BIRDS AS NATIONAL EMBLEMS
Several nations and empires of both ancient and modern times have
adopted birds as emblems of their sovereignty, or at least have placed
prominently on their coats of arms and great seals the figures of birds.
Among these the eagle—some species of the genus Aquila—takes precedence
both in time and in importance. The most ancient recorded history of the
human race is that engraved on the tablets and seals of chiefs who
organized a civilization about the head of the Persian Gulf more than
4000 years before the beginning of the Christian era. These record by
both text and pictures that the emblem of the Summerian city of Lagash,
which ruled southern Mesopotamia long previous to its subjugation by
Babylonia about 3000 B. C., was an eagle “displayed,” that is, facing us
with wings and legs spread and its head turned in profile. This figure
was carried by the army of Lagash as a military standard; but a form of
it with a lion’s head was reserved as the special emblem of the Lagash
gods, with which the royal house was identified—the king’s standard.
After the conquest of Babylonia by Assyria this eagle of Lagash was
taken over by the conquerors, and appears on an Assyrian seal of the
king of Ur many centuries later. “From this eagle,” says Ward,[23] “in
its heraldic attitude necessitated by its attack on two animals [as
represented on many seals and decorations] was derived the two-headed
eagle, in the effort to complete the bilateral symmetry. This
double-headed eagle appears in Hittite art, and is continued down
through Turkish and modern European symbolism.”
Among the host of rock-carvings in the Eyuk section of the mountains of
Cappadocia (Pteria of the Greeks) that are attributed to the Hittites,
Perrot and Chipiez found carvings of a double-headed eagle which they
illustrate;[112] and they speak of them as often occurring. “Its
position is always a conspicuous one—about a great sanctuary, the
principal doorway to a palace, a castle wall, and so forth; rendering
the suggestion that the Pterians used the symbol as a coat of arms.”
Dr. Ward thought the Assyrian two-headed figure of their national bird
resulted from an artistic effort at symmetry, balancing the wings and
feet outstretched on each side, but I cannot help feeling that here
among the Hittites it had its origin in a deeper sentiment than that. It
seems to me that it was a way of expressing the dual sex of their
godhead, presupposed, in the crudeness of primitive nature-worship, to
account for the condition of earthly things, male and female uniting for
productiveness—the old story of sky and earth as co-generators of all
life. Many other symbols, particularly those of a phallic character,
were used in Asiatic religions to typify the same idea; or perhaps the
conception was of that divine duality, in the sense of co-equal power of
Good and Evil, God and Satan, that later became so conspicuous in the
doctrine of the ancient Persians. Could it have been a purified
modification of this significance that made the eagle during the Mosaic
period—if Bayley[24] is right—an emblem of the Holy Spirit? And Bayley
adds that “its portrayal with two heads is said to have recorded the
double portion of the spirit bestowed on Elisha.”
Old Mohammedan traditions, according to Dalton, give the name “hamca” to
a fabulous creature identical with the bicephalous eagle carved on
Hittite rock-faces. Dalton[25] says also that coins with this emblem
were struck and issued by Malek el Sala Mohammed, one of the Sassanids,
in 1217; and that this figure was engraved in the 13th century by
Turkoman princes on the walls of their castles, and embroidered on their
battle-flags.
To the early Greeks the eagle was the messenger of Zeus. If, as
asserted, it was the royal cognizance of the Etruscans, it came
naturally to the Romans, by whom it was officially adopted for the
Republic in 87 B. C., when a silver eagle, standing upright on a spear,
its wings half raised, its head in profile to the left, and thunderbolts
in its claws, was placed on the military standards borne at the head of
all the legions in the army. This was in the second consulship of Caius
Marius, who decreed certain other honors to be paid to the bird’s image
in the Curia.
One need not accuse the Romans of merely copying the ancient monarchies
of the East. If they thought of anything beyond the majestic appearance
of the noble bird, it was to remember its association with their great
god Jupiter—the counterpart of Zeus. Nothing is plainer as to the origin
of the ideas that later took shape in the divinities of celestial
residence than that Jupiter was the personification of the heavens; and
what is more natural than that the lightnings should be conceived of as
his weapons? Once, early in his history, when Jupiter was equipping
himself for a battle with the Titans, an eagle brought him his dart,
since which time Jupiter’s eagle has always been represented as holding
thunderbolts in its talons. The bird thus became a symbol of supreme
power, and a natural badge for soldiers. The emperors of imperial Rome
retained it on their standards, Hadrian changing its metal from silver
to gold; and “the eagles of Rome” came to be a common figure of speech
to express her military prowess and imperial sway.
