i 4 8 BIRDS IN LEGEND 



familiar in heraldry — is that of a bird sitting by its nest 

 with its beak depressed and tearing at its breast, repre- 

 senting "the pelican in its piety," the last word here hav- 

 ing its original meaning of parental care. It also became 

 a pictured symbol of the Christ and of the Passion, "and 

 more particularly of the Eucharist, wherein Christians 

 are nourished by Christ himself." Thomas Aquinas 

 (13th century) is the author of a well-known verse of 

 this import: 



Pelican of Piety, Jesus, Lord and God, 



Cleanse thou me, unclean, in thy most precious blood, 



But a single drop of which doth save and free 



All the universe from its iniquity. 



A similar stanza in John Skelton's Armoury of Birds 

 reads : 



Then sayd the Pellycane, 

 When my byrdts be slayne, 

 With my bloude I them reuyue [revive], 

 Scrypture doth record 

 The same dyd our Lord, 

 And rose from deth to lyue. [life] 



The eagle is to be regarded rather as an emblem than 

 as a symbol yet it has a significance of this sort, for by 

 the early Christians it was considered a symbol of the 

 Ascension. This may have been a pious inversion of the 

 custom in Pagan Rome of setting free an eagle at the 

 funeral pyre of an emperor, in the belief that this mes- 

 senger of Jove would carry the dead monarch's soul 

 straight up to Olympus. 



The notion that in death the soul leaves the body in 

 the form of a bird is old and very general. Medieval 

 biographies of Christian saints and martyrs abound in 

 instances, as, for example, the story of Saint Devote, 



