BIRD SACRIFICE

THE custom of slaying the wren is widespread in France also. But the chants that deal with it dwell, not like ours, on the actual hunt, but on the sacrificial plucking and dividing up of the bird. Moreover, the French chants depend for their consistency not on repetition like ours, but are set in cumulative form. Both in contents and in form they seem to represent the same idea in a later development.

At Entraigues, in Vaucluse, men and boys hunted the wren on Christmas Eve, and when they caught a bird alive they gave it to the priest, who set it free in church. At Mirabeau the hunted bird was blessed by the priest, and the curious detail is preserved that if the first bird was secured by a woman, this gave the sex the right to jeer at and insult the men, and to blacken their faces with mud and soot if they caught them. At Carcassonne, on the first Sunday of December, the young people who dwelt in the street of Saint-Jean went out of the town armed with sticks and stones to engage in the hunt. The first person who struck the bird was hailed king, and carried the bird home in procession. On the last of December he was solemnly introduced to his office as king; on Twelfth Day he attended mass in church, and then, crowned and girt about with a cloak, he visited the various dignitaries of the place, including the bishop and the mayor, in a procession of mock solemnity. This was done as late as 1819.[67] This identification of the bird and the men explains the hiring of a cart or waggon to convey "the bird" in our own custom-rhymes.

The Breton chant on "plucking the wren," Plumer le roitelet begins:—

"We will pluck the beak of the wren, for he is very small," and continues, "We will pluck the left eye of the wren, for he is very small".

and then enumerates right eye, left ear, right ear, head, neck, chest, back, belly, left wing, right wing, left buttock, right buttock, left thigh, right thigh, left leg, right leg, left foot, right foot, first claw of left foot and every claw in succession of this and of the other foot. The last sentence is "We will pluck the tail of the wren," and then sentence after sentence is repeated to the first, "We will pluck the beak of the wren because he is very small, we have plucked him altogether."

Another poem preserved in Breton relates how the wren was caught and caged and fed till the butcher and his comrades came and slew it, when the revelry began (L., I, p. 7).

I have often wondered at the cruel sport of confining singing birds in cages. Possibly this goes back to a custom of fattening a victim that was sacrificially slain. For the wren is tabu in Brittany as among ourselves, and in popular belief the nestlings of each brood assemble with the parent birds in the nest on Twelfth Night, and must on no account be disturbed. This reflects the belief that the creature that is slain during the winter solstice, at its close starts on a new lease of life.

The wren is not the only bird that was sacrificially eaten in France, judging from the chants that are recorded. A chant on "plucking the lark," Plumer l'alouette, is current in the north of France which begins:—

"We will pluck the lark, we will pluck it altogether."

And it enumerates the bird's beak, eyes, head, throat, back, wings, tail, legs, feet, claws.

A variation of the same chant is sung in Languedoc, where it is called L'alouette plumÉe, "the plucked lark," and is described as a game (M. L., p. 457).

Again, the dividing up of the thrush forms the subject of a chant which is sung in Brittany in the north (L., I, p. 81), and in Languedoc in the south. It is called DÉpecer le merle, and preserves the further peculiarity that the bird, although it is divided up, persists in singing. The version current in Languedoc begins:—

"The thrush has lost his beak, how will he manage to sing, and yet he sings, the poor thrush, yet he goes on singing."

The chant then enumerates the bird's tongue, one eye, two eyes, head, neck, one wing, two wings, one foot, two feet, body, back, feathers, tail; always returning to the statement that the bird, although it is divided up, persists in singing.

The French word merle stands both for thrush and for blackbird. The blackbird is held in reverence among ourselves in Salop and Montgomeryshire, and blackbird-pie was eaten in Cornwall on Twelfth Night.[68] But there is no reference to the sacrificial slaying of the bird, as far as I am aware. In the French chant the bird continues to sing although it is killed. The same idea finds expression in our nursery song of Sing a Song of Sixpence. This piece, taken in conjunction with the eating of blackbird-pie in Cornwall and the French chants, seems to preserve the remembrance of the ancient bird sacrifice. The first verse of this rhyme appears in the collection of 1744, in which "naughty boys" stands for blackbirds. In other collections the piece runs as follows:—

The magpie is "a little blackbird" in the version of Halliwell, which continues:—

Halliwell (1842, p. 62) noted that in the book called Empulario or the Italian Banquet of 1589, there is a receipt "to make pies so that the birds may be alive in them and fly out when it is cut up," a mere device, live birds being introduced after the pie is made. One cannot but wonder if the device was a mere sport of fancy, or if it originated from the desire to give substance to an ancient belief.