By such a history, partly mythical, and partly practical and glorious,
this bird came to typify imperialism in general. A golden eagle mounted
on a spear, was the royal standard of the elder Cyrus, as it had been of
his ancestors.
When Napoleon I. dreamed of universal conquest he revived on the
regimental banners of his troops the insignia of his Roman predecessors
in banditry—in fact he was entitled to do so, for he had inherited them
by right of conquest from both Italy and Austria, the residuary legatees
of Rome. Discontinued in favor of their family bees by the Bourbons,
during their brief reign after the fall of Bonaparte, the eagle was
restored to France by a decree of Louis Napoleon in 1852. There is a
legend that a tame eagle was let loose before him when he landed in
France from England to become President of the first French Republic.
Now it is the proper finial for flagstaffs all over the world except,
curiously, in France itself, where a wreath of laurel legally surmounts
the tricolor of the Republic, which has discarded all reminders of
royalty. Thus the pride of conquerors has dropped to the commonplace of
fashion—
Imperial Caesar, dead and turned to clay,
Might stop a hole to keep the wind away.
The destruction of the Italian and western half of the old Roman empire
was by the hands of northern barbarians who at first were mere
conquerors and despoilers, but finally, affected by their contact with
civilization and law, became residents in and rulers of Italy, and were
proud to assume the titles and what they could of the dignity of Roman
emperors. In the eighth century Charlemagne became substantially master
of the western world, at least, and assumed the legionary eagle as he
did the purple robes of an Augustus; and his successors held both with
varying success until the tenth century, when German kings became
supreme and in 962 founded that very unholy combination styled the Holy
Roman Empire. For hundreds of years this fiction was maintained. At
times its eagle indicated a real lordship over all Europe; between times
the states broke apart, and, as each kept the royal standard, separate
eagles contended for mastery. Thus Prussia and other German kingdoms
retained on their shields the semblance of a “Roman” eagle; and the
Teutonic Knights carried it on their savage expeditions of
“evangelization” to the eastern Baltic lands.
All these were more or less conventional figures of the Bird of Jove in
its natural form, but a heraldic figure with two heads turned, Janus
like, in opposite directions, was soon to be revived in the region
where, as we have seen, it had been familiar 2000 years before as the
national emblem of the Eastern, or Byzantine, Empire, which for hundreds
of years contested with Rome, both the political and the ecclesiastical
hegemony of the world. Just when this symbol came into favor at
Constantinople is unknown, but one authority says it did not appear
before the tenth century. At that time the Eastern emperors were
recovering lost provinces and extending their rule until it included all
the civilized part of western Asia, Greece, Bulgaria, southern Italy,
and much of the islands and shores of the Mediterranean; and they
asserted religious supremacy, at least, over the rival European empire
erected on Charlemagne’s foundation. It would seem natural that at this
prosperous period, when Byzantium proudly claimed, if she did not really
possess all “the glory that was Greece and the grandeur that was Rome,”
such a double-headed device might be adopted, signifying that she had
united the western power with her own. The evidence of this motive is
doubtful, however, for it is not until a much later date that the figure
begins to be seen on coins and textiles, first at Trebizond,
particularly in connection with the emperor Theodore Lascaris, who
reigned at the beginning of the 13th century. Dalton[25] suggests
plausibly that this symbol may have become Byzantine through the
circumstance that this Lascaris had previously been despot of Nicomedia,
in which province Bogaz-Keui and other Hittite remains were situated,
and where the bicephalous carvings heretofore alluded to are still to be
seen on rockfaces and ruins, always in association with royalty.
It is very attractive to think that this form of eagle was chosen, as
has been suggested, to express the fact that Constantinople was now lord
over both halves, East and West, into which Diocletian had divided the
original empire of Rome. Whether this idea was behind the choice I do
not know, but at any rate the two-faced eagle became latterly the
acknowledged ensign of imperial Byzantium, and as such was introduced
into European royal heraldry, whether or not by means of the returning
Crusaders, as commonly stated, remains obscure.
