SACRED AND OMINOUS BIRDS, ETC.
The fatal cuckoo, on yon spreading tree,
Hath sounded out your dying knell already.
_Cowley._
Amongst the various lightning birds of the Aryan mythology, some were
regarded as portentous of evil; others, as the robin, the stork, and the
woodpecker, on the contrary, were regarded with favour, and especially
protected. The red breast of the robin, the red legs of the stork, and
the red mutch of the woodpecker, were believed to result from their
lightning origin. In Germany the robin is held in as much regard as it
is in England. The Anglo-Saxon name, _Hrodhbeorht_, or _Hrodhbriht_,
signifies flamebright, which was one of the appellations of Thor. In
illustration of the reverence paid to the redbreast, a writer in "Notes
and Queries" relates the following beautiful story, which he had from
his nurse, a native of Cærmarthenshire:--
"Far, far away, is a land of woe, darkness, spirits of evil, and _fire_.
Day by day does the little bird bear in his bill a drop of water to
quench the flame. So near to the burning stream does he fly, that his
dear little feathers are scorched; and hence he is named _Bronrhuddyn_
(_i.e._, breast-burned, or breast-scorched). To serve little children,
the robin dares approach the infernal pit. No good child will hurt the
devoted benefactor of man. The robin returns from the land of fire, and
therefore he feels the cold of winter far more than his brother birds.
He shivers in the brumal blast; hungry he chirps before your door. Oh!
my child, then, in gratitude throw a few crumbs to poor redbreast."
I have not to this day forgotten the sense of shame and sorrow with
which I was overwhelmed, when, as a boy, being permitted for the first
time to discharge a fowling-piece at a small bird in a shrubbery, I
discovered that the feathered songster whose life I had taken was a
robin-redbreast.
The stork is, in Germany especially, ever a welcome guest, and wheels
(sun emblems) are placed on the roofs of houses in Hesse, in order to
encourage the storks to build their nests thereupon. Their presence is
supposed to render the building safe against the ravages of fire.
Mannhardt mentions an instance in which, to avenge the abstraction of
her young, it is said a stork carried a flaming brand in her beak, threw
it into the nest, and thus set the house on fire. The German name for
stork, Grimm says, is literally child or soul-bringer. Hence the belief
that the advent of infants is presided over by this bird, which obtains
so largely in Denmark and Germany.
Amongst the remains of birds and animals consumed as food by the framers
of the Danish "kjökkenmöddings," or shell-mounds, the absence of the
bones of the domestic fowl, two species of swallow, the sparrow and the
stork, has been commented upon by several archæologists. This is
attributable, doubtless, to the sacred character with which they were
invested by the inhabitants of the district when the said mounds were
formed. For a similar reason, as has been previously observed, no bones
of the hare have been found in these ancient "kitchen-middens."
Amongst the birds of evil omen, the owl appears to rank with the
foremost. Bourne says, "If an owl, which is reckoned a most abominable
and unlucky bird, send forth its hoarse and dismal voice, it is an omen
of the approach of some terrible thing; that some dire calamity and some
great misfortune is near at hand." Chaucer speaks of the "owl eke that
of deth the bode bringeth." Amongst the Romans its appearance was
regarded as a most certain portent of death. In the year 312, on the day
on which Constantine saw the vision of the cross in the heavens, with
the legend "In hoc signo vinces," Zosimus, the pagan historian, informs
us that his opponent, Maxentius, was disconcerted by the adverse portent
of a flight of owls. Speaking of the prodigies which were said to
accompany the passing away of Augustus Cæsar, Xiphilinus says that an
"owl sung on the top of the Curia." Our Elizabethan and later poets
often refer to this superstition. In one of Reed's old plays we have:--
When screech owls croak upon the chimney tops,
It's certain then you of a corse shall hear.
Spencer speaks of "the ill-fac'd owl, death's dreadful messenger," and
Pennant, when describing what is called the tawny owl, says, "this is
what we call the screech owl, to which the folly of superstition had
given the power of presaging death by its cries." Shakspere makes Lennox
say, on the night of the murder of Duncan, that--
The obscure bird
Clamoured the live-long night.
