Zoological Mythology Volume Ii Part 20

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 Nukteos.--The enemy of Nukteos.--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 peac.o.c.k.--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 Sita.--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 woodc.o.c.k.--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 _?igvedas_ compares him to a khargala[382], which is probably an owl (also called naktacaras); it also directs the devotee to curse death and the G.o.d 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 G.o.d of the dead (the G.o.d Yamas). In Hungary the owl is called the bird of death. In the _Mahabharatam_,[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 _Mahabharatam_, again,[386] the owl kills the crows by night whilst they are sleeping. In the _Ramaya?am_,[387] the owl (as the moon) contends with the vulture (the sun), who had usurped its nest; the two disputants appeal to Ramas, 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." Ramas, 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 punis.h.i.+ng the vulture, but desists upon learning that the latter was once King Brahmadattas, condemned to become a vulture by the wise Gautamas, because he had once offered meat and fish to that penitent to eat. Ramas 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 Garu?as, who thinks of no one but the G.o.d Vish?us, 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; kakaris, or enemy of the crow, is one of the Sansk?it names of the owl, and the kakolukika 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 Pa?inis.

In the thirtieth story of the fourth book of _Afana.s.sieff_, 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 peac.o.c.k'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 Nukteus of Lesbio (according to others, of the king of the Ethiopians. Nukteus 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 Athene 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 Athene, the G.o.ddess of wisdom, inasmuch as she sees in darkness; the flight of the bird of night was, therefore, for the Athenians a sign that the G.o.ddess who protected their city was propitious; hence the owls of Athens pa.s.sed into a proverb. The owl, otherwise (according to the superst.i.tion 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 ign.o.ble and ill-omened bird that it really is. It is said of Demosthenes, that before going into exile, he declared that Athene delighted in three fear-inspiring beasts--the owl, the dragon, and the Athenian people. In _aelianos_ 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 _aeneid_, 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 dirae 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 c.u.m 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 chi, 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 chi Cu 'avi patruni, tinta canciar lu p."

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 chiancanu li jacobbi."

In the popular Sicilian legend, ent.i.tled _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 _v?ikas_, 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 Athene), 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 sahasrakshas (the heavenly peac.o.c.k), 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 M?igara?as, or king of beasts) seems generally to be the same as the moon, the mistress of the night. Indras is often the peac.o.c.k-G.o.d, the azure starry sky of night; but blue and black, as we have said, are two equivalent colours (the azure G.o.d Indras becomes the azure or dark K?ish?as, and, on the contrary, the crow becomes a peac.o.c.k), and are expressed by one and the same word; hence the black bird and the blue one are subst.i.tuted for one another. According to Festus, the crow was, before the peac.o.c.k, sacred to Juno. The crow-peac.o.c.k has already become proverbial in the _Pancatantram_,[392] where we read that the hasty fool takes a crow for a peac.o.c.k. The voice of the peac.o.c.k is as shrill as that of the crow; in the _Ramaya?am_,[393] the water-c.o.c.k (?alakukkubhas, the heron, the halcyon, the duck, the swan) laughs at the peac.o.c.k when striving to answer the cuckoo. Thus, the Greek proverb laughs at the crows which are more honoured than the nightingales (korakes aedonon aidesimoteroi). Martial places them in contrast with the swans--

"Inter Laedaeos 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 _Afana.s.sieff_, 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 _Mahabharatam_,[394] the monster Rahus disguises himself as a G.o.d, that he may go and drink the ambrosia of the G.o.ds; the sun and the moon denounce the imposture; Rahus is recognised, and Vish?us cuts off his head with his disc; this is an ancient variety of the fable of the crow among the peac.o.c.ks. This disguise of the crow, however, will appear quite natural when we reflect that Indras is a peac.o.c.k, and that in the _Ramaya?am_[395] a certain learned crow (pa??itas) is called by Hanumant the son of Indras (putra? kila sa cakrasya; 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 a.s.sumes in the Hindoo poems a sinister, and sometimes even a diabolical aspect. In the _Ramaya?am_,[396] a crow attacks Sita with wings, beak, and claws; Ramas 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 Ramas to beseech him to deliver it from this enchantment; Ramas 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 Ramas must aim at. The cunning bird, hoping that Ramas will miss his aim, says one of its eyes; Ramas aims at it and strikes it, to the great wonder of Sita, against whom the crow had begun to make war, after that Ramas 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 _Ramaya?am_, 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 (sarika or _gracula religiosa_). A bird of prey holds a parrot in its claws, and a sarika 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 _Ramaya?am_,[397]

Ramas orders Sita to preserve the rest of the food for the crows. In the flight of the G.o.ds before the demons, described in the last book of the _Ramaya?am_, the G.o.d Indras hides himself in the form of a peac.o.c.k, and Yamas, the G.o.d of the dead, in that of a crow (in h.e.l.lenic 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 Koronis; here the crow occupies the place of the mythical cuckoo. In another h.e.l.lenic 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 pa.s.s 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 aelianos, 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 amba.s.sadors, 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 d.a.m.ned. At Brusasco, in Piedmont, children sing to the crow this funereal verse, counterfeiting in the chorus the crow's cry--

"Curnaia.s.s, Porta 'l scia.s.s (the colander); Me mari l'e morta Sut la porta.

Que!"

In a popular Swedish song, in the collection translated into German by Warrens, I read this verse, where the crow a.s.sumes an entirely monstrous form; men spit at it, as they do at the devil--

"Es flog ein Rabe uber das Dach, Hatt' Menschenfleisch in den Krallen, Drei Tropfen Blutes trauften herab, Ich spulte, wo sie gefallen."

In the thirty-ninth story of the fourth book of _Afana.s.sieff_, 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 G.o.d, takes now the shape of a cuckoo, now that of a crow, the crow, in the fifteenth story of _Siddhikur_, 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. Ph?bos sends the crow to find the l.u.s.tral 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 pa.s.sed 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 ill.u.s.trated 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 G.o.d; 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 _Afana.s.sieff_, 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 h.e.l.lenic 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 _Afana.s.sieff'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 princ.i.p.al 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 _Afana.s.sieff_, 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 G.o.d 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 disperar perdono."

The reader knows, no doubt, the fable of Arne, 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 s.h.i.+ning 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 h.e.l.l, 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 superst.i.tion 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 qua 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 _Afana.s.sieff_, 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 relations.h.i.+p 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 _Afana.s.sieff_, 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 G.o.dmother 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 _Afana.s.sieff_, the stork is said to be the brother of the woodc.o.c.k, 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 a.s.sumes 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 _Afana.s.sieff_, 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 aryan beliefs, one of the forms a.s.sumed by the souls of the dead.

FOOTNOTES:

[382] Pra ya ?igati khargaleva naktam apa druha tanva? guhamana; _?igv._ vii. 104, 17.

[383] Yad uluko vadati mogham etad yat kapota? padam agnau k?i?oti, yasya duta? prahita esha etat tasmai yamaya namo astu m?ityave; _?igv._ i. 165, 4.

[384] iii. 73.

[385] iii. 15, 128, and _Hitopadecas_, iv. 47.

[386] iii. 308, x. 38.

[387] vi. 64.