In the 15th century what was left of the Holy Roman Empire became the
heritage of the Austrian house of Hapsburg which had succeeded the
German Hohenstauffens; and to Sigismund, head of the house in that
century, is ascribed the design in the Austrian arms of the two-headed
eagle, looking right and left, as if to signify boastfully that he ruled
both East and West. These were relative and indefinite domains, but as
he had, by his crowning at Rome, received at least nominal sovereignty
over the fragmentary remains in Greece of the ancient Eastern Empire, he
was perhaps justified in adopting the Byzantine ensign as “captured
colors”; but a rival was soon to present a stronger claim to these
fragments and their badge.
In this same period, that is in the middle of the 15th century, Ivan the
Great of Russia was striving with high purpose and despotic strength to
bring back under one sway the divided house of Muscovy, together with
whatever else he could obtain. To further this purpose he married, in
1472, Sophia Paleologos, niece of the last Byzantine emperor, getting
with her Greece and hence a barren title to the throne of the Eastern
empire—a barren title because its former domain was now over-run by the
Turks, but very important in the fact that it included the headship of
the Greek, or Orthodox, Church. From this time Russia as well as Austria
has borne a two-faced eagle on its escutcheon; and, although both birds
are from the same political nest, the feeling between them has been far
from brotherly.
It may be remarked here, parenthetically, that in Egypt the cult of the
kingly eagle never flourished, for the griffon vulture, “far-sighted,
ubiquitous, importunate,” became the grim emblem of royal power; and a
smaller vulture (_Neophron percnopterus_) is called Pharaoh’s chicken to
this day by the fellaheen. By “eagle” in Semitic (Biblical) legends is
usually meant the lammergeier.
Prussia had kept a single-headed eagle as her cognizance in remembrance
of her previous “Roman” greatness; and it was retained by the German
Empire when that was created by Bismarck half a century and more ago.
From it the Kaiser designated the two German military orders—the Black
Eagle and the superior Red Eagle; and Russia and Serbia have each
instituted an order called White Eagle. The traditional eagle of Poland
is represented as white on a black ground. It was displayed during the
period of subjection following the partition of the country in 1795,
with closed wings, but now, since 1919, it spreads its pinions wide in
the pride of freedom.
_In the years between 1914 and 1919 an allied party of hunters, enraged
by their depredations, went gunning for these birds of prey, killed most
of them and sorely wounded the rest!_
Although several species of real eagles inhabit the Mediterranean region
and those parts of Europe and Asia where these nations lived, and
warred, and passed away, and are somewhat confused in the mass of myth
and tradition relating to them, the one chosen by Rome was the golden
eagle, so called because of the golden gloss that suffuses the feathers
of the neck in mature birds. Now we have this species of sea-eagle in
the United States, and it has been from time immemorial the honored
War-eagle of the native redmen. If it was needful at our political birth
to put any sort of animal on our seal, and the choice was narrowed down
to an eagle, it would have been far more appropriate to have chosen the
golden rather than the white-headed or “bald” species—first because the
golden is in habits and appearance far the nobler of the two, and,
second, because of the supreme regard in which it was held by all the
North American aborigines, who paid no respect whatever to the bald
eagle. On the other hand, the white head and neck of our accepted
species gives a distinctive mark to our coat of arms. The history of the
adoption of this symbol of the United States of America is worth a
paragraph.
On July 4, 1776, on the afternoon following the morning hours in which
the Congress in Philadelphia had performed the momentous duty of
proclaiming the independence of the United States, it dropped down to
the consideration of its cockade, and appointed a committee to prepare a
device for a Great Seal and coat-of-arms for the new republic.[26]
Desiring to avoid European models, yet clinging to the traditions of art
in these matters, the committee devised and offered in succession
several complicated allegorical designs that were promptly and wisely
rejected by the Congress. Finally, in 1782, the matter was left in the
hands of Charles Thomson, Secretary of the Congress, and he at once
consulted with William Barton of Philadelphia. They abandoned allegory
and designed an eagle “displayed proper,” that is, with a shield on its
breast. Mr. Barton, who was learned in heraldry, explained that “the
escutcheon being placed on the breast of the eagle _displayed_ is a very
ancient mode of bearing, and is truly imperial.” To avoid an “imperial”
effect, however, a concession was made to local prejudice by indicating
plainly that the bird itself was the American bald eagle—unless, indeed,
that happened to be the only one Barton knew!
