BIRDS AS SYMBOLS AND BADGES
Certain kinds of birds have become symbols of popular ideas, or even
significant badges of persons and events, and are thus more or less
conventionalized accessories in art, by reason of their appearance
(form, color), or their habits, or their connection with some historic
incident or fabulous tale. In many cases this symbolism is of very
ancient origin, as is most particularly true of the eagle and the dove.
The eagle is accounted for elsewhere in its various aspects and
relations: but the dove, by which is meant the prehistorically
domesticated blue rock-pigeon, almost deserves a chapter to itself.
To trace the career of the dove in religion, customs, and art is,
indeed, one of the most engaging of my tasks, and the quest discloses a
curiously double and diverse symbolism running almost simultaneously
from the beginning of history to the present, for this bird serves as an
emblem of purity and conjugal affection in one association, and in
another suggests the familiar epithet “soiled.”
The story of this bird goes back to the misty dawn of civilization and
religion in Mesopotamia, the Garden-of-Eden land, where arose the dual
“nature-worship” of the combining elements heaven and earth, male and
female. The fecund soil, yielding its fruits to the fertilizing sunshine
and rain, sent by the sky-god, became personified as Ishtar (Ashtaroth),
and to her was assigned the amorous and prolific dove as a type of the
family concord and productiveness she represented; and white doves were
sold to worshippers at Babylon to be offered as sacrifices in her
temple. Her worship was spread to Asia Minor and the shore of the Ægean
by Babylonian and Assyrian conquests, and she became known to the
Phrygians as Cybele, to the Syrians as Darketo, and to the Phoenicians
as Atagartis, whom the Ionian Greeks called Astarte.
In these transformations the primitive Ishtar gradually fell from her
original state as a type of motherhood to the baser one of physical
love-indulgence, and among her votaries were troops of maidens who
publicly offered their virginity at her shrine, as a form of sacrifice
and service.
Some of the Syrians are said to have thought of their goddess Darketo as
“Semiramis,” but this was by confusion with her fabled daughter. Whether
or not a real woman and queen of that name ever existed, I leave to the
historians, but a mythical Semiramis belongs to my story, and her
history was first written by Ctesias, an Asiatic-Greek historian of the
fourth century B.C. Ctesias says that near Askalon was a large lake
beside which Darketo (otherwise Atagartis) had a habitation; she is
represented with the face of a woman and the body of a fish—perhaps the
most antique conception of a mermaid. She fell in love with a fair youth
and a girl-baby resulted. Then, in shame, Darketo destroyed her lover,
exposed the child in a rocky desert, and flung herself into the lake.
The babe, nurtured by doves on milk and cheese, was discovered and
reared by a herdsman, who called the child Semiramis—a Syrian word for
“doves.” At the close of her life this mythical Semiramis changed
herself into a dove and flew away with certain other birds. Hence, in
Ctesias’s time, divine honors were paid in the East to doves; and a dove
is the badge of Semiramis in Syrian monumental art. Diodorus Siculus
repeats this account with additional details.
The sceptre in the hand of the revered image of Atagartis in her great
temple at Hierapolis bore the golden figure of a dove on its summit; and
in Phoenicia, Cyprus, Sardinia, and wherever the Phocians and other
Levantine traders of that day traded and colonized, have been found
small terra-cotta figures of this goddess, or of one of her priestesses,
always with a dove.
To the devotees of this cult, which was confined to the coastal region,
and in which the Hebrews and other Semites of the interior desert-plains
took no part, a dove was so sacred that if a person even accidentally
touched one he was “unclean” throughout the day. Hence the birds
thronged in the villages and houses and swarmed about the temple yards,
where they were fed by visitors, as still is the custom in the
Mohammedan mosques that have taken their place. This was noted
especially at Hierapolis, where, according to Lucian, one of the
venerated images had a pigeon’s head.
This religious doctrine, and more particularly the Phrygian cult of
Cybele, was undoubtedly carried to the Ægean islands and to Greece,
while civilization was still in its infancy there, for the “sea-born”
Aphrodite—an epithet indicative of her arrival from across the waters—is
only Astarte transformed in Greek thought, which seems to explain the
classic story that Aphrodite was born from an egg, with a dove brooding
upon it, rolled ashore by a fish.
The focus of religious emotion in those early centuries of Greece, at
least in Attica, was probably in the most ancient of oracles, that at
Dodona. Tradition ascribed its origin to a dove that spoke with a human
voice; and among those who served the shrine were three priestesses
popularly called “Doves,” whose duty it was to announce oracles
requested as if real birds uttered them from the foliage of the
surrounding oaks—divine trees. Connected with the cult of Zeus at Dodona
was that of Aphrodite, then regarded as the goddess of exalted love, not
of the sensual passion by which in later times her cult in Rome, as
Venus, became degraded. It was natural, as we have seen, that the dove
should be associated with this pristine Aphrodite, and equally suitable
that it should be adopted subsequently as the attendant of lascive
Venus, for as De Kay[18] observes, doves are forever making love and
caressing each other. “Chaucer speaks of ‘the wedded turtil with her
herte trewe’.... So the bird is by its nature and habits fitted to be
the attendant and symbol of the goddess of love—the bird that draws her
flower-studded chariot through the air.” A Persian poet asks:
Knowest thou why round his neck the dove
A collar wears?—it is to tell
He is the faithful slave of love,
And serves all those who serve him well.[88]
An interesting memorandum here is the observation by A. B. Cook,[37] the
erudite author of _Zeus_, that the oracle in the oasis Ammon (Siwah),
which Alexander the Great took such prodigious trouble to visit and
consult, was, like that at Dodona, founded by a dove. “Moreover,” Mr.
