FABLE AND FOLKLORE 203 



Such representations of demons were the prototypes of 

 the grotesque combinations of animal features, and of 

 men and animals, more familiar to us in the Egyptian 

 Sphinx, the classic centaurs, and medieval angels and 

 devils. 



When the elders in Babylon expounded the reason for 

 faith in these antagonistic supernatural creatures, they 

 explained that the "divine" eagle symbolized beneficence 

 and protective power in the universe, while the feathered 

 monsters stood for the baffling forces of malignancy and 

 harm. In this philosophy, probably, is the underlying re- 

 lationship that connects all this Oriental flock of fabulous 

 fowls — visionary flight-beings in varying forms and 

 phases that seek to portray the powers of the air, mys- 

 terious, uncontrollable, overwhelming, capable of all the 

 mind of primitive man could conceive or his gods per- 

 form. All of them became endowed in time with the 

 luxuriant colorings of Eastern poetry and fiction, and 

 appear now heroic and picturesque, as one expects of 

 everything in the dreamy Orient of tradition. 



In the cold and stormy North, however, where the 

 sun is a source of comfort rather than of terror, and 

 movements of the atmosphere are more often feared 

 than blessed, the similar conception of a gigantic skybird 

 is far more definite. When the native of the Russian 

 plains, struggling homeward against driving snow, hears 

 the shrilling and howling of the tempest he knows Vikhar, 

 the Wind-Demon, is abroad. Norsemen represent him 

 as Hraesvelg, the North Wind, an eagle: he does not 

 "ride on the wings of the wind," he is the wind, and the 

 blast from the arctic sea that beats upon your face is the 

 air set in motion by the wings of this colossal, invisible 



