Traditions, Superstitions and Folk-lore Part 24

"Far, far away, is a land of woe, darkness, spirits of evil, and _fire_.

Day by day does the little bird bear in his bill a drop of water to quench the flame. So near to the burning stream does he fly, that his dear little feathers are scorched; and hence he is named _Bronrhuddyn_ (_i.e._, breast-burned, or breast-scorched). To serve little children, the robin dares approach the infernal pit. No good child will hurt the devoted benefactor of man. The robin returns from the land of fire, and therefore he feels the cold of winter far more than his brother birds.

He s.h.i.+vers in the brumal blast; hungry he chirps before your door. Oh!

my child, then, in grat.i.tude throw a few crumbs to poor redbreast."

I have not to this day forgotten the sense of shame and sorrow with which I was overwhelmed, when, as a boy, being permitted for the first time to discharge a fowling-piece at a small bird in a shrubbery, I discovered that the feathered songster whose life I had taken was a robin-redbreast.

The stork is, in Germany especially, ever a welcome guest, and wheels (sun emblems) are placed on the roofs of houses in Hesse, in order to encourage the storks to build their nests thereupon. Their presence is supposed to render the building safe against the ravages of fire.

Mannhardt mentions an instance in which, to avenge the abstraction of her young, it is said a stork carried a flaming brand in her beak, threw it into the nest, and thus set the house on fire. The German name for stork, Grimm says, is literally child or soul-bringer. Hence the belief that the advent of infants is presided over by this bird, which obtains so largely in Denmark and Germany.

Amongst the remains of birds and animals consumed as food by the framers of the Danish "kjokkenmoddings," or sh.e.l.l-mounds, the absence of the bones of the domestic fowl, two species of swallow, the sparrow and the stork, has been commented upon by several archaeologists. This is attributable, doubtless, to the sacred character with which they were invested by the inhabitants of the district when the said mounds were formed. For a similar reason, as has been previously observed, no bones of the hare have been found in these ancient "kitchen-middens."

Amongst the birds of evil omen, the owl appears to rank with the foremost. Bourne says, "If an owl, which is reckoned a most abominable and unlucky bird, send forth its hoa.r.s.e and dismal voice, it is an omen of the approach of some terrible thing; that some dire calamity and some great misfortune is near at hand." Chaucer speaks of the "owl eke that of deth the bode bringeth." Amongst the Romans its appearance was regarded as a most certain portent of death. In the year 312, on the day on which Constantine saw the vision of the cross in the heavens, with the legend "In hoc signo vinces," Zosimus, the pagan historian, informs us that his opponent, Maxentius, was disconcerted by the adverse portent of a flight of owls. Speaking of the prodigies which were said to accompany the pa.s.sing away of Augustus Caesar, Xiphilinus says that an "owl sung on the top of the Curia." Our Elizabethan and later poets often refer to this superst.i.tion. In one of Reed's old plays we have:--

When screech owls croak upon the chimney tops, It's certain then you of a corse shall hear.

Spencer speaks of "the ill-fac'd owl, death's dreadful messenger," and Pennant, when describing what is called the tawny owl, says, "this is what we call the screech owl, to which the folly of superst.i.tion had given the power of presaging death by its cries." Shakspere makes Lennox say, on the night of the murder of Duncan, that--

The obscure bird Clamoured the live-long night.

Puck, in Midsummer Night's Dream, says,--

Now the hungry lion roars, And the wolf be-howls the moon; Whilst the heavy ploughman snores, All with weary task fordone.

Now the wanted brands do glow, Whilst the scritch-owl, scritching loud, Puts the wretch, that lies in woe, In remembrance of a shroud.

Referring to the advent of the Duke of Gloucester, afterwards King Richard III., King Henry says:--

The owl shriek'd at thy birth; an evil sign!

The night crow cry'd, aboding luckless time; Dogs howled, and hideous tempests shook down trees.

And again, in Julius Caesar, on the night of the murder of the great dictator, Casca, amongst the numerous other prodigies which he witnessed says:--

And yesterday the bird of night did sit, Even at noon-day, upon the market place, Hooting and shrieking.

The rejoinder put into the mouth of Cicero, shows that Shakspere, while he appreciated the dramatic value of the "folk-lore" of superst.i.tious people like the terrified Casca, was fully alive to the folly of the popular interpretation of the phenomena referred to. He says:

Indeed, it is a strange-dispos'd time; But men may construe things after their fas.h.i.+on Clean from the purpose of the things themselves.

This is still more markedly indicated in the dialogue between Hotspur and Owen Glendower, in the first part of King Henry IV.:--

_Glendower_: At my nativity The front of heaven was full of fiery shapes, Of burning cressets; and at my birth The frame and huge foundation of the earth Shaked like a coward.

_Hotspur_: Why, so it would have done At the same season, if your mother's cat Had but kittened, though yourself had ne'er been born.

_Glendower_: I say the earth did shake when I was born.

_Hotspur_: And I say the earth was not of my mind, If you suppose as fearing you it shook.

_Glendower_: The heavens were all on fire, the earth did tremble.

_Hotspur_: O, then the earth shook to see the heavens on fire, And not in fear of your nativity.

Diseased nature often times breaks forth In strange eruptions: oft the teeming earth Is with a kind of cholic pinched and vexed, By the imprisoning of unruly wind Within her womb; which for enlargement striving, Shakes the old beldam earth, and topples down Steeples and moss-grown towers.