This design was finally adopted in 1782. Since then the Great Seal has
been re-cut several times, so that the bird in its imprint is now a far
more reputable fowl than at first—looks less as if it were nailed on a
barn-door _pour encourager les autres_. In its right claw it holds a
spray of ripe olives as an emblem of a peaceful disposition, and in its
left an indication of resolution to enforce peace, in the form of
American thunderbolts—the redman’s arrows.
There were men in the Congress in 1782, as well as out of it, who
disliked using any eagle whatever as a feature of the arms of the
Republic, feeling that it savored of the very spirit and customs against
which the formation of this commonwealth was a protest. Among them stood
that clear-headed master of common sense, Benjamin Franklin, who thought
a thoroughly native and useful fowl, like the wild turkey, would make a
far truer emblem for the new and busy nation. He added to the turkey’s
other good qualities that it was a bird of courage, remarking, with his
own delightful humor, that it would not hesitate to attack any _Red_coat
that entered its barnyard!
Franklin was right when he argued against the choice of the bald eagle,
at any rate, as our national emblem. “He is,” he said truly, “a bird of
bad moral character; he does not get his living honestly; you may have
seen him perched on some dead tree, where, too lazy to fish for himself,
he watches the labor of the fishing-hawk, and when that diligent bird
has at length taken a fish and is bearing it to its nest the bald eagle
pursues him and takes it from him. Besides, he is a rank coward; the
little kingbird attacks him boldly. He is therefore by no means a proper
emblem.”
None of these depreciatory things could Franklin have truly said of the
skilful, self-supporting, and handsome golden eagle—a Bird of Freedom
indeed. (Audubon named a western variety of it after General
Washington.) This species was regarded with extreme veneration by the
native redmen of this country. “Its feathers,” says Dr. Brinton, the
ethnologist, “composed the war-flag of the Creeks, and its image, carved
in wood, or its stuffed skin, surmounted their council-lodges. None but
an approved warrior dare wear it among the Cherokees, and the Dakotas
allowed such an honor only to him who first touched the corpse of the
common foe. The Natchez and other tribes regarded it almost as a deity.
The Zuñi of New Mexico employed four of its feathers to represent the
four winds when invoking the rain-god.”
Hence a war-song of the Ojibways reported by Schoolcraft:
Hear my voice ye warlike birds!
I prepare a feast for you to batten on;
I see you cross the enemy’s lines;
Like you I shall go.
I wish the swiftness of your wings;
I wish the vengeance of your claws;
I muster my friends;
I follow your flight.
Doesn’t this sound like a bit from the _Saga_ of Harold Hadrada?
Mexico did better in choosing her crested eagle, the harpy (_Thrasaëtus
harpia_),a magnificent representative of its race, renowned from
Paraguay to Mexico for its handsome black-and-white plumage adorned with
a warrior’s crest, and for its grand flight, dauntless courage and
amazing endurance. Quesada tells us that the Aztecs called it the winged
wolf. The princes of Tlascala wore its image on their breasts and on
their shield as a symbol of royalty; and in both Mexico and Peru, where
it was trained for sport in falconry, it was preferred to the puma,
which also was taught to capture deer and young peccaries for its
master, as is the cheeta in India. Captive harpies are still set to
fight dogs and wildcats in village arenas, and rarely are vanquished.
The tradition is that the Aztecs, a northern Nahuatl tribe, escaping
from the tyranny of the dominant Chichemecas, moved about A. D. 1325
into the valley of Mexico (Tenochtitlan), and settled upon certain
islets in a marshy lake—the site of the subsequent City of Mexico; and
this safe site is said to have been pointed out to them by a sign from
their gods—an eagle perched upon a prickly-pear cactus, the nopal, in
the act of strangling a serpent. This is the picture Cortez engraved on
his Great Seal, and Mexico has kept it to this day.
