THE OWL, THE CROW, THE MAGPIE, AND THE STORK.
SUMMARY.
The funereal owl.--The owl and the vulture.--The owl and the
crow.--The owls as friends of the swans and enemies of the
crows.--The wise owl.--The Eulenspiegel.--The owl as the daughter of
Nükteos.--The enemy of Nükteos.--An ill-omened bird.--Prophetic
virtue of the owl.--The horned owl.--The owl as a weaver.--The owl
and the coins.--The crow and the peacock.--The crow and the
nightingale.--The crow and the swan.--_Gracculus ad fides_.--The
prophetic crow.--The crow and the cheese.--The crow as the son of
Indras; the Athenians swore by the crow and by Zeus.--The crow and
Sîtâ.--The cunning crow.--The crow, the parrot, and the bird of
prey.--The crow as the shadow of a dead man.--Yamas as a crow.--The
white crow.--Go to the crows.--The rooks.--The crow as a devil.--It
helps an old man to pick grains of corn up.--The crow and the
cuckoo.--The crow and the waters.--The crow and the figs.--The crow
and the hydromel.--The crow and the water of life and death.--The
crow as the bird of light.--The crow on a mountain covered with
diamonds.--The crows as brothers and sisters of the heroine and of
the hero.--The crow as the messenger of St Oswald.--The crow, the
maiden, and the crab.--The _corvus pica_.--The blue magpie.--The two
magpies.--Huginn and Muninn.--The magpie as the bringer of the
balsam herb.--The magpie sacred to Bacchus.--The magpie and the
nightingale.--The daughters of Euippes as magpies.--The rook and the
magpie as friends of gold.--The magpie as an infernal bird.--The
malice of the magpie.--The white and black magpie.--The magpie and
the guests.--The stork.--The stork and the heron.--The stork as the
bringer of children.--Funereal presage of the stork.--The stork and
the old man.--Paternal and filial affection of the stork.--The
presents of the stork.--The stork brother of the woodcock.--The
inebriated storks.--The storks in the other world.
The owl, the crow, the magpie, and the stork are in intimate mythical
relation with each other. To give an idea of the monster that wanders in
the night, the _Rigvedas_ compares him to a khargalâ[382], which is
probably an owl (also called naktacaras); it also directs the devotee to
curse death and the god of the dead (to conjure them away), when the owl
emits her painful cry, and when the kapotas or dark dove touches the
fire[383] (thus we read in the fragments of Menander, "if the owl should
cry, we have reason to be afraid"); in the _Pancatantram_,[384] the king
of the crows also compares the hostile owl that arrives towards night to
the god of the dead (the god Yamas). In Hungary the owl is called the
bird of death. In the _Mahâbhâratam_,[385] the mind of the wicked which
sees clearly, fishes in turbid waters, and is dexterous in foul actions,
is compared to the owl, who (probably as moon) distinguishes every shape
in the night. In the _Mahâbhâratam_, again,[386] the owl kills the crows
by night whilst they are sleeping. In the _Râmâyanam_,[387] the owl (as
the moon) contends with the vulture (the sun), who had usurped its nest;
the two disputants appeal to Râmas, who asks each how long the nest had
belonged to it; the vulture answers, "Since the earth was peopled with
men," and the owl, "Since the earth was covered with trees." Râmas,
with justice, decides in favour of the owl, observing that his claim is
the more ancient, since there were trees before there were men, and is
for punishing the vulture, but desists upon learning that the latter was
once King Brahmadattas, condemned to become a vulture by the wise
Gâutamas, because he had once offered meat and fish to that penitent to
eat. Râmas touches the vulture, which, the malediction having come to an
end, immediately resumes its human form. The third book of the
_Pancatantram_ treats of the war between the owls and the crows. The
birds are weary of having a useless king like Garudas, who thinks of no
one but the god Vishnus, and does not trouble himself to protect the
nests of the little birds his subjects; they meditate electing a king,
and are about to choose the owl,[388] when the crow (the dark night)
comes to give its veto, of which the _Pancatantram_ says, that it is the
most cunning amongst birds, as the barber among men, the fox among
animals, and the mendicant friars among religious orders. The war
between the owl and the crow (the moon and the dark night) is popular in
Hindoo tradition; kâkâris, or enemy of the crow, is one of the Sanskrit
names of the owl, and the kâkolûkikâ or owl-like crow, as has already
several times been observed by the learned men who have studied Hindoo
literary chronology, is already mentioned in the Grammar of Pâninis.
