THE WOODPECKER AND THE MARTIN.
SUMMARY.
The _picus_ in the work of Professor Kuhn.--_Picus_, _corvus
pica_, and _picumnus_; the Vedic word _vrikas_.--The she-wolf and
the woodpecker as the nurses of the Latin twin heroes.--_Picus_ as
the phallos; _picus_, _picumnus_, _pilumnus_, _pilum_, _pistor_;
_piciu_, _pinco_, _pincio_, _pinson_, _pincone_.--The sacred herb
of Indras which cleaves the mountains.--Jupiter as a _picus_; the
_picus_ presages rain; the herb of the woodpecker has the virtue
of opening every shut place.--The woodpecker and the
honey.--Beowulf and the woodpecker.--The woodpecker and the
gold.--The green woodpecker.--The woodpecker as the devil.--The
woodpecker in opposition to the fox.--The vengeance of the
woodpecker.--The halcyon.--The martin or bird of St
Martin.--_Martin piciu_.--The _yünx_ in love with Zeus; it
attracts lovers.--_Alküoneioi hêmerai_; the halcyon.--Robin
Redbreast and its "charitable bill."--The bird of St Gertrude; the
_incendiaria avis_; _Jean rouge-gorge_.--Sea-birds with white and
black plumage and a little spot of blood on their heads.
The woodpecker has already had the honour of being studied with great
learning by Professor Adalbert Kuhn, in his excellent work upon the
celestial fire and water, to which I refer the cultivated reader for
the principal myths relating to the subject; that is to say, for the
comparison of the Vedic hawk and the Vedic fire-bhuranyus with the
Hellenic Phoroneus, the Latin _picus Feronius_, the _incendiaria
avis_, the _picus_ that carries thunder, and that which carries food
to the twins Romulus and Remus,[408] and which itself enjoys wine,
with King Picus, progenitor of a race, and with the corresponding
German traditions. I shall only observe here the mythological
relationship between _picus_ and the _corvus pica_ (_picumnus_ was
applied both to the woodpecker and the magpie), in order to return to
the equivocal Vedic word _vrikas_, which means wolf and crow, whence
also arose and fostered itself the confusion between the she-wolf that
nurses the Latin twin heroes, and the woodpecker which, in the same
legend, offers itself as their nourisher. The woodpecker, the magpie,
and the wolf, personify equally the god in the darkness, the devil,
the cloud, the sky of night, the rainy season, the wintry season; from
the night, and from the winter, the new sun, fed by the she-wolf, or
by the funereal bird, arises; the penetrating beak of the woodpecker
in the cloud is the thunderbolt; in the night, and in the wintry
season, it is now the moon that disperses the darkness, now the
sunbeam that comes out of the darkness. The thunderbolt, the moon, and
the sun's ray, moreover, sometimes assume in myths the form of the
phallos; the woodpecker as a phallos and the King Picus, progenitor of
a race, seem to me to be the same. The Latin legend puts _picus_ in
connection with _picumnus_, _pilumnus_, the _pilum_, and the _pistor_,
in the same way as a Norwegian story puts in relation with flour the
cuckoo, which we already know to be a phallical symbol, properly the
presser down. In the Piedmontese dialect, the common name of the
phallos is _piciu_; in Italian, _pinco_ and _pincio_ have the same
meaning; _pincione_ is the chaffinch (in French _pinson_); and
_pincone_ means a fool, for the same reason that the ass, as a
phallical symbol, personified folly. We already know Indras as a
cuckoo, as a peacock, and as a hawk. To find Indras again in the
woodpecker, the _Tâittiriya-Brahmanam_ offers us a notable analogy. In
it Indras kills the wild boar, hidden in the seven mountains (the
shadows of the night, or the clouds), cleaving them by the touch of
the stem of a sacred luminous and golden herb (sa darbhapingûlam
uddhritya sapta girîn bhittvâ[409]), which may be the moon in the
night, or else the thunderbolt in the cloud; the thunderbolt is also
not seldom represented in Âryan traditions as a magic rod. It is with
a golden rod that, in the seventh book of the _Æneid_, the enchantress
Circe transforms the wise King Picus, son of Saturn (as
Jupiter-Indras; Suidas also speaks of a Pêkos Zeus, buried in Crete)
into a bird, into the _picus_, sacred to the god of warriors
(Mars-Indras), whence his name of _picus martius_, the woodpecker,
which is supposed to presage rain (like Zeus and Indras)--
"Picus equûm domitor, quem capta cupidine conjux,
Aurea percussum virga, versumque venenis,
Fecit avem Circe, sparsitque coloribus alas."
