FABLE AND FOLKLORE 69 



sun-disk), Ra, Osiris, Seku, and other solar divinities. 

 "It was regarded," as Mr. Cook explains in Zeus, 37 "as 

 the only bird that could look with unflinching gaze at 

 the sun, being itself filled with sunlight, and eventually 

 akin to fire." Later, people made it the sacred bird of 

 Apollo, and Mithraic worshippers spoke of Helios as a 

 hawk, but crude superstitions among the populace were 

 mixed with this priestly reverence. 



It was universally believed of the eagle, that, as an old 

 writer said, "she can see into the great glowing sun"; 

 few if any were aware that she could veil her eyes by 

 drawing across the orbs that third eyelid which naturalists 

 term the nictitating membrane. Hence arose that fur- 

 ther belief, lasting well into the Middle Ages, that the 

 mother-bird proved her young by forcing them to gaze 

 upon the sun, and discarding those who shrank from the 

 fiery test — "Like Eaglets bred to Soar, Gazing on Starrs 

 at heaven's mysterious Pow'r," wrote an anonymous poet 

 in 1652. "Before that her little ones be feathered," in the 

 words of an old compiler of marvels quoted by Hulme, 38 

 "she will beat and strike them with her wings, and thereby 

 force them to looke full against the sunbeams. Now if 

 she sees any one of them to winke, or their eies to water 

 at the raies of the sunne, she turns it with the head fore- 

 most out of the nest as a bastard." 



How many who now read the 103d Psalm, or that fine 

 figure of rhetoric in Milton's Areopagitica, could explain 

 the full meaning of the comparison used? The passage 

 referred to is that in which Milton exclaims: "Methinks 

 I see in my mind a noble and puissant nation rousing her- 

 self like a strong man after sleep. . . . Methinks I see 

 her renewing her mighty youth, and kindling her undaz- 

 zled eyes at the sun." Milton evidently expected all his 