In the thirtieth story of the fourth book of _Afanassieff_, the crow
eats the eggs of the geese and the swans. The owl, out of hatred to
the crow, accuses him to the eagle; the lying crow denies, but is
nevertheless condemned to be imprisoned.
In the ninth book of Aristotle's _History of Animals_, I also find
that the crow fights with the owl, whose eggs it destroys at midday,
whilst the owl, on the other hand, eats the crow's eggs during the
night. In Italian, the expression "the owl amongst the crows," is used
to indicate a serious danger. In John Tzetza, we also find an
apologue, according to which the crow was about to be elected king of
the birds, having arrayed itself in the feathers that had fallen from
the other birds, when the owl comes up (in Babrios, instead of the
owl, it is the swallow that does the same), recognises one of its own
feathers, and plucks it out, setting thus an example to the other
birds, who in a short time despoil the crow entirely. (This is a
variety of the well-known fable of the crow in the peacock's feathers,
and of the same fable, in an opposite sense, contained in the
_Pancatantram_, where the crow is the wise bird, and the owl the
simple one.) There are other instances of cunning ascribed to the owl
in fables; for instance, it predicted to the birds that an archer
would kill them with their own feathers, and advised them not to let
the oak-trees grow, because on them the mistletoe grows, and birds are
caught by means of it. The German Eulenspiegel, the legendary
malicious buffoon, who wears a great hat, is probably of the same
mythical family. The Greeks considered the owl to be a form of the
daughter of Nükteus of Lesbio (according to others, of the king of the
Ethiopians. Nükteus and the black Ethiopian, both being the night,
correspond to each other), who, having become enamoured of her father,
lay with him without his knowledge; her father wished to kill her,
but Athênê took pity upon her, and transformed her into an owl, which,
remembering its crime, always flees from the light (it is far from the
day, like the moon). The owl was sacred to Athênê, the goddess of
wisdom, inasmuch as she sees in darkness; the flight of the bird of
night was, therefore, for the Athenians a sign that the goddess who
protected their city was propitious; hence the owls of Athens passed
into a proverb. The owl, otherwise (according to the superstition of
the ancient Greeks, recorded by Pliny among the Latin writers), was
the enemy of Dionysos (who loves the mysteries, which the moon and the
aurora disperse); hence the prescription of ancient medicine, that the
eggs of the owl, drunk for three days in wine, make drunkards
abstemious. Philostratos, in the Life of Apollonius, goes so far as to
say that when one eats an owl's egg, one takes a dislike to wine
before having tasted it. But, even in antiquity, the owl was generally
looked upon as the ignoble and ill-omened bird that it really is. It
is said of Demosthenes, that before going into exile, he declared that
Athênê delighted in three fear-inspiring beasts--the owl, the dragon,
and the Athenian people. In _Ælianos_ and _Apuleius_, the owls are
spoken of as birds of ill omen. But the male owl was and is still
especially considered as a bird of the worst and most funereal
character in Italy, Russia, Germany, and Hungary.[389] In the fourth
book of Virgil's _Æneid_, the song of the male owl is fatal--
"Seraque culminibus ferali carmine Bubo
Visa queri et longas in fletum ducere voces."
The Romans purified the city with water and sulphur when a male owl or
a wolf happened to enter into the temple of Jupiter, or into the
Capitol. According to Silius Italicus, the defeat of Cannes was also
prognosticated by the male owl--
"Obseditque frequens castrorum limina Bubo."
And Ovid, in the tenth book of the _Metamorphoses_--
"Ignavus Bubo dirum mortalibus omen;
Nam diræ mortis nuntius esse solet."
According to the fifth book of the same _Metamorphoses_, Ascalaphos
was transformed by Ceres into a male owl, and condemned to predict
evil, because he had accused her to Jove of having eaten a pomegranate
in secret, against the prohibition.
The prophetic faculty of the owl, according to popular belief, is so
great, that Albertus Magnus could seriously write in his times--"Si
cor ejus cum dextro pede super dormientem ponatur, statim tibi dicit
quidquid fecerit, et quidquid ab eo interrogaveris. Et hoc a fratribus
nostris expertum est moderno tempore." When the witches in _Macbeth_
make the horrid mixture in the great caldron, in order to obtain from
it the virtue of sinister presages, they put into it, amongst other
maleficent ingredients--
"Eye of newt, and toe of frog,
Wool of bat, and tongue of dog,
Adder's fork, and blind-worm's sting,
Lizard's leg, and owlet's wing."