Cook remarks, “Semiramis is said to have learned her destiny from Ammon,
and to have fulfilled it by becoming a dove.... In short, it appears
that the whole apparatus of the oracle at Dodona ... was to be matched
in the oasis of Ammon. Strabo adds that both oracles gave their
responses in the selfsame manner, not by words but by certain tokens,
such as the flight of doves.”
The conception of Aphrodite also included that of spring, ushered in by
the early return of this migrant from its winter resort in Africa and
the time when it cooed for a mate—the season when “a livelier iris
changes on the burnished dove”; while the revival of nature in spring
has always to imaginative souls typified the Resurrection as taught in
Christian doctrine and exemplified in some of the customs of Easter,
which, of course, is only an adaptation of the far more ancient festival
of rejoicing at the return of the sun—the rebirth of the year.
Another line of thought apparently of Oriental origin, but prevalent in
northern Europe, connected this dove with the Fates and with death,
especially death by violence—a phase that is traced in wearisome detail
back to the _Rigvedas_ and other misty sources by the myth-readers, and
which probably comes from its plaintive “cooing.” Sometimes, however,
the fateful dove brings good tidings and succor to the distressed, as in
the story of Queen Radegund, who in the form of a dove once delivered
sailors from shipwreck.
This is an appropriate place, perhaps, to repeat the legend related by
the Rhodian Apollonius in his poem _Argonautica_, concerning the
Symplegades—the two islands that stand on opposite sides of the
Bosphorus “mouth.” It appears that these islands were wont in days
ancient even to Apollonius to swing together and crush any living thing
that attempted to pass between them and enter the Black Sea. Phineas,
who lived on the shore near by told Jason, who had arrived there on his
journey in search of the Golden Fleece, and who wanted to go on into the
Euxine, how to escape the fatal grasp of the island-gates. He was to
sail or row the _Argo_ as near as he dared to the entrance, then let
loose a dove. The bird would fly onward, the islands would rush together
to crush it; and the instant they had swung back Jason must drive his
ship on between them before they could close again. This plan, so clever
except for the poor bird, succeeded, and broke the magic spell. Living
heroes had passed safely between them, and ever since then the malicious
Symplegades have remained stable. This story has been scientifically
analyzed by the mythologists in various ways, but none has deigned to
consider why a dove was chosen, rather than some other bird, as the
martyr of the occasion. I am inclined to think it was because among
sailors of those days the dove was believed to help them; and that, in
turn, was owing to its association with the “foam-born” Aphrodite, who
was worshipped by mariners, especially about Cyprus, as goddess of the
sea.
I have dwelt somewhat at length on these antique fables, not only to
give a glimpse of the nativity of certain far more modern, or even
existing, ideas and customs connected with the dove, but more especially
to display the background of tradition and feeling that affected the
minds of people toward this familiar bird at the time when Christianity
began to manifest itself in Italy, and began to replace by a Christian
symbolism the previous figurative significance of the dove. The highest
place given it in early Christian thought and art was as a
representative of the third member of the godhead—the Holy Ghost, and it
still holds this significance, as every one may realize who recalls the
hymn beginning “Come Holy Spirit, heavenly Dove,” which will be sung in
perhaps hundreds of churches next Sunday. An old and natural inference
followed, that the devil cannot ever take (by magic) the form of this
celestial messenger.
According to an apocryphal gospel the Holy Ghost in the semblance of a
dove, designated Joseph as the spouse of the Virgin Mary by alighting on
his head; and in the same manner, according to Eusebius, Fabian was
indicated as divinely appointed to be Pope in the third century. It is
said also that at the Council of Nice (A.D. 325) the creed formulated
there was signed by the Holy Spirit, appearing as a dove—a legend that
magnifies the tremendous importance of that document.
Again, there is the story of the miraculous dove at the consecration of
Clovis on Christmas Day, 496, at Rheims. When Clovis and St. Remi, the
bishop, reached the baptistery the priest bearing the holy chrism was
prevented by the density of the crowd from reaching the font. Then a
dove, whiter than snow, brought a vial (ampoule) filled with chrism sent
from heaven; and the bishop took it, and with this miraculous chrism
perfumed the baptismal water for the Frankish chief by whose victories
over Germanic barbarians France was founded.
The lives of medieval saints and martyrs—or at any rate, the records of
them—abound in such incidents of supernatural recognition. Several
devoted women on taking the vow of virginity received their veils from
doves hatched in no earthly nest; bishops were more than once given
approval of public acts, especially when unpopular, by similar
manifestations of divine approbation, doves alighting on their heads. “A
dove is the special emblem of Gregory the Great (A.D. 590–604), and its
figure rests on his right shoulder in the magnificent statue of this
pope in Rome.”
