23 6 BIRDS IN LEGEND 



bad-tempered sort of fellow among their demigods, 

 promised the logcock, or big black woodpecker of the 

 forest, that if he would kill a certain Cannibal-Woman he 

 should have a piece of her scalp with its lock of red hair. 

 So the bird rushed at her and drove his chisel-like beak 

 into her heart. Then Ball-carrier gave her red scalp-lock 

 to the logcock, which placed it on his own head, as one 

 may see now. In Indo-European mythology woodpeckers 

 figure among lightning-birds, and the red mark on their 

 heads is deemed the badge of their office. 



The need of accounting for notable features like this 

 in animals seems to have appealed to all sorts of people, 

 all around the world, in each case according to local ideas. 

 Thus an Arabic tradition current in Palestine accounts 

 for the fork in the tail of swallows by the fact that a bird 

 of this species baffled a scheme of the Old Serpent (Eblis) 

 in Paradise, whereupon the serpent struck at it, but suc- 

 ceeded only in biting out a notch in the middle of its tail. 

 Another example: Nigerian negros say that the vulture 

 got its bald head by malicious transference of a disease 

 with which a green pigeon had been suffering — a native 

 guess at the filth-bacteria to which modern zoologists at- 

 tribute the nakedness! Oddly enough, a folk-tale in 

 Louisiana, related by Fortier, 106 similarly explains the 

 baldness of our turkey-buzzard by saying it came from 

 a pan of hot ashes thrown at the vulture's head in revenge 

 for an injury it had committed on a rabbit — and "buz- 

 zards never eat bones of rabbits." 



The Iowas account for the peculiar baldness of this 

 bird by a long story recounted by Spence 12 in which 

 their mythical hero Ictinike figures. Ictinike asked a 

 buzzard to carry him toward a certain place. The crafty 

 bird consented, but presently dropped him in a tall hollow 



