CHAPTER XIV

LEGENDS IN A HISTORICAL SETTING

It is not easy in preparing a book devoted mainly to fable and folklore to sort out material for a separate chapter on “legends.” A legend may be defined as a narrative of something thought of as having actually happened in connection with some real purpose or place, but which is unsupported by historical evidence. In many cases such narratives are quite incredible, but even so they may have a historically illustrative, a literary, or at least an amusing interest. Stories of a considerable number of well-known kinds of birds are in this way connected with actual persons, or with verifiable incidents of the past, and hence may be said to be “legends in an historical setting.” A fair example of them is the incident of the Capitoline geese.

Early in the third century before the Christian era a horde of Gaulish invaders under Brennus over-ran central Italy, and in 388 B.C. captured all of Rome itself except the lofty citadel called the Capitol, where a Roman general officer, Marcus Manlius, held out with a small garrison on the point of starvation. One night the besieging Gauls, having discovered an unguarded by-path, crept up the rocky steep, intending the surprise and capture of the almost worn-out defenders. “But,” says Plutarch,[94] in Dryden’s translation, “there were sacred Geese kept near the Temple of Juno, which at other times were plentifully fed, but at this time, by reason of the Corn and all other Provisions were grown strait, their allowance was shorten’d and they themselves in a poor and lean condition. This Creature is by nature of quick sense, and apprehensive of the least noise; so that besides watchful through hunger, and restless, they immediately discovered the coming of the Gauls; so that running up and down, with their noise and cackling they raised the whole camp.”

Manlius sprang from sleep, aroused a body of soldiers and repelled the attack. It was the beginning of an ultimate victory over the enemy. Rome was saved, and in recognition of it Manlius was given the honorary title Capitolinus, and for a long time afterward the incident was celebrated annually by a procession to the Capitol in which a golden goose was carried. Livy also tells us in his history that the prototype of this golden symbol was a single sentinel goose never seen before, hence a divine aid sent to Rome for the purpose by the gods. It is interesting to note that

These consecrated geese in orders That to the capitol were warders And being then upon patrol With noise alone beat off the Gaul,

as _Hudibras_ has it, were “sacred” to Juno, for this was before the time when she, having changed from the status of simple wife to Jupiter (and a model to human wives), had become the imperious and trouble-making empress of later days, and had discarded the motherly goose for the exotic, proud, and royally splendid peacock. This is a capital example of the adaptive character of the assignment of birds to the various demigods of the Roman pantheon; and it suggests the query whether in some principal cases reverence for the bird itself did not precede the conception of the divinity it afterward typified.

Another tale of birds acting as sentinels explains how the wren came to be so mortally hated by the Irish, whose cruel “hunting of the wren” is described in another chapter. According to Lady Wilde,[60] a student of Irish folklore, this hatred is owing to the fact that once when Irish troops were approaching to attack a part of Thomas Cromwell’s army (about 1650) “wrens came and perched on the Irish drums, and by their tapping and noise aroused the English soldiers, who fell on the Irish troops and killed all of them.” This is a variant of a legend far older than Cromwell’s campaigning; and it is not the true explanation of the antipathy the cruder Irish and Manxmen still feel toward this innocent little songster, while at the same time they have a peculiar tenderness for the robin.

A third parallel is found in the annoyance caused the Scottish Covenanters. Many a meeting of pious Presbyterians in some hidden, heathery glen of the misty hills was discovered and roughly dispersed “because of the hovering, bewailing plovers, fearful for their young, clamoring overhead.” The poet Leyden alludes to the long-remembered grudge against this suspicious bird when, speaking of the religious refugees on the moors, he writes:

The lapwing’s clamorous whoop attends their flight, Pursues their steps where’er the wanderers go, Till the shrill scream betrays them to the foe.

Returning to ancient history, two bird-stories of Alexander the Great are delightful as illustrating how an independent and masterful intellect, even in that early day above the Pagan superstitions of the time, might with ingenuity and boldness bend the sanctions of religion to his own ends without destroying them. The first one is an incident recorded of Alexander’s campaign in Asia Minor in 334 B.C. His fleet was anchored in the harbor of Miletus, and opposite it lay the fleet of the Persians. Alexander had no desire to disturb this situation, for he meant his army, not the navy, to do the work in view. One day an eagle, Jove’s bird, was seen sitting on the shore behind the Macedonian ships, and Parmenion, chief of staff, found in this fact convincing indication by the gods that victory was with the ships. Alexander pointed out that the eagle had perched on the land, not on the ships, giving thereby the evident intimation that it was only through the victory of the troops on land that the fleet could have value. As Alexander was commander-in-chief, this was evidently the orthodox interpretation.

Two years later Alexander was one day laying out on its site the plan of his foreordained city of Alexandria, in Egypt, and was marking the course of the proposed streets by sprinkling lines of flour in the lack of chalk-dust. “While the king,” says Plutarch, “was congratulating himself on his plan, on a sudden a countless number of birds of various sorts flew over from the land and the lake in clouds, and settling on the spot in clouds devoured in a short time all the flour, so that Alexander was much disturbed in mind at the omen involved, till the augurs restored his confidence, telling him the city ... was destined to be rich in its resources, and a feeder of nations of men.”

