CHAPTER VII.

THE WOODPECKER AND THE MARTIN.

SUMMARY.

The _picus_ in the work of Professor Kuhn.--_Picus_, _corvus pica_, and _picumnus_; the Vedic word _vrikas_.--The she-wolf and the woodpecker as the nurses of the Latin twin heroes.--_Picus_ as the phallos; _picus_, _picumnus_, _pilumnus_, _pilum_, _pistor_; _piciu_, _pinco_, _pincio_, _pinson_, _pincone_.--The sacred herb of Indras which cleaves the mountains.--Jupiter as a _picus_; the _picus_ presages rain; the herb of the woodpecker has the virtue of opening every shut place.--The woodpecker and the honey.--Beowulf and the woodpecker.--The woodpecker and the gold.--The green woodpecker.--The woodpecker as the devil.--The woodpecker in opposition to the fox.--The vengeance of the woodpecker.--The halcyon.--The martin or bird of St Martin.--_Martin piciu_.--The _yünx_ in love with Zeus; it attracts lovers.--_Alküoneioi hêmerai_; the halcyon.--Robin Redbreast and its "charitable bill."--The bird of St Gertrude; the _incendiaria avis_; _Jean rouge-gorge_.--Sea-birds with white and black plumage and a little spot of blood on their heads.

The woodpecker has already had the honour of being studied with great learning by Professor Adalbert Kuhn, in his excellent work upon the celestial fire and water, to which I refer the cultivated reader for the principal myths relating to the subject; that is to say, for the comparison of the Vedic hawk and the Vedic fire-bhuranyus with the Hellenic Phoroneus, the Latin _picus Feronius_, the _incendiaria avis_, the _picus_ that carries thunder, and that which carries food to the twins Romulus and Remus,[408] and which itself enjoys wine, with King Picus, progenitor of a race, and with the corresponding German traditions. I shall only observe here the mythological relationship between _picus_ and the _corvus pica_ (_picumnus_ was applied both to the woodpecker and the magpie), in order to return to the equivocal Vedic word _vrikas_, which means wolf and crow, whence also arose and fostered itself the confusion between the she-wolf that nurses the Latin twin heroes, and the woodpecker which, in the same legend, offers itself as their nourisher. The woodpecker, the magpie, and the wolf, personify equally the god in the darkness, the devil, the cloud, the sky of night, the rainy season, the wintry season; from the night, and from the winter, the new sun, fed by the she-wolf, or by the funereal bird, arises; the penetrating beak of the woodpecker in the cloud is the thunderbolt; in the night, and in the wintry season, it is now the moon that disperses the darkness, now the sunbeam that comes out of the darkness. The thunderbolt, the moon, and the sun's ray, moreover, sometimes assume in myths the form of the phallos; the woodpecker as a phallos and the King Picus, progenitor of a race, seem to me to be the same. The Latin legend puts _picus_ in connection with _picumnus_, _pilumnus_, the _pilum_, and the _pistor_, in the same way as a Norwegian story puts in relation with flour the cuckoo, which we already know to be a phallical symbol, properly the presser down. In the Piedmontese dialect, the common name of the phallos is _piciu_; in Italian, _pinco_ and _pincio_ have the same meaning; _pincione_ is the chaffinch (in French _pinson_); and _pincone_ means a fool, for the same reason that the ass, as a phallical symbol, personified folly. We already know Indras as a cuckoo, as a peacock, and as a hawk. To find Indras again in the woodpecker, the _Tâittiriya-Brahmanam_ offers us a notable analogy. In it Indras kills the wild boar, hidden in the seven mountains (the shadows of the night, or the clouds), cleaving them by the touch of the stem of a sacred luminous and golden herb (sa darbhapingûlam uddhritya sapta girîn bhittvâ[409]), which may be the moon in the night, or else the thunderbolt in the cloud; the thunderbolt is also not seldom represented in Âryan traditions as a magic rod. It is with a golden rod that, in the seventh book of the _Æneid_, the enchantress Circe transforms the wise King Picus, son of Saturn (as Jupiter-Indras; Suidas also speaks of a Pêkos Zeus, buried in Crete) into a bird, into the _picus_, sacred to the god of warriors (Mars-Indras), whence his name of _picus martius_, the woodpecker, which is supposed to presage rain (like Zeus and Indras)--

"Picus equûm domitor, quem capta cupidine conjux, Aurea percussum virga, versumque venenis, Fecit avem Circe, sparsitque coloribus alas."