This is in allusion, according to _The Catholic Encyclopedia_, “to the
well-known story recorded by Peter the Deacon (_Vita_, xxviii), who
tells us that when the pope was dictating his homilies in Ezechiel a
veil was drawn between his secretary and himself. As, however, the pope
remained silent for long periods of time, the servant made a hole in the
curtain and, looking through, beheld a dove seated on Gregory’s head
with its beak between his lips. When the dove withdrew its beak the holy
pontiff spoke and the secretary took down his words; but when he became
silent the servant again applied his eyes to the hole and saw that the
dove had again placed its beak between his lips.” Much the same incident
belongs to the biography of another early pope; and apropos to the
significance of this bird in the Romanist method of demonstrating that
faith to the populace, Mackenzie E. Walcott contributed the following
bit of history to _Notes and Queries_ in 1873:
The dove was regarded as the symbol of the holy spirit which came in
the eventide of days, bringing safety and peace to the ark of Christ
and a world rescued from wreck, and to whom Christians should be
conformed in innocency. A dove was suspended over the altar, as
Amphilochius says of S. Basil that he broke the Holy Bread and
placed one third part in the pendant golden dove over the altar. The
Council of Constantinople charged a heretic with robbing the gold
and silver doves that hung above the fonts and altars. The dove was
also the symbol of our Blessed Lord, as we learn from Prudentius and
an expression of Tertullian, “the Dove’s house,” applied to a
church, probably in allusion to Coloss. i, 20.
The dove for reservation [that is, withholding a part of the
eucharist] whether for communion of infants in the baptistery, or of
sick under a ciborium, was suspended by a chain. One is preserved in
the church of S. Nazarius at Milan, and a solitary mention of
another is contained in an inventory of Salisbury. In Italy at an
early date, the dove was set upon a tower for reservation.... We
also find in early works of devotional art the dove represented as
flooding a cross with streams of living water. There is a famous
example in the Lateran, symbolical of Holy Baptism. A holy lamb and
dove are placed on the canopy of the baptistery at Saragossa.
It seems unlikely that Mohammed could have heard of these pontifical
sources or methods of divine inspiration, yet, according to Brewer,[34]
Prideaux, in his _Life of Mahamet_, relates that he taught a dove to
pick seed placed in his ear as it perched on his shoulder; but the wily
prophet “gave it out it was the Holy Ghost, in the form of a dove, come
to impart to him the counsels of God.” This accounts probably (for
Shakespeare may well have heard the tradition) for the doubting query in
_Henry V_: “Was Mohammed inspired with a dove?”
Whether this legend is credible or not, it is certain that Islam has
preserved the ancient Oriental reverence for this bird, which now flocks
in great numbers around all the mosques; and the Moslems have a
half-superstitious feeling that any bird that seeks its rest and makes
its nest about temples and holy buildings must not be disturbed—a kindly
regard in which swallows share, at least in the Near East, where the
Mohammedans say that the swallow must be a very holy bird, because it
makes an annual pilgrimage to Mecca.
John Keane,[14] an Englishman who spent a long time in Arabia about
forty years ago, records that at Mecca vast flocks of pigeons were to be
seen in the public space surrounding the kaaba. By repeated observations
he estimated that between 5000 and 6000 pigeons assembled there daily,
all so tame that they would alight on men’s heads and shoulders. They
are still held as almost sacred, are never killed, and nest in nearly
every building in niches left for that purpose in the walls of the
rooms. Pilgrims purchase baskets of grain to give to the pigeons as a
pious act, and each benefactor “becomes the vortex of a revolving storm
of pigeons.” In some remote places, indeed, these temple-pets become
themselves almost objects of worship. For example, on the direct road
between Yarkand and Khotan, Chinese Turkestan, stands the locally
celebrated pigeon-shrine (Kaptar Mazzar), where all good Moslems must
dismount and reverently approach the sacred spot. “Legend has it that
Imam Shakir Padshah, trying to convert the Buddhist inhabitants of the
country to Islam by the drastic agency of the sword, fell here in battle
against the army of Khotan, and was buried in the little cemetery. It is
affirmed that two doves flew forth from the heart of the dead saint, and
became the ancestors of the swarms of pigeons we saw ... sated with the
offerings of the Faithful, and extremely fat.... We were told that if a
hawk were to venture to attack them it would fall down dead.”
A pretty story is related by E. Dinet, a French artist, in his book of
sketches in Algeria. “Doves, which the Arabs name imams, because,” he
was told, “like the imam in the mosques, they call the faithful to
prayer, and because, like him, they do not cease to prostrate themselves
by inclining their necks in devotions to the Creator.” Newspapers of the
year 1921 contained an account of how two European boys ignorantly
provoked a riot in Bombay by killing a couple of pigeons in the street.
