Let ut a rauen and forth he flew
Dune and vp sought heare and thare
A stede to sett upon somequar.
Vpon the water sone he fand
A drinkled best ther flotand
Of that flees was he so fain
To ship came he never again.
To this list of messengers medieval tradition added a fourth—the kingfisher, which in Europe is blue-green above and rich chestnut on the breast. At that time, however, it was a plain gray bird. This scout flew straight up to heaven, in order to get a wide survey of the waters, and went so near the sun that its breast was scorched to its present tint and its back assumed the color of the sky overhead. (This recalls Thoreau’s saying that our bluebird carries the sky on its back and the earth on its breast.)
Faith in a general flood long ago is shown by primitive documents to have prevailed not only in Asia Minor and eastward, but in Persia, India and Greece. It did not prevail in Europe generally, nor in Africa. On the other hand missionaries report traditions of it in Polynesia—where, curiously, geographers find evidence of great subsidences since the archipelagoes affected have been inhabited; and certainly it was a part of the mythical prehistory of many tribes among the aborigines of North America, where birds were often connected with the adventures of the few or solitary survivors by means of whom the world was repeopled. Thus scores, perhaps hundreds, of varying traditions and fables exist of the creation of the earth out of a chaos of water, or of its restoration after having been drowned in a universal flood; and often it is hard to distinguish the creation-myth from the deluge-tale.
The American story-material of this nature may be divided into groups that would correspond roughly to the various aboriginal language-stocks, betraying a family likeness in each group, but showing tribal variations as a rule connected with each particular tribal or mythical “first man,” or with the totemic ancestor.