Pliny relates that the woodpecker has the virtue of opening every shut
place, touching it with a certain herb, which increases and decreases
with the moon;[410] this herb may be the moon itself, which opens the
hiding-places of the night, or the thunderbolt which opens the
hiding-places of the cloud. It is well known that in the Vedic hymns,
Indras, who is generally the pluvial and thundering god, is frequently
associated with the soma (ambrosia and moon), and even identified with
it. Pliny adds, moreover, that whoever takes honey out of the hive
with the beak of a woodpecker is not liable to be stung by the bees;
this honey may be the rain in the cloud as well as the lunar ambrosia
or the dew of the morning aurora; hence the woodpecker's beak may be
the thunderbolt as well as the moonbeam, or the sunbeam. Beowulf (the
wolf of the bees) is spoken of in connection with the woodpecker as
well as with the bear: the _Bienenfresser_ of German legends, or the
_pica merops_, explains the Latin superstition and the Beowulf. Like
the crow, the woodpecker, too, stays in darkness, but brings water,
seeks for honey, and finds the light. In the _Aulularia_, Plautus
makes woodpeckers live upon golden mountains (picos, qui aureos monies
incolunt). Inasmuch as the woodpeckers announced the approach of
winter, or were seen on the left, according to the well-known verse of
Horace[411]--
"Teque nec lævus vetet ire picus,
they were considered birds of evil omen. In the _Ornithologus_, it is
said that the green woodpecker (the moon, by the previously mentioned
equivocalness of _haris_) presages winter (the moon, as we have said,
rules over the winter). For this reason, St Ephiphanios could compare
the woodpecker with the devil. According to Pliny, the woodpecker that
perched upon the head of the prætor Lucius Tubero, whilst he was
administering justice, announced approaching ruin to the empire if it
were allowed to go free, and approaching death to the prætor if
killed; Lucius Tubero, moved by love of his country, seized the
woodpecker, killed it, and died soon afterwards. Hence Pliny could say
with reason that woodpeckers were "in auspiciis magni."
In the twentieth story of the third book of _Afanassieff_, the
woodpecker, which usually appears as a very knowing bird, lets itself
be deceived by the fox, who eats its young ones, under the pretext of
teaching them an art. In the twenty-fifth story of the fourth book, on
the other hand, the woodpecker assumes a heroic and formidable aspect.
It makes friends with an old dog, which has been expelled from its
kennel, and offers its services as purveyor. A woman, is carrying some
dinner to her husband, who is working in the fields. The woodpecker
flies before her and feigns to let itself be taken; the woman, to run
after it, puts the dinner down, and the dog feeds upon it (in a
variety of the same story, the woodpecker also offers to the dog a
means of getting something to drink). Afterwards the dog meets the
fox; then, in order to please the woodpecker (who, perhaps, remembered
the treachery of the fox who ate its little ones), it runs upon the
fox and maltreats it. A peasant passes by and thrashes the poor dog,
who dies. Then the woodpecker becomes furious in its desire of
vengeance, and begins to peck now at the peasant, and now at his
horses; the peasant tries to flog the woodpecker, instead of which he
flogs the horses to death. Nor does the woodpecker's vengeance stop
here; it goes to the peasant's wife and pecks at her; she endeavours
to beat it, but instead of doing so, she beats her own sons (these are
two varieties of the story of the mother who beats her son, thinking
to beat the ass, which, as a phallical symbol, we have already said
corresponds to the woodpecker. The myth of Seilenos, which we saw in
connection with the ass, has also been quoted by Professor Kuhn in
relation with the woodpecker. In the third book of the _Pancatantram_,
we have a bird that throws gold from behind, a characteristic of the
mythical ass in fairy tales). Here the woodpecker has the same office
which in another Russian story, already recorded, is attributed to the
wintry, funereal, and ill-omened stork, the sun hidden in the
darkness, or the cloud.
The halcyon, which announces tempests, and the bird of St Martin, the
fisher martin, are of the same wintry and phallical nature as the
woodpecker. In Piedmont, a fool is insultingly called by the name of
Martin-Piciu (the podex and the phallos, and also the phallos martin,
which reminds us of the _picus pistor_, and the _picus martius_), and
the above-quoted Italian expression _pincone_ is equivalent to it. The
sun that hides itself in darkness or clouds loses its power. The
phallical symbol is evident. Here remark the Hellenic fable of the
bird Yünx tetraknamon, of the four rays, of the long tongue, always
changeful (the Trench call it _paille en cul_). Pan is said to have
been the father of a girl called Yünx, who, having attempted to seduce
Zeus, was changed by the vengeance of Hêrê into a bird of the same
name. In Pindar, Jason made use of this bird, the gift of Aphroditê,
to gain the favour of Medea. In Theocritos, this bird is invoked by
girls in love to attract their lovers into the house; women made use
of this bird in their mischief-working love-mysteries.