The Mohammedans were horrified and the police had difficulty in
suppressing an extensive disturbance; the stock exchange and other
general markets were closed, and a wide-spread strike of workmen in
India was threatened, as an evidence of the deep feeling aroused by the
boys’ sacrilegious act. It was evidence also of the panic-force of
superstition under an appropriate stimulus, and a good illustration of
Professor George Santayana’s definition of superstition as “reverence
for what hurts.” In the same year it was reported by telegraph from
Brownsville, Texas, that a snow-white pigeon flew into Sacred Heart
Church there on the morning of November 11, during a service celebrating
Armistice Day, and perched over a memorial window, where it remained
throughout the service. Had it been a sparrow or woodpecker no one would
have thought of recording the incident.
Men in the Middle Ages had perfect faith in prodigies such as those
connected with the holy ampoule of St. Remi and the subsequent miracles
in which it was so efficacious; and everyone understood their meaning.
This continued as long as the Church held sway over hearts and minds of
the populace. Nobody, probably, had the disposition, not to say the
hardihood, to deny the story—you may read it in Froissart—that at the
battle of Roosebeek (or Rosebeque), which put an end to the power of
Philip van Artevelde in 1382, a white dove was seen to circle about and
alight on the French oriflame, which then swept on to victory.
Readers of Malory’s _Morte D’Arthur_ will recall that as on its
appearance the Holy Grail passes before Lancelot’s eyes in the castle of
Pelleas, a dove, entering at the window and carrying a small golden
censer in its beak, impressed the awe-struck knights of the Table Round
as a lovely token of the purity and worship to which the castle was
devoted. Nothing could be more natural in medieval romance than this
incident—a miracle commemorated in the opera _Parsifal_. The Venetians
still assert that the pigeons so familiar and petted in the piazza of
St. Mark fly three times daily around the city in honor of the Trinity.
A later example: in the first voyage of Hernando Cortez to America water
and food were almost exhausted, and everybody in the vessel was
discouraged and mutinous, when “came a Dove flying to the Shippe, being
Good Friday at Sunsett; and sat him on the Shippe-top; whereat they were
all comforted, and tooke it for a miracle and good token ... and all
gave heartie thanks to God, directing their course the way the Dove
flew.” Any sort of bird would have been welcome as an indication of
nearness of land, but a _dove_ meant to them a heavenly pilot. No wonder
that they were comforted! And when they had landed they found in
abundance a flower (the orchid _Peristeria elata_) which they at once
named La Flor del Espiritu Santu—Flower of the Holy Ghost. Why? Because
in its center the consolidated pistil and stamens form an unmistakable
image of a dove.
The immediate source of this symbolism is evidently the account in the
gospels of the divine sanction witnessed at the baptism of Jesus.
Matthew (iii, 16) records: “Lo, the heavens were opened unto him, and he
saw the Spirit of God descending like a dove, and lighting upon him”;
and St. Luke strengthens the realism by writing that “the Holy Ghost
descended in a bodily shape like a dove.” Hence this bird is constantly
associated with Christ and with the Cross by artists and decorative
designers; and it is no wonder that in so strictly Catholic countries as
Italy it is considered sacrilegious by many of the people to eat the
flesh of pigeons.
“In the fifth century,” as Mrs. Jenner tells us in her book on Christian
symbolism,[63] the dove is shown descending on the Blessed Virgin at the
Annunciation. After this date the Holy Dove is commonly shown in
depicting both these subjects, as well as the sacrament of baptism. It
appears frequently also over the pictures of the Virgin and Child, and
in pictures of the Creation, where “the spirit of God moved on the face
of the waters.... The Holy Spirit as a dove bestowing the Gift of
Tongues is shown with flames proceeding from Him.”
The prophet Elisha is represented in a window of Lincoln College,
England, with a two-headed dove on his shoulder—evidently an allusion to
his petition to Elijah (_II Kings_, ii, 9): “I pray thee, let a double
portion of thy spirit be upon me.”
But this venerated bird has many other meanings in Christian art and
parable, sometimes so comprehensive as to include the Church, or Pope,
or Christians generally in the sense that they are distinguished from
Pagans by their gentleness and innocence.
Reference has been made to the funereal quality of this bird, which
appears on medieval funerary monuments as testimony of death in
Christian faith. In the miracle-play depicting the career and martyrdom
of St. Eulalia of Barcelona, which is still enacted annually in the
Catalan village-churches of the eastern Pyrenees, it is represented that
the tortured soul of the Christian maiden escapes to heaven in the form
of a dove. Even to-day one sees these birds, or a pair of them, carved
on tombstones, or their stuffed skins employed as a part of funeral
wreaths and accessories, and certain superstitions have grown out of
this practice, as is related elsewhere.
The white domestic dove has always been a figure of purity by reason, no
doubt, of its whiteness, as of unstained snow or light—the same feeling
that prescribes white raiment in such church services as the
confirmation of girls, and white veils and flowers for brides. This,
probably, was the reason, too, why white doves, and even geese, were
acceptable for sacrifice in the Jewish temple of old from those who
could not afford to give a lamb. Mary, mother of Jesus, offered doves at
her sacrificial purification; and that these birds were commonly used
for that purpose is evident from the fact that a great trade in them had
grown up in and around the temple in Jerusalem, profaning it, so that
later Jesus drove away from its hallowed precincts “them that sold
doves.” A tradition says that Moses, a good economist, decreed as a
proper sacrifice-offering either a turtle-dove or two young pigeons,
because doves were good to eat at any time, whereas pigeons (the larger
and wilder stock) were tough and unpalatable except as squabs; and it is
to be remembered that the edible flesh of sacrificed animals was
afterward eaten, and for that end was divided equally between the
offerer and the priests.
