Bird Gods in Ancient Europe 



may be the case, because the coming rain may 

 lure insects out and abundance of food may 

 make the bird liveHer in his efforts to please 

 himself and his mate. Whence, to regard him 

 as a capital bird of prophecy and place him at 

 a remote epoch as the visible sign of a god of 

 thunder, was but a step. The epoch, we must 

 suppose, was prior to that in which the aris- 

 tocracy of gods on Olympus had turned itself 

 into the exclusive set it afterwards became. 



According to the sounding of this nature's 

 drum, the auspex, Druid, Velleda, rainmaker 

 of the past argued what was to be the turn 

 of the weather and what were the chances of 

 chase and war. Till well down to present 

 times the magicians of the Lapps, far to the 

 north, and in earlier days those of the Finns 

 and Esthonians, used the magic drum or tam- 

 bourine to foretell pleasure or pain, luck or 

 evil, with a very distinct recognition, I believe, 

 of the analogies between drum, woodpecker 

 and thunder god. In this century the Lapps, 



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