Ingersoll Birds in Legend, Fable and Folklore

1. Auflage 2020
ISBN: 978-3-7519-1796-4
Verlag: BoD - Books on Demand
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: 6 - ePub Watermark

E-Book, Englisch, 325 Seiten

When we say, "A little bird told me," we are talking legend and folklore and superstition all at once. There is an old Basque story of a bird-always a small one in these tales-that tells the truth; and our Biloxi Indians used to say the same of the hummingbird. Breton peasants still credit all birds with the power of using human language on proper occasions, and traditions in all parts of the world agree that every bird had this power once on a time if not now. The fireside-tales of the nomads of Oriental deserts or of North American plains and forest alike attest faith in this power; and conversation by and with birds is almost the main stock of the stories heard on our Southern cotton-plantations.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Ingersoll, Ernest

Leseproben

CHAPTER I A CHAT WITH THE INTENDING READER
Angus Mac-ind-oc was the Cupid of the Gaels. He was a harper of the sweetest music, and was attended by birds, his own transformed kisses, which hovered, invisible, over young men and maidens of Erin, whispering love into their ears.


When we say, “A little bird told me,” we are talking legend and folklore and superstition all at once. There is an old Basque story of a bird—always a small one in these tales—that tells the truth; and our Biloxi Indians used to say the same of the hummingbird. Breton peasants still credit all birds with the power of using human language on proper occasions, and traditions in all parts of the world agree that every bird had this power once on a time if not now. The fireside-tales of the nomads of Oriental deserts or of North American plains and forest alike attest faith in this power; and conversation by and with birds is almost the main stock of the stories heard on our Southern cotton-plantations. You will perhaps recall the bulbul bazar of the Arabian Nights , and, if you please, you may read in another chapter of the conversational pewit and hoopoe of Solomonic fame.
Biblical authority exists in the confidence of the Prophet Elijah that a “bird of the air ... shall tell the matter”; and monkish traditions abound in revelations whispered in the ear of the faithful by winged messengers from divine sources, as you may read further along if you have patience to turn the leaves. The poets keep alive the pretty fiction; and the rest of us resort to the phrase with an arch smile whenever we do not care to quote our authority for repeating some half-secret bit of gossip. “This magical power of understanding birdtalk,” says Halliday, [1][A] “is regularly the way in which the seers of myths obtain their information.”
A . This and similar “superior” figures throughout the text refer to the List of Books in the Appendix, where the author and title of the publication alluded to will be found under its number.
The author takes this opportunity, in place of a perfunctory Preface, to make grateful acknowledgment of assistance to Professor A. V. H. Jackson, who revised the chapter on fabulous birds; to Mr. Stewart Culin, helpful in Chinese matters, etc.; to Professor Justin H. Smith, who scanned the whole manuscript; and to others who furnished valuable facts and suggestions.
Primitive men—and those we style the Ancients were primitive so far as nature is concerned—regarded birds as supernaturally wise. This canniness is implied in many of the narratives and incidents set down in the succeeding pages; and in view of it birds came to be regarded by early man with great respect, yet also with apprehension, for they might utilize their knowledge to his harm. For example: The Canada jay is believed by the Indians along the northern shore of Hudson Bay to give warning whenever they approach an Eskimo camp—usually, of course, with hostile intent; and naturally those Indians kill that kind of jay whenever they can.
The ability in birds to speak implies knowledge, and Martha Young [2] gives us a view of this logic prevailing among the old-time southern darkies:
Sis’ Dove she know mo’n anybody or anything in de worl’. She know pintedly de time anybody gwine die. You’ll hear her moanin’ fer a passin’ soul ’fo’ you hear de bell tone. She know ’fo’ cotton-plantin’ time whe’r de craps dat gatherin’ ’ll be good er bad. ’Fo’ folks breaks up de new groun’ er bust out middles, Sis’ Dove know what de yield ’ll be. She know it an’ she’ll tell it, too. ’Caze ev’ybody know if Sis’ Dove coo on de right han’ of a man plowin’, dare ’ll be a good crap dat year; but ef she coo on de lef’ dar ’ll be a faillery crap dat year.
Sis’ Dove she know about all de craps dat grow out er de groun’ but she ’special know about corn, fer she plant de fi’st grain er corn dat ever was plant’ in de whole worl’. Whar she git it?... Umm—hum! You tell me dat!