Puck, in Midsummer Night's Dream, says,--
Now the hungry lion roars,
And the wolf be-howls the moon;
Whilst the heavy ploughman snores,
All with weary task fordone.
Now the wanted brands do glow,
Whilst the scritch-owl, scritching loud,
Puts the wretch, that lies in woe,
In remembrance of a shroud.
Referring to the advent of the Duke of Gloucester, afterwards King
Richard III., King Henry says:--
The owl shriek'd at thy birth; an evil sign!
The night crow cry'd, aboding luckless time;
Dogs howled, and hideous tempests shook down trees.
And again, in Julius Cæsar, on the night of the murder of the great
dictator, Casca, amongst the numerous other prodigies which he witnessed
says:--
And yesterday the bird of night did sit,
Even at noon-day, upon the market place,
Hooting and shrieking.
The rejoinder put into the mouth of Cicero, shows that Shakspere, while
he appreciated the dramatic value of the "folk-lore" of superstitious
people like the terrified Casca, was fully alive to the folly of the
popular interpretation of the phenomena referred to. He says:
Indeed, it is a strange-dispos'd time;
But men may construe things after their fashion
Clean from the purpose of the things themselves.
This is still more markedly indicated in the dialogue between Hotspur
and Owen Glendower, in the first part of King Henry IV.:--
_Glendower_: At my nativity
The front of heaven was full of fiery shapes,
Of burning cressets; and at my birth
The frame and huge foundation of the earth
Shaked like a coward.
_Hotspur_: Why, so it would have done
At the same season, if your mother's cat
Had but kittened, though yourself had ne'er been born.
_Glendower_: I say the earth did shake when I was born.
_Hotspur_: And I say the earth was not of my mind,
If you suppose as fearing you it shook.
_Glendower_: The heavens were all on fire, the earth did tremble.
_Hotspur_: O, then the earth shook to see the heavens on fire,
And not in fear of your nativity.
Diseased nature often times breaks forth
In strange eruptions: oft the teeming earth
Is with a kind of cholic pinched and vexed,
By the imprisoning of unruly wind
Within her womb; which for enlargement striving,
Shakes the old beldam earth, and topples down
Steeples and moss-grown towers.
In the Greek mythology the owl was the symbol of Athenê. Hence, as
before observed, she was styled "Glaucopis," or owl-eyed. According to
Payne Knight, this symbol was adopted for the wise goddess because the
owl was "a bird which seems to surpass all other creatures in acuteness
of organic perception, its eye being calculated to observe objects which
to all others are enveloped in darkness, its ear to hear sounds
distinctly, and its nostrils to discriminate effluvia with such nicety
that it has been deemed prophetic, from discovering the putridity of
death even in the first stages of disease." As in the case of the dog,
referred to in Chapter IX., it is by no means improbable that the
extremely delicate sense of smell possessed by the owl, lies at the root
of this superstition. Its after development into a prophetic power
respecting approaching death, even without previous disease, can easily
be understood, after the original physical conditions had entered into
the mythical realm of legend and superstition.
The cuckoo is generally regarded, like the owl and the raven, as a bird
of ill omen. According to Mannhardt, on first hearing its note, the
German peasant rolls himself on the grass, as he does when he hears
thunder. The observance of this ceremony is supposed to insure to the
individual freedom from aches and pains during the year. It is
considered to be unlucky to hear the cuckoo for the first time without
coin in the pocket. The more fortunate peasants yet instinctively turn
over their money to insure "luck" on first hearing this bird's cry.
The old English rhyme is well known in Lancashire:--
Cuckoo, cherry tree,
Good bird tell me,
How many years have I to live.
In some places there is a triple rhyme, the last line reading thus:
How many years before I dee? (die).
I remember well indulging in my youth, with other boys, in the
divination described by Sir Henry Ellis, as follows:--"Easy to foretel
what sort of summer it would be by the position in which the larva of
_Cicàda (Aphrophora) spumaria_ was found to lie in the froth
(_cuckoo-spit_) in which it is enveloped. If the insect lay with its
head upwards, it infallibly denoted a dry summer; if downwards, a wet
one." The said spume was fully believed to have been deposited upon the
vegetation by the expectoration of the cuckoo.
Cuckoos are believed to become sparrowhawks in winter. The Rev. H. B.
