Bird Gods in Ancient Europe 



ment Vaino sets out to catch her with his 

 nets and fish lines ; she allows herself to be 

 caught in the shape of a fish ; but just as he 

 touches the fish with his knife, it springs over- 

 board and mocks him — 



I am not a scaly sea-fish. 

 Not a trout of northland rivers. 

 Not a whiting from the waters. 

 Not a salmon of the northseas ; 

 I, a young and merry maiden. 

 Friend and sister of the fishes, 

 Youkahainen's youngest sister, 

 J, the one that thou dost fish for, 

 I am Aino, whom thou lovest. 



{Rime V, Crawford's translation.) 



Venus and Vaino are both of them born of 

 the sea, yet children of the great gods Zeus 

 and Ukko. We may be sure that the people 

 who founded the oracle at Dodona had a male 

 and female parallel to the male and female 

 Venus of Italy and the Vaino-Aino pair on 

 the Baltic. Later on I shall argue that this 

 god must have been Pan, shown by the parallel 



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