Again, the robin redbreast was sacrificially eaten in France at Le Charme, Loiret, on Candlemas, that is on February the first (Ro., II, 264). There are no chants on the sacrifice of the robin in France, as far as I know. Among ourselves, on the other hand, where no hunting of the robin is recorded, a piece printed both by Herd[69] and Chambers suggests his sacrifice. The piece is called by Chambers The Robin's Testament, and it describes how the bird, on the approach of death, made a bequest of his several parts, which he enumerated exactly in the way of the sacrificial bird-chants current in France. They were his neb, feathers of his neb, right leg, other leg, feathers of his tail, and feathers of his breast, to each of which he attributed a mystic significance. The piece in the combined versions stands as follows:—

The Robin's Testament should be compared with the French piece called Le Testament de l'Ane, "the testament of the ass," of which a number of variations have been collected. The "testament of the ass" was recited outside the church on the so-called FÊte de l'Ane, "the feast of the ass," which was kept in many cities of France till a comparatively recent date. In Douai it was celebrated as late as the year 1668. On this occasion an ass was brought into church, and an office was recited in Latin, which enlarged on the ass that carried the Holy Family into Egypt, the ass which bore Christ into Jerusalem, the ass of Balaam, and so forth. Its chorus consisted of braying, in which the assembled canons joined. This service in church was preceded by a recitation outside the holy edifice, which was in the vernacular, and which, in dialogue form, enlarged on the several parts of the ass.[70]

One of these dialogue pieces, current in Franche-ComtÉ, describes how the she-ass, conscious of the approach of death, bequeathed her feet and ears to her son, her skin to the drummer, her tail to the priest to make an aspergill, and her hole to the notary to make an inkpot (B., p. 61).

Another version, at greater length, is in the form of instruction which is given by the priest to the child, whose answers are set in cumulative form.

"The feast of the ass," in the words of Bujeaud, "must have been very popular, since I have often heard the children of Angoumais and Poitou recite the following piece ":—

Le prÊtre: Que signifient les deux oreilles de l'Âne?

L'enfant: Les deux oreilles de l'Âne signifient les deux grands saints, patrons de notre ville.

Le prÊtre: Que signifie la tÊte de l'Âne?

L'enfant: La tÊte de l'Âne signifie la grosse cloche et la langue fait le battant de cette grosse cloche qui est dans le clocher de la cathÉdrale des saints patrons de notre ville.

(B. I., p. 65.)

"The priest: What do the ears of the ass stand for?—The child: The ears of the ass stand for the two great patron saints of our city.—The priest: What does the head stand for?—The head stands for the great bell, and the tongue for the clapper of the great bell which is in the belfry of the cathedral of the holy saints, the patrons of our city."

We then read of the throat which stands for the entrance to the cathedral—the body for the cathedral itself—the four legs, its pillars—the heart and liver, its great lamps—the belly, its alms-box— the tail which stands for the aspergill—the hide which stands for the cope of the priest—and the hole which stands for the holy-water stoup.

This chant on the parts of the ass is among the most curious survivals. At first one feels inclined to look upon it as intended to convey ridicule, but this idea is precluded by the existence of The Robin's Testament, and by the numerous pieces which enumerate the several parts of the bird in connection with the bird sacrifice. Again in this case we are led to look upon the piece as a garbled survival of some heathen form of ritual. The ass, however, was not known in Western Europe till a comparatively late period in history. It has no common Aryan name, and the question therefore arises how it can have come to be associated with what is obviously a heathen form of ritual.

Mannhardt, with regard to German folk-lore, pointed out that the ass was substituted in many places for the hare, which was tabu, and with which it shared the peculiarity of having long ears. This substitution was favoured by their likeness of name: heselÎn, heselken. (M., p. 412.)

We are led to inquire if the ass in Western Europe can have taken the place of another animal also, and we find ourselves confronted with the following facts:—

Dicky among ourselves is applied to a bird, especially to a caged (? perhaps a sacrificial) bird; the word Dicky is also widely applied to an ass, properly to a he-ass.[71] The ass is often called by nicknames exactly like the small wild birds: Jack-ass, Betty-ass, Jenny-ass, in form closely correspond to Jack-daw, Magpie, and Jenny Wren of the feathered tribe. The word Jack-ass moreover is applied both to the four-footed beast and to a member of the feathered tribe. Nicknames probably originated in the desire to conceal a creature's true identity.

In Scotland the word cuddy again stands both for an ass and for some kinds of bird, including the hedge-sparrow and the moor-hen.[71] The word cuddy is said to be short for Cuthbert, but it seems to be related also to cutty, an adjective applied to the wren (cf. above, p. 176, 193), the derivation and meaning of which are uncertain.

The same overlapping of terms exists in France, where the ass is popularly called Martin (Ro., IV, 206, 223, 233), while the feathered martins include the martin pÊcheur, kingfisher, the martin rose, goatsucker, and the martinets (Ro., II, p. 70). In Germany also, where no bird-chants are recorded, as far as I am aware, the expression Martinsvogel is applied to a bird of augury of uncertain identity, sometimes to the redbreast (Gr., p. 946). And a current proverb has it, Es ist mehr als ein Esel der Martin heisst, "he is more than an ass who is called Martin." (Ro., IV, 233.) In Barmen boys parade the streets on the eve of St. Martin's Day, asking for contributions, and, if they receive nothing, they sing:—

"Martin is an ass, he pulls the cow by the tail," that is, "he has no money in his purse."

These various survivals support the view that the ass in Western Europe somehow got mixed up with the birds. When and how this came about is difficult to tell. The representatives of Christianity were in a position to accept the feast of the ass, since the ass figured largely in the Old and the New Testaments. But we do not know if they consciously did so, and introduced the ass in the place of another animal, or if they took over an animal which had before their time been accepted in the place of a bird.

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