Pliny relates that the woodpecker has the virtue of opening every shut place, touching it with a certain herb, which increases and decreases with the moon;[410] this herb may be the moon itself, which opens the hiding-places of the night, or the thunderbolt which opens the hiding-places of the cloud. It is well known that in the Vedic hymns, Indras, who is generally the pluvial and thundering god, is frequently associated with the soma (ambrosia and moon), and even identified with it. Pliny adds, moreover, that whoever takes honey out of the hive with the beak of a woodpecker is not liable to be stung by the bees; this honey may be the rain in the cloud as well as the lunar ambrosia or the dew of the morning aurora; hence the woodpecker's beak may be the thunderbolt as well as the moonbeam, or the sunbeam. Beowulf (the wolf of the bees) is spoken of in connection with the woodpecker as well as with the bear: the _Bienenfresser_ of German legends, or the _pica merops_, explains the Latin superstition and the Beowulf. Like the crow, the woodpecker, too, stays in darkness, but brings water, seeks for honey, and finds the light. In the _Aulularia_, Plautus makes woodpeckers live upon golden mountains (picos, qui aureos monies incolunt). Inasmuch as the woodpeckers announced the approach of winter, or were seen on the left, according to the well-known verse of Horace[411]--

"Teque nec lævus vetet ire picus,

they were considered birds of evil omen. In the _Ornithologus_, it is said that the green woodpecker (the moon, by the previously mentioned equivocalness of _haris_) presages winter (the moon, as we have said, rules over the winter). For this reason, St Ephiphanios could compare the woodpecker with the devil. According to Pliny, the woodpecker that perched upon the head of the prætor Lucius Tubero, whilst he was administering justice, announced approaching ruin to the empire if it were allowed to go free, and approaching death to the prætor if killed; Lucius Tubero, moved by love of his country, seized the woodpecker, killed it, and died soon afterwards. Hence Pliny could say with reason that woodpeckers were "in auspiciis magni."

In the twentieth story of the third book of _Afanassieff_, the woodpecker, which usually appears as a very knowing bird, lets itself be deceived by the fox, who eats its young ones, under the pretext of teaching them an art. In the twenty-fifth story of the fourth book, on the other hand, the woodpecker assumes a heroic and formidable aspect. It makes friends with an old dog, which has been expelled from its kennel, and offers its services as purveyor. A woman, is carrying some dinner to her husband, who is working in the fields. The woodpecker flies before her and feigns to let itself be taken; the woman, to run after it, puts the dinner down, and the dog feeds upon it (in a variety of the same story, the woodpecker also offers to the dog a means of getting something to drink). Afterwards the dog meets the fox; then, in order to please the woodpecker (who, perhaps, remembered the treachery of the fox who ate its little ones), it runs upon the fox and maltreats it. A peasant passes by and thrashes the poor dog, who dies. Then the woodpecker becomes furious in its desire of vengeance, and begins to peck now at the peasant, and now at his horses; the peasant tries to flog the woodpecker, instead of which he flogs the horses to death. Nor does the woodpecker's vengeance stop here; it goes to the peasant's wife and pecks at her; she endeavours to beat it, but instead of doing so, she beats her own sons (these are two varieties of the story of the mother who beats her son, thinking to beat the ass, which, as a phallical symbol, we have already said corresponds to the woodpecker. The myth of Seilenos, which we saw in connection with the ass, has also been quoted by Professor Kuhn in relation with the woodpecker. In the third book of the _Pancatantram_, we have a bird that throws gold from behind, a characteristic of the mythical ass in fairy tales). Here the woodpecker has the same office which in another Russian story, already recorded, is attributed to the wintry, funereal, and ill-omened stork, the sun hidden in the darkness, or the cloud.

The halcyon, which announces tempests, and the bird of St Martin, the fisher martin, are of the same wintry and phallical nature as the woodpecker. In Piedmont, a fool is insultingly called by the name of Martin-Piciu (the podex and the phallos, and also the phallos martin, which reminds us of the _picus pistor_, and the _picus martius_), and the above-quoted Italian expression _pincone_ is equivalent to it. The sun that hides itself in darkness or clouds loses its power. The phallical symbol is evident. Here remark the Hellenic fable of the bird Yünx tetraknamon, of the four rays, of the long tongue, always changeful (the Trench call it _paille en cul_). Pan is said to have been the father of a girl called Yünx, who, having attempted to seduce Zeus, was changed by the vengeance of Hêrê into a bird of the same name. In Pindar, Jason made use of this bird, the gift of Aphroditê, to gain the favour of Medea. In Theocritos, this bird is invoked by girls in love to attract their lovers into the house; women made use of this bird in their mischief-working love-mysteries.

