2 6o BIRDS IN LEGEND 



stories, and is still regarded by Saharan nomads as pos- 

 sessed of peculiar virtues. The great Jewish king, whose 

 reality is almost hidden under the legendary mantle, is 

 said to have chosen the hoopoe, the cock and the pewit: 

 the first because of its wit, the second in admiration of 

 its cry, and the third because, says Hanauer, it can 

 see through the earth, and could tell him where foun- 

 tains of water could be found. The last preference is 

 natural in an arid region, the pewit being a water-bird, 

 the familiar lapwing-plover; and as it annually migrates 

 through Palestine into Ethiopia it is reasonable that it 

 should be fabled to be the means of bringing Solomon 

 and the Queen of Sheba together, as is described in 

 Chapter XXVII of the Koran. It should be noted that 

 all of these birds are crested. 



The veneration given to doves by the Mohammedans 

 at Mecca is accounted for elsewhere; but swallows are 

 held in almost equal reverence by both officials and pil- 

 grims at that great shrine of Islam, and build their 

 nests in the harain. This respect is explained by 

 Keane 14 as the result of a belief that they were the 

 instruments by which Mecca was saved from the Abys- 

 sinian (Christian) army that is known to have invaded 

 Arabia in the year of Mohammed's birth, and to have 

 been disastrously expelled. The tradition is that God 

 sent flocks of swallows, every bird carrying three small 

 stones in its beak and two in its claws, which were 

 dropped on the heads of the Abyssinians, and mirac- 

 ulously penetrated the bodies of men and elephants 

 until only one of the invaders was left alive. He fled back 

 to his country, and had just finished telling of the dis- 

 aster to the king when one of the swallows, which had 

 followed him from Mecca, dropped its pebble and killed 



