Bird Gods in Ancient Europe 



the same sort in royal houses, such as that of 

 Atossa of Persia and the Ptolemies of Egypt. 

 Surely it is worth while to discover that these 

 offensive features resolve themselves into 

 unions that might be possible in a family of 

 eccentric birds ! 



The evil imagined in the cuckoo has left its 

 trace in the vulgar speech of Germany. Hoi* 

 dich der Kuckuck ! Das weiss der Kuckuck ! 

 Der Kuckuck hat ihn hergebracht — " The 

 deuce take you ! The Old Boy knows ! The 

 devil must have brought him ! " — show that 

 like other pagan gods the cuckoo god was 

 degraded to a devil. The hoopoe is called the 

 cuckoo's sexton or lackey, and the wryneck the 

 cuckoo's maiden, perhaps because the ancients 

 fancied that the bird was twisting its head 

 round to see its admired one, the cuckoo. 



The blacker, more criminal idea of the 

 cuckoo has found its way into the great 

 dramas of the world with Oidipous — " Swell- 

 foot the Tyrant " — by Sophocles. The 

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