A more widespread, popular and persistent notion makes the dove the
symbol of peace, usually depicted with a spray of olive in its beak. How
the olive came to have this character has been thoroughly discussed by
the Rev. H. Friend.[11] It appears to be largely an accidental
acquisition, even if one believes that the idea is derived from the
olive-leaf brought back by the dove that Noah sent forth from the ark.
In old times a tree-branch of any sort served as does a modern flag of
truce between warring factions; or was held aloft as a sign of friendly
intentions when strangers approached others without hostile purpose. The
tradition of the Deluge suggested, and usage has strengthened, the
supposition that the olive was the proper sort of branch to show
(without danger of misunderstanding), as was the practice of Roman
heralds, and the fact that this bird was associated with the olive in
Biblical legend has made the dove the “bird of peace.” The olive-tree
was given to Athens and the world by Pallas Athene, patron of peace and
plenty.
As a matter of ornithology the choice of this bird as a representative
of peace is an unfortunate one, for pigeons are unusually quarrelsome
among themselves; it is noticeable, however, that in all these relations
the symbolic dove is a white one—not the gray ring-dove. In Japan, on
the contrary doves are considered messengers of war, which perhaps
originated in the legend of an escape from his enemies by the mythical
hero Yoritomo. He was hiding in a hollow tree, and when his pursuers saw
two doves fly out of the hollow they concluded no one could be there and
passed on. Yoritomo afterward became shogun, and he erected shrines to
the god of war, whose birds are doves, become so, perhaps, by reason of
their pugnacity.
Next to the dove (or perhaps the eagle) the peacock appears to have most
importance among birds as a symbol. To us it stands as a vainglorious
and foppish personality of very little use in a practical world; and
India has a proverb that the crow that puts on peacock’s feathers finds
that they fall out and that he has left only the harsh voice. De
Gubernatis[54] quotes another Hindoo saying, that this bird has angel’s
feathers, a devil’s voice and a thief’s walk. Other stories tell of the
proud bird’s chagrin when he looks down and perceives how black and
glossy are his feet—as old Robert Chester sang it in _Love’s Martyr_:
The proud sun-loving peacocke with his feathers,
Walkes all alone, thinking himself a king,
And with his voyce prognosticates all weathers,
Although God knows but badly doth he sing;
But when he lookes downe to his base blacke feete,
He droops, and is asham’d of things unmeete.
A still earlier poet had sung of this secret chagrin attributed to the
conceited fowl, and had accounted for it by a popular Moslem tradition,
illustrated to this day by the fact that the Devil-worshipping sect of
Yezd, in northern Mesopotamia, reverence the peacock as the accomplice
of Eblis, which is Satan; my reference is to the Persian Azz’ Eddin
Elmocadessi,[88] who wrote—
The peacock wedded to the world,
Of all her gorgeous plumage vain,
With glowing banners wide unfurled,
Sweeps slowly by in proud disdain;
But in her heart a torment lies,
That dims the lustre of those eyes;
She turns away her glance—but no,
Her hideous feet appear below!
And fatal echoes, deep and loud,
Her secret mind’s dark caverns stir;
She knows, though beautiful and proud,
That Paradise is not for her.
For, when in Eden’s blissful spot
Lost Eblis tempted man, she dared
To join the treach’rous angel’s plot
And thus his crime and sentence shared.
Her frightful claws remind her well
Of how she sinned and how she fell.
The native home of this resplendent pheasant is India and Malaya, and
the brilliance of its plumage (in the male sex, to which all that
follows refers), the radiating, rustling quills and prismatic eye-spots
of the magnificent tail-coverts, together with other features of the
bird’s life, led to its association in Eastern mythology with the sun
and sometimes with the rainbow. Taken westward by adventurous traders,
the glittering dress of the cock entered into the popular conception of
the phenix, and thus the peacock came to be accepted in pagan Greece and
Italy as a substitute for that gorgeous fiction, as no real phenix was
obtainable. Naturally the new bird was assigned, superseding her homely
goose, to Hera (Juno) the consort of Zeus (Jupiter) whose cognizance was
the eagle—the other component of the hybrid phenix; and, as Juno was
queen of heaven, the bird was used by pre-christian artists as the
symbol of the apotheosis of an empress as was the eagle that of an
emperor.
These ideas were of Eastern origin, and came with the bird when it was
introduced into the western world from its home in southern Asia, where
its harsh cry of warning to the jungle whenever it espied a tiger,
leopard or big snake, was also a welcome signal to the people of the
woodland villages to be on their guard. “For this reason, as well as its
habit of foretelling rain by its dancing and cries of delight, it has
from time immemorial been held in the East as a bird of magic, or the
embodiment of some god of the forest whose beneficence is well worth
supplication, and whose resentment might bring disaster. Hence it was
ever protected, not by law, but from a feeling of veneration.”
