September 26, 2026
BULRUSH
King Midas, having preferred the singing of Marsyas, the satyr, to that of Apollo, the god clapped upon him a pair of ass’s ears. The king’s barber saw them, and, unable to keep the secret, buried it at the foot of a cluster of Bulrushes. These Reeds, shaken by the wind, continually murmured, “King Midas has ass’s ears.” Both the Scirpus lacustris and Typha latifolia (the Reed Mace) are popularly known as the Bulrush (a corruption of Pole Rush or Pool Rush). The Typha is depicted by Rubens, and the earlier Italian painters, as the Reed put into the hands of Jesus Christ upon His crucifixion. The same Reed is, on certain days, put into the hands of the Roman Catholic statues of our Saviour. Gerarde calls this Reed Cat’s-tail, and points out that Aristophanes makes mention of it in his ‘Comedy of Frogs,’ “where he bringeth them forth, one talking with another, being very glad that they had spent the whole day in skipping and leaping among Galingale and Cat’s-tail.”
The Bulrushes, among which the infant Moses was placed on the banks of the Nile, were Reeds not unlike the Typha. The ark in which he was laid was probably a small canoe constructed with the same Reed—the Papyrus Nilotica, which, according to Egyptian belief, was a protection from crocodiles. Gerarde says: “It is thought by men of great learning and understanding in the Scriptures, and set downe by them for truth, that this plant is the same Reed mentioned in the second chapter of Exodus, whereof was made that basket or cradle, which was daubed within and without with slime of that country, called Bitumen Judaicum, wherein Moses was put, being committed to the water, when Pharaoh gave commandment that all the male children of the Hebrews should be drowned.”
Boats and canoes formed of the Papyrus are common in Abyssinia. In South America, a similar kind of Bulrush is used for a like purpose.
The Bulrush is under the dominion of Saturn.