The illness. In a word, the peasant-invalid might 



?T Umi ?\ e r take the bird to be a death-messenger, the bird 



Heralds 



of the grave. The most singular of these folk- 

 superstitions, I think, is that in whose exercise 

 a living pigeon used to be placed on the head 

 of a dying man in order to attract the pain to 

 the bird and so ease the sufferer. One wonders 

 what became of the unfortunate pigeon. 



The strangest of the northern legends is 

 that Swedish one which makes the wild-dove 

 the confidant of Baldur, the Scandinavian god 

 of song and beautiful love, before he died ' the 

 white death ' when the ancient world receded 

 for ever at the advent of Christ. Still do they 

 murmur in the woods of the immortal passion, 

 the deathless love of the old gods, they who 

 long ago passed away one knows not whither, 

 with Baldur going before them harping, and 

 singing a strange song. One Gaelic poetic 

 name for the cushat is poetry itself ; Caoirean- 

 na-coille, 'the murmur of the woods.' The 

 subtlest legend is that old world Finnish 

 identification of Aino the dove -maiden and 

 Vaino, the male -Venus of the North, like 

 Venus sea-born, like Venus the offspring of 

 Zeus and Destiny, and as Aino or Vaino now 

 the singer, now the presiding deity at marriage 

 festival or during the lamentations for the dead. 

 How little we know of this Vaino of the 



156 



