FABLE AND FOLKLORE 21 



solidly composed of fish-bones, which was set afloat, or 

 at any rate floated, on the surface of the Mediterranean. 

 The natural query how such a structure could survive the 

 shock of waves led to the theory that Father yEolus made 

 the winds "behave" during the brooding-time. As Pliny 

 explains : "For seven days before the winter solstice, and 

 for the same length of time after it, the sea becomes calm 

 in order that the kingfishers may rear their young." 

 Simonides, Plutarch, and many other classic authorities, 

 testify to the same tradition, which seems to have be- 

 longed particularly to the waters about Sicily. More 

 recent writers kept alive the tender conceit. 



Along the coast the mourning halcyon's heard 

 Lamenting sore her spouse's fate, 



are lines from Ariosto's verse almost duplicated by 

 Camoens; and Southey — 



The halcyons brood around the foamless isles, 

 The treacherous ocean has forsworn its wiles. 



while Dryden speaks of "halcyons brooding on a winter 

 sea," and Drayton makes use of the legend in five differ- 

 ent poems. It is a fact that in the region of southern 

 Italy a period of calm weather ordinarily follows the 

 blustering gales of late autumn, which may have sug- 

 gested this poetic explanation; but one student believes 

 that the story may have been developed from a far earlier 

 tradition. "The Rhibus of Aryan mythology, storm- 

 demons, slept for twelve nights [and days] about the 

 winter solstice ... in the house of the sun-god Savitar." 

 Such is the history behind our proverbial expression 

 for tranquillity, and often it has been used very remotely 