Guatemala was a part of ancient Mexico; and perched on the shield in
Guatemala’s coat-of-arms is the green or resplendent trogon
(_Pharomacrus mocinno_), the native and antique name of which is
quetzal. This is one of the most magnificent of birds, for its crested
head and body (somewhat larger than a sparrow’s) are iridescent green,
the breast and under parts crimson, and the wings black overhung by
long, plumy coverts. The quetzal’s special ornament, however, is its
bluish-green tail, eight or ten inches long, whose gleaming feathers
curve down in the graceful sweep of a sabre. It has been called the most
beautiful of American birds, and it is peculiar to Central America.
How this trogon came to be Guatemala’s national symbol, made familiar by
all its older postage-stamps, is a matter of religious history. One of
the gods in the ancient Aztec pantheon was Quetzalcoatl, of whom it was
said in their legends “that he was of majestic presence, chaste in life,
averse to war, wise and generous in action, and delighting in the
cultivation of the arts of peace.” He was the ruler of the realm far
below the surface of the earth, where the sun shines at night, the abode
of abundance where dwell happy souls; and there Quetzalcoatl abides
until the time fixed for his return to men. The first part of the name
of this beneficent god, associated with sunshine and green, growing
things, meant in the Nahuatl language a large, handsome, green feather,
such as were highly prized by the Aztecs and reserved for the decoration
of their chiefs; and one tradition of the god’s origin and equipment
relates that he was furnished with a beard made of these plumes. These
royal and venerated feathers were obtained from the trogon, which his
worshippers called _Quetzal-totl_. The emerald-hued hummingbirds of the
tropics also belonged to him.
Although Mexico and Central America were “converted” to Christianity by
a gospel of war and slavery, the ancient faith lived on in many simple
hearts, especially in the remoter districts of the South, and nowhere
more persistently than among the Mayas of Guatemala and Yucatan, whose
pyramidal temples are moldering in their uncut forests. When, in 1825,
Guatemala declared its independence and set up a local government, what
more natural than that it should take as a national symbol the glorious
bird that represented to its people the best influence in their ancient
history and the most hopeful suggestion for the future.
In the religion of the Mayas of Yucatan the great god of light was
Itsamna, one of whose titles was The Lord, the Eye of the Day—a truly
picturesque description of the sun. A temple at Itzmal was consecrated
to him under the double name Eye of Day-Bird of Fire. “In time of
pestilence,” as Dr. Brinton informs us,[27] “the people resorted to this
temple, and at high noon a sacrifice was spread upon the altar. The
moment the sun reached the zenith a bird of brilliant plumage, but which
in fact was nothing else than a fiery flame shot from the sun, descended
and consumed the offering in the sight of all.” Another authority says
that Midsummer-day was celebrated by similar rites. Hence was held
sacred the flame-hued ara, or guacamaya, the red macaw.
The Musicas, natives of the Colombian plateau where Bogotá now stands,
had a similar half-superstitious regard for this big red macaw, which
they called “fire-bird.” The general veneration for redness, prevalent
throughout western tropical America, and in Polynesia, is doubtless a
reflection of sun-worship.
Let us turn to a lighter aspect of our theme.
France rejoices, humorously, yet sincerely, in the cock as her
emblem—the strutting, crowing, combative chanticleer that arouses
respect while it tickles the French sense of fun. When curiosity led me
to inquire how this odd representative for a glorious nation came into
existence, I was met by a complete lack of readily accessible
information. The generally accepted theory seemed to be that it was to
be explained by the likeness of sound between the Latin word _gallus_, a
dunghill cock, and _Gallus_, a Gaul—the general appellative by which the
Romans of mid-Republic days designated the non-Italian, Keltic-speaking
inhabitants of the country south and west of the Swiss Alps. But whence
came the name “gaul”? and why was a pun on it so apt that it has
survived through long centuries? I knew, of course, of the yarn that
Diodorus Siculus repeats: that in Keltica once ruled a famous man who
had a daughter “tall and majestic” but unsatisfactory because she
refused all the suitors who presented themselves. Then Hercules came
along, and the haughty maiden surrendered at Arras. The result was a son
named Galetes—a lad of extraordinary virtues who became king and
extended his grandfather’s dominions. He called his subjects after his
own name Galatians and his country Galatia. This is nonsense. Moreover
“Galatia” is Greek, and was applied by the Greeks, long before the day
of Diodorus, to the lands of a colony of Keltic-speaking migrants who
had settled on the coast of Asia Minor, and became the Galatians to whom
Paul wrote one of his _Epistles_. The Greek word _Galatai_ was, however,
a form of the earlier _Keltai_.