In Sicily, the owl that moans, the crow that caws, and the dog that
howls by night near the house of a sick man, announce approaching death
to him; but among owls, the horned owl (the horned moon), jacobu, or
chiovu, or chiò, is especially feared. The horned owl sings near the
house of a sick man three days before his death; if there are no sick
people in the house, it announces to one at least of its inhabitants
that he or she will be struck with squinancy of the tonsil. The peasants
in Sicily, when in spring they hear the lamentation of the horned owl
for the first time, go to their master to give notice of their intention
of leaving his service; whence the Sicilian proverb--
"Quannu canta lu chiò
Cu 'avi patruni, tinta canciar lu pò."
The Sicilian poet Giovani Meli, in the little poem, _Pianto di
Palemone_, refers to the sinister presage of the horned owl in the
following verses--
"Ah! miu patri lu predissi,
E trimava 'ntra li robbi,
Ch'eu nascivi 'ntra l'ecclissi
E chiancìanu li jacobbi."
In the popular Sicilian legend, entitled _La Principessa di Carini_,
when the friar goes to act as a spy, the moon envelops itself in
clouds, the horned owl flies round, screeching--
"Lu jacobbu chiancennu svulazzau."
In several German popular songs, the horned owl and the common owl
complain that they are alone and deserted in the forest. The owl (as
the moon) is also represented in German tradition as a nocturnal
weaver.[390] In the same tradition, the funereal owl is found
mentioned in connection with the funereal crow.[391]
I have already mentioned, in the chapter on the Wolf, that _vrikas_,
in the Vedic hymns, may mean both wolf and crow. The crow, like the
wolf, represents the dark night. The owl with yellow eyes (whence in
Athens certain coins bearing the effigies of an owl were called owls,
and in Italy golden coins are vulgarly called owls'-eyes) seems to
represent the crepuscular bird in particular (from which we can
understand why it was especially sacred to Athênê), and much oftener
still the night with the yellow eye of the moon. The crow, on the
other hand, seems to be the representative of the gloomy night or
cloud. The owl which destroys the crow's nest, and discovers the
deceit of the crow when disguised in the feathers of other birds,
seems to be the same as the moon that disperses the darkness, or the
sahasrâkshas (the heavenly peacock), that shuts the thousand eyes of
the starry sky, and makes the thousand stars of the heaven grow pale.
The owl, as the king of birds (we know also the Indras-moon as
Mrigarâgas, or king of beasts) seems generally to be the same as the
moon, the mistress of the night. Indras is often the peacock-god, the
azure starry sky of night; but blue and black, as we have said, are
two equivalent colours (the azure god Indras becomes the azure or dark
Krishnas, and, on the contrary, the crow becomes a peacock), and are
expressed by one and the same word; hence the black bird and the blue
one are substituted for one another. According to Festus, the crow
was, before the peacock, sacred to Juno. The crow-peacock has already
become proverbial in the _Pancatantram_,[392] where we read that the
hasty fool takes a crow for a peacock. The voice of the peacock is as
shrill as that of the crow; in the _Râmâyanam_,[393] the water-cock
(galakukkubhas, the heron, the halcyon, the duck, the swan) laughs at
the peacock when striving to answer the cuckoo. Thus, the Greek
proverb laughs at the crows which are more honoured than the
nightingales (korakes aêdonôn aîdesimôteroi). Martial places them in
contrast with the swans--
"Inter Lædæos ridetur corvus Olores;"
and the Greek proverb turns into ridicule the rook amongst the Muses
(koloios en tais mousais), and the Latin one, the "Gracculus ad
fides." In a variety of the forty-sixth story of the sixth book of
_Afanassieff_, the crow occupies the place of the prophetic
nightingale. The fox (the spring aurora) takes the cheese (the moon)
from the crow (the winter night), by making it sing. In the
_Mahâbhâratam_,[394] the monster Râhus disguises himself as a god,
that he may go and drink the ambrosia of the gods; the sun and the
moon denounce the imposture; Râhus is recognised, and Vishnus cuts off
his head with his disc; this is an ancient variety of the fable of the
crow among the peacocks. This disguise of the crow, however, will
appear quite natural when we reflect that Indras is a peacock, and
that in the _Râmâyanam_[395] a certain learned crow (pânditas) is
called by Hanumant the son of Indras (putrah kila sa çakrasya; in the
_Ornithes_ of Aristophanes, I read that at Athens men swore by the
crow and by Zeus). I have observed, on a previous occasion, that the
Vedic Indras assumes in the Hindoo poems a sinister, and sometimes
even a diabolical aspect. In the _Râmâyanam_,[396] a crow attacks Sîtâ
