FABLE AND FOLKLORE 243 



the blowing of the wind. The mass of wondering and 

 terrified people, however, could not think of the rush 

 and noise and glare of stormy weather otherwise than 

 as something produced by living beings of huge, mys- 

 terious and usually destructive power; and they were 

 as real to them, although invisible, as are the electric 

 currents and tremendous air-vibrations to us. Among 

 the aboriginal Chinese electricity was represented as 

 residing on the mountains in the form of birds, and 

 their Thunder-god is pictured with a bird's beak and 

 claws, and armed with a drum and hammer. 



'The drama of mythology," De Gubernatis tells us, 

 "has its origin in the sky; but the sky may be either 

 clear or gloomy; it may be illumined by the sun or by 

 the moon; it may be obscured by the darkness of night, 

 or the condensation of its vapors into clouds. . . . The 

 god who causes rain to fall, who from the highest 

 heaven fertilizes the earth, takes the form now of a ram, 

 now of a bull; the lightning that flies like a winged 

 arrow, is represented now as a bird, now as winged 

 horse; and thus, one after another, all the shifting phe- 

 nomena of the heavens take the form of animals, be- 

 coming at length now the hero himself, now the animal 

 that waits upon the hero, and without which he would 

 possess no supernatural power whatever." 



To the minds of the redmen in the eastern part of 

 the United States the violent storms frequent in sum- 

 mer were somehow produced by vague supernatural 

 beings spoken of as Thunder-gods; but on the open 

 prairies and plains of the West, where even more ter- 

 rific electric disturbances occur, and also along the 

 Northwest Coast and in Alaska, they were attributed to 

 birds of enormous size, who darkened the rain-clouds 



