(The Talmudist had
forgot that the animals saved from the Flood were in pairs.)[80] The
celebrated Og, king of Bashan, it seems, was one of the antediluvians,
and was saved by riding on the back of the unicorn. The dwellers in
Brobdignag were pigmies compared with the renowned King Og, since his
footsteps were forty miles apart, and Abraham's ivory bed was made of
one of his teeth. Moses, the Rabbis tell us, was ten cubits high[81] and
his walking-stick ten cubits more, with the top of which, after jumping
ten cubits from the ground, he contrived to touch the heel of King Og;
from which it has been concluded that that monarch was from two to three
thousand cubits in height. But (remarks an English writer) a certain
Jewish traveller has shown the fallacy of this mensuration, by meeting
with the end of one of the leg-bones of the said King Og, and travelling
four hours before he came to the other end. Supposing this Rabbi to have
been a fair walker, the bone was sixteen miles long!
[80] Is it possible that this "story" of the unicorn was
borrowed and garbled from the ancient Hindu legend of
the Deluge? "When the flood rose Manu embarked in the
ship, and the fish swam towards him, and he fastened the
ship's cable to its horn." But in the Hindu legend the
fish (that is, Brahma in the form of a great fish) tows
the vessel, while in the Talmudic legend the ark of Noah
takes the unicorn in tow.
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