Frog and Fish

Gerry Quinn · 23 May 2011, 18:05 · from 2011-May.txt.gz

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From: gerryq at indigo.ie (Gerry Quinn)
Date: Mon, 23 May 2011 19:05:05 +0100
Subject: (urth) Frog and Fish
References: <BANLkTimi4LOYZm_3it=UGzRXxTfwQdk52g at mail.gmail.com>
Message-ID: <6A720799A50E420FBAE6E11E0EF8E5DE@jill>


----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Andrew Mason" <andrew.mason53 at googlemail.com>

> All the Romulus and Remus references you mentioned are clearly there
> as well. It's an amalgam of two stories about [a] child[ren] brought
> up by wolves. It's entirely plausible that such a story would develop
> - much less weird than the combination of the Monitor and the
> Minotaur. There is also a bit derived from American history (Squanto),
> a glancing reference to Moses, and quite likely other things as well.

Yes, that certainly seems the source for those bits.


> So, why Fish? Well, if they are trying to combine one version of the
> story in which the hero has a twin, and another in which he is called
> Frog, they need to find a name for his twin which fits 'Frog'. 'Fish'
> looks suitable.. That may be all there is to it, though for all I know
> it is also a reference to another legend we haven't spotted yet.

It is also alliterative, as with Romulus and Remus..


> > Note 1: Mars or Hercules was supposedly their father - some people have
> > found Mars somewhere I think, but I prefer the idea of Hercules as 
> > Spring
> > Wind, because of his parentage, Zeus appearing as a flower which is the 
> > sort
> > of thing he did. Frog later claimed his heritage in the name of the Red
> > Flower.)

> If I remember rightly, the Red Flower story is actually a historic
> legend about the birth of Mars. (Virtually everything that is said
> about Spring Wind fits Mars. Once he has dropped out of the story
> things become more complex.)

Ah, yes, looked it up now.  That certainly must be the source of the flower 
story.  My main issue was that Early Summer (and Spring Wind) seemed to be 
presented as human rather than divine in the story, hence my preference for 
the Hercules version.  But looking in detail at Mars, I see he was an 
agricultural as well as a war god, which does indeed fit Spring Wind 
perfectly.  So yes, I think we can discount Hercules and unambiguously 
identify Spring Wind as Mars.

- Gerry Quinn

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