According to the fifth book of Aristotle's _History of Animals_, the
halcyon sits on its eggs in the serene days of winter, called
therefore alküoneiai hêmerai; and the author cites a sentence of
Simonides concerning this bird: "When Zeus, in the wintry season,
creates twice seven warm days, mortals say, 'This tepid weather is
nourishing the variously-painted halcyons.'" Ovid relates that Alcyon
was transformed into the bird of this name while weeping for her
husband, who had been drowned in the sea, whence Ariosto wrote--
"E s'udîr le Alcione alla marina
Dell' antico infortunio lamentarse."
This bird, the kingfisher, several kinds of woodpeckers, the wren, the
crow, and the redbreast, the Scotch Robin Redbreast, also called in
English ruddock and Robin-ruddock, which, "with charitable bill,"
according to the expression of Shakspeare in _Cymbeline_,[412] throws
funereal flowers upon unburied bodies,[413] are all birds sacred to
St Martin, the holy gravedigger, the bringer of winter, who,
according to the Celtic and German traditions, divides his own cloak
with poor men, and covers them. German legends are full of incidents
relating to this funereal and wintry bird, with which now the funereal
Norwegian bird of St Gertrude, now the cuckoo, now the _incendiaria
avis_, are assimilated. Hence the same redbreast which in German
tradition is sacred to St Martin is called _Jean rouge-gorge_ in the
popular songs of Brittany, published by Villemarqué, and is sacred to
St John; but this John may be the St John of winter, whose festival is
celebrated on the 27th of December, that is, two days after the
Nativity of Christ, or in the days in which the sun, the Saviour, is
born again, and the light increases. Birds of the same funereal nature
as that of St Martin appear in the Breton song _Bran_ (or the prisoner
of war):--"At Kerloan, upon the battlefield, there is an oak-tree
which spreads its branches over the shore; there is an oak-tree at the
place where the Saxons took to flight before the face of Evan the
Great. On this oak, when the moon shines at night, birds come to meet
one another, sea-birds with white and black plumage, and a little spot
of blood on their heads; with them there comes an old grey crow, and
with it a young crow. Both are very weary, and their wings are wet;
they come from beyond the seas, they come from afar; and the birds
sing such a beautiful song that the great sea is hushed and listens;
this song they sing with one voice, except the old crow and the young
one; now the crow has said--'Sing, little birds; sing, sing, little
birds of the land; you do not die far away from Bretagne.'" The same
funereal birds which have pity for the dead, like the stork, also take
care of new-born infants, and bring the light forth. The cloudy
nocturnal or wintry monster discovers his treasures; the funereal bird
buries the dead, and brings them to life again; its beak pierces
through the mountain, finds the water and the fire, and tears the veil
of death; its luminous head disperses the gloomy shadows.
FOOTNOTES:
[408]
"Lacte quis infantes nescit crevisse ferino?
Et picum expositis sæpe tulisse cibos?"
--Ovid, _Fasti_, iii.
[409] Compare _pingûlas_ with _pingalas_ and _pingaras_.--In the hymn,
x. 28, 9, of the _Rigvedas_, we also have the mountain cleft from afar
by a clod of earth: Adrim logena vy abhedam ârât. This analogy is so
much the more remarkable, as in the same hymn, 4th strophe, the wild
boar is also spoken of.
[410] The same virtue of opening the mountain by means of an herb I
find attributed to the little martin, in connection with Venus, in
Simrock, the work quoted before, p. 415: "Schon in einem Gedichte
Meister Altschwerts, ed. Holland, s. 70, wird der Zugang zu dem Berge
durch ein Kraut gefunden, das der Springwurzel oder blauen
Schlüsselblume unserer Ortssagen gleicht. Kaum hat es der Dichter
gebrochen, so kommt ein Martinsvögelchen geflogen, das guter
Vorbedeutung zu sein pflegt; diesem folgt er und begegnet einem
Zwerge, der ihn in den Berg zu Frau Venus führt."
[411] _Carm._ iii. 27.
[412]
"Thou shalt not lack
The flower that's like thy face, pale primrose; nor
The azured hare-bell, like thy veins; no, nor
The leaf of eglantine, whom not to slander,
Out-sweetened not thy breath; the ruddock would,
With charitable bill (O bill, sore-shaming
Those rich-left heirs, that let their fathers lie
Without a monument!), bring thee all this."
--iv. 2.
[413] Cfr. what is said on the whoop, the stork, and the
lark.--Concerning the bird _gaulus_, I find in Du Cange as follows:
"Gaulus Merops avis apibus infensa, unde et Apiastra vocitatur. Papias:
'Meropes, Genus avium, idem et Gauli, qui parentes suos recondere, et
alere dicuntur, sunt autem virides et vocantur Apiastræ.'"