Bird Gods in Ancient Europe 



enough to root them out in this quarter and 

 absorb them in that. Their Kalevala and the 

 ballads and fairy stories which failed to be 

 woven into that epic, are not only admirable as 

 poetry, but are mines from which we can draw 

 in order to repair the gaps in the myths and 

 folk-lore of more than one famous race — 

 Greek, Latin, Keltic, Scandinavian. 



The Rigveda of the old Indians speaks of 

 the cuckoo in such a way that we see at once 

 it must have been a god to earlier inhabitants. 

 The kokila, as he is called in Sanskrit, is 

 there said to be a bird who knows all things, 

 not only what has happened, but what shall 

 happen. To the inhabitants of India, as well 

 as to Europeans, is he a prophetic bird. The 

 same is true of two species of cuckoos in New 

 Guinea. In Germany he foretold riches or 

 poverty for the rest of the year, also the 

 number of years the listener had to live, also 

 the time that must elapse before marriage. 

 Goethe has used these ideas in his verses 



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