In the Greek mythology the owl was the symbol of Athene. Hence, as before observed, she was styled "Glaucopis," or owl-eyed. According to Payne Knight, this symbol was adopted for the wise G.o.ddess because the owl was "a bird which seems to surpa.s.s all other creatures in acuteness of organic perception, its eye being calculated to observe objects which to all others are enveloped in darkness, its ear to hear sounds distinctly, and its nostrils to discriminate effluvia with such nicety that it has been deemed prophetic, from discovering the putridity of death even in the first stages of disease." As in the case of the dog, referred to in Chapter IX., it is by no means improbable that the extremely delicate sense of smell possessed by the owl, lies at the root of this superst.i.tion. Its after development into a prophetic power respecting approaching death, even without previous disease, can easily be understood, after the original physical conditions had entered into the mythical realm of legend and superst.i.tion.

The cuckoo is generally regarded, like the owl and the raven, as a bird of ill omen. According to Mannhardt, on first hearing its note, the German peasant rolls himself on the gra.s.s, as he does when he hears thunder. The observance of this ceremony is supposed to insure to the individual freedom from aches and pains during the year. It is considered to be unlucky to hear the cuckoo for the first time without coin in the pocket. The more fortunate peasants yet instinctively turn over their money to insure "luck" on first hearing this bird's cry.

The old English rhyme is well known in Lancas.h.i.+re:--

Cuckoo, cherry tree, Good bird tell me, How many years have I to live.

In some places there is a triple rhyme, the last line reading thus:

How many years before I dee? (die).

I remember well indulging in my youth, with other boys, in the divination described by Sir Henry Ellis, as follows:--"Easy to foretel what sort of summer it would be by the position in which the larva of _Cicada (Aphrophora) spumaria_ was found to lie in the froth (_cuckoo-spit_) in which it is enveloped. If the insect lay with its head upwards, it infallibly denoted a dry summer; if downwards, a wet one." The said spume was fully believed to have been deposited upon the vegetation by the expectoration of the cuckoo.

Cuckoos are believed to become sparrowhawks in winter. The Rev. H. B.

Fristram, at a recent meeting of the British a.s.sociation, held at Newcastle-on-Tyne, stated when he once remonstrated with a man for shooting a cuckoo, "the defence was that it was well known that _sparrowhawkes turned into cuckoos_ in the summer." Grimm states that in Germany, after St. John's day, about the time when it becomes mute, the cuckoo is believed to change into a hawk. Referring to these facts, Kelly pertinently asks, as "the form of the cuckoo remotely resembles that of the falcon tribe, may we hazard a conjecture that hence, in German tradition, that bird in some degree represents the fire-bringing falcon of the Aryans?" Mannhardt says, "The cuckoo is the messenger of Thor, the G.o.d in whose gift were health and strength, length of days, and marriage blessings, and therefore it is that people call upon the bird to tell how long they have to live, how soon they will be married, and how many children they shall have; and that in Schaumberg the person who acts at a wedding as master of the ceremonies carries a cuckoo on his staff."

Kelly says:--"The cuckoo's connection with storms and tempests is not clearly determined, but the owl's is indisputable. Its cry is believed in England to foretell rain and hail, the latter of which is usually accompanied with lightning, and the practice of nailing it to the barn door, to avert the lightning, is common throughout Europe, and is mentioned by Palladius in his treatise on agriculture."

The wren, as I have shown in a previous chapter, is mercilessly hunted to death in the Isle of Man, although he partakes of the sanct.i.ty of the robin in most parts of England. Not so in Ireland, however. General Vallancy says:--"The Druids represented this as the king of all birds.

The superst.i.tious respect shown to this little bird gave offence to our first Christian missionaries, and by their commands he is still hunted and killed on Christmas-day; and on the following (St. Stephen's-day) he is carried about hung by the leg in the centre of two hoops crossing each other at right angles, and a procession is made in every village, of men, women, and children, singing an Irish catch importing him to be the king of all birds."

The wren is sometimes treated in a similar manner in the south of France. It is generally, however, regarded as a sacred bird, as in England and Scotland. To take its life or to rob its nest even, in the Pays de Caux, is regarded as a crime of such atrocity that it will "_bring down the lightning_" upon the homestead of the offender. Robert Chambers, in his "Popular Rhymes," has the following couplet on this subject:--

Malisons, malisons, mair than ten, That harry the Ladye of Heaven's hen!

It would seem from these facts that the poor little bird has met with a somewhat similar fate to that of Odin and the rest of the aesir G.o.ds, and has been transformed, occasionally at least, into a spirit of evil.

In Perigord, according to De Nore, the swallow is called "_La Poule de Dieu_" and is regarded as "the messenger of life." The cricket, too, is held in similar estimation. May not the latter have acquired its reputation from its fondness of the domestic hearth, and its presumed immunity from the effects of fire?

The raven, sacred to Odin and Apollo, the German and Greek forms of the Aryan Rudra, was, and indeed is yet, pre-eminently the bird of ill-omen.

Lady Macbeth, in the fulness of her murderous impulse, exclaims:--

The raven himself is hoa.r.s.e That croaks the fatal entrance of Duncan Under my battlement.

And Hamlet, impatient at the grimaces of the actor, representing, in the play, the murderer of his father, exclaims:--

Leave thy d.a.m.nable faces and begin. Come-- The croaking raven Doth bellow for revenge.

And, again, Oth.e.l.lo says:--

Oh, it comes o'er my memory As doth the raven o'er the infected house, Boding to all.

All know what powerful use Edgar Allan Poe has made of this "grim, ungainly, ghastly, gaunt, and ominous bird of yore," in his marvellous poem, "The Raven."

The raven's power of scenting carrion from a great distance may have originally influenced, as in the case of the dog and owl, its selection as a personification of impending death or other calamity.