Bird Gods in Ancient Europe 



usually means the Baltic, when the actual 

 direction is told. In Trinity College, Dublin, 

 is an Irish treatise on bird auguries which, so 

 far as I know, has not been translated. 



Another bird trait, which he shares with 

 Vaino and other heroes of the Finns and 

 Esths, is that of understanding the speech of 

 birds ; it is his own language ! He is expert 

 in capturing birds. In one story he hits with 

 his sling two magic birds that turn into Liban 

 and Fand, daughters or wives of Mananan of 

 the Sea, who have fallen in love with him, and in 

 consequence drops into a stupor, becomes half 

 crazy and otherwise shows that the hibernating 

 cuckoo is the root of the story. 



In fact we must regard Cuchullaind as the 

 cuckoo god pre-eminent, a typical descendant 

 in myth and legend from a deity whose traces 

 are found in nearly every part of the world. 



That this is not an extravagant statement 

 appears when we examine the epic of the 

 Persians, the Shah Nameh, in which the old 

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