From the belief in the intuitive wisdom of birds comes the world-wide confidence in their prophetic power. Hence their actions, often so mysterious, have been watched with intense interest, and everything unusual in their behavior was noticed in the hope that it might express a revelation from on high. Advantage was taken of this pathetic hope and assurance by the Roman augurs in their legalized ornithomancy, of which some description will be found in another chapter. Nine-tenths of it was priestly humbug to keep ordinary folks in mental subjection, as priestcraft has ever sought to do. The remaining tenth has become the basis of the present popular faith in birds’ ability to foretell coming weather. Let me cite a few aboriginal examples of this faith, more or less sincere, in the ability and willingness of birds to warn inquiring humanity.
The Omahas and other Siouan Indians used to say that when whippoorwills sing at night, saying “Hoia, hohin?” one replies “No.” If the birds stop at once, it is a sign that the answerer will soon die, but if the birds keep on calling he or she will live a long time. The Utes of Colorado, however, declare that this bird is the god of the night, and that it made the moon by magic, transforming a frog into it; while the Iroquois indulged in the pretty fancy that the moccasin-flowers (cypripediums) are whippoorwills’ shoes.
This is a little astray from my present theme, to which we may return by quoting from Waterton [73] that if one of the related goatsuckers of the Amazon Valley be heard close to an Indian’s or a negro’s hut, from that night evil fortune sits brooding over it. In Costa Rica bones of whippoorwills are dried and ground to a fine powder by the Indians when they want to concoct a charm against some enemy; mixed with tobacco it will form a cigarette believed to cause certain death to the person smoking it.
To the mountaineers of the southern Alleghanies the whippoorwill reveals how long it will be before marriage—as many years as its notes are repeated: as I have heard the bird reiterate its cry more than 800 times without taking breath, this must often be a discouraging report to an anxious maid or bachelor. One often hears it said lightly in New England that a whippoorwill calling very near a house portends death, but I can get no evidence that this “sign” is really attended to anywhere in the northern United States.
This, and the equally nocturnal screech-owl (against which the darkies have many “conjurings”) are not the only birds feared by rural folk in the Southern States, especially in the mountains. A child in a family of Georgia “crackers” fell ill, and his mother gave this account of it to a sympathetic friend:
Mikey is bound to die. I’ve know’d it all along. All las’ week the moanin’ doves was comin’ roun’ the house, and this mornin’ one come in at the window right by Mikey’s head, an’ cooed an’ moaned. I couldn’t scare it away, else a witch would ’a’ put a spell on me.
Mikey lived to become a drunkard, is the unfeeling comment of the reporter of this touching incident in The Journal of American Folklore .
“ One constantly hears by day the note of the limócon, a wood-pigeon which exercises a most extraordinary interest over the lives of many of the wild people, for they believe that the direction and nature of its notes augur good or ill for the enterprises they have in hand.” This memorandum, in Dean Worcester’s valuable book on the Philippines, [3] is apt to the purpose of this introductory chapter, leading me to say that the continuing reader will find doves (which are much the same in all parts of the world) conspicuous in legend, fable and ceremony; also that the “direction and nature” of their voices, as heard, is one of the most important elements in the consideration of birds in general as messengers and prophets—functions to which I shall often have occasion to refer, and on which are founded the ancient systems of bird-divination.
In these United States little superstition relating to animals has survived, partly because the wild creatures here were strange to the pioneers, who were poorly acquainted with their characteristics, but mainly because such fears and fancies were left in the Old World with other rubbish not worth the freight-charges; yet a few quaint notions came along, like small heirlooms of no particular value that folks dislike to throw away until they must. Almost all such mental keepsakes belong to people in the backward parts of the country, often with an ill-fitting application to local birds. A conspicuous disappearance is that venerable body of forebodings and fancies attached to the European cuckoo, totally unknown or disregarded here, because our American cuckoos have no such irregular habits as gave rise to the myths and superstitions clustering about that bird in Europe.
We saw a moment ago that the negro farmer estimated what the yield of his field would be by the direction from which the dove’s message came to his ears. I have another note that if one hears the first mourning-dove of the year above him he will prosper: if from below him his own course henceforth will be down hill.
This matter of direction whence (and also of number) is of vital...