Bird Gods in Ancient Europe 



ited by a race somewhat homogeneous. We 

 learn to call these earlier swarms the Pclas- 

 gians — a name wherein some old critics have 

 guessed, by the common interchange of r with 

 J, the word Pelargians, or the people of the 

 storks ; and they have given gratuitously the 

 explanation that the Pe- 

 lasgians were so called 

 because they were of 

 a roving nature and 

 came and went like the 

 storks. 



However that might 

 have been — and the absolute impossibility 

 of the explanation will be greatly weakened 

 when we find bird names under many famous 

 names of gods — we know that a section of 

 the Pelasgians or Pelargians was in alliance 

 with Priam of Troy and that In the Greek 

 period many were still living in Epirus about 

 Dodona — the famous place for oracles deliv- 

 ered through the sounds of an oak grove and 



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