Engelbert Kaempfer and the Myth of the Scythian Lamb (article)

Engelbert Kaempfer and the Myth of the Scythian Lamb
By Robert W. Carrubba, for The Classical World (1993)

This article opens with a substantial (for an article) biography of Engelbert Kaempfer, a German scholar and physician whose travels (1683-93) gave him the opportunity to personally research and report on the origin of the vegetable lamb myth.

Carrubba points to Kaempfer's extensive training, his firm grounding in both Humanities and Sciences, his belief in "the primacy of reason and scientific methodology" (41) and other qualities that make him a reliable reporter on the V.L. In addition, he seems to have composed works on Persian and Japanese botany.

Carrubba includes a nice, concise summary of the lamb myth, which I'll include here in case I need to write one some day and find it's more prudent to copy and credit:

"In common form, the myth has it that the Scythian Lamb is a zoophyte (plant-animal or vegetable lamb) which grows from the ground on a stem attached to its navel. In all other respects the creature looks like a real lamb of flesh and blood with four legs and a sizeable tail. The Lamb of Scythia or Tartary feeds on the grass about it and is a prey for wolves, though not for other carnivores." (43)

In discussing Kaempfer's report on the vegetable lamb, Carrubba first summarizes its organization:

"Kaempfer's report o nthe Scythian Lamb is organized as follows: (1) credulity and misunderstanding of terms created the fable; (2) the conventional description of the creature; (3) etymology of the word Borometz (Borametz); (4) description of a real breed of Scythian Lamb; (5) extraction of the lamb fetus; (6) preparation of the skins; (7) debunking of the myth, based on eyewitness investigation; (8) ascription of the origin of the myth to ignorance, inattentiveness, and the human inclination to believe in wonders." (44)

I won't get too far into Carrubba's rehashing of Kaempfer's arguments. Why? Because a couple of centuries after Kaempfer and before Carrubba, Henry Lee sat down and penned a great little booklet that explains everything in great detail, from the possible roots of the myth through all the major attempts to explain and understand it. The men and their peers ultimately reached different conclusions -

(1) that the origin was based in folk art made from manipulated fern tree rhizomes,
(2) that it was rooted in a misunderstanding/mistranslation of cotton, and
(3) that it could be traced to the practice of removing fetal lambs from the womb for their soft skins, resulting in misleading "scientific specimens"

What is perhaps most reassuring about Kaempfer is the fact that his report is based on eyewitness investigation. That lends him a credibility that is lacking in some other folks who discuss the zoophytic phenomenon.

As usual, no direct bearing on Mandeville, but the article points to the place the vegetable lamb had in the collective imagination of medieval and early modern Europe, and the whole spectrum of response (from Erasmus Darwin's airy-fairy poems to Kaempfer's rigorous scientific report) to an idea that Mandeville helped to solidify within the culture of the period.