FABLE AND FOLKLORE 143 



male sex, to which all that follows refers), the radiating, 

 rustling quills and prismatic eye-spots of the magnificent 

 tail-coverts, together with other features of the bird's life, 

 led to its association in Eastern mythology with the sun 

 and sometimes with the rainbow. Taken westward by 

 adventurous traders, the glittering dress of the cock 

 entered into the popular conception of the phenix, and 

 thus the peacock came to be accepted in pagan Greece 

 and Italy as a substitute for that gorgeous fiction, as no 

 real phenix was obtainable. Naturally the new bird was 

 assigned, superseding her homely goose, to Hera (Juno) 

 the consort of Zeus (Jupiter) whose cognizance was 

 the eagle — the other component of the hybrid phenix; 

 and, as Juno was queen of heaven, the bird was 

 used by prechristian artists as the symbol of the 

 apotheosis of an empress as was the eagle that of an 

 emperor. 



These ideas were of Eastern origin, and came with the 

 bird when it was introduced into the western world 

 from its home in southern Asia, where its harsh cry of 

 warning to the jungle whenever it espied a tiger, leopard 

 or big snake, was also a welcome signal to the people 

 of the woodland villages to be on their guard. "For this 

 reason, as well as its habit of foretelling rain by its danc- 

 ing and cries of delight, it has from time immemorial 

 been held in the East as a bird of magic, or the embodi- 

 ment of some god of the forest whose beneficence is well 

 worth supplication, and whose resentment might bring dis- 

 aster. Hence it was ever protected, not by law, but 

 from a feeling of veneration." 



The words quoted are from one of a series of articles 

 on Oriental Art by Mrs. Katherine M. Ball, 68 printed in 

 Japan (July, 1922), from which the reader may gather 



