CHAPTER VI

BIRDS IN CHRISTIAN TRADITION AND FESTIVAL

The crowing of a cock ushered in the momentous tragedy that closed the earthly career of Jesus of Nazareth. Jesus had told one of his disciples in the evening of the Passover, that “the cock shall not crow this day before that thou shalt twice deny that thou knowest me” (_Luke_, xxii, 34). Later that same night Jesus was arrested and taken into the house of the Jewish high priest, and when, one after another, three persons had identified Peter as one of the Disciples Peter each time denied it, “and immediately, while he yet spake, the cock crew.”

Although the cock and his brood have had a part in Oriental and classical superstitions, ceremonies, and myths since these things began, it is probable that Jesus had in mind nothing more than the time of “cock-crowing,” which among the Jews was a recognized name of the third watch of the night, beginning at three o’clock in the morning. Mark enumerates the four watch-divisions when he says: “Ye know not when the master of the house cometh, at even, or at midnight, or at the cock-crowing, or in the morning.”

Out of this simple matter, a natural habit of the bird, the early Christians, with the avidity of zealots for inspired pegs on which to hang new devotions, set up many theories and customs. For instance, I find in the English periodical _Nature Notes_ (VI, 189) the following, translated from the _Treasury of Brunetti Latini_, a teacher of Dante in the poet’s youth: “By the song of the cock we may know the hour of the night, and even as the cock before it singeth beateth its body with its wings, so should a man before he prays flagellate himself.” To this added a fourteenth-century chant, as follows:

Cock at midnight croweth loud, And in this delighteth: But before he crows, his sides With his wings he smiteth: So the priest at midnight, when Him from rest he raiseth, Firstly doeth penitence, After that he praiseth.

Ratzel mentions that in Abyssinia cocks were often placed in churches as living alarm-clocks. It is a tradition that at the moment of the great Birth the cock crowed: _Christus natus est!_ Hence as early as the 4th century arose the belief in its crowing always on Christmas eve—a legend alluded to by Shakespeare:

Some say that ever ’gainst that season comes Whereon our Saviour’s birth is celebrated, The bird of dawning singeth all night long.

By a similar passage in _Hamlet_, where Bernardo, Heraldo, and Marcellus are discussing the apparition of the ghost of Hamlet’s father, the reader learns of another ancient superstition:

_Bern._ It was about to speak when the cock crew.

_Her._ And then it started like a guilty thing Upon a fearful summons. I have heard The cock, that is the trumpet to the morn, Doth with his lofty and shrill-sounding throat Awake the god of day; and, at his warning, Whether in sea or fire, in earth or air, The extravagant and erring spirit hies To his confine: and of the truth herein This present object made probation.

_Mar._ It faded on the crowing of the cock.

Not only ghosts, but the Devil and all his powers of darkness, especially warlocks and witches, must disappear at Chanticleer’s cheerful warning that daylight is at hand.

Domestic fowls had become common in Palestine at the time of Jesus, having been received long before from Persia. According to the _Mishna_ Jews were prohibited from selling a white cock to the heathen because it was suitable for sacrifice, but if it were defective it became unsuitable. Cyrus Adler tells us that they used to cut off a toe, and so circumvent the prohibition. Says the Talmud: “There be three that be unyielding—Israel among the peoples, the dog among beasts, and the cock among birds” (Beca, 56).

No doubt it is true, as Mr. R. L. Gales pointed out a few years ago in the _National Review_, that the sacred mythology of the Nativity and Passion, which is far wider than my immediate use of it, sprang up when the minds of people constantly dwelt on the Faith in a spirit of devotion rather than of controversy. “It seems, too, that there was in the Christianity of the earlier ages something that we may perhaps call a pantheistic element, which has since disappeared.”

Russians tell the story that while Christ was hanging on the cross the sparrows were maliciously chirping _Jif! jif!_ that is, “He is living, He is living!” in order to urge the tormenters to fresh cruelties; but the swallows cried, with opposite intent, “_Umer! Umer!_” “Dead! Dead!” Therefore the swallow is blessed, but the sparrow is under a curse, and ever since that time it hops, because its legs are tied together, for its sin, by invisible bonds. Another story is that the sparrow was the bird that betrayed the hiding-place of Jesus in the Garden at Gethsemane, whereas all other birds tried to entice away the officers who were searching for him, especially the swallow, whose erratic flight still shows that it is seeking to find him.

