[[475]] Diodorus Siculus, ii, 4.
[[476]] De dea Syria, 14.
[[477]] This little bird allied to the woodpecker twists its neck strangely when alarmed. It may have symbolized the coquettishness of fair maidens. As love goddesses were "Fates", however, the wryneck may have been connected with the belief that the perpetrator of a murder, or a death spell, could be detected when he approached his victim's corpse. If there was no wound to "bleed afresh", the "death thraw" (the contortions of death) might indicate who the criminal was. In a Scottish ballad regarding a lady, who was murdered by her lover, the verse occurs:
'Twas in the middle o' the night
The cock began to craw;
And at the middle o' the night
The corpse began to thraw.
[[478]] Langdon's Sumerian and Babylonian Psalms, pp. 133, 135.
[[479]] Introduction to Lane's Manners and Customs of the Modern Egyptians.
[[480]] Tammuz is referred to in a Sumerian psalm as "him of the dovelike voice, yea, dovelike". He may have had a dove form. Angus, the Celtic god of spring, love, and fertility, had a swan form; he also had his seasonal period of sleep like Tammuz.
[[481]] Campbell's Superstitions of the Scottish Highlands, p. 288.
[[482]] Indian Myth and Legend, p. 95.
[[483]] Ibid., pp. 329-30.