with wings, beak, and claws; Râmas hurls an enchanted dart at it; the
bird, by divine grace, does not die, but as it flies rapidly, between
drop and drop, whilst it rains from the cloud, it sees nothing but
darts and shadows of darts in the air. Then it returns to Râmas to
beseech him to deliver it from this enchantment; Râmas says that the
enchantment must run its full course, but that he can make it take
effect in one part of the body alone; let the crow choose the part
that Râmas must aim at. The cunning bird, hoping that Râmas will miss
his aim, says one of its eyes; Râmas aims at it and strikes it, to the
great wonder of Sîtâ, against whom the crow had begun to make war,
after that Râmas had marked her forehead in red (probably after the
evening aurora; the legendary husband and wife exchange the ring of
recognition, now the sun and now the moon, in the evening or the
autumn, in order to find themselves together again, by its means, in
the morning or the spring). I have cited in the preceding chapter,
from the _Pancatantram_, the popular Hindoo belief that the crow is
the most cunning of birds, as the fox is the most cunning of animals.
Aristotle says that the crow is the fox's friend; in the _Râmâyanam_,
the stratagem adopted by the fox in the Western fable to make the
cheese fall out of the crow's beak, obliging it to open its beak and
let the booty fall, is advised by the rook or crow (sârikâ or _gracula
religiosa_). A bird of prey holds a parrot in its claws, and a sârikâ
in its beak; the rook says, "Parrot, bite the foot of the enemy whilst
he is alone and in the air, and whilst his beak presses me; and as his
beak is occupied and cannot bite thee, bite thou him, in order that he
may let you go;" the rook thus hoped that, by opening its beak, which
it did with pain, the bird of prey would let it too go. In Plautus a
crafty servant is compared to a crow. The crow also personifies in
Hindoo tradition the shadow of a dead man; to give food to the crows
is for the Hindoos the same as to give food to the souls of the dead;
hence part of their meals was always, and is still, according to all
travellers in India, left for the crows. Even in the _Râmâyanam_,[397]
Râmas orders Sîtâ to preserve the rest of the food for the crows. In
the flight of the gods before the demons, described in the last book
of the _Râmâyanam_, the god Indras hides himself in the form of a
peacock, and Yamas, the god of the dead, in that of a crow (in
Hellenic mythology, during the war against the giants, it is Apollo
that transforms himself into a crow, but probably into a white one,
as white crows were, according to the Greek belief, dedicated to the
sun. It is said that the crow was once white, but that Apollo made it
black, indignant at that animal for bringing to him the unwelcome news
of having surprised in adultery his mistress, the Princess Korônis;
here the crow occupies the place of the mythical cuckoo. In another
Hellenic myth, the crow loses the favour of Pallas for having brought
the intelligence that Erichtonios, born to Pallas by the seed of the
celestial blacksmith, which had fallen upon the earth, had been found
by the three daughters of Kekrops. In reward for the services of the
crow, Yamas conceded to it the right of eating the funereal food, for
which reason the shades of the dead, when this food is given to the
crow, are enabled to pass into a better world. In the _Clouds_ of
Aristophanes, the Greek proverb, "Go to the crows" (ball' es korakas),
means "die." Hence in India as in Persia, in Russia as in Germany, in
Greece as in Italy, the crow is pre-eminently a funereal bird of
sinister omen. According to Ælianos, the Venetians of ancient Hadria
were accustomed to appease the rooks, in order that they should not
devastate the fields, by solemnly sending to meet them two
ambassadors, who presented to them a mixture of oil and flour. If the
rooks accepted the offering, it was a good sign. In Lambert of
Aschaffenburg, a pilgrim sees in a dream a horrid crow which caws and
flies round Cologne, and which is hunted away by a splendid horseman;
the pilgrim explains that the crow is the devil, and the horseman St
George. In the Chronicles of the Beatified Anthony, we find described
fetid and black pools "in regione Puteolorum in Apulia," whence the
souls arise in the forms of monstrous birds in the evening hours of
the Sabbath, which neither eat nor let themselves be caught, but
wander till in the morning an enormous crow compels them to submerge
themselves in the waters. In Germany, according to Rochholtz, when a
crow places itself upon the roof of a house where there is a dead
body, it means that the dead man's soul is damned. At Brusasco, in
Piedmont, children sing to the crow this funereal verse,
counterfeiting in the chorus the crow's cry--
"Curnaiáss,
Porta 'l sciass (the colander);
Me mari l'è morta
Sut la porta.
