Early Modern Porcupines
Among the natural histories that provide descriptions of porcupines are Pliny’s, a volume which we know Pulter consulted, and Du Bartas’s (translated by Josuah Sylvester), which she might or might not have known. Du Bartas’s poem was a popular work that offered a catalogue of animals in relation to God’s creation of the world.
Pliny's description of the porcupine:
- Of the Pork-pen.
The Porkpens come out of India and Africke: a kind of Vrchin or hedge-hog they be: armed with pricks they be both; but the Porkpen hath the longer sharp pointed quilles, and those, when he stretcheth his skin, he sendeth and shooteth from him: when the hounds presseth hard vpon him, he flieth from their mouthes, and then takes vantage to launce at them somwhat farther off. In the Winter he lieth hidden, as the nature is of many beasts to doe, and the Beares aboue the rest.
Josuah Sylvester’s description of the porcupine:
- But, O! what Monster’s this that bids me battail,
- On whose rough back an Hoast of Pikes doth rattle:
- Who string-less shoots so many arrows out,
- Whose thorny sides are hedged round about
- With stiff steel-pointed quils, and all his parts
- Bristled with bodkins, arm'd with Auls and Darts,
- Which ay fierce darting, seem still fresh to spring,
- And to his ayd still new supplies to bring?
- O fortunate Shaft-neuer-wanting Bowe-man!
- Who, as thou fly’st canst hit thy following foe-man,
- And never missest (or but very narrow)
- Th' intended mark of thyselfs kindred Arrow:
- Who, still self-furnisht needest borrow never
- Diana's shafts, nor yet Apollos quiver,
- Nor bowe-strings fetch from Carian Aleband,
- Brazell from Perù, but hast all at hand
- Of thine owne growth; for in thy Hide do growe
- Thy String, thy Shafts, thy Quiver and thy Bowe.