Bird Gods in Ancient Europe 



take fire from — as it were spring from — the 

 head of the sun as the latter sinks to rest. 

 There is reason to believe that the primitive 

 peoples imagined one office of the moon and 

 the dawn to be the purely feminine one of 

 bathing and refreshing the sun during the 

 night after his toilsome, dusty passage across 

 the heavens, sending him cleansed and bright 

 next morning to run his course again. 



By the time of the Homeric poems the 

 names of gods taken from peoples not origi- 

 nally Greek had become Greek property and 

 stories regarding these gods had branched off 

 into a hundred different versions with various 

 godlike persons in the title roll. The bards had 

 already exercised their wits in explaining the 

 names of gods and heroes from Greek roots, 

 just as in our epoch the Irish bards explained 

 non-Keltic names of gods and heroes through 

 Keltic roots. Take Ulysses for an example. 

 The Greeks called him Odusseus, explaining 

 the name as the " hated " one. But the 

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