Juniata sentinel and Republican. [volume] (Mifflintown, Juniata County, Pa.) 1873-1955, 1876-03-22
rrsdatseus Relasi.r - Daras 80 40

: Certain traditions relating to birds
and beasts are only explicable on the
supposition that they were once objects
Of divination or worship. The old Ger
mans, we know from Tacitus, used
white horses, as the Romans used chick
ems, for purposes Of augury, ana :
vined future events from different into
nations of neighings. Hence it proba-
bly, is that the discovery of horseshoe
is so universally thought lucky, some
of the feelings that once attached to the
animal itself still surviving round the
iron of its hoOf. For horses, like dogs
or birds, were invariably accredited with
a greater insight into futurity than man
himself; and the many superstitions
connected with the flight or voice of
birds resolve themselves into the fa:lcy,
not incOnceivable among men surroun-
ded on all sides by unintelliglble
tongues, that birds were the bearers of
messages and warnings to men, which
skill and observation might hope to in
teIpret. Why is the robins life and
nest sacred and why does an injury to
either bring about bloody milk, light
ming, or rain? The Christian legend
says that it extracted a thorn from the
crown of Christ. or that it daily bears
to hell drop water of water to put out
the flames, and accounts i'm either way
for the red dye on its breast. But this
is evidently a medieval gloss to some
heather belief, like the reason for the
unluckiness of the magpie, that il would
not enter the ark, but sat jabbering out
side over the drowned world; or like
the idea of the aspen still trembling at
the part it played in the crucifixion. Ii
has been suggested that the robin, on
account of its color, was once sacred to
Thor, the god of lightning; yet, is it
not possible that its red breast singled
il out for worship from among birds, ,just
as its red berries the rowan from among
trees long before its worshippers had ar
rived at any ideas of abstract diyinitiesf
All over the world there is a regard for
things red. In the Highlands women
tie some red thread round the cows tails
before turning them out to grass la
Spring, and tie red silk round their own
fingers TO keep off the witches; and,
just as i'm Esthonia mothers put some
red thread in their babies cradles, so in
China they tie some round their child
ren's wrists, ana teach them to regard
red as the best known safeguard against
l.ssons s,f,.o,,,ar,,;,. foIL- Iora Is . ....,-
tion ag,;nst the ,haorr wbi,.b d..du.,as
nonuIar traditions from arv.n or orbe,
m mrtboIoov We have already ,,lIud..5
to the fact thar In narts of Thina the
same FEELINGS nrevaii about the swallow
as in EpyI,1,,i or Germanv Rut fhere
arr, vet otb.r au,loy;es b.,waer tho
E,sf and tbe West crouing hon Is
an obiect of universal di.ILiLe in Eny-
land and Rrittanv and few families in
Cbina will Leen a GROWING hen The
owls voice is ominous of deatb or other
calamity In ENGLAND and Germany ne
II was in Greece Texcent at Athens.
but in tho Celestial Fmn;re also =, nre-
sages death. and is rewarded as the bird
wb;ch calls for tho sonI And the crow
also, ia in China bird of I'M omen Ia
II not therefore likely that Ali nonular
fanries ahout birds and animals have
begun in tbe same wav among the same
or different races of the globe and were
subsequently, adopted. but never origi-
mated by mythology Nav it not be
that certain birds or animals became
prominent i'm mythology because they
had already been prominent in tradi-
dition. rather than that they became
promineutint tradition because they pre-
yiously had been prominent in mythol-
ogyr For instance. instead of tracing
a dogs bowling as a death omen to an
Aryan belief that the doc guited the
soul from its earthly tenement to its
abode in heaven. NAV we not suppose
that the myth arose from an already ex-
istinp omen. and that the latter arose.
rs omens still do. from a coincidence
which suggested a CONNECTION subse-