Qué!"
In a popular Swedish song, in the collection translated into German by
Warrens, I read this verse, where the crow assumes an entirely
monstrous form; men spit at it, as they do at the devil--
"Es flog ein Rabe über das Dach,
Hatt' Menschenfleisch in den Krallen,
Drei Tropfen Blutes träuften herab,
Ich spülte, wo sie gefallen."
In the thirty-ninth story of the fourth book of _Afanassieff_, an old
man, having let some grain fall to the ground, says that if the sun
warmed him, the moon gave him light, and the crow helped him to pick
the corn up, he would give each one of his three daughters. Sun, moon,
and crow listen to him, and marry the three maidens. Some time after,
the old man goes to visit his son-in-law the crow, who makes him mount
a never-ending ladder, carrying him in his beak; but when they are
high up, the crow lets the old man drop, and he dies.
Inasmuch as Indras, or Zeus, that is, the pluvial god, takes now the
shape of a cuckoo, now that of a crow, the crow, in the fifteenth
story of _Siddhikür_, announces the proximity of water to the thirsty
prince. Tommaso Badino of Piacenza[398] narrates an apologue which
reminds us of the biblical legend of the Deluge. Phoebos sends the
crow to find the lustral water for the sacrifice of Zeus;[399] but the
crow, when it arrives at the fountain, sees some figs near it; instead
of doing its errand, it waits till the (phallical) figs ripen. Hence
the crow passed into a proverb as a procrastinator (the legend of St
Athanasius, moreover, recognises the procrastinator in the crow,
because it says "cras" with its voice). Nor can we accept the biblical
derivation of the belief of the procrastinating crow, when we find it
explicitly mentioned and illustrated in Ovid by the story of the figs
and that of the corn, whose maturity the crow waits for before
carrying the water. The meaning of the myth appears to me evident; the
thundering and rainy clouds yield water towards the end of June, when
the first figs and the grain are ripe (in Plutarch's Life of Nicias,
instead of these we have the golden dates); the crow represents the
pluvial god; as the cuckoo brings the rains of spring, the crow brings
those of summer, and afterwards, when the later figs ripen, those of
autumn, which announce the winter, dear to the crows.[400]
"Imbrium divina vis imminentum."[401]
In a popular Swedish song, hydromel is offered to the messenger crow;
instead of this, it solicits small grains for its young. In the
fifty-second story of the sixth book of _Afanassieff_, the crow is
sent to seek for the water of life and death, and to make experiments
with it upon itself before bringing it.
But out of darkness comes forth light, the sun; from the black night,
the clear day; from the black crow, the white one; hence, in the first
of the Esthonian stories, we find the crow represented as the bird of
light, in the same way as in the Hellenic myth it was sacred to
Apollo. In the sixth of the Sicilian stories of Signora Gonzenbach,
crows carry the boy Giuseppe, shut up in a sack made of a horse's skin
dried in the sun, to a mountain covered with diamonds, and the egg of
a crow thrown on the head of the monster giant kills him. In the ninth
story of the fourth book of the _Pentamerone_, a king sees the blood
of a crow, which had been killed, upon some white marble, and wishes
for a bride who shall be white like the marble and red like the blood,
and have hair as black as the crow's feathers. The foolish hero Ivan,
in _Afanassieff's_ story (vi. 9), calls the crows his little sisters,
and pours out for them the food contained in the small pipkins which
he was carrying to sell. In popular German and Scandinavian songs,
where the crow often appears as the succourer of the beautiful maiden
(the sun; _die Sonne_ is feminine in German, as is well known), it is
said to be the heroine's brother. The crow is the well-known messenger
of Saint Oswald, king in Engelland (the land of the Angles). The crow
often brings good luck to the heroes, even by sacrificing itself; the
death of night and of winter brings round again day and spring; hence
the two celebrated verses of Horace--
"Oscinem corvum prece suscitabo
Solis ab ortu."[402]
Several of the mythical characteristics of the crow, indeed, the
principal ones, are also ascribed to the magpie (_corvus pica_). The
blue magpie seems to be spoken of as a bird of evil omen, even in a
Vedic hymn, in connection with the disease of consumption.[403] In the
forty-sixth story of _Afanassieff_, the magpies are in relation with the
mythical water; one magpie is sent for the water of life, and another
for the water of speech, to resuscitate the two sons of a prince and
princess, whom a witch had touched with the hand of death as they slept.
