Juniata sentinel and Republican. [volume] (Mifflintown, Juniata County, Pa.) 1873-1955, 1876-05-17
Traditions Relating to Birds and
AnnmalU.

Traditions Relating 90 Birds snd
trr Animals frs
Certain traditions relating to birds
and beasts are only explicable on the
suppOsitiOn that they were once OBJ
jccts of divination or worship. The
old Germans-we know from TacItus
used white horses, as the Romans
used chickens, for purposes of augury
and OWNED future events from differ
ent intOnations of neighing. Hence
it probably is that the discovery of q
horseshoe is SO universally thought
lucky, some of the feelings still snr-
viving round the iron of its hOOf. For
horses, like dogs or birds, were invari-
ably accredited with q greater insight
into futurity than man himself; and
the many superstitiOns connected with
the flight or voice of birds resolve
themselves into fancy, not incOnceiv-
able among men surrounded on all
sides by unintelligible tongues, that
birds were the bearers of messages and
warnings to men, which skill and OBJ
servatiOn might hope to interpret.
Why is the robins life and nest sacred,
and why does an injury to either bring
about bloody milk, lightning or rain
The Christian legend says that it ex-
tracted a thorn from the crown of
Christ. or that it daily bears to bell q
drop of water to put out the flame. and
accounts in either way for the red dye
on its breast. But this is evidently a
medieval gloss to some heather be-
lief, like the reason of the unluckiness
of the magpie, that it would not enter
the ark, but sat jabbering outside over
the drowned world or like the idea of
the aspen still rembling at the part it
played in the crucifixiOn. ..
1t has been suggested that the robin,
on account of its color, was once sa-
cred to Thor, the god of lightning yet
is it not possible that its red breast
singled it out for worship from among
birds, just as its red berries the rowan
from among trees long before worship
ers had arrived at any ideas of abstract
divinities. All over the world there is
a desire for things red. In the High
lands women tie some red thread round
the cows tails before turning them out
to grass in spring, and the red silk
round their own fingers to keep off the
witches; and just as in EsthOnia moth
ers put some red thread in their ba-
bies' cradles, so in China they tie some
round their children's wrists and teach
them to regard red as one of the best
known safeguards against evil spirits.
Indeed, one of the chief lessons of COM
parative folk lore is a caution against
the theory which deduces popular ira
ditiOns from Aryan or other mythO-
logy.
We have already alluded to the fact
that in parts of China the same feel
ings prevail about the swallow as in
England and Germany. But there are
yet other analOgies between the East
and West. A Growing hen is an object
of universal dislike IN Brittany, and
few families in China will keep crow
ing hen. The owls voice is ominous
of death or other calamity in England
and Germany, as it was in Greece lex
cept at Athens , but in the Celestial
Empire it presages death and is regar-
ded as the bird which calls for the
soul. And the crow also is in China
bird of ill-Omen. Is it not, therefore,
likely that its popular fancies about
birds and animals have begun i'm the
same way among the same or different
races of the globe and were subse-
quently adopted but never originated
by mythology May it not be that GER
tain birds or animals became prOmi-
nent in mythology because they had
already become prOminentin tradition,
rather than that they became prOmi-
nent in tradition, because they previ-
Ously mad been prominent in mythOlO-
gy. For instance, instead of tracing a
dogs bowling as death omen to an
Aryan belief that the dog guided the
soul from its earthly tenement to its
abode in heaven. may we not suppose
that the myth arose from an already
existing omen, and that the latter
arose, as Omens still do, from a cOinci-
dence which suggested a connection
subsequently sustained by superficial
observations The st. Swithin fallacy,
which arose within historical memory
and still holds its ground IN an age of
scientific observation, well illustrates
how one striking coincidence may grow
into belief, which no amount of later
evidence can weaken or destroy. Just
SO, if it happened that a dog hOwled
just before some calamity befell our
Aryan fOrefathers, thousands and
thousands of years ago, long before
they had attained to any thought of
soul or heaven, we can well imagine
that the dog which already betokened
death, should, when they came to
frame the myth, be conceived as the
guide which was waiting for the soul
to take 1t to heaven, and might survive
to the latest ages. 1t, at all events,
initiates against the exclusively Aryan
nature of the belief, and exemplifies
the extraordinary coincidence of ideas
among different people, that the Es-
quimaux lay dogs head by the grave
of child, ''fOr the soul of a dog can
find its way everywhere, and will show
the ignorant babe to the land of souls"
-COrnhiH Magazine.