Comment 9 of 10, added on July 12th, 2009 at 7:22 AM.

S.Sukamar is right, the donkey thinks it is being worshipped, not Jesus. The Romans persistently slandered Christians and Jews with the rumour that they worshipped a donkey god. To the Greeks, the donkey was associated with Saturn and the Titans, the old Gods of Greece. The first verse, and lines like "ancient crooked will", hint that the donkey is something from a past age (and the donkey was domesticated long before the domestication of the horse, an event which must have plunged the civilised world into turmoil). The ass headed or ass eared god/monster is a common figure in a lot of mythologies (Set, Midas, Typhon, Gisbourne, Bottom, Batman etc.) sometimes benign and sometimes terrifying. To Christians, the donkey is a symbol of humility, and as such it is often contrasted with the lion, the proud king of beasts. But to pagans the donkey is also a fertility symbol, and a calendar symbol, a creature that conceives at midwinter and gives birth at midsummer, associated with holly. The holy midwinter tree that flowers in summer (e.g.In Mallory's The Quest of the holy grail Hector has a dream in which Lancelot is wreathed in holly and riding a donkey). Dionysus also rode a donkey and dressed in purple.

Pignut from Bulgaria