Fristram, at a recent meeting of the British Association, held at
Newcastle-on-Tyne, stated when he once remonstrated with a man for
shooting a cuckoo, "the defence was that it was well known that
_sparrowhawkes turned into cuckoos_ in the summer." Grimm states that in
Germany, after St. John's day, about the time when it becomes mute, the
cuckoo is believed to change into a hawk. Referring to these facts,
Kelly pertinently asks, as "the form of the cuckoo remotely resembles
that of the falcon tribe, may we hazard a conjecture that hence, in
German tradition, that bird in some degree represents the fire-bringing
falcon of the Aryans?" Mannhardt says, "The cuckoo is the messenger of
Thor, the god in whose gift were health and strength, length of days,
and marriage blessings, and therefore it is that people call upon the
bird to tell how long they have to live, how soon they will be married,
and how many children they shall have; and that in Schaumberg the person
who acts at a wedding as master of the ceremonies carries a cuckoo on
his staff."
Kelly says:--"The cuckoo's connection with storms and tempests is not
clearly determined, but the owl's is indisputable. Its cry is believed
in England to foretell rain and hail, the latter of which is usually
accompanied with lightning, and the practice of nailing it to the barn
door, to avert the lightning, is common throughout Europe, and is
mentioned by Palladius in his treatise on agriculture."
The wren, as I have shown in a previous chapter, is mercilessly hunted
to death in the Isle of Man, although he partakes of the sanctity of the
robin in most parts of England. Not so in Ireland, however. General
Vallancy says:--"The Druids represented this as the king of all birds.
The superstitious respect shown to this little bird gave offence to our
first Christian missionaries, and by their commands he is still hunted
and killed on Christmas-day; and on the following (St. Stephen's-day) he
is carried about hung by the leg in the centre of two hoops crossing
each other at right angles, and a procession is made in every village,
of men, women, and children, singing an Irish catch importing him to be
the king of all birds."
The wren is sometimes treated in a similar manner in the south of
France. It is generally, however, regarded as a sacred bird, as in
England and Scotland. To take its life or to rob its nest even, in the
Pays de Caux, is regarded as a crime of such atrocity that it will
"_bring down the lightning_" upon the homestead of the offender. Robert
Chambers, in his "Popular Rhymes," has the following couplet on this
subject:--
Malisons, malisons, mair than ten,
That harry the Ladye of Heaven's hen!
It would seem from these facts that the poor little bird has met with a
somewhat similar fate to that of Odin and the rest of the Æsir gods, and
has been transformed, occasionally at least, into a spirit of evil.
In Perigord, according to De Nore, the swallow is called "_La Poule de
Dieu_" and is regarded as "the messenger of life." The cricket, too, is
held in similar estimation. May not the latter have acquired its
reputation from its fondness of the domestic hearth, and its presumed
immunity from the effects of fire?
The raven, sacred to Odin and Apollo, the German and Greek forms of the
Aryan Rudra, was, and indeed is yet, pre-eminently the bird of ill-omen.
Lady Macbeth, in the fulness of her murderous impulse, exclaims:--
The raven himself is hoarse
That croaks the fatal entrance of Duncan
Under my battlement.
And Hamlet, impatient at the grimaces of the actor, representing, in the
play, the murderer of his father, exclaims:--
Leave thy damnable faces and begin. Come--
The croaking raven
Doth bellow for revenge.
And, again, Othello says:--
Oh, it comes o'er my memory
As doth the raven o'er the infected house,
Boding to all.
All know what powerful use Edgar Allan Poe has made of this "grim,
ungainly, ghastly, gaunt, and ominous bird of yore," in his marvellous
poem, "The Raven."
The raven's power of scenting carrion from a great distance may have
originally influenced, as in the case of the dog and owl, its selection
as a personification of impending death or other calamity.
The raven was the standard of the Scandinavian vikingrs, as the eagle
was of the Ancient Romans, and is of the French of the present day.
