Whatever tradition or superstition or other motive affected the choice of any bird as a tribal totem, or endowed it with “sacredness,” practical considerations were surely influential. It is noticeable that the venerated ibis and hawk in Egypt were useful to the people as devourers of vermin—young crocodiles, poisonous snakes, grain-eating mice and so forth. Storks in Europe and India, and the “unclean” birds of Palestine forbidden to the Jews, were mostly carrion-eaters, and as such were desirable street-cleaners in village and camp. A tradition in the Ægean island Tenos is that Poseidon—a Greek St. Patrick—sent storks to clear the island of snakes, which originally were numerous there. Australian frontiersmen preserve the big kingfisher, dubbed “laughing-jackass,” for the same good reason. The wiser men in early communities appreciated this kind of service by birds, and added a religious sanction to their admonition that such servants of mankind should not be killed. It was the primitive movement toward bird-protection, which, by the way, was first applied in this country to the scavenging turkey-buzzards and carrion-crows of the Southern States.
As for the smaller birds, where special regard was paid them it was owing, apart from the natural humane admiration and enjoyment of these pretty creatures, to the mystery and fiction of their being animated by spirits. When they were black, like ravens and cormorants, or were cruel night-prowlers, such as owls, or uttered disconsolate cries, they were thought to be inhabited by dread, malignant, spirits “from night’s Plutonian shore,” as Poe expresses it, but when they had pretty plumage, pleasing ways and melodious voices, they were deemed the embodiment of beneficent and happy spirits—perhaps even those of departed relatives.
Hence we have the notion that some birds are lucky and others unlucky in their relation to us. Those that bring good luck are mainly those kinds that associate themselves with civilization, such as the various robins, wrens and storks, the doves and the swallows. Even so, however, time and place must be considered in every case, for the dearest of little birds when it pecks at a window-pane, or seems bent on entering a cottage door will arouse tremors of fear in a superstitious heart—much more so a bird that ordinarily keeps aloof from mankind. Frazer records, in his essay on Scapegoats, that if a wild bird flies into a rural Malay’s house, it must be carefully caught and smeared with oil, and must then be released into the open air with a formula of words adjuring it to take away all ill-luck. In antiquity Greek women seem to have done the same with any swallow they found inside the house, a custom mentioned by both Pythagoras and Plato—the latter humorously proposing to dismiss poets from his ideal State in the same manner. Such doings remind one of the function of the scapegoat; and in fact, according to Frazer, the Hazuls, of the Carpathian Mountains, imagine they can transfer their freckles to the first swallow they see in the spring by uttering a certain command to the bird. Are these practices distorted reminiscences of the conjuring by the Hebrew shaman as described in the Old Testament?
This shall be the law of the leper in the day of his cleansing: He shall be brought into the priest.... Then shall the priest command to take for him that is to be cleaned two birds alive and clean, and cedar wood and scarlet and hyssop. And the priest shall command that one of the birds be killed in an earthen vessel over running water. As for the living bird, he shall take it and the cedar wood, and the scarlet, and the hyssop, and shall dip them and the living bird in the blood of the bird that was killed over the running water; and he shall sprinkle upon him that is to be cleansed from the leprosy seven times, and shall pronounce him clean, and shall let the living bird loose into the open field. (Lev. xiv, 27.)
The matter of “luck” in this hocus-pocus seems to lie in the chance as to which bird is chosen to be “scapegoat,” and so is allowed to remain alive, cleaning its feathers as best it may. Evidently, the bird that wishes to do nothing to offend anyone must go warily. A cuckoo, for example, may spoil the day for an English milkmaid by incautiously sounding its call before her breakfast.
Such has been the mental attitude underlying the amazing ideas and practices that will be found described in succeeding chapters of this collection of traditional birdlore, much of which is so juvenile and absurd. Until one reviews the groping steps by which mankind advanced with very uneven speed—a large body of it having yet hardly begun the progress, even among the “civilized”—from the crudest animism to a clearer and clearer comprehension of “natural law in the physical world,” he cannot understand how men gave full credence to fictions that the most superficial examination, or the simplest reasoning, would show were false, and trembled before the most imaginary of alarms. Add to this childish credulity the teachings of religious and political leaders who had much to gain by conserving the ignorance and faith of their followers; add again the fruitful influence of story-tellers and poets who utilized ancient legends and beliefs for literary advantage, and you have the history and explanation of how so many primitive superstitions and errors have survived to our day.
CHAPTER II
BIRDS AS NATIONAL EMBLEMS
Several nations and empires of both ancient and modern times have adopted birds as emblems of their sovereignty, or at least have placed prominently on their coats of arms and great seals the figures of birds.
Among these the eagle—some species of the genus Aquila—takes precedence both in time and in importance. The most ancient recorded history of the human race is that engraved on the tablets and seals of chiefs who organized a civilization about the head of the Persian Gulf more than 4000 years before the beginning of the Christian era. These record by both text and pictures that the emblem of the Summerian city of Lagash, which ruled southern Mesopotamia long previous to its subjugation by Babylonia about 3000 B. C., was an eagle “displayed,” that is, facing us with wings and legs spread and its head turned in profile. This figure was carried by the army of Lagash as a military standard; but a form of it with a lion’s head was reserved as the special emblem of the Lagash gods, with which the royal house was identified—the king’s standard.
After the conquest of Babylonia by Assyria this eagle of Lagash was taken over by the conquerors, and appears on an Assyrian seal of the king of Ur many centuries later. “From this eagle,” says Ward,[[23]] “in its heraldic attitude necessitated by its attack on two animals [as represented on many seals and decorations] was derived the two-headed eagle, in the effort to complete the bilateral symmetry. This double-headed eagle appears in Hittite art, and is continued down through Turkish and modern European symbolism.”