“When the King of Trachis, the son of Hesperus, or of Lucifer, and Philonis, perished in shipwreck, his wife Alcyone, the daughter of Æolus and Ægiale, for love of him, threw herself into the sea;—who both, by the mercy of the gods, were turned into the birds called Halcyons. These birds, in the winter-time, build their nests, and lay their eggs, and hatch their young on the sea; and the sea is quiet in those days, which the sailors call the Halcyonia.”—Hyginus, Fab. LXV.
191. “Now the King of Trachis, the son of Lucifer, had to wife Halcyone. And he, wishing to consult the oracle of Apollo concerning the state of his kingdom, was forbidden to go, by Halcyone, nevertheless he went; and perished by shipwreck. And when his body was brought to his wife Halcyone, she threw herself into the sea. Afterwards, by the mercy of Thetis and Lucifer, they were both turned into the sea-birds called Halcyons. And you ought to know that Halcyone is the woman’s name, and is always a feminine noun; but the bird’s name is Halcyon, masculine and feminine, and so also its plural, Halcyones. Also those birds make their nests in the sea, in the middle of winter; in which days the calm is so deep that hardly anything in the sea can be moved. Thence, also, the days themselves are called Halcyonia.”—Servius, in Virg. Georg. i. 399.
192. “And the pairing of birds, as I said, is for the most part in spring time, and early summer; except the halcyon’s. For the halcyon has its young about the turn of days in winter, wherefore, when those days are fine, they are called ‘Halcyonine’ (ἀλκυόνειοι); seven, indeed, before the turn, and seven after it, as Simonides poetized, (ἐποίησεν).
‘As, when in the wintry month
Zeus gives the wisdom of calm to fourteen days,
Then the people of the land call it
The hour of wind-hiding, the sacred
Nurse of the spotted Halcyon.’
“And in the first seven days the halcyon is said to lay her eggs, and in the latter seven to bring forth and nourish her young. Here, indeed, in the seas of Greece, it does not always chance that the Halcyonid days are at the solstice; but in the Sicilian sea, almost always. But the æthuia and the laros bring forth their young, (two, or three) among the rocks by the sea-shore; but the laros in summer, the æthuia in first spring, just after the turn of days; and they sit on them as other birds do. And none of these birds lie torpid in holes during the winter; but the halcyon is, of all, seen the seldomest, for it is seen scarcely at all, except just at the setting and turn of Pleias, and then it will but show itself once, and away; flying, perhaps, once round a ship at anchor, and then it is gone instantly.”—Aristotle, Hist. Av., v. 8, 9.
193. “Now we are ready enough to extol the bee for a wise creature, and to consent to the laws by which it cares for the yellow honey, because we adore the pleasantness and tickling to our palates that is in the sweetness of that; but we take no notice of the wisdom and art of other creatures in bringing up their young, as for instance, the halcyon, who as soon as she has conceived, makes her nest by gathering the thorns of the sea-needle-fish; and, weaving these in and out, and joining them together at the ends, she finishes her nest; round in the plan of it, and long, in the proportion of a fisherman’s net; and then she puts it where it will be beaten by the waves, until the rough surface is all fastened together and made close. And it becomes so hard that a blow with iron or stone will not easily divide it; but, what is more wonderful still, is that the opening of the nest is made so exactly to the size and measure of the halcyon that nothing larger can get into it, and nothing smaller!—so they say;—no, not even the sea itself, even the least drop of it.”—Plutarch: De Amore Prolis.