Elsie releases them by plucking stinging-nettles which she has to weave into eleven shirts with long sleeves. She does not finish in time, and one sleeve being wanting in the youngest boy's shirt, he has one arm, and a wing instead of the other.[139]
The robin, oddly enough among birds, is also a transformed man. The legend is told amongst the Chippeway Indians that there was once a hunter so ambitious that his only son should signalise himself by endurance when he came to the time of life to undergo the fast for the purpose of choosing his guardian spirit, that after the lad had fasted for eight days, his father still pressed him to persevere. But the next day, when the father entered the hut, his son had paid the penalty of violated nature, and in the form of a robin had just flown down to the top of a lodge. There before he flew away to the woods, he entreated his father not to mourn the transformation. "I shall be happier," he said, "in my present state than I could have been as a man. I shall always be the friend of men and keep near their dwellings; I could not gratify your pride as a warrior, but I will cheer you with my songs."[140]
In Bavaria the hoopoe is said to play the part of attendant to the cuckoo. It is believed that the plantain was once a maiden, who, watching by the wayside for her lover, who was long in coming, was changed into a plant, and once in seven years she becomes a bird, either the cuckoo or the hoopoe,[141] or, as it is called in Devonshire, the "dinnick," the cuckoo's servant.
One of the best-known classical stories of bird-women is, of course, the tragedy of Progne and Philomela, daughters of Pandion, King of Athens. Progne marries Tereus, King of Thrace, but Tereus, blinded by Philomela's beauty, betrays his sister-in-law and cuts out her tongue lest she should tell of his villainy. Nevertheless she manages to send a message to her sister, who revenges herself and Philomela on her husband Tereus by killing his son Itys and dishing up his body as food at a meal which she sets before his father. Tereus, having eaten of the flesh of his beloved son, discovers the trick played upon him and pursues his wife and her sister with the intention of punishing them. As they flee Philomela is transformed into a nightingale, while Progne becomes a swallow, upon whose breast the red stains of her murdered son appear. Tereus is changed into a crested bird, either a hoopoe or a lapwing.
"The Thracian king, lamenting sore,
Turned to a lapwing, doeth them upbrayde."
A pretty story of a woman-kingfisher is also to be found among the classics. Ceyx, King of Trachyn, sets out for Claros, to succour his brother, against the advice of his wife, Halcyone. A storm overtakes the ship on which he is travelling and he is drowned. Halcyone hastens to the seashore to find him, as she feels she cannot live without his presence, and as she stands looking out to sea the body of the drowned Ceyx floats towards her. She leaps into the water to seize his corpse and at that moment is transformed into a kingfisher, and with her bill and wings caresses the dead face and limbs of her beloved husband. Then the gods, in compassion, transform Ceyx also into a kingfisher, so that as birds their love may endure for ever.[142]