Page:Notes and Queries - Series 10 - Volume 2.djvu/378

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NOTES AND QUERIES. [10* s. n. OCT. is, MM.

THE PELICAN MYTH.

(10 th S. ii. 267.)

THOUGH, perhaps, not so perplexing as some other zoological fables such as the barnacle absurdity, for instance the pelican myth is a remarkable ornithological puzzle. Who can decide which bird it was that nourished its young with its own blood ? Currently it is identified with the common pelican (P. onocrotalus), on the ground that the red extremity of its beak might have given rise to the fable ; but as this sea-fowl is notably gregarious,* it does not play the part of a "pelican of the wilderness" in a very convincing way. Bartlett (Proc. Zool. Soc. t 1869, p. 146) suggested that the flamingo may have been the original bird from its ejecting a sanguineous fluid into the gaping mouths of Cariamas ; but to this there are also various objections. Further back one finds Luther calling the bird of the Psalm Mohrdommel, i.e., the bittern, which is usually solitary enough, though flocks have been seen in Lower Egypt. Again, Carus ( Geschichte der Zoologie,' 1872, s. 130) says,

Die Ernahrung der Jungen mit Blut findet sich bei Horapollo vom Geier erzahlt (ed. Leemans, p. 17)"; and W. Houghton (Academy, 1884, vol. xxv. pp. 29, 97, 243) advances many arguments in support of this identification with a vulture, Neophron perc- nopterus. Translators of the Bible seem to have experienced some little difficulty in rendering the Hebrew word (occurring five times) for which " pelican " has been accepted in Psalm cii. ; and it is sufficiently clear that the Greek pelican mentioned by Aristophanes and Aristotle was not the fabulous bird, but the woodpecker, as shown by the derivation from TreAe/cvs, an axe. Etymologists, indeed, are puzzled to account for this transference ot the name from an arboreal bird to a sea- fowl, pour on ne sait quelle ressemblance " (Littre). The same word, too, seems also to have been applied in Greek to the spoonbill (L. platea, platalea), which is also very ctitierent in appearance from the woodpecker. Perhaps, if the fabulous and post-classical

pelican ' is not an assimilized, but merely an appropriated name, the mythical bird was unfamiliar to the Greeks.

This difficulty in identification has been appreciated from at least the time of St Jerome Not having a copy of the saint's works a t hand, I cannot say whether ' Hieron

M * n " Pelicans fish in concert. " Darwin, 'Desc.

in Psalmos Tractatus' is to be found in, eg., Vallarsi's collection. But in Bailey's edition of Facciolati and Forcellini's ' Totius Latini- tatis Lexicon ' the following entry occurs, s.v. 'Pelecanus':

"Avis JSgyptia circa solitudines Nili prsecipue nascens, quse aruore pullorum dicitur femur suum rostro vulnerareet sanguinemad eos alendos elicere. Ejus meminit Hieronym. in Psalm. 100, ubi addit duo esse pelicanorum genera, aquatile unum, alterum volatile, illud piscibus vesci, hoc serpenti- bus, crocodilis, et lacertis. Gesnerus vulturetn JEgyptium vocat" (i.e., Pharaoh's hen).

To this may be added the testimony of Albertus Magnus, who derives pelican ** a pelle cana":

" Duo dicuntur esse pellicanorum genera ; unum aquaticum quod piscibus ; alterum terrestre quod serpentibus et vermibus vivit ; et dicitur delectari lacte cocodrillorum quod cocodrillus spargit super lutum paludum, unde pellicanus sequitur cocodril- lum." 'De Animalibus,' xxiii. (1519).

Here, however, we trench on the domain of the ' Physiologus,' though the pelican fable is not always included therein (cf. Strzygow- ski, 'Der Bilderkreis des griechischen Phy- siologus,' 1899,s. 66), and, in fact, seems rather of ecclesiastical origin. It may be futile to discuss whether Jerome employed the word "pelican" through deficiency of avian or Hebrew knowledge, or whether he followed some other authority (the LXX.) ; for his contemporary, Epiphanius, Bishop of Con- stantia, as well as Eustathius, Augustine, Gregory, and Isidore, also make mention of the bird, according to Houghton (loc. cit.). The account given by the first of these occurs in an edition of the 'Physiologus' printed in 1588 with a picture of a vulture or eagle, and it has been remarked that the pelican " in her piety " is generally so represented for instances, in Whitney's 'Choice Emblems and other Devices ' (1586), and other works dated 1618 ? and 1682 (H. Krebs), whence Sir T. Browne's animadversions in his * Vulgar Errors.' That the young were not originally nourished from the breast may be seen in Horapollo, who says that the vulture* sym- bolizes a compassionate person, because during the 120 days of its nurture of its offspring, if food cannot be had, it opens its own thigh and permits the young ones to partake of the blood, so that they may not perish from want ; and this is in part cor- roborated from the extract from Bailey given above. Hulme quotes a slightly different

f Could the pelican have been originally the sparrow-hawk or Horus, or the " vulture " of Buto? Compare, by the way, L. butio, a bittern, with Luther's renderings, and with L. buteo, a falcon or hawk (whence English "buzzard," one species of which is B. desertorum).