The oystercatcher is still known among the Gaels of northern Scotland as St. Bride’s lad, says Seton Gordon (_Nineteenth Century_, 1923, p. 420) from the fact that when that saint first visited Long Island she carried an oystercatcher in each hand; also, there is an old Gaelic tradition that this bird covered Jesus with seaweed when his enemies appeared in hot pursuit. The oystercatcher was therefore blessed, and still shows, as it flies, the form of a cross on its plumage.

A Spanish legend asserts that the owl was once the sweetest of singers; but that, having been present when Jesus died, from that moment it has shunned daylight, and now only repeats in a harsh tone _Cruz! Cruz!_

Most of the legends of the Cross, so far as concern birds, at least, seem to have arisen in Sweden. The Swedes say, for example, that a swallow hovered over the Crucifixion crying _Svale! Svale!_ “Cheer up! Cheer up!” and it is therefore called in their country the bird of consolation. A similar story is current in Scandinavia of the stork, which is said to have cried to the Redeemer, as it flew about the Cross, _Styrket! Styrket!_ “Strengthen ye.” In both cases there is a play on the Swedish names of these birds; but they testify that the stork, now virtually mute, formerly had a voice. In Sweden, where the red crossbill is a familiar winter bird, arose the tradition that its peculiarly crossed beak became twisted by its efforts to pull the nails from Christ’s hands and feet:

Stained with blood and never tiring With its beak it doth not cease, From the Cross ’t would free the Saviour Its creator’s son release.

And the Saviour speaks in mildness: Blest be thou of all the good! Bear as token of this moment Marks of blood and holy rood.

So Longfellow paraphrases Julius Mosen’s little German hymn.

The same loving service has been attributed to the red-browed goldfinch of Europe in a legend current in Great Britain—a story put into verse in _The Spectator_ (London, 1910) by Pamela Tenant, partly thus:

Held in his slender beak the cruel thing, Still with his gentle might endeavoring But to release it.

Then as he strove, spake One—a dying space— ‘Take, for thy pity, as a sign of grace, ‘Semblance of this, my blood, upon thy face ‘A living glory.’

The complaining love-note of the wood-pigeon has, in the northwestern part of Europe, become the subject of a well-adapted and pathetic myth, as Watters[57] denominates it in his entertaining _Birds of Ireland_. “It is said that a dove perched in the neighborhood of the holy cross when the Redeemer was expiring, and, wailing its notes of sorrow, kept repeating the words ‘Kyrie! Kyrie!’ [Kyrie eleison—Lord have mercy!] to alleviate the agony of his dying moments.”

Of all the legends connecting birds with this awful scene those relating to the little robin-redbreast of Europe are most familiar, for they have been celebrated in poems that everyone reads. The story is that the robin, pitying the pain of the cruel crown pressed on the Saviour’s brow, plucked away the sharpest of the thorns; and some say that before that moment the bird was all gray, and was bound to remain so until it had done something worthy of its having a red breast. A forgotten writer, whose lines have been preserved in an old volume of _Notes and Queries_, tells the story thus:

Bearing his cross, while Christ passed by forlorn, His Godlike forehead by the mock crown torn, A little bird took from that crown one thorn, To soothe the dear Redeemer’s throbbing head. That bird did what she could; His blood, ’t is said, Down-dropping dyed her tender bosom red. Since then no wanton boy disturbs her nest; Weasel nor wildcat will her young molest— All sacred deem that bird of ruddy breast.

The Spaniards, however, believe swallows—also “redbreasts” in their way—to be the birds that pulled the thorns from Christ’s crown—two thousand of them!

Another northern tradition is that the robin carries in its beak daily a drop of water to those shut up in the “burning lake,” and that its breast is red because scorched by the flames of Gehenna. This old Swedish legend gave Whittier the inspiration for an exquisite poem:

He brings cool dew in his little bill, And lets it fall on the souls of sin; You can see the mark on his red breast still Of fires that scorch as he drops it in.

