detested color by hurling it headlong from a wall. In an old black-letter translation of Albertus Magnus the donkey figures In the following extraordinary receipt: “Take an Adder’s ekyn, and Auri pigmentum, and greeke pitch of Reupiriticum, and the waxe of newe Bees,* and the fat or grease of an Asse, andbreake them all, and put them all in a dull seething pot full of water, and make It to seethe at a glowe fire, and after let it waxe cold, and make a taper, and every man that shall see light of it shall seeme headlesse.” Burton, in his “Anatomy of Melancholy,” mentions as a valuable armlet “a ring made of the hoofe of an asse’s right foot carried about” A tract written by a certain “A. B.” in 1595, entitled “The Noblenesse of the Asse,” is exceedingly laudatory of that excellent animal: “He refuseth no burden, he goes whither he is sent without any contradiction. He lifts not his foote against any one; he bytes not; he is no fugitive, nor malicious affected. He doth all things in good sort, and to his liking that hath cause to employ him.” But what, chiefly fills the worthy author with admiration is the donkey’s voice—-his “goodly, sweet, and continuall brayings,” which form “a melodious and proportionate kind of mu-sicke;”-~The Gentleman's Magazine.