The ceased to call the woodpecker Pikker (a word 



Awakener so strangely like Picus) and thus it is that now 

 Woods. * ne P easan t knows him only as Tikka. With 

 the Romans, Picus the god was figured with 

 a woodpecker on his head, and all of us who 

 have read Pliny will remember the great store 

 laid by the auspices of Rome on the flight 

 and direction and general procedure of this 

 forest -traveller. Recently a sculptor, I know 

 not of what nationality, exhibited in Paris a 

 statue of the Unknown Pan, and on his 

 shoulder perched a woodpecker. Was this a 

 reminiscence, or ancestral memory, or the 

 divining vision of the imagination ? I have 

 some fifty pages or more of MS. notes dealing 

 with the folklore and legendary names and 

 varying ways and habits of the fascinating 

 woodlander, from his Greek appearance as 

 Pelekas, the axe-hewer (Aristophanes calls him 

 the oak-striker) — whence no doubt ' Picus ' 

 and 'Pikker' and 'Peek' and the rest — to 

 Latin Tindareas, mortal father of Leda, to 

 the White Woodpecker, the magic bird of 

 mediaeval legend, to ' der olle Picker,' the 

 horrible laughing god of human sacrifice in 

 ancient Prussia, to Pak-a-Pak, ' the lost lover 

 of the woman in the oak,' in a strange tale I 

 heard once in the woods of Argyll. But of all 

 this I would recall to-day only that tradition of 



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