Still another theory explains that its reddish front remains tinctured by the stain it received in trying to staunch the blood that flowed from the Redeemer’s pierced side.

Almost all boys in Great Britain are, or used to be, collectors of birds’ eggs, before bird-protecting societies and public enlightenment restricted their destructive enthusiasm; but the nest of the “ruddock” (robin) was rarely disturbed by the most careless of them, who, if undeterred by any soft sentiment, were frightened by the superstition that bad luck followed any such vandalism. Many maxims to this effect might be quoted, one of which, a proverb in Cornwall, runs:

He that hurts robin or wren Will never prosper, boy or men.

In Essex they repeat to children a little ballad like this:

The robin and the redbreast, The robin and the wren; If ye take out o’ their nest Ye’ll never thrive again.

The robin and the redbreast, The martin and the swallow; If ye touch one o’ their eggs Bad luck will follow.

The Scotch say it a little differently:

The laverock and the lintie, The robin and the wren; If ye harry their nests Ye’ll never thrive again.

Let me digress here for a moment. “Laverock” is Scottish for lark, meaning the skylark. De Gubernatis,[54] who discourses learnedly on the mythical connotations of the name in India and ancient Greece, finds that the significance of this bird in popular tales is due to its crest, which he shows to be an indication that it was among the birds of the sun. “The crested lark,” he says, “is the same as the crested sun, the sun with its rays,” and he continues: “In the legend of St. Christopher I see an equivoque between the word _Christos_ and the word _cresta_, crest, and either way I see the sun personified.”

Whatever these speculations may be worth the old stories attribute to the lark that funereal charity which belongs to several birds, among them the European robin; and this brings us back to the main track and to the pretty story of the Babes in the Woods. Away back in bad old times a Norfolk gentleman left legacies to two infant children, which were to pass to their uncle if the babies died. After a year this uncle hired ruffians to take the children into a forest and kill them, but instead the men left them there to starve. For a time they ate blackberries, but soon became exhausted, lay down, and went to sleep, and expired.

Their little corpse the robin-redbreast found, And strew’d with pious bill the leaves around.[8]

More modern poets have made many allusions to this touching tale, which Shakespeare knew, for in _Cymbeline_ he makes Arviragus say over Imogen—

Thou shalt not lack The flowers that’s like thy face, pale primrose; nor The azured harebell.... The ruddock would With charitable bill bring thee all these.

And in William Collins’s _Dirge to Cymbeline_ are the lines:

The redbreast oft at evening hours Shall kindly lend his little aid, With heavy moss, and gathered flowers, To deck the ground where thou art laid.

The conceit is far more ancient than Shakespeare or Gay or even than Robert Yarrington—who, in 1601, wrote a ballad on it concluding,

No buriall this pretty pair of any man receives Till Robin Redbreast piously did cover them with leaves—

for Horace relates in one of his poems how he as a child wandering one day on Mount Vultur fell wearily asleep, and was covered by protecting doves with laurel and myrtle leaves.

The robin is always remembered at Christmas in the rural villages and farms of northern Europe, for it is not migratory. In South Germany the custom is to put grain on a roof for the redbreasts, who come trustfully about houses at that season, and find welcome shelter in barns and straw-stacks: and in Sweden and elsewhere an unthreshed sheaf of wheat is set up on a pole for their winter fare.

It will have been noticed that in the ballads quoted, the wren is associated with the robin in a protective way. A whole book might be written about this least of birds, which, although the least, is called “king” in every European language. We are told that a wren was in the stable at Bethlehem when Christ was born; and an Irish proverb runs: “The robin and the wren are God’s two holy men.” How surprising, then, to read of a custom called Hunting (or in some places Burying) the Wren, which once prevailed in southern France, in Keltic parts of England, in Wales, and also in Ireland, where it persisted until abolished by the British Government about the middle of the 19th century. Accounts of the practices, songs, etc., connected with it may be found in antiquarian histories, for example the following from Miles’s book of Christmas customs:

In the Isle of Man very early on Christmas morning, when the church-bells had rung out midnight, servants went out to hunt the wren. They killed the bird, fastened it to the top of a long pole; and carried it in procession to every house, chanting these words:

We hunted the wren for Robin the Bobbin, We hunted the wren for Jack of the Can, We hunted the wren for Robin the Bobbin, We hunted the wren for everyone.