Asser, in his "Life of Alfred the Great," when describing a victory
gained by that king near Kynwith Castle says: "they gained a very large
booty, and among other things the standard called Raven; for they say
that the three sisters of Hindwai and Hubba, daughters of Lodobroch,
wove that flag and got it ready in one day. They say, moreover, that in
every battle, wherever that flag went before them, if they were to gain
the victory, a live crow would appear flying in the middle of the flag;
but if they were doomed to be defeated it would hang down motionless,
and this was often proved to be so." Doubtless much of the still
lingering aversion for crows, ravens, and magpies, is but the remains of
the dislike of our Anglo-Saxon ancestors to the emblem of their once
dreaded mortal enemies, or it is, perhaps, more probable that each
people had preserved a similar traditionary faith in the supernatural
character of the bird from their common remote ancestors. Indeed,
reference is made to the raven as a war emblem in the fragment of heroic
Anglo-Saxon poetry, containing part of a description of the battle at
Finnesburg, which was found on the cover of a MS. of homilies, in the
library at Lambeth Palace, by Dr. Hicks, in the sixteenth century. On
the defeat of the warriors, the MS. says,--"The raven wandered, swart
and sallow brown." There is, as I have previously observed, in Chapter
IX., a tradition in Cornwall that King Arthur is yet alive in the form
of a raven, and superstitious persons yet refuse to kill the bird from a
belief in its truth.
Many other birds possess somewhat similar attributes to the raven, such
as crows, magpies, jackdaws, &c. Ramesey (Elminthologia, 1668)
says:--"If a crow fly but over the house and croak thrice, how do they
fear, they, or some one else in the family, shall die." The croaking of
crows and ravens foreboded rain. In this particular they resembled the
woodpecker. It was, nay, it is yet held that to see a crow on the left
hand is a sinister omen. In the "Defensative against the Poyson of
supposed Prophesies," by the Earl of Northampton, published in 1583, we
find the following:--"The flight of many crowes upon the left side of
the campe made the Romans very much afrayde of some badde lucke; as if
the greate god Jupiter had nothing else to do (said Carneades) but to
drive jack-dawes in a flock together."
The evil boding of the "seven whistlers," or flock of plovers, in
Lancashire, has been previously referred to. In Lancashire and the north
of England magpies are termed pyanots. The old formula, which attributes
certain results as the consequence of their appearance, is still firmly
believed in, viz.:--"One for sorrow, two for mirth, three for a wedding
and four for death." Intelligent persons, yet, from mere habit, on the
sight of a magpie, involuntary turn round three times, or mark a cross
with the toe on the ground, in order to avert the calamity supposed to
be attendant upon its untoward presence. The original name, when fully
expressed, appears to have been maggott pie. Shakspere mentions it
under this designation, when, in Macbeth, he refers to its use in
divination. He says:--
Augurs and understood relations have
By maggot pies, and choughs, and rooks, brought forth
The secret'st man of blood.
The woodpecker, perhaps, of all the fire-bringing birds, has most
permeated the ancient mythologies. The Latins named it Picus, whose
brother (or double), Pilumnus, was the god of bakers and millers. In
early times the millers pounded their corn with a pestle, and _pilum_
signified both pestle and javelin, which are equally types of the
thunderbolt. The tapping of the beak of the woodpecker was regarded as
partaking of a similar character. On the birth of a child it was
customary at Rome to prepare a couch for Pilumnus and Picumnus, who were
believed to bring the fire of life, and were supposed to remain until
the vitality of the infant was indisputable. The Romans likewise styled
the woodpecker Martus and Feronius, from the god Mars and the Sabine
goddess Feronia. The name Feronia is indicative of fire or soul
bringing, and is intimately connected with that of Phoroneus, the
Prometheus of a Peloponnesian legend, relating to the original
procuration of the heavenly fire. Dr. Kuhn says both names are identical
with the epithet commonly applied to the Aryan fire-god Agni,
_Churanyu_, which signifies "one who pounces down, or bears down
rapidly."
Picus was the son of Saturn, and the first King of Latium, as well as a
fire-bringing bird. This, Kelly observes, "is only another way of saying
that he, too, like Manu, Minyas, Minos, Phoroneus, and other
fire-bringers, is the first man; and therefore it is that, under the
name of Picumnus, he continued in latter times to be the guardian genius
of children, along with his brother Pilumnus."
A remarkable coincidence between the Anglo-Saxon pedigree of Odin, which
makes Beav, or Beovolf, one of his ancestors, and the story of the first
King of Latium, is noticed by Grimm. Beewolf--that is, bee-eater--is the
German name for the woodpecker.
