Bird Gods in Ancient Europe 



lucky peasant. Such Is the beautiful Suometar 

 of Finland, of whom one reads In the Kantele- 

 tar or collection of Finnish poems. She was 

 born from the egg of a goose and was so attrac- 

 tive that the sun, the moon and the northstar 

 came down to earth to woo her for a wife. 



Cygnus the swan appears In Greek myth- 

 ology again and again, oftenest under the name 

 of some ancient king named Kuknos. There 

 was the son of Stheneleus, a great musician 

 among the " LIgyes " far beyond the Po, in 

 fact on the Baltic, who mourned himself to 

 death over the fall of Phaeton from the sky, 

 whereupon Apollo turned him Into a swan. 

 The fable is well fitted to the northern land 

 where the sun disappears for months and 

 where peoples of the Finnic race live who call 

 the swan lulg. 



In his description of Attlka the traveller 

 Pausanias has preserved the following testi- 

 mony to the repute of the swan as a bird of 

 prophecy : 



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