The words quoted are from one of a series of articles on Oriental Art by
Mrs. Katherine M. Ball,[68] printed in _Japan_ (July, 1922), from which
the reader may gather further facts as to the place the bird holds in
the religious and artistic thought of the Orient. In China, for example,
in the time of the Tang dynasty (8th century, A. D.), “many thousand
districts,” according to the chronicles, “paid tribute in peacocks,
because their feathers were required by the state, not only as
decorations for the imperial processions, but for the designation of
official rank; for the peacock feather was bestowed upon officials, both
military and civil, as a reward for faithful service.” Such feathers
differed according to the honor to be dispensed, hence there are the
“flower” feather, the “green” feather, and the “one-eyed,” “two-eyed”
and “three-eyed,” all of which were greatly treasured and worn on
special occasions. This use of the feather is accounted for by Mrs. Ball
in this way: “In the Chin dynasty a defeated general took refuge in a
forest where there were many peacocks. When the pursuing forces arrived,
and found the fowl so quiet and undisturbed, they concluded that no one
could possibly have come that way, and forthwith abandoned the search.
The general—who later became known as the ancestor of five kings—was
thus able to escape, and so grateful was he that later when he came into
power he instituted the custom of conferring a peacock feather as an
honor for the achievement of bravery in battle.” This incident reminds
us of the escape of Yoritomo of Japan, and of the Tartar general who
avoided capture under the protection of a quiet owl, as related
elsewhere.
The Japanese are fond of the peacock as a motive in their exquisite art,
and frequently combine it with the peony, as do the Chinese, who
consider that the only flower worthy of such association. Another
subject frequently seen illustrated is a representation of the Buddhist
healing deity Kujako Myowo, the Japanese analogue of the Hindoo
deification of this fowl.
Whether the peacock was brought to the Mediterranean region from India
or Persia or from Phoenicia is unknown. It is commonly said that
Alexander the Great was its introducer; but wherever it went its
symbolic significance accompanied it, otherwise the peoples of Greece
and Italy would hardly have given it the name of their own goddess of
light and day, or have held it to be a visible sign of the rainbow
itself. In combination with the eagle it was originally an attribute of
Pan, who later was obliged to yield it to Juno, the goddess of Heaven,
thus making it the star-bird, the symbol of the starry firmament, on
account of the “eyes” in its tail-feathers, which were regarded as the
very stars themselves. Out of this arose many myths, chief among which
is that of the hundred-eyed Argus—how Argus was set by Juno to watch Io,
of whom she had been jealous, but was killed by Mercury in the interest
of the queen’s unrepentant husband; and how Juno makes the best of a bad
situation:
Thus Argus lies in pieces cold and pale;
And all his hundred eyes with all their light
Are closed at once in one perpetual night.
These Juno takes, that they no more shall fail,
And spreads them on her peacock’s gaudy tail.[69]
But the Christians, in their revolt against everything Pagan, regarded
this bird, which like so many other facts and fancies of the ancient
régime they could not destroy, from a new and different angle. They
observed that although it lost (by molting) its splendid raiment yet as
often it was re-acquired—manifestly a similitude of the resurrection of
the devoted soul into renewed glories after death. The fact was true, of
course of all birds, but it was most noticeable in this gaudy stranger
from the land of sunrise; and, in addition, a belief was borrowed from
the phenix that its flesh was incorruptible. Thus the peacock became in
early Christian art a symbol of immortality.
In the general mental lethargy that marked the Middle Ages this elevated
idealism was degraded; yet that somewhat of the bird’s traditional
sacredness remained is shown by the fact that among the customs of
chivalry, knights and squires took oath on the king’s peacock, which,
stuffed and brought ceremoniously to the table, was a feature in various
solemnities. Critics trace to this the Shakespearian oath “By cock and
pye!”—to my mind a dubious gloss. “It is said of Pythagoras,” De
Gubernatis[54] notes, “that he believed himself to have once been a
peacock, that the peacock’s soul entered into Euphorbus, a Homeric
Trojan hero, that of Euphorbus into Homer, and that of Homer into him.”
Those who are familiar with classic literature may be able to continue
the history of this literary metempsychosis down to the present. Hehn
and Stallybrass elaborate their history of the peacock in custom and
myth in exhaustive detail in their _Wanderings of Plants and Animals_.
A quaint relic of ancient ideas survives in the prevalent notion that
the beautiful tail-plumes of the peacock are unlucky or worse, for it is
widely feared that illness and death speedily follow putting them into a
house, especially as affecting the health of youngsters. It occurred to
me that this superstition, as foolish as it is baleful, was probably
connected with the far-reaching dread of the Evil Eye, having in mind
the gleaming ocellæ that decorate these splendid feathers, but
Elworthy’s exhaustive treatise[66] on that dreaded visitation
(especially feared among Italians) alludes to the matter only casually,
and expresses the opinion that the alleged ill-luck is a relic of the
ancient cult of Juno—a lingering fear that in some way her anger may be
excited by the plucking of the feathers of her favorite bird; while the
idea that so long as these plumes are kept in the house no suitors will
come for the daughters points to the old attribute of spite or jealousy
in love or matrimonial matters with which Juno was always accredited in
Pagan times.
