Bird Gods in Ancient Europe 



tale it is Pikne who is thunder god and owner 

 of the pipes, and it is the devil himself, plainly 

 at an earlier date some goblin not so malignant 

 as Satan, who steals and makes off with them. 



Pikker is a word found again in German 

 Specht, woodpecker. Finnic tribes find it 

 inconvenient to pronounce s and jp together. 

 The word Spickgans, smoked goose, appears 

 in Esthonian as pikk-hani. 



The Kelts seem to have applied a word like 

 picus and Pikker to the raven, with a change 

 of initial p to f; since Irish has fiach (feek) 

 for that wily bird of magic and prophecy. It 

 is a bird with human traits, for although the 

 woodpecker laughs, the raven can be taught 

 to speak. Beside Picus the ancient Italians 

 had pica, the magpie — another wise, uncanny 

 bird. The Greeks called the woodpecker with 

 circumlocutions the tree-chiseller, or else 

 pelekas, the hewer with an axe, as if his 

 ordinary name had become too sacred to pro- 

 nounce. Aristophanes called him oak-striker; 



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