Many other birds were believed to forecast the weather, such as the barn
door fowl, the stormy petrel, the heron, and the crane, all of which
appear but to be modifications of the Aryan lightning birds so often
referred to. In the Greek version of the myth, the raven represents the
dark cloud. Originally, however, the cloud referred to was white; but
Apollo, having sent his favourite bird to the fountain for water, was
imposed upon by the feathered idler and glutton; he, therefore, turned
his plumage black, and condemned him as a punishment to a continuous
croaking for water to quench his thirst.
Amongst insects, the lady-bird appears to have been a fire-bringer, and
is yet much in vogue in matters of augury. Gay says:--
This lady-fly I take from off the grass,
Whose spotted back might scarlet red surpass.
Fly lady-bird, north, south, or east or west,
Fly where the man is found that I love best.
I know not whether the dandelion can be classed among the lightning
plants, but I remember well the blowing away of its ripened winged seeds
with the view to ascertain the time of the day, as well as to solve much
more profound mysteries.
In the "Athenian Oracle" the following curious rejoinder appears to the
query:--"Why rats, toads, ravens, screech owls, are ominous; and how
they came to foreknow fatal events?" The writer replies: "Had the
querist said unlucky instead of ominous he might easily have met with
satisfaction; a rat is so because it destroys many a Cheshire cheese,
&c. A toad is unlucky because it poisons." [This is now known to be
erroneous.] "As for ravens and screech owls, they are just as unlucky as
cats, when about their courtship, because they make an ugly noise, which
disturbes their neighbourhood. The instinct of rats leaving an old ship
is because they cannot be dry in it, and an old house because, perhaps,
they want victuals. A raven is much such a prophet as our conjurors or
almanac makers, foretelling events after they are come to pass: they
follow great armies, as vultures, not as foreboding battle, but for the
dead men, dogs, horses, &c., which, especially in a march, must be daily
left behind them. But the foolish observations made on their croaking
before death, etc., are for the most part pure humour, and have no
grounds besides foolish tradition or a sickly imagination." Old Reginald
Scot, as early as the sixteenth century, stoutly contended "that to
prognosticate that guests approach to your house on the chattering of
pies or haggisters, [a Kentish term for magpie,] is altogether vanity
and superstition."
The _Shipping Gazette_, in April, 1869, contained a communication
entitled "A Sailor's Notion about Rats," in which the following passage
occurs:--"It is a well authenticated fact that rats have often been
known to leave ships in the harbour previous to their being lost at sea.
Some of those wiseacres who want to convince us _against the evidence of
our senses_ will call this superstition. As neither I have time, nor you
space, to cavil with such at present, I shall leave them alone in their
glory." It is difficult to decide whether the superstition, the bad
logic, or the self-sufficiency of the writer of this sentence most
predominates. It is a pity he did not edify the "wiseacres" as to how
"the evidence of our senses" could by any possibility bring us in
contact with the motive of rats, with whom we have had no intercourse
either of a mental or moral kind. But perhaps the said "Shipmaster" has,
after taking rats into his council, rejected their advice, and lost his
bark in consequence. Truly it is a difficult matter to determine where
abject superstition ends and ordinary credulity begins. The fact that
rats do sometimes migrate from one ship to another, or from one barn or
corn stack to another, from various causes, ought to be quite sufficient
to explain such "evidence of our senses" as informs us that "rats have
often been known to leave ships in harbour _previous_ to their being
lost at sea." If they left the ship at all _in harbour_, it, of
necessity must have been _before_ the vessel was lost at sea. The error
lies in the assertion, without the slightest "evidence of our senses" to
support it, that sailor rats are genuine Zadkiels, and can peep into
futurity by the aid of some supernatural power denied to mariners of the
genus _homo_.
This superstition, nevertheless, is evidently one of considerable
antiquity. Shakspere refers to it in the Tempest. Prospero, describing
the vessel in which himself and daughter had been placed with the view
to their certain destruction at sea says:--
They hurried us aboard a bark;
Bore us some leagues to sea; where they prepared
A rotten carcase of a boat, not rigged,
Nor tackle, sail, nor mast; the very rats
Instinctively had quit it.