Kal. Iun. 1st
The first day is given to thee, Carna. She is the goddess of the hinge: by her divine power she opens what is closed, and closes what is open. Time has dimmed the tradition which sets forth how she acquired the powers she owns, but you shall learn it from my song. Near to the Tiber lies an ancient grove of Helernus; the pontiffs still bring sacrifices thither. There a nymph was born (men of old named her Crane), often wooed in vain by many suitors. Her wont it was to scour the countryside and chase the wild beasts with her darts, and in the hollow vale to stretch the knotty nets. No quiver had she, yet they thought that she was Phoebus sister; and, Phoebus, thou needst not have been ashamed of her. If any youth spoke to her words of love, she straightway made him this answer: “In this place there is too much of light, and with the light too much of shame; if thou wilt lead to a more retired cave, I’ll follow.” While he confidingly went in front, she no sooner reached the bushes than she halted, and hid herself, and was nowise to be found. Janus had seen her, and the sight had roused his passion; to the hardhearted nymph he used soft words. The nymph as usual bade him seek a more sequestered cave, and she pretended to follow at his heels, but deserted her leader. Fond fool!
Janus sees what goes on behind his back; vain is thine effort; he sees thy hiding-place behind him. Vain is thine effort, lo! said I. For he caught thee in his embrace as thou didst lurk beneath a rock, and having worked his will he said: “In return for our dalliance be thine the control of hinges; take that for the price of thy lost maidenhood.” So saying, he gave her a thorn—and white it was—wherewith she could repel all doleful harm from doors. There are greedy birds, not those that cheated Phineus’ maw of its repast, though from those they are descended. Big is their head, goggle their eyes, their beaks are formed for rapine, their wings are blotched with grey, their claws fitted with hooks. They fly by night and attack nurseless children, and defile their bodies, snatched from their cradles. They are said to rend the flesh of sucklings with their beaks, and their throats are full of the blood which they have drunk. Screech-owl is their name, but the reason of the name is that they are wont to screech horribly by night. Whether, therefore, they are born birds, or are made such by enchantment and are nothing but beldames transformed into fowls by a Marsian spell, they came into the chambers of Proca. In the chambers Proca, a child five days old, was a fresh prey for the birds. They sucked his infant breast with greedy tongues, and the poor child squalled and craved help.
Alarmed by the cry of her fosterling, the nurse ran to him and found his cheeks scored by their rigid claws. What was she to do? The colour of the child’s face was like the common hue of late leaves nipped by an early frost. She went to Crane and told what had befallen. Crane said, “Lay fear aside; thy nursling will be safe.” She went to the cradle; mother and father were weeping. “Restrain your tears,” she said, “I myself will heal the child.” Straightway she thrice touched the doorposts, one after the other, with arbutus leaves; thrice with arbutus leaves she marked the threshold. She sprinkled the entrance with water (and the water was drugged), and she held the raw inwards of a sow just two months old. And thus she spoke: “Ye birds of night, spare the child’s inwards: a small victim falls for a small child. Take, I pray ye, a heart for a heart, entrails for entrails. This life we give you for a better life.” When she had thus sacrificed, she set the severed inwards in the open air, and forbade those present at the sacrifice to look back at them. A rod of Janus, taken from the white-thorn, was placed where a small window gave light to the chambers. After that, it is said that the birds did not violate the cradle, and the boy recovered his former colour.
You ask why fat bacon is eaten on these Calends, and why beans are mixed with hot spelt. She is a goddess of the olden time, and subsists upon the foods to which she was inured before; no voluptuary is she to run after foreign viands. Fish still swam unharmed by the people of that age, and oysters were safe in their shells. Latium knew not the fowl that rich Ionia supplies, nor the bird that delights in Pygmy blood; and in the peacock naught but the feathers pleased, nor had the earth before sent captured beasts. The pig was prized, people feasted on slaughtered swine: the ground yielded only beans and hard spelt. Whoever eats at the same time these two foods on the Calends of the sixth month, they affirm that nothing can hurt his bowels.
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