At each house they sought to collect money. At last, when all had been visited, they laid the wren on a bier, carried it to the church-yard, and buried it with the utmost solemnity, singing Manx dirges.

It is evident that this is a very ancient practice, and embodies in its utterly degenerate state a religious idea or symbolism, the meaning of which has been forgotten. Why, for example, should the feathers of the murdered Manx wrens be preserved, one by one, among the coast families, as a talisman preserving the possessor from shipwreck, unless some religious sanction was involved, and this may be connected with St. Stephen, the first Christian martyr, who was stoned to death; for this savage custom belonged to St. Stephen’s Day, December 26, as well as to Christmas, or locally in place of Christmas. But why the wren, rather than some other bird? The matter is interesting enough to justify quoting the broad account of the matter furnished by Swann:[47]

An old Irish custom on St. Stephen’s Day, and one that has not quite died out, was the “hunting of the wren” by boys. When captured it was tied, alive but maimed, to a pole (or, according to Vallancey—De Reb. Hib., IV, 13—tied by the leg in the center of two hoops placed at right angles with one another) and paraded around the neighborhood, a few doggerel verses being repeated at each house, while a donation was requested, one version being;

The wran, the wran, the king of all birds, St. Stephen’s Day was caught in the furze, Come, give us a bumper, or give us a cake, Or give us a copper, for Charity’s sake.

Yarrell records a similar practice in Kerry, where the peasantry on Christmas Day used to hunt the bird with two sticks, “one to beat the bushes the other to fling at the bird.” Bullock also mentions it as prevalent in the Isle of Man, both on Christmas Eve and St. Stephen’s Day, and tells us it was founded on a tradition of a beautiful fairy who lured the male inhabitants to a watery grave in the sea, and who to escape subsequent destruction took the form of a wren, which form she was supposed to be doomed by a spell to reassume each succeeding New Year’s Day, ultimately perishing by human hands.... To my own knowledge this custom of a “wren hunt” existed in Nottinghamshire also within recent times, the bird being hunted along the hedgerows by boys armed with stones, but I do not recollect that anything was done with the bird when killed or maimed....

In connection with this belief [alluded to above] in the kingship over other birds, a Twelfth Day custom of parading a caged wren in Pembrokeshire, with the lines recited, is described in Swainson’s _Folklore of British Birds_, O’Curry has recorded that the wren, like the raven, was kept domesticated on account of the auguries derived from it, which were employed by the Druids. An Irish proverb asserts that “The fox is the cunningest beast in the world barring the wren.” According to Dalyell the wren is considered an unlucky token in Scotland, but the robin a lucky one.

Explanations of this revolting yet long persistent custom have been many and various. A totemic sort of theory is that the bird “was once regarded as sacred, and the Christmas hunting is the survival of an annual custom of slaying the divine animal, such as is found among primitive peoples. The carrying of its body from door to door is apparently intended to convey to each house a portion of its virtues.” I know of no facts in history to support this theory as applied to the Keltic race. One authority tells us that the “crime” for which the bird must be punished so ferociously is that it has “a drop o’ the de’il’s blood in its veins,” but so has the magpie, which is not persecuted.

Lady Wilde[60] assures us that “the wren is mortally hated by the Irish for on one occasion, when the Irish troops were approaching to attack a portion of Thomas Cromwell’s army the 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 them all.” For this tragic incident we are given no time or place; and it happens that the same report was made respecting a battle between Irish and Danish invaders some 800 years before Cromwell’s campaigns in the Emerald Isle or anywhere else.

The real clue to the puzzle is contained in the fact that in their barbarous hunt for wrens the men and boys kept yelling words that in Cormac’s _Glossary_ (10th century) are explained as “draoi-en,” Druid-bird. We know that the Druid priests were accustomed to draw auguries from the chirpings of the wren—a divination to which the early Christian missionaries objected strenuously. It is probable that they condemned the little songster as a symbol of heathen rites, and encouraged their converts to kill it at the time of the annual Christian feast as a sign of abnegation of Druidical connections. The stoning of the birds on St. Stephen’s Day might be regarded as a vengeful reminder of the manner of that martyr’s murder by a mob.