These two magpies seem to correspond to the two crows, Huginn and
Muninn, which the Scandinavian god Odin sent every day into the world to
learn all the news there current, which they afterwards brought back and
whispered in one of his ears. In a German legend given by Grimm, the
magpie appears as the bringer of the balsam herb (Springwurzel). The
Greeks and the Latins considered the magpie to be sacred to Bacchus,
because it is in connection with the ambrosial drink; and, as drunkards
are garrulous, so the magpie is famous for its garrulity. We have seen
the rook amongst the Muses; in Theocritus the magpie defies the
nightingale in singing; in Galenus it is proverbially emulous of the
Siren; the nine daughters of Euippes were changed into magpies, because
they had presumed to emulate the nine Muses in singing, whence Dante,
invoking Calliope, wishes to continue his song--
"Con quel suono
Di cui le Piche misere sentiro,
Lo colpo tal che disperâr perdono."
The reader knows, no doubt, the fable of Arnê, as given in Ovid, who,
in her thirst for gold, betrayed her country to the enemy, and was
changed into a rook (monedula), the friend of gold. In the tenth book
of his History, Livy narrates the fable of a crow that ate the gold in
the Capitol. In a popular Danish ballad, gold is offered to the
messenger crow, who (like the cuckoo) answers that it knows not what
to do with it, and desires rather nourishment fit for crows. The
magpie, too, became proverbial as a robber of gold and silver, which
it goes to hide, not so much because it likes shining metals, as
because it hates too great light. The crow and the magpie hide the sun
and the golden ears of corn in the rainy and wintry season. In German
mythology, the magpie is an infernal bird, into which witches often
transform themselves, or which is ridden by them. Hence it is also
believed in Germany that the magpie must be killed during the twelve
days between Christmas and Epiphany (when the days begin to lengthen
again). But, inasmuch as every species of malice is learned in hell,
the malice of the magpie became even more proverbial than that of the
crow. The magpie makes use of this knowledge now to do evil, as a
malignant fairy, now to do good to men, as a benignant fairy: the
colour of the blue magpie appears now luminous, now tenebrific; the
colours of white and black in the magpie (as in the swallow) represent
its two mythical contradictory characters. In German superstition the
magpie tells of the approach of the wolf; hence it is still believed
that it is unlucky to kill a magpie. In the Russian popular song, the
magpie is the punisher of the lazy little finger which would not go to
the well to find water:--
"The magpie, the magpie,
Had cooked the gruel,
It leaped upon the threshold,
It invited the guests."[404]
It invites all the guests, except the little finger, which is the
smallest of the fingers on account of its laziness;--we have already
mentioned the lazy little brother who refuses to go to take water, in
the first chapter of the first book. In Russia, it is believed that
when a magpie comes to perch upon the threshold of a house, it
announces the arrival of guests; this belief reminds me of the magpie
of Petronius: "Super limen autem cavea pendebat aurea, in quâ pica
varia intrantes salutabat."[405]
As the crow and the magpie are thought of, in mythology, in connection
with the water, and with the funereal and infernal winter, so the
stork represents especially the rainy and wintry season. The heron,
already mentioned in the chapter on the Cuckoo, presents several of
the mythical characteristics of the stork. In the twenty-ninth story
of the fourth book of _Afanassieff_, the stork, tired of living alone,
goes to the heron and proposes marriage to her. The heron sends him
away in contempt. No sooner is the stork gone, than the heron repents,
and goes in her turn to propose to the stork, who refuses out of
sulkiness. He then repents of his refusal, and returns to the heron,
who, sulky in her turn, rejects him. The story ends by saying that the
heron and the stork continue to visit one another, but that they are
not married yet. This fable, although it has a satirical meaning, also
implies the intimate mythical relationship between the heron and the
stork. The heron and the stork are two birds which equally love the
water, and therefore serve to represent the cloudy, rainy, wintry, or
gloomy sky, which, as we have already said, is often represented as a
black sea. From the night, the cloud, or the winter, comes forth the
young sun, the new sun, the little child-hero who had been exposed in
the waters; hence the popular German belief of children that the
storks carry children from the fountain.[406] However, properly
speaking, as long as the stork holds the child-hero in its beak, the
latter is not considered born; it is only born at the moment in which,
opening its beak, it puts the child down in its mother's lap. The
stork personifies the funereal sky, the sky when the celestial hero,
the sun, is dead. Hence it is believed in Germany that when storks fly
round, or over a group of persons, some one of them is about to die;
the clouds and the shadows that collect together presage the
disappearance or death of the sun.