As has been said, what we call Savoy and France were known to the Romans
as _Gallia_, Gaul; but this term had been familiar in Italy long before
Caesar had established Roman power over the great region between the
German forests and the sea that he tersely described as _Omnia Gallia_;
and it seems to have originated in the following way:
About 1100 B. C. two wild tribes, the Umbrians and the Oscans, swept
over the mountains from the northeast, and took possession of northern
Italy. These invaders were Nordics, and used an antique form of Teutonic
speech. They were resisted, attacked, and finally overwhelmed by the
Etruscans, who about 800 B. C., when Etruria was at the height of its
power, extended their rule to the Alps and the Umbrian State
disappeared. In the sixth century new hordes, calling themselves Kymri,
coming from the west, and speaking Keltic dialects, swarmed into
northern Italy from the present France. The harried people north of the
Po, themselves mostly descendants of the earlier invasion, spoke of
these raiders by an old Teutonic epithet which the Romans heard and
wrote as _Gallus_, the meaning of which was “stranger”—in this case “the
enemy.”
The word _Gallus_, Gaul or a Gaul, then, was an ancient Teutonic epithet
inherited by the Romans from the Etruscans, and had in its origin no
relation to _gallus_, the lord of the poultry-yard. It is most likely,
indeed, that the term was given in contempt, as the Greeks called
foreigners “barbarians” because they spoke some language which the
Greeks did not understand; for the occupants of the valley of the Po at
that time were of truly Germanic descent, and did not regard the
round-headed, Alpine “Kelts” as kin in any sense, but rather as ancient
foes. What the word on their lips actually was no one knows; but it
seems to have had a root _gal_ or _val_, interchangeable in the sound
(to non-native ears) of its initial letter, whence it appears that
Galatai, Gael, Valais, Walloon, and similar names connected with Keltic
history are allied in root-derivation. Wales, for example, to the early
Teutonic immigrants into Britain was the country of the _Wealas_,
_i.e._, the “foreigners” (who were Gaulish, Keltic-speaking Kymri); and
the English are not yet quite free from that view of the Welsh.
The opportunity to pun with _gallus_, a cock, is evident, just as was a
bitter pun current in Martial’s time between _Gallia_, a female Gaul and
_gallia_, a gall-nut; but in all this there is nothing to answer the
question why the pun of which we are in search—if there was such a
pun—has endured so long. I think the answer lies in certain appearances
and customs of the Keltic warriors.
Plutarch, in his biography of Caius Marius, describes the Kymri fought
by Marius, years before Caesar’s campaigns, as wearing helmets
surmounted by animal effigies of various kinds, and many tall feathers.
Diodorus says the Gauls had red hair, and made it redder by dyeing it
with lime. This fierce and flowing red headdress must have appeared much
like a cock’s comb, to which the vainglorious strutting of the
barbarians added a most realistic touch in the eyes of the disciplined
legionaries. Later, the Roman authorities in Gaul minted a coin or coins
bearing a curious representation of a Gaulish helmet bearing a cock on
its crest, illustrations of which are printed by G. R. Rothery in his _A
B C of Heraldry_. Rothery also states that the bird appears on
Gallo-Roman sculptures. Another writer asserts that Julius Caesar
records that those Gauls that he encountered fought under a
cock-standard, which he regarded as associated with a religious cult,
but I have been unable to verify this interesting reference. Caesar does
mention in his _Commentaries_ that the Gauls were fierce fighters, and
that one of their methods in personal combat was skilful kicking, like a
game-cock’s use of its spurs—a trick still employed by French rowdies,
and known as _la savate_. In the Romance speech of the south of France
chanticleer is still _gall_.