The straight face with which Plutarch[94] recites these and similar stories of hocus-pocus in the matter of inconvenient omens is delightful; but the faith of the common people was not so easily shaken. For example: When the Sicilian-Greek army of Agathocles, Tyrant of Syracuse in the third century, B. C., was facing near Times a more powerful Carthaginian force, Agathocles let loose a number of owls among his men, “who suddenly took great courage as the birds sacred to Pallas settled blinking upon their helmets and shields”—and they routed the bigger enemy. That was true religious inspiration—as true as ever blazed in the heart of Christian crusader; but it was a sacrilegious trick on the part of Agathocles!

Just across the strait from Sicily, at Regium (Reggio), was the home of the celebrated cranes of Ibycus. Ibycus, a local poet, was being murdered by robbers when he called on the cranes fluttering near by to give witness of his death. Later, the murderers were one day at the theatre, when they saw a flock of cranes, and in fright whispered to one another: “The cranes of Ibycus!” They were overheard, arrested and executed, whence the proverb “the cranes of Ibycus” to express crime coming unexpectedly to light.

_The Wonderful Magazine_, an amazing periodical issued in London from 1793 to 1798, contained a story that in 1422 a “Roman” emperor besieging Zeta took all the sparrows his men could catch, and, tying lighted matches to their feet, let them go toward the town. But the citizens made a great noise, and the frightened sparrows flying back set the Roman camp on fire and so raised the siege. The reader may put his own estimate on this bit of historical lore; and may discover, if he can, where and what was Zeta.

Arabs in Palestine tell how a bird was involved in David’s sin of coveting Uriah’s wife. David, they say, had shut himself up in a tower for meditation, when, happening to look up, he saw just outside the window a bird of amazing beauty—a pigeon whose plumage gleamed like gold and jewels. David threw some crumbs on the floor, whereupon the pigeon came in and picked them up, but eluded David’s attempt to capture it. At last, to escape his efforts, it flew to the window and settled on one of the bars. He pursued, but it departed. It was then, as David followed the bright creature with longing eyes, that he caught sight of Madame Uriah in the bath—and was done for!

Among other excellent things in Hanauer’s _Tales from Palestine_[43] is the following report of Solomon’s contest with a dove:

“In the southern wall of the Kubbet ’es-Sakhra [at Jerusalem], the mosque that now stands near the site of the ancient Temple, on the right side of the door as one enters there is a gray slab framed in marble of a dark color. It contains a figure, formed by natural veins in the stone, which is distinct enough to be taken for a picture of two doves perched facing each other on the edge of a vase. With this picture is connected a tale....

“The great king Solomon understood the language of beasts, birds and fishes, and, when he had occasion to do so, would converse with all of them. One day, soon after he had completed the Temple, as he was standing at a window of the royal palace, he overheard a conversation between a pair of birds that were sitting on the housetop. Presently the male, who was evidently trying to impress the female with his importance, exclaimed: ‘Solomon is a conceited fool! Why should he be so vain of this pile of buildings he has raised? I, if I wished, could kick them all over in a few minutes.’

“The king, greatly enraged by this pompous speech, summoned the offender into his presence and demanded what he meant by such an outrageous boast. ‘Your majesty,’ replied the bird, ‘will, I am sure, forgive my audacity, when I explain that I was in the company of a female; since your majesty doubtless knows from experience that in such circumstances the temptation to boast is almost irresistible.’ The monarch, forgetting his anger in his amusement, said with a smile: ‘Go your way this time, but see that you do not repeat the offence,’ and the bird, after a profound obeisance, flew away to rejoin his mate.

“He had hardly alighted before the female, unable to repress her curiosity, eagerly inquired why he had been summoned to the palace. ‘Oh,’ said the impudent boaster, ‘the king heard me tell you that if I chose I could kick down all his buildings in no time, and he sent for me to beg me not to do it.’

“Solomon, who, of course, heard this remark also, was so indignant at the incorrigible vanity of its author that he at once turned both birds into stone. They remain to this day as a reminder of the saying: ‘The peace of mankind consists in guarding the tongue.’”

But the stories of Solomon and his bird-friends are many. He was evidently a jolly old soul, and tradition says that when he travelled across the desert clouds of birds formed a canopy to protect him from the sun. The hoopoe, a high-crested bird that figures largely in other fanciful tales of the East, tells wise Solomonic stories, and is still regarded by Saharan nomads as possessed of peculiar virtues. The great Jewish king, whose reality is almost hidden under the legendary mantle, is said to have chosen the hoopoe, the cock and the pewit: the first because of its wit, the second in admiration of its cry, and the third because, says Hanauer, it can see through the earth, and could tell him where fountains of water could be found. The last preference is natural in an arid region, the pewit being a water-bird, the familiar lapwing-plover; and as it annually migrates through Palestine into Ethiopia it is reasonable that it should be fabled to be the means of bringing Solomon and the Queen of Sheba together, as is described in