Bird Gods in Ancient Europe 



form pago ; Burgundian French had paivo ; 

 but the Berry dialect retains the n in pante, 

 peahen. The Irish call the peacock payal, 

 but write the word as if it had been padgal. 

 Identified through the gorgeousness of its 

 feathers and especially through the spots on 

 the long plumes, the eyes that suggest the 

 red-gold " eye of day," it could not fail to 

 obtain the name that referred to the sun, the 

 day and splendor, at the same time that it 

 meant a bird god honored throughout Europe 

 for his prophetic minstrelsy. Roman potters 

 often stamped a figure of the peacock with 

 plumes displayed on their little pottery hand 

 lamps. 



We are told that the name of the peafowl 

 used by the Greeks came with the bird from 

 India, but was more immediately known to 

 them under the Persian form tawus; and this 

 form appears to have found lodgment in 

 Greece alone, where it appears as taos, geni- 

 tive taon. That means that the Greeks did 