One more bird-story is connected with Christianity in general—that alluded to in _Hamlet_, where Ophelia says: “Well, God ’ield you! They say the owl was a baker’s daughter!” This enigmatical remark probably had reference to the story formerly, and perhaps still, common among the peasantry in the English Midlands, of a baker’s daughter that was transformed into an owl by Jesus as a punishment for reducing to a very small size the large piece of dough which her mother had agreed to bake for him. The dough, however, swelled in the oven to enormous proportions, to the girl’s great astonishment, and she gasped out “Heu, heu, heu!” This owl-like noise suggested her transformation into that bird. The story is told to children as a warning lesson against illiberal treatment of the poor. It is evidently alluded to, also, in Beaumont and Fletcher’s play _The Nice Valour_, where the Passionate Lord says, after speaking of a nest of owls, “Happy is he whose window opens to a brown baker’s chimney! he shall be sure there to hear the bird sometimes after twilight.” In northern Germany they say a baker’s man was the offender; and that he was changed by Jesus into a cuckoo, the white spots in whose wings show where the flour was sprinkled on the man’s dun coat. The Norse people apply the same moral by means of their common woodpecker, whose pattern of dress is indicated in the legend known to Norse children as the Gertrud story, which is prettily related by Miss Walker.[39] Brewer’s _Handbook_ notes that a maid-servant of the Virgin Mary, who had purloined one of her mistress’s dresses, was converted into a lapwing and condemned forever to cry “Tyvit, tyvit!” (I stole it). The source of the anecdote is not given, nor the language of the one who interprets it, but it reminds one of Tennyson’s.

With a lengthened loud halloo, Tuwhoo, tuwhit, tuwhit, tuwhoo-o-o.

The Greeks, according to Andrew Lang, had a similar legend of feminine impiety, by which they mystically explained the origin of owls and bats.

The prevalence of a belief in such transformations as these by Jesus is very widespread; the traditions vary somewhat, as we have seen, in different countries, but it is evident that the root is in the primitive notion that such miracles were not only possible, but natural. Rather more remote and obscure is the connection of birds with certain other religious feasts, such as the substitution of turkey for boar’s-head as the central dish for the Christmas dinner among the English Dissenters, attributed to the fact that turkeys became common about the time of the Reformation, and acquired a meritorious character on that account among those who wanted to continue the Christmas feast without the taint of a dish partaking of the customs of the hated Papists. Is our New England custom of a turkey dinner on Thanksgiving Day traceable to this, remembering that the Puritans paid little or no heed to Christmas?

For centuries, and until comparatively recent times, among the sports and jollifications recalling the Roman carnival (at the same date) that marked Shrove Tuesday, the last day before Lent, both in Britain and in France, along with the eating of unlimited pancakes, cock-fighting and “throwing at cocks” had the most prominent place. The last-mentioned sport consisted in fastening live cocks in a certain position, and letting men compete in throwing clubs at them, the man who killed the bird winning it. This atrocious form of amusement did not shock the populace of a time when bear-baiting, bull-baiting, and the pitting of dogs against each other or against badgers and rats were popular; yet a few protested, and even in the 17th century antiquaries were searching for the origin of the custom. Hearne asserted that it was in memory of English victories over the French (symbolized by the Gallic _coq_) in the time of Henry V; but the sport was customary in France itself long before that time. A writer quoted by Smith[61] records that “the common account of it is that the crowing of a cock prevented our Saxon ancestors from massacring their conquerors, the Danes, on the morning of a Shrove Tuesday while asleep in their beds,” which recalls one of the explanations of the Irish wren-hunting. My own opinion is that the custom had no particular significance, but was just a sportive way of getting without much cost the material for a good dinner, as were the “turkey shoots” of our western frontier; and that Erasmus was fairly right when he remarked that “the English eat a certain cake on Shrove Tuesday, on which they immediately run mad and kill the poor cocks.”

