ioo BIRDS IN LEGEND 



great aviary, it is well to remember that doves were sacred 

 in ancient Babylonia to Ishtar, who, as the deified 

 (female) personification of productiveness, co-existent 

 with the (male) Sun-god, was sometimes designated as 

 Mother-goddess, or even as "Mother Earth": so that it 

 would be highly appropriate to send first a dove as a 

 messenger to this incarnation of fruitful land. This falls 

 in with Moncure D. Conway's suggestion 56 that the dove 

 and raven were tribally "sacred" animals among the 

 people affected by this Babylonian deluge. The choice 

 of the swallow was natural, when one remembers its 

 habit of flying long and far over bodies of water; and 

 that the raven should not come back is in keeping with its 

 character as much as is the quick return of the semi- 

 domestic dove and swallow. Dr. Laufer 52 notes that 

 St. Ambrose, in his treatise De Noe et Area, devotes a 

 whole chapter to the "crow's" impiety in not returning to 

 the Ark. The Arabs, according to Keane, 14 even yet call 

 this bird "raven of separation," meaning the separation 

 of the water from the land at the close of the Flood. An- 

 other Arabic source, quoted by Baring-Gould from the 

 medieval Chronicle of Abou-djafer Tabari, transmits tra- 

 ditional particulars that considerably extend the too- 

 laconic Biblical log of the Ark. "When Noah had left the 

 Ark," it relates, "he passed forty days on the mountain, 

 till all the water had subsided into the sea. . . . Noah 

 said to the raven, 'Go and place your foot on the earth, 

 and see what is the depth of the water.' The raven de- 

 parted, but having found a carcass it remained to devour 

 it and did not return. Noah was provoked, and he cursed 

 the raven, saying, 'May God make thee contemptible 

 among men, and let carrion be thy food.' " 



Johann von Herder, the poet and friend of Goethe, 