In Russian stories we have a double aspect of the stork (besides the
fable, probably imported, of the stork and the fox as cousins, who
invite each other to supper). In the seventeenth story of the second
book of _Afanassieff_, an old man begs the stork to be as his son (the
reputation of the storks for their paternal and filial affection is of
ancient date[407]). The stork gives to the old man a sack out of which
come two young men, who cover the table with a silk tablecloth,
furnished with every good thing. A godmother who has three daughters
changes the old man's sack whilst he is returning home. The old man,
laughed at and beaten by his wife, returns to the stork, who gives him
another sack, out of which also come two young men, who flog people
vigorously. By means of this sack the old man recovers the former one,
and reduces his wife to obedience. In a variety of the same story, the
stork makes to the foolish hero three presents--a horse which, when it
is told to stop, is transformed into a heap of money, and, when it is
told to go on, resumes its former shape; a tablecloth which both
spreads itself and takes itself off; and a horn out of which come the
two young floggers. In the thirty-seventh story of the fourth book of
_Afanassieff_, the stork is said to be the brother of the woodcock,
and they cut hay together, but do nothing else. We mentioned, in the
chapter on the Bear, the storks that eat the harvests of a peasant who
threatens to cut off their feet. They upset a barrel of wine in order
to drink its contents; the indignant peasant takes and binds them to
his waggon, but the inebriated storks are so strong, that they carry
peasant, waggon, and horse up into the air. Here the stork assumes a
diabolical aspect, as the representative of the wintry season; the
chariot of the peasant is that of the sun. In the fifth story of the
sixth book of _Afanassieff_, the soldier-impostor tells an old woman
that he is going back to the other world, where he found her son
leading storks to the pasturage. Here the storks have the funereal and
infernal nature of the crows, which we have observed to be, in Âryan
beliefs, one of the forms assumed by the souls of the dead.
FOOTNOTES:
[382] Pra yâ gigâti khargaleva naktam apa druhâ tanvam gûhamânâ;
_Rigv._ vii. 104, 17.
[383] Yad ulûko vadati mogham etad yat kapotah padam agnâu krinoti,
yasya dûtah prahita esha etat tasmâi yamâya namo astu mrityave;
_Rigv._ i. 165, 4.
[384] iii. 73.
[385] iii. 15, 128, and _Hitopadeças_, iv. 47.
[386] iii. 308, x. 38.
[387] vi. 64.
[388] In the articles against Bernard Saget in the year 1300, recorded
by Du Cange, I read--"Aves elegerunt Regem quemdam avem vocatam Duc, et
est avis pulchrior et major inter omnes aves, et accidit semel quod Pica
conquesta fuerat de Accipitre dicto Domino Regi, et congregatis avibus,
dictus Rex nihil dixit nisi quod flavit (flevit?). Vel (veluti) idem de
rege nostro dicebat ipse Episcopus, qui ipse est pulchrior homo de
mundo, et tamen nihil scit facere, nisi respicere homines."
