Bird Gods in Ancient Europe 



In such myths and legends we see an inti- 

 mate blending of an animal and a human god, 

 the bird representing that more archaic part of 

 the double which descended from a very remote 

 epoch, when the animal itself was worshipped 

 and the idea of divine beings in the shape of 

 man had not risen above the fear of the return- 

 ing spirit of a magician. It seems impossible 

 to believe that men who had once conceived 

 of a well-ordered community of human gods 

 on Olympus would have then evolved such 

 barbaric and often repulsive stories about bird 

 gods as we find in Greek mythology. 



Everything points to such myths as sur- 

 vivals from a much ruder age. The parallel 

 which may be drawn between, on the one side, 

 Achilleus and his son Pyrrhus (fire) and, on 

 the other, the Finnish eagle that brings fire 

 from heaven, seems to demand the early exist- 

 ence in Greece of a people akin in mental 

 traits to Finnish tribes, a people that, so far 

 from being driven out or cut off by the 



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