[177]. Buchholz, Realien, Bd. i. Abth. ii. p. 134.
One of the few bits of primitive folk-lore enshrined in the Iliad relates to the wars of the cranes and pygmies. The passage is curious in many ways. It contains the first notice of bird-migrations, implies the constancy with which the ‘annual voyage’ of the ‘prudent crane’ was steered during three thousand years,[[178]] and records the dim wonder early excited by the sight and sound of that
Aery caravan, high over seas
Flying, and over lands with mutual wing
Easing their flight.
[178]. Koerner, Die Homerische Thierwelt, pp. 62-65.
In the Iliadic lines, the clamour of the Trojan advance, in contrast to the determined silence of their opponents, is somewhat disdainfully accentuated:
When afar through the heaven cometh pealing before them the cry of the cranes,
As they flee from the wintertide storms and the measureless deluging rains.
Onward with screaming they fly to the streams of the ocean-flood,