Bird Gods in Ancient Europe 



sister fears the same fate and refuses him ; 

 whereupon he seizes her and, placing her in his 

 magic sleigh, carries her off. As she gives 

 him none but bitter words and constantly wails 

 and complains, he loses patience and turns her 

 into a gull ; whence it is that the gull fre- 

 quents lonely seas and shores and never ceases 

 to complain. Finally we must not forget a 

 parallel of Picus of Italy and Pikker of Estho- 

 nia among the Old Prussians, a Slavic race pro- 

 bably mixed with Finnic tribes. They had an 

 idol to which human beings were sacrificed. 

 When pleased, this idol was heard to laugh ! 

 Its name was Picollus ! " der olle Pikker"? 



•But before turning to other bird gods I may 

 say that the expression the Greeks used for a 

 foreign tongue " twitter " has always seemed 

 to me to point to a Slavonic language as the 

 first which suggested the idea. If one listens 

 to Polish or Vendish, without understanding it, 

 there is a peculiarly soft twittering quality to 

 be remarked in the utterance, probably due to 



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