The question arises here in the mind of the naturalist: If the
aboriginal Gauls really bore a “cock” on their banners and wore its
feathers in their helmets (as the Alpine regiments in Italy now wear
chanticleer’s tail-plumes), what bird was it? They did not then possess
the Oriental domestic fowls to which the name properly belongs, and had
nothing among their wild birds resembling it except grouse. One of these
wild grouse is the great black capercaille, a bold, handsome bird of the
mountain forests, noted for its habit in spring of mounting a prominent
tree and issuing a loud challenge to all rivals; and one of its gaudy
feathers is still the favorite ornament for his hat of the Tyrolean
mountaineer. By the way, the _cockade_, that figured so extensively as a
badge in the period of the French Revolution was so called because of
its resemblance to a cock’s comb.
Now comes a break of several centuries in the record, illuminated by
only a brief note in La Rousse’s _Encyclopédie_, that in 1214, after the
Dauphin du Viennois had distinguished himself in combat with the
English, an order of knights was formed styled L’Ordre du Coq; and that
a white cock became an emblem of the dauphins of the Viennois line.
The cock did not appear as a blazon when, after the Crusades, national
coats-of-arms were being devised; nevertheless the _le coq de France_
was not forgotten, for it was engraved on a medal struck to celebrate
the birth of Louis XIII (1601). Then came the Revolution, when the old
régime was overthrown; and in 1792 the First Republic put the cock on
its escutcheon and on its flag in place of the lilies of the fallen
dynasty. When this uprising of the people had been suppressed, and
Napoleon I had mounted the throne, in 1804, he substituted for it the
Roman eagle, which he had inherited from his conquests in Italy and
Austria, and which was appropriate to his ambitious designs for world
domination. This remained until Napoleon went to Elba, and then Louis
XVIII brought back for a short time the Bourbon lilies; yet medals and
cartoons of the early Napoleonic era depict the Gallic cock chasing a
runaway lion of Castile or a fleeing Austrian eagle, showing plainly
what was the accepted symbol of French power in the eyes of the common
folks of France. One medal bore the motto _Je veille pour le nation_.
Napoleon soon returned from Elba only to be extinguished at Waterloo,
after which, during the régime of Louis Philippe, the figure of the
Gallic cock was again mounted on the top of the regimental flagstaffs in
place of the gilded eagle; an illustration of this finial is given in
_Armories et Drapeaux Français_. Louis Philippe could do this
legitimately, according to Rothery and others, because this bird was the
crest of his family—the Bourbons—in their early history in the south of
France. The Gallic cock continued to perch on the banner-poles until the
foundation of the second Empire under Louis Napoleon in 1852. Since then
the “tricolor,” originating in 1789 as the flag of the National Guard,
and dispensing with all devices, has waved over France. Officially bold
chanticleer was thus dethroned; but in the late World War, as in all
previous periods of public excitement, the ancient image of French
nationality has been revived, as the illustrated periodicals and books
of the time show; and, much as they revere the tricolor, the soldiers
still feel that it is _le coq Gaulois_ that in 1918 again struck down
the black eagles of their ancient foes.
* * * * *
Juvenal’s sixth _Satire_, in which he castigates the Roman women of his
day for their sins and follies, contains a line, thrown in as a mere
side-remark—
Rara avis in terris, negroque similima cygno—
which has become the most memorable line in the whole homily. It has
been variously translated, most literally, perhaps, by Madan: “A rare
bird in the earth, and very like a black swan.” The comparison was meant
to indicate something improbable to the point of absurdity; and in that
sense has _rara avis_ been used ever since.
For more than fifteen hundred years Juvenal’s expression for extreme
rarity held good; but on January 6, 1697, Dutch navigator Willem de
Vlaming, visiting the southwestern coast of Australia, sent two boats
ashore to explore the present harbor of Perth. “There their crews first
saw two and then more black swans, of which they caught four, taking two
of them alive to Batavia; and Valentyne, who several years later
recounted this voyage, gives in his work a plate representing the ship,
boats and birds at the mouth of what is now known from this circumstance
as Swan River, the most important stream of the thriving colony now
State of Western Australia, which has adopted this very bird as its
armorial symbol.”
Another Australian bird, that, like the black swan, has obtained a
picturesque immortality in a coat-of-arms; and on postage stamps, is the
beautiful lyre-bird, first discovered in New South Wales in 1789, and
now a feature in the armorial bearings of that State in the Australian
Commonwealth. New Zealand’s stamps show the apteryx (kiwi) and emeu.
