"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.
[CHAPTER VIII.]
THE LARK AND THE QUAIL.
SUMMARY.
The lark the first of animals.—It existed before the earth.—It buries its father in its own head.—The lark sings the praises of God.—Praǵâpatis creates the stomas first.—The crested sun.—Christos and crista; the crested lark and St Christophoros.—Alauda the lauder.—The lark upon the father's tomb.—The mother-lark.—The lark announces morning and summer.—Bharadvâǵas, the bringer of food, the bringer of good things and of sound.—Bharadvâǵas as a mythical singer or poet, nourished by a lark; the son of Bṛihaspatis.—The old Bharadvâǵas ascends into heaven in union with the sun.—The quail.—Vartikâ, vartakas, wachtel, perepiolka.—The quail and the wolf in the Ṛigvedas.—The wise girl upon a hare, with a quail tied to her hand.—Jove as a quail.—The quail sacred to Hercules.—The moon and the quail.—The quail becomes a stone.—The quail believed to eat poisonous hellebore.—The quail as a sacred bird.—The game of the quail.—The quail and the cock.—The quail as a prophetic bird.—The quail puts a price upon corn.
To the crested lark, in the Ornithes of Aristophanes, the name of king is given, and the same virtue of funereal charity is attributed to it which we have already seen in the redbreast of winter, in the stork, and in the crested whoop. According to Aristophanes the lark was not only the first of animals, but it existed before the earth and before the gods Zeus and Kronos and the Titans. Hence, when the lark's father died, there was no earth to bury him in; then the lark buried its father in its own head (or in its pyramidal crest). Goropius explains the belief that the lark existed before the earth, by observing that the lark sings seven times a day the praises of God in the high air, and that prayer was the first thing which existed in the world. In Hindoo cosmogony, when Praǵâpatis, the creator, wishes to multiply himself, he begins by creating the stomas or hymn.[414] The father of the lark is therefore the god himself. The crested lark is the same as the crested sun, the sun with his rays. In the legend of St Christopher, I see an equivoque between the word Christos and the word crista, and, either way, I see the sun personified. St Christopher, in the legend, carries Christ, and is associated with the lark. Goropius, when a child, on seeing a picture representing St Christopher, marvelled that the lark did not flee from the tree-staff of St Christopher, whilst the sparrows, instead, fled before him as soon as he approached; he was answered that the lark is not afraid of St Christopher, because it sees on the saint's shoulders its own creator, God. Christ, the father of the lark, dies, and the lark buries him in its crista. In the same way an equivoque in speech made of the lark (alauda) the lauder (laudatrix) of God; thus it seems to me that the equivoque between crista and Christos passed into the legend of St Christopher. In the nineteenth Mongol story, the poor young man makes his fortune when he hears a lark upon his father's tomb, which has come and placed itself upon the loom. The lark is a form of the young man himself, the young sun who from poor becomes rich; the loom upon which the lark perches is the sky. The Greek name of the crested lark (korüdalos) corresponds to the Latin galerita. The lark with the crest or with the tuft explains the custom of the Gauls, recorded by Suetonius in the Life of Julius Cæsar, of representing a crested lark upon their helmets. The Æsopian fables of the mother-lark with its young ones, and of the lark with the birdcatcher, show us this bird full of cunning and wisdom. As the larks sing the praises of God only when the sky is serene, and as they announce the morning[415] and the summer, they represent the crested sun which illumines all, which is all-luminous, all-seeing, (the Vedic viçvavedas), the golden sun. In the thirteenth Esthonian story, the maiden that sleeps will waken when she hears again the summer song of the larks. (Here the maiden is the earth, which wakens in the spring.)
The Hindoo name of the lark is no less interesting than the Latin alauda. Bharadvâǵas, or the lark, may mean the bringer of food or of goods (as the sun), as well as the bringer of sound (the singer of hymns) and the sacrificer. In this triple interpretation which can be given to the word bharadvâǵas, nearly all the myth of the lark seems to be contained. Bharadvâǵas, afterwards, also becomes the name of a celebrated poet, and of one of the seven mythical sages, who, according to the legend, was nourished by a lark, and who is said to be the son of Bṛihaspatis, the god of sacrifice, Fire, identified with Divodâsas, one of the favourites of the god Indras, who destroys for him the strong celestial cities of Çambaras. The Tâittiriya-brâhmaṇam also shows us the wise Bharadvâǵas in connection with Indras. Bharadvâǵas has become old whilst travelling three degrees of the life of a studious penitent; Indras approaches the aged sage, and asks him, how, if he still had many years to live, he would employ his lifetime? The sage answers that he would continue to live in penitence and in study. In the three first degrees of his life, Bharadvâǵas has studied the three Vedâs (the Atharva-veda having come afterwards, or not being as yet recognised as a sacred book). In the fourth period, Bharadvâǵas learns universal science (çarvavidyâ), becomes immortal, and ascends into heaven in union with the sun (âdityasya sâyuǵyam).