[389] Among the Tartars, according to Aldrovandi, the feathers of the
male owl are worn as an amulet, probably to conjure the owl himself
away, in the same way as, in the Vedic hymns, Death is invoked in order
that it may remain far off. In the _Khorda Avesta_ (p. 147), translated
by Spiegel, the hero Verethraghna derives his strength from the owl's
feathers.--We are acquainted with the funereal moon in the form of
Proserpine; the Hindoos considered Manus in relation with the moon, with
which, moreover, it was also identified. Manus, as the first and the
father of men, is also the first of the dead. Manus gives the somas to
Indras. The dying sun is exchanged in the funereal kingdom for the moon;
but of the moon's kingdom the souls come down, and to the moon's kingdom
they return. With Manus the word _Menerva_ is joined, a Latin form, as a
goddess, of the Greek Athênê. The owl, the symbol of Minerva, may be
equivalent to Manus as the moon. The intimate connection which exists in
myths and legends between the maiden aurora and the maiden moon is
well-known; they reciprocally do services to each other. Athênê may very
well have represented equally the two wise maidens--the moon, who sees
everything in the dark night; the aurora, who, coming out of the gloomy
night, illumines everything. The head of Zeus, out of which Athênê
comes, appears to be a form of the eastern sky.
[390] "Selbst in sternloser Nacht ist keine Verborgenheit, es lauert
eine grämliche Alte, die Eule; sie sitzt in ihrem finstern Kämmerlein,
spinnt mit silbernen Spindelchen und sieht übel dazu, was in der
Dunkelheit vorgeht. Der Holzschnitt des alten Flugblattes zeigt die
Eule auf einem Stühlchen am Spinnrocken sitzend."
[391]
"Wenn durch die dünne Luft ein schwarzer Rabe fleucht
Und krähet sein Geschrei, und wenn des Eulen Fraue
Ihr Wiggen-gwige heult: sind Losungen sehr rauhe."
--Rochholtz, the work quoted before, i. p. 155.
[392] i. 175.
[393] ii. 5.
[394] i. 1152.
[395] ii. 105, v. 3.
[396] _Ib._
[397] ii. 105; cfr. also _Du Cange_, s. v. _corbitor_.--In the German
legend of the Emperor Frederic Barbarossa, the emperor, buried under a
mountain, wakens and asks, "Are the crows still flying round the
mountain?" he is answered that they are still flying. The emperor
sighs and lies down again, concluding that the hour of his
resurrection has not yet arrived.
[398] In the _Ornithologia_ of Aldrovandi. The messenger crow is of
frequent occurrence in legends.
[399] In Plutarch, two crows guide Alexander the Great, when he goes
to consult the oracle of Zeus Ammôn.
[400] Hence the name of Avis S. Martini also given to the crow,
because it often comes about St Martin's day. In Du Cange and in the
_Roman du Renard_ we also find indicated the auspices to be taken from
the crow's flight; for the same custom in Germany, cfr. Simrock, the
work quoted before, p. 546.
[401] Horace, _Carm._ iii. 27.--In _Afanassief_, again (iv. 36), the
rook is asked where it has flown to. It answers, "Into the meadows to
write letters and sigh after the maiden;" and the maiden is advised to
hurry towards the water. The maiden declares that she fears the crab.
In this maiden, that is afraid of the crab, I think I can recognise
the zodiacal sign of Virgo (attracted by the crab of the summer),--the
virgin who approaches the water, the autumn and the autumnal rains;
the virgin loved by the crow, who is the friend of the rains.
[402] Horace, _Carm._ iii. 27.
[403] Sâkam yakshma pra pata câshena kikidîvinâ; _Rigv._ x. 97, 13.
[404]
Saróvka, saróvka,
Kasha varlla
Na parók skakála,
Gastiei saszivála.
[405] The magpie is proverbial as a babbler; hence, from its Italian
name _gazza_, the name _gazzetta_ given to newspapers, as divulging
secrets.--In the _Dialogus Creaturarum_, dial. 80, it is written of
the magpie, called _Agazia_: "Pica est avis callidissima.... Hæc apud
quemdam venatorem et humane et latine loquebatur, propter quod venator
ipsam plenaria fulciebat. Pica autem non immemor beneficii, volens
remunerare eum, volavit ad Agazias, et cum eis familiariter sedebat et
humane sermocinabatur. Agaziæ quoque in hoc plurimum lætabantur
cupientes et ipsæ garrire humaneque loqui."
[406] Hence the request made in the popular song to the stork, to
bring a little sister; cfr. the songs of the stork in Kuhn and
Schwarz, _N. S. M. u. G._ p. 452. As the bringer of children, the
stork is represented as the serpent's enemy; cfr. _Tzetza_, i. 945.
[407] Cfr. _Phile_, vi. 2; and Aristophanes in the _Ornithes_--
"Deî tous neotous t' patéra palin trephein."