With a lengthened loud halloo,
Tuwhoo, tuwhit, tuwhit, tuwhoo-o-o.
The Greeks, according to Andrew Lang, had a similar legend of feminine impiety, by which they mystically explained the origin of owls and bats.
The prevalence of a belief in such transformations as these by Jesus is very widespread; the traditions vary somewhat, as we have seen, in different countries, but it is evident that the root is in the primitive notion that such miracles were not only possible, but natural. Rather more remote and obscure is the connection of birds with certain other religious feasts, such as the substitution of turkey for boar’s-head as the central dish for the Christmas dinner among the English Dissenters, attributed to the fact that turkeys became common about the time of the Reformation, and acquired a meritorious character on that account among those who wanted to continue the Christmas feast without the taint of a dish partaking of the customs of the hated Papists. Is our New England custom of a turkey dinner on Thanksgiving Day traceable to this, remembering that the Puritans paid little or no heed to Christmas?
For centuries, and until comparatively recent times, among the sports and jollifications recalling the Roman carnival (at the same date) that marked Shrove Tuesday, the last day before Lent, both in Britain and in France, along with the eating of unlimited pancakes, cock-fighting and “throwing at cocks” had the most prominent place. The last-mentioned sport consisted in fastening live cocks in a certain position, and letting men compete in throwing clubs at them, the man who killed the bird winning it. This atrocious form of amusement did not shock the populace of a time when bear-baiting, bull-baiting, and the pitting of dogs against each other or against badgers and rats were popular; yet a few protested, and even in the 17th century antiquaries were searching for the origin of the custom. Hearne asserted that it was in memory of English victories over the French (symbolized by the Gallic coq) in the time of Henry V; but the sport was customary in France itself long before that time. A writer quoted by Smith[[61]] records that “the common account of it is that the crowing of a cock prevented our Saxon ancestors from massacring their conquerors, the Danes, on the morning of a Shrove Tuesday while asleep in their beds,” which recalls one of the explanations of the Irish wren-hunting. My own opinion is that the custom had no particular significance, but was just a sportive way of getting without much cost the material for a good dinner, as were the “turkey shoots” of our western frontier; and that Erasmus was fairly right when he remarked that “the English eat a certain cake on Shrove Tuesday, on which they immediately run mad and kill the poor cocks.”
Lent closes with the joyful celebration of Easter, an occasion in which the eggs of birds, at least, have a persistent and prominent part, and doves find a place in several Old World ceremonies of the Church.
In the matter of the almost universal and everywhere popular custom of playing with colored eggs at Easter, I can do no better than quote The Catholic Encyclopedia, article “Easter”:
Because the use of eggs was forbidden during Lent they were brought to the table on Easter Day, colored red to symbolize the Easter joy. This custom is found not only in the Latin but also in the Oriental Churches. The symbolic meaning of a new creation of mankind by Jesus risen from the dead was probably an invention of later times. The custom may have its origin in Paganism, for a great many pagan customs, celebrating the return of spring, gravitated to Easter. The egg is the emblem of the germinating life of early spring. Easter eggs, the children are told, come from Rome with the bells which on Thursday go to Rome and return Saturday morning. The sponsors in some countries give Easter eggs to their god-children. Colored eggs are used by children at Easter in a sort of game which consists in testing the strength of the shells. Both colored and uncolored eggs are used in some parts of the United States in this game, known as “egg-picking.” Another practice is the “egg-rolling” by children on Easter Monday on the lawn of the White House in Washington.
A quaint feature in this pagan survival in a Christian celebration of a momentous incident and idea is the connection with it of the rabbit. Wherever colored Easter eggs are displayed, images of a rabbit are likely to accompany them. Children are told that the Easter Rabbit lays the eggs, for which reason they are, in some countries, hidden in a nest in the garden. The strangeness of the association disappears when we remember that the date of the feast is determined by the time when the moon first becomes full after the spring equinox, and that the rabbit, which has from time immemorial been a symbol of fertility, is representative of the moon-goddess, Luna, which was worshipped annually at a date coinciding with the Easter festival. Thus, like many other pagan rites and symbols significant of reviving nature, it became confused with the Christian celebration of the Resurrection.
At the feast of the Pentecost, on Whitsunday, commemorating the descent of the Holy Ghost upon the Apostles, doves were formerly always employed in Europe in staging the solemnities.