Mikey lived to become a drunkard, is the unfeeling comment of the reporter of this touching incident in The Journal of American Folklore.
“One constantly hears by day the note of the limócon, a wood-pigeon which exercises a most extraordinary interest over the lives of many of the wild people, for they believe that the direction and nature of its notes augur good or ill for the enterprises they have in hand.” This memorandum, in Dean Worcester’s valuable book on the Philippines,[[3]] is apt to the purpose of this introductory chapter, leading me to say that the continuing reader will find doves (which are much the same in all parts of the world) conspicuous in legend, fable and ceremony; also that the “direction and nature” of their voices, as heard, is one of the most important elements in the consideration of birds in general as messengers and prophets—functions to which I shall often have occasion to refer, and on which are founded the ancient systems of bird-divination.
In these United States little superstition relating to animals has survived, partly because the wild creatures here were strange to the pioneers, who were poorly acquainted with their characteristics, but mainly because such fears and fancies were left in the Old World with other rubbish not worth the freight-charges; yet a few quaint notions came along, like small heirlooms of no particular value that folks dislike to throw away until they must. Almost all such mental keepsakes belong to people in the backward parts of the country, often with an ill-fitting application to local birds. A conspicuous disappearance is that venerable body of forebodings and fancies attached to the European cuckoo, totally unknown or disregarded here, because our American cuckoos have no such irregular habits as gave rise to the myths and superstitions clustering about that bird in Europe.
We saw a moment ago that the negro farmer estimated what the yield of his field would be by the direction from which the dove’s message came to his ears. I have another note that if one hears the first mourning-dove of the year above him he will prosper: if from below him his own course henceforth will be down hill.
This matter of direction whence (and also of number) is of vital importance in interpreting bird-prophecy the world over, as will be fully shown in a subsequent chapter. Even in parts of New England it is counted “unlucky” to see two crows together flying toward the left—a plain borrowing from the magpie-lore of Old England. In the South it is thought that if two quails fly up in front of a man on the way to conclude a bargain he will do well to abandon the intended business. Break up a killdeer’s nest and you will soon break a leg or arm—and so on.
There always have been persons who were much disturbed when a bird fluttered against a closed window. A rooster crowing into an open house-door foretells a visitor. The plantation darkies of our Southern States believe that when shy forest-birds come close about a dwelling as if frightened, or, wandering within it, beat their wings wildly in search of an exit, so some soul will flutteringly seek escape from that house—and “right soon.” Similar fears afflict the timid on the other side of the globe. On the contrary, and more naturally, it is esteemed among us an excellent omen when wild birds nest fearlessly about a negro’s or a mountaineer’s cabin.
When a Georgia girl first hears in the spring the plaintive call of returning doves she must immediately attend to it if she is curious as to her future partner in life. She must at once take nine steps forward and nine backward, then take off her right shoe: in it she will discover a hair of the man she is to marry—but how to find its owner is not explained! This bit of rustic divination is plainly transferred from the old English formula toward the first-heard cuckoo, as may be learned from Gay’s The Shepherd’s Week,[[8]] which is a treasury of rustic customs in Britain long ago. Says one of the maids:
Then doff’d my shoe, and by my troth I swear,
Therein I spy’d this yellow, frizzled hair.
This matter of the hair is pure superstition allied to magic, in practicing which, indeed, birds have often been degraded to an evil service very remote from their nature. Thiselton Dyer quotes an Irish notion that “in everyone’s head there is a particular hair which, if the swallow can pluck it, dooms the wretched individual to eternal perdition.” A Baltimore folklorist warns every lady against letting birds build nests with the combings of her hair, as it will turn the unfortunate woman crazy. Any woman afraid of this should beware of that dear little sprite of our garden shrubbery, the chipping-sparrow, for it always lines its tiny nest with hair. This notion is another importation, for it has long been a saying in Europe that if a bird uses human hair in its nest the owner of the hair will have headaches and later baldness. Curiously enough the Seneca Indians, one of the five Iroquois tribes, are said to have long practised a means, as they believed it to be, of communicating with a maiden-relative, after her death, by capturing a fledgling bird with a noose made from her hair. The bird was kept caged until it began to sing, when it was liberated and was believed to carry to the knowledge of the departed one a whispered message of love.