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.