Certain kinds of birds have become symbols of popular ideas, or even significant badges of persons and events, and are thus more or less conventionalized accessories in art, by reason of their appearance (form, color), or their habits, or their connection with some historic incident or fabulous tale. In many cases this symbolism is of very ancient origin, as is most particularly true of the eagle and the dove. The eagle is accounted for elsewhere in its various aspects and relations: but the dove, by which is meant the prehistorically domesticated blue rock-pigeon, almost deserves a chapter to itself.

To trace the career of the dove in religion, customs, and art is, indeed, one of the most engaging of my tasks, and the quest discloses a curiously double and diverse symbolism running almost simultaneously from the beginning of history to the present, for this bird serves as an emblem of purity and conjugal affection in one association, and in another suggests the familiar epithet “soiled.”

The story of this bird goes back to the misty dawn of civilization and religion in Mesopotamia, the Garden-of-Eden land, where arose the dual “nature-worship” of the combining elements heaven and earth, male and female. The fecund soil, yielding its fruits to the fertilizing sunshine and rain, sent by the sky-god, became personified as Ishtar (Ashtaroth), and to her was assigned the amorous and prolific dove as a type of the family concord and productiveness she represented; and white doves were sold to worshippers at Babylon to be offered as sacrifices in her temple. Her worship was spread to Asia Minor and the shore of the Ægean by Babylonian and Assyrian conquests, and she became known to the Phrygians as Cybele, to the Syrians as Darketo, and to the Phoenicians as Atagartis, whom the Ionian Greeks called Astarte.

In these transformations the primitive Ishtar gradually fell from her original state as a type of motherhood to the baser one of physical love-indulgence, and among her votaries were troops of maidens who publicly offered their virginity at her shrine, as a form of sacrifice and service.

Some of the Syrians are said to have thought of their goddess Darketo as “Semiramis,” but this was by confusion with her fabled daughter. Whether or not a real woman and queen of that name ever existed, I leave to the historians, but a mythical Semiramis belongs to my story, and her history was first written by Ctesias, an Asiatic-Greek historian of the fourth century B.C. Ctesias says that near Askalon was a large lake beside which Darketo (otherwise Atagartis) had a habitation; she is represented with the face of a woman and the body of a fish—perhaps the most antique conception of a mermaid. She fell in love with a fair youth and a girl-baby resulted. Then, in shame, Darketo destroyed her lover, exposed the child in a rocky desert, and flung herself into the lake. The babe, nurtured by doves on milk and cheese, was discovered and reared by a herdsman, who called the child Semiramis—a Syrian word for “doves.” At the close of her life this mythical Semiramis changed herself into a dove and flew away with certain other birds. Hence, in Ctesias’s time, divine honors were paid in the East to doves; and a dove is the badge of Semiramis in Syrian monumental art. Diodorus Siculus repeats this account with additional details.

The sceptre in the hand of the revered image of Atagartis in her great temple at Hierapolis bore the golden figure of a dove on its summit; and in Phoenicia, Cyprus, Sardinia, and wherever the Phocians and other Levantine traders of that day traded and colonized, have been found small terra-cotta figures of this goddess, or of one of her priestesses, always with a dove.

To the devotees of this cult, which was confined to the coastal region, and in which the Hebrews and other Semites of the interior desert-plains took no part, a dove was so sacred that if a person even accidentally touched one he was “unclean” throughout the day. Hence the birds thronged in the villages and houses and swarmed about the temple yards, where they were fed by visitors, as still is the custom in the Mohammedan mosques that have taken their place. This was noted especially at Hierapolis, where, according to Lucian, one of the venerated images had a pigeon’s head.

This religious doctrine, and more particularly the