Page:Journal of American Folklore vol. 12.djvu/251

 Bibliographical Notes. 239

limb ; this was supposed to be indicative of rain, and so the creature was made a thunder-bird. Thus Picus the woodpecker became an Italiot deity. His custom of excavating a cavity caused him to be supposed cog- nizant of hidden treasures. With Picus Mr. de Kay correlates the Estho- nian Pikker ; in the temple-huts of these tribes, heathen until the twelfth century, we should have found wooden images of such a bird god. In the Kalevala we have a "hero with the scarlet headgear," Nyyrikki, who blazes a path for the hunter ; this personage is the woodpecker. With augurs ravens and crows were greater favorites, by reason of their distinct voices.

The cuckoo is sacred to spring, because of his mysterious cry. The cuckoo lays its egg in the nest of another bird, and is said also to remove the eggs of the foster-mother after its own child has been hatched. He was therefore regarded as a criminal. Mr. de Kay thinks that numerous folk-tales and myths are to be traced to this reputation ; he ventures to sug- gest that the story of Siegfried is the echo of a cuckoo myth. The myths that deal with marriage within prohibited degrees, and those treating of the devouring by a father of his own children may be explained in similar manner. The Irish hero Cuchulainn was originally a cuckoo god ; he bears harness at seven years of age, because a young cuckoo is fledged in seven weeks ; his feat of driving off fifty boy-princes is a survival of the cuckoo's exploits in ridding the nest of foster-brothers ; his distortion in battle is the ruffling up of the feathers of the bird. The early bird-god literature among Akkads offers parallels. The writer suggests to anthro- pologists that the habit of couvade may have owed its origin to observa- tion of the habits of birds and childlike imitation. The owl rids fields of mice ; it is assigned to Pallas Athene, because it can see in the dark ; the attribution shows that originally the goddess must have been noctur- nal. Before wisdom was associated with the deity, Pallas may have been evolved from an owl into a psychopompos or soul-guide.

The eagle is famous in myth, not merely on account of his power and swiftness, but because of the great age and ability of rejuvenescence assigned to him.

Myths belonging to the category dealt with by the writer bear every evi- dence of belonging to a much ruder age ; parallels with Finnish mythology, for example, seem to demand the early existence in Greece of a people akin in mental traits to Finnish tribes, which lent important elements to Greek mythology.

Such is an outline of the views of Mr. de Kay, who has written a brief but suggestive book on a very difficult subject. Even the complications of philology seem simple in comparison with the tangle of mythology. When- ever inference enters into the discussion, when it is necessary to go beyond the definite statements of the source, the difficulty of passing from conjec- ture to demonstration is almost insuperable. The key offered by compara- tive etymology based on mere assonance is almost always merely de/usive. Only the broadest generalizations will usually be found capable of proof. The extent to which, in ancient art, the ascription of animal tokens to dei-

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