It occurs to me, also, that the fact that the revered peacock throws
away (moulds) its quills every year suggests to a superstitious
imagination that they may be distasteful to the bird, and hence
something to be avoided by careful devotees. Nevertheless, on Easter Day
in Rome, when the pope is borne in magnificent state into St. Peter’s,
he waves over the heads of the reverent worshippers assembled there a
fan (flabellum) of ostrich feathers on which have been sewn the
eye-spots from peacock plumes, the latter, we are told, signifying the
all-seeing vigilance of the Church—against foolishness as well as
downright evil, let us hope!
No bird is more often employed symbolically in Christian art than the
pelican, which, like the peacock became a representative of salvation
through the self-sacrifice of Christ. How this developed from the
supposed habit of resuscitating her nestlings by feeding them blood from
her bosom, after they had been murdered by the father, is explained in
another chapter. It is said that the story originated in Egypt, with
reference to a vulture. St. Jerome, however, first gave it a theological
application, teaching that similarly those dead in sin were made alive
again by the blood of the Christ. The form—still familiar in heraldry—is
that of a bird sitting by its nest with its beak depressed and tearing
at its breast, representing “the pelican in its piety,” the last word
here having its original meaning of parental care. It also became a
pictured symbol of the Christ and of the Passion, “and more particularly
of the Eucharist, wherein Christians are nourished by Christ himself.”
Thomas Aquinas (13th century) is the author of a well-known verse of
this import:
Pelican of Piety, Jesus, Lord and God,
Cleanse thou me, unclean, in thy most precious blood,
But a single drop of which doth save and free
All the universe from its iniquity.
A similar stanza in John Skelton’s _Armoury of Birds_ reads:
Then sayd the Pellycane,
When my byrdts be slayne,
With my bloude I them reuyue [revive].
Scrypture doth record
The same dyd our Lord,
And rose from deth to lyue. [life]
The eagle is to be regarded rather as an emblem than as a symbol yet it
has a significance of this sort, for by the early Christians it was
considered a symbol of the Ascension. This may have been a pious
inversion of the custom in Pagan Rome of setting free an eagle at the
funeral pyre of an emperor, in the belief that this messenger of Jove
would carry the dead monarch’s soul straight up to Olympus.
The notion that in death the soul leaves the body in the form of a bird
is old and very general. Medieval biographies of Christian saints and
martyrs abound in instances, as, for example, the story of Saint Devoté,
found in a boat near Monaco at the moment of her expiring, with a dove
issuing from her lips.[67] The Paris _Figaro_, in October, 1872,
describing the ceremonies at the death of a gipsy in that city,
mentioned that a bird was held close to the mouth of the dying girl,
ready to receive her expired soul. This is not an illogical idea, if the
conception of a person’s soul as a distinct entity is conceded; for if
it is to fly away to Paradise it must have something in the nature of
wings, and a bird, or the semblance of a real bird, is inevitably
suggested, the wings of a bat being too repulsive—reserved, in fact, for
representations of Satan and his emissaries. Angels and genii have
always been provided by prophets, romancers, and artists with swanlike
wings, springing from behind their shoulders, reckless of comparative
anatomy—otherwise how could these “heavier-than-air” beings accomplish
their travelling?
I have said that the theory that the disengaged soul departs to heaven
in the form of or by aid of a bird is historically very old. Probably,
indeed, it is of prehistoric antiquity, for various savage peoples have
arrived at the same doctrine, based on an obvious philosophy. For
example: Powers[19] tells us that the Keltas of southern California
believe that when one of the tribe dies a little bird flies away with
his soul. “If he was a bad Indian a hawk will catch the bird and eat it
up, body, feathers and all; but if he was a good Indian the soul-bird
will reach the spirit-land.”
In Christian iconography the eagle is the emblem of the evangelist St.
John, an assignment originating, it is said, in Jerome’s interpretation
of the amazing visions of the four “beasts” as recorded in _Ezekiel_
i:5, and somewhat less fantastically in _Revelations_ iv:7. Wherever in
sculpture, painting, or stained glass St. John appears he may be
recognized by his eagle; and sometimes the bird is rather more
conspicuous than the saint, as when it is bearing him aloft on its back,
both gazing, open-eyed and resolute, at the sun, as the eagle is fabled
to be able to do. This association also accounts for the practice of
carving the support of the reading-desk in both Catholic and Anglican
churches in the form of an eagle with outstretched wings. At the
beginning, we are told, figures of all four evangelists upheld the
lectern; but one by one the others disappeared before the demands of
artistic grace until at last John, “the beloved disciple,” alone
remained, and presently he came to be represented only by his emblem.
“Medieval writers,” remarks B. L. Gales, in an article in _The National
Review_ (1808), “delight in all sorts of wild and wonderful tales about
his,” that is, the eagle’s “renewing his youth by gazing at the sun or
plunging into a clear stream, and allegorize at length on the Waters of
Baptism and the true Sun—Jesus Christ.” This, of course, is simply a
comparatively modern illustration of the very ancient myth that when the
sun set in the western ocean, yet arose bright and hot next morning, it
had rejuvenated itself by its bath as it passed from west to east
underneath the world.
