Bird Gods in Ancient Europe 



like the Samoyeds and other tribes of Siberia, 

 not only used the drum for incantations, but 

 foretold coming events by drawing figures on 

 the stretched hide of the drum and then watch- 

 ing the course taken by a ring laid loosely on 

 the hide, as the vibration of the drumming 

 carried it toward one figure or the other. The 

 probability is, that before Jupiter was known 

 in Italy by that name, the worshippers of the 

 great god Picus, living in their wicker huts 

 lives not so very unlike those of Lapps and 

 Finns, used the tambourine for magic and 

 prophecy, just as some of these Hyperboreans 

 used and still use their own small drum. 



National vanity has made sad work of the 

 study of the past. Men of science, in whom 

 one ought never find that a blind patriotism 

 has made them pervert facts, have insisted on 

 the superiority of their own people's ancestry 

 and made havoc of history. German archae- 

 ologists have claimed Teutonism wherever 

 they learned or imagined that one nation of 



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