One might extend this chapter by remarking on various birds popularly
identified with certain countries, as the ibis with Egypt, the
nightingale with England and Persia, the condor with Peru, the red
grouse with Scotland, the ptarmigan with Newfoundland, and so on. Then
might be given a list of birds whose feathers belonged exclusively to
chieftainship, and so had a sort of tribal significance. Thus in Hawaii
a honeysucker, the mamo, furnished for the adornment of chiefs alone the
rich yellow feathers of which “royal” cloaks were made; the Inca
“emperors” of Peru, before the Spanish conquest, reserved to themselves
the rose-tinted plumage of an Andean water-bird; an African chief
affected the long tail-plumes of the widowbird—and so forth.
Only one of these locally revered birds entices me to linger a
moment—the nightingale, beloved of English poets, whose oriental
equivalent is the Persian bulbul. The mingled tragedies of the
nightingale and the swallow form the theme of one of the most famous as
well as sentimental legends of Greek mythology. These myths, strangely
confused by different narrators, have been unravelled by the scholarly
skill of Miss Margaret Verrall in her _Mythology of Ancient
Athens_;[108] and her analysis throws light on the way the Greek
imagination, from prehistoric bards down to the vase-decorators of the
classic era, and to the dramatists Sophocles, Æschylus, and
Aristophanes, dealt with birds—a very curious study. Miss Verrall
reminds us that a word is necessary as to the names of the Attic tale.
“We are accustomed, burdened as we are with Ovidian association, to
think of Philomela as the nightingale. Such was not the version of
Apollodorus, nor, so far as I know, of any earlier Greek writer.
According to Apollodorus, Procne became the nightingale (’αηδών) and
Philomela the swallow χελιδών. It was Philomela who had her tongue cut
out, a tale that would never have been told of the nightingale, but
which fitted well with the short restless chirp of the swallow. To speak
a barbarian tongue was ‘to mutter like a swallow.’”
But there has arisen in Persia a literature of the nightingale, or
“bulbul,” springing from a pathetic legend—if it is not simply poetic
fancy—that as the bird pours forth its song “in a continuous strain of
melody” it is pressing its breast against a rose-thorn to ease its
heart’s pain. Giles Fletcher, who had been attached to one of Queen
Elizabeth’s missions to Russia, and perhaps in that way picked up the
suggestion, used it in one of his love-poems in a stanza that is a very
queer mixture of two distinct fancies and a wrong sex, for the thrush
that sings is not the one that has any occasion to weep about virginity:
So Philomel, perched on an aspen sprig,
Weeps all the night her lost virginity,
And sings her sad tale to the merry twig,
That dances at such joyful mystery.
Ne ever lets sweet rest invade her eye,
But leaning on a thorn her dainty chest
For fear soft sleep should steal into her breast
Expresses in her song grief not to be expressed.
The poetic vision over which Hafiz and others have sighed and sung in
the fragrant gardens of Shiraz seems to owe nothing to the Greek tale,
and to them the plaintive note in the bird’s melody is not an expression
of bitter woe, but only bespeaks regret whenever a rose is plucked. They
will tell you tearfully that the bulbul will hover about a rosebush in
spring, till, overpowered by the sweetness of its blossoms, the
distracted bird falls senseless to the ground. The rose is supposed to
burst into flower at the opening song of its winged lover. You may place
a handful of fragrant herbs and flowers before the nightingale, say the
Persian poets, yet he wishes not in his constant and faithful heart for
more than the sweet breath of his beloved rose—
Though rich the spot
With every flower the earth has got,
What is it to the nightingale
If there his darling rose is not.
But romantic stories of the association of the queen of flowers with the
prince of birds are many, and the reader may easily find more of them.
In a legend told by the Persian poet Attarall the birds once appeared
before King Solomon and complained that they could not sleep because of
the nightly wailings of the bulbul, who excused himself on the plea that
his love for the rose was the cause of irrepressible grief. This is the
tradition to which Byron alludes in _The Giaour_:
The rose o’er crag or vale,
Sultana of the nightingale,
The maid for whom his melody,
His thousand songs, are heard on high,
Blooms blushing to her lover’s tale—
His queen, the garden queen, the rose,
Unbent by winds, unchilled by snows.