In the East, where the sport of falconry originated, and where the
Mongols trained and employed, and still do, eagles as well as hawks, the
falcon has acquired much interesting symbolism, especially in Japan, as
appears in many exquisite drawings by early artists; and often these can
be fully understood and enjoyed by us of the West only when the subtle
meaning involved in the picture is interpreted to us, or we learn the
tradition to which it refers. For example, in Hokusai’s drawing _San
Puku_ (The Three Lucky Things) the mountain symbolizes the beauty of
nature, the falcon the delights of the chase, and the eggplant the
wisdom of frugality and of the simplicity of life. This undaunted bird
(_taka_, the heroic one) is to the Japanese the symbol of victory; and
the Medal of Victory, which the government confers upon distinguished
warriors has emblazoned upon it a golden falcon, in commemoration of the
coming to Japan of its mythical ancestor, Jimmu Tenno; for it is related
that as he set foot up on the Island’s shore, a falcon flew toward him
and lit on his bow, an incident which has ever been regarded as
prophetic of the success of his undertaking.
Little can be added in this connection concerning the birds of prey. In
ancient Egypt the vulture represented Nekht, the tutelary deity of the
South, who appeared to men in that form; and the protection she accorded
to the queens of Egypt was indicated by the vulture-headdress worn by
these ladies at least during the Empire. The kite, too, is connected
with early Egyptian history, according to a tradition, preserved by
Diodorus Siculus, that the book of religious laws and customs was
originally brought to Thebes by a kite; wherefore the sacred scribes
wore a red cap with a kite’s feather in it.
The cock in Christian religious art is to be interpreted as an emblem of
vigilance—also as an image of preachers, in which may be a touch of
humor. “When introduced near the figure of St. Peter,” says one
authority, “it expresses repentance; in this connection it is one of the
emblems of the Passion.” The placing of the image of a cock on church
towers is said to be an allusion to Peter as the head of the Church on
earth, and as representing the voice of the Church, which by day and in
the watches of the night calls on men to repent. Another tradition is
that some early pope ordered that the weathervane on churches be in that
form in order to remind the clergy of the necessity of watchfulness—a
second reference to _Mark_, iii, 35.
Ragozin tells us that in the _Vendida_, the “Bible” of the ancient
Medes, great credit is given to the cock as the messenger who calls men
to the performance of their religious duties: “Arise, O men! Whichever
first gets up shall enter paradise!” A Hebrew legendary saying is that
when a cock crows before dawn it warns: “Remember thy Creator, O
thoughtless man!” Finally Drayton sings of—
The cock, the country horologe that rings
The cheerful warning to the sun’s awake.
Nowadays, if chanticleer calls to mind anything in particular, except
wrath at his too early rising to adore the god of day, it is the spirit
of boastfulness and “cocksureness”; while his humble mate represents
maternal cares carried to the extreme of fussiness.
The names of a good many birds serve as synonyms of prevailing ideas, or
become figures of speech, without having a special myth or story behind
them. Thus the words _eagle_ and _falcon_ convey to the listener the
notion of nobility in power, while _hawk_ simply means fierceness, with
somewhat of prying, detective skill. _Owl_ provokes in the imagination a
rather smiling picture of solemn pretence of wisdom—a reputation, by the
way, almost wholly due to the little European screech-owl’s accidental
association with Pallas Athene. _Swallow_ suggests spring all over the
world; _goose_ and _gull_ connote easy credulity and foolishness;
_vulture_ and _raven_, rapine and cruelty; _parrot_ senseless chatter or
the lavish repetition of another’s ideas or sayings; _cuckoo_, poaching
on another man’s domestic preserves; and so on down to the _stork_,
which in Germany symbolizes filial piety because of its fancied
solicitude toward aged storks, and which children are taught to believe
brings babies from the fountain to their mothers’ laps. The Chinese and
Japanese peasantry hold the _Mandarin duck_ in high esteem as a model of
conjugal virtues, because it is said to mate for life, and Hindoos feel
the same toward their (sarus) _crane_—a bird that figures extensively in
the legendary lore of both China and Japan. Figures of the crane are
found decorating bridal attire in Japan, and this bird is commended to
womankind generally in Nippon as an example of motherhood to be
emulated. “In this respect it is like the _pheasant_, which is said to
stay by her young during a grass-fire, covering them with her
outstretched wings until, together, they perish in the flames; for in a
similar way the crane shields her young from the bitter cold of the
winter snows.”
In ancient Egypt the plume of the _ostrich_, “on account of the
mathematical equality of the opposing barbs in point of length—a
peculiarity not present in the primary feathers of any other bird with
which the Egyptians were acquainted—was regarded as the sacred symbol of
justice.” Osiris was represented with two ostrich plumes in his crown.
Says Dr. Cyrus Adler: “The Egyptian considered the _hoopoe_ as
symbolical of gratitude because it repays the early kindness of its
parents in their old age by trimming their wings and bringing them food
when they are acquiring new plumage. The Arabs call it ‘doctor,’
believing it to possess marvellous medicinal qualities, and they use its
head in charms and incantations.”