Bird Gods in Ancient Europe 



goodly wings unto the peacock, or wings and 

 feathers unto the ostrich ? '* and proceeds to 

 score the foolishness of the ostrich, but has no 

 word to say against the peacock. It remained 

 for the Middle Ages to cast odiousness upon 

 this magnificent creature and to exalt into a 

 favorite charge of coats of arms the " Pelican 

 in its piety" — as ugly and stupid a bird as 

 one can find on the Nile. Yet those men of 

 the Middle Ages who did not moralize es- 

 teemed the peacock scarcely less, since we 

 know that knights and esquires took an oath 

 on the king's peacock, which was called the 

 voeu du paon. 



In these considerations of ancient bird gods 

 in Europe I do not wish to be understood to 

 confine the men and demigods noted to an 

 exclusively bird origin. I wish to call atten- 

 tion to a neglected field of mythology and folk- 

 lore, by studying which very many anecdotes 

 and actions, which otherwise must seem quite 

 arbitrary, if not foolish, take their places in 



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