Lent closes with the joyful celebration of Easter, an occasion in which the eggs of birds, at least, have a persistent and prominent part, and doves find a place in several Old World ceremonies of the Church.

In the matter of the almost universal and everywhere popular custom of playing with colored eggs at Easter, I can do no better than quote _The Catholic Encyclopedia_, article “Easter”:

Because the use of eggs was forbidden during Lent they were brought to the table on Easter Day, colored red to symbolize the Easter joy. This custom is found not only in the Latin but also in the Oriental Churches. The symbolic meaning of a new creation of mankind by Jesus risen from the dead was probably an invention of later times. The custom may have its origin in Paganism, for a great many pagan customs, celebrating the return of spring, gravitated to Easter. The egg is the emblem of the germinating life of early spring. Easter eggs, the children are told, come from Rome with the bells which on Thursday go to Rome and return Saturday morning. The sponsors in some countries give Easter eggs to their god-children. Colored eggs are used by children at Easter in a sort of game which consists in testing the strength of the shells. Both colored and uncolored eggs are used in some parts of the United States in this game, known as “egg-picking.” Another practice is the “egg-rolling” by children on Easter Monday on the lawn of the White House in Washington.

A quaint feature in this pagan survival in a Christian celebration of a momentous incident and idea is the connection with it of the rabbit. Wherever colored Easter eggs are displayed, images of a rabbit are likely to accompany them. Children are told that the Easter Rabbit lays the eggs, for which reason they are, in some countries, hidden in a nest in the garden. The strangeness of the association disappears when we remember that the date of the feast is determined by the time when the moon first becomes full after the spring equinox, and that the rabbit, which has from time immemorial been a symbol of fertility, is representative of the moon-goddess, Luna, which was worshipped annually at a date coinciding with the Easter festival. Thus, like many other pagan rites and symbols significant of reviving nature, it became confused with the Christian celebration of the Resurrection.

At the feast of the Pentecost, on Whitsunday, commemorating the descent of the Holy Ghost upon the Apostles, doves were formerly always employed in Europe in staging the solemnities.

On Whitsuntide, white pigeons tame in strings from heaven fly, And one that framed is of wood still hangeth in the skie,

as we are told by Neogeorgus (1511–63), speaking of the custom in Germany; and elsewhere we learn that in Spain pigeons with cakes tied to their legs were let loose in churches, where representations of the Holy Ghost were a part of the celebration. This last fact accounts for the use of the dove—an emblem of the third element of the God head, as we shall see.

To a similar old custom, if Marion Crawford, the learned author of _Salve Venetia_, is not mistaken, we owe the picturesque fact that pigeons are a feature of the plaza of St. Mark in Venice—one of the “sights” of that wonderful city:

The Venetians always loved processions, and it is to one of these pageants that the pigeons of St. Mark’s owe their immunity. As early as the end of the fourteenth century it was the custom to make a great procession on Palm Sunday, in the neighborhood of St. Mark’s. A canon of the Cathedral deposited great baskets on the high altar containing the artificial palms prepared for the Doge, the chief magistrates, and the most important members of the clergy.... According to the appointed service the procession began immediately after the distribution of the palms; and while the choir chanted the words “_Gloria, laus et honor_” of the sacred hymn, a great number of pigeons were sent flying from different parts of the façade down into the square, having little screws of paper fastened to their claws to prevent them from flying too high. The people instantly began to catch the birds, and a great many were actually taken; but now and then one, stronger than the rest, succeeded in gaining the higher parts of the surrounding buildings, enthusiastically cheered by the crowd.

Those who had once succeeded in making their escape were regarded as sacred forever with all their descendants. The state provided them with food from its granaries, and before long, lest by mistake any free pigeons should be caught on the next Palm Sunday the Signory next decreed that other birds must be used on the occasion.

F. Hopkinson Smith, in his _Gondola Days_, gives a more secular account of the origin of the regard felt by the Venetians for these “pets of the State,” whose ancestor, the genial artist writes, brought the good news to Venice of the capture (in 1205) of Candia by Admiral Enrico Dandolo.