According to the fifth book of Aristotle's _History of Animals_, the halcyon sits on its eggs in the serene days of winter, called therefore alküoneiai hêmerai; and the author cites a sentence of Simonides concerning this bird: "When Zeus, in the wintry season, creates twice seven warm days, mortals say, 'This tepid weather is nourishing the variously-painted halcyons.'" Ovid relates that Alcyon was transformed into the bird of this name while weeping for her husband, who had been drowned in the sea, whence Ariosto wrote--

"E s'udîr le Alcione alla marina Dell' antico infortunio lamentarse."

This bird, the kingfisher, several kinds of woodpeckers, the wren, the crow, and the redbreast, the Scotch Robin Redbreast, also called in English ruddock and Robin-ruddock, which, "with charitable bill," according to the expression of Shakspeare in _Cymbeline_,[412] throws funereal flowers upon unburied bodies,[413] are all birds sacred to St Martin, the holy gravedigger, the bringer of winter, who, according to the Celtic and German traditions, divides his own cloak with poor men, and covers them. German legends are full of incidents relating to this funereal and wintry bird, with which now the funereal Norwegian bird of St Gertrude, now the cuckoo, now the _incendiaria avis_, are assimilated. Hence the same redbreast which in German tradition is sacred to St Martin is called _Jean rouge-gorge_ in the popular songs of Brittany, published by Villemarqué, and is sacred to St John; but this John may be the St John of winter, whose festival is celebrated on the 27th of December, that is, two days after the Nativity of Christ, or in the days in which the sun, the Saviour, is born again, and the light increases. Birds of the same funereal nature as that of St Martin appear in the Breton song _Bran_ (or the prisoner of war):--"At Kerloan, upon the battlefield, there is an oak-tree which spreads its branches over the shore; there is an oak-tree at the place where the Saxons took to flight before the face of Evan the Great. On this oak, when the moon shines at night, birds come to meet one another, sea-birds with white and black plumage, and a little spot of blood on their heads; with them there comes an old grey crow, and with it a young crow. Both are very weary, and their wings are wet; they come from beyond the seas, they come from afar; and the birds sing such a beautiful song that the great sea is hushed and listens; this song they sing with one voice, except the old crow and the young one; now the crow has said--'Sing, little birds; sing, sing, little birds of the land; you do not die far away from Bretagne.'" The same funereal birds which have pity for the dead, like the stork, also take care of new-born infants, and bring the light forth. The cloudy nocturnal or wintry monster discovers his treasures; the funereal bird buries the dead, and brings them to life again; its beak pierces through the mountain, finds the water and the fire, and tears the veil of death; its luminous head disperses the gloomy shadows.

FOOTNOTES:

[408]

"Lacte quis infantes nescit crevisse ferino? Et picum expositis sæpe tulisse cibos?" --Ovid, _Fasti_, iii.

[409] Compare _pingûlas_ with _pingalas_ and _pingaras_.--In the hymn, x. 28, 9, of the _Rigvedas_, we also have the mountain cleft from afar by a clod of earth: Adrim logena vy abhedam ârât. This analogy is so much the more remarkable, as in the same hymn, 4th strophe, the wild boar is also spoken of.

[410] The same virtue of opening the mountain by means of an herb I find attributed to the little martin, in connection with Venus, in Simrock, the work quoted before, p. 415: "Schon in einem Gedichte Meister Altschwerts, ed. Holland, s. 70, wird der Zugang zu dem Berge durch ein Kraut gefunden, das der Springwurzel oder blauen Schlüsselblume unserer Ortssagen gleicht. Kaum hat es der Dichter gebrochen, so kommt ein Martinsvögelchen geflogen, das guter Vorbedeutung zu sein pflegt; diesem folgt er und begegnet einem Zwerge, der ihn in den Berg zu Frau Venus führt."

[411] _Carm._ iii. 27.

[412]

"Thou shalt not lack The flower that's like thy face, pale primrose; nor The azured hare-bell, like thy veins; no, nor The leaf of eglantine, whom not to slander, Out-sweetened not thy breath; the ruddock would, With charitable bill (O bill, sore-shaming Those rich-left heirs, that let their fathers lie Without a monument!), bring thee all this." --iv. 2.

[413] Cfr. what is said on the whoop, the stork, and the lark.--Concerning the bird _gaulus_, I find in Du Cange as follows: "Gaulus Merops avis apibus infensa, unde et Apiastra vocitatur. Papias: 'Meropes, Genus avium, idem et Gauli, qui parentes suos recondere, et alere dicuntur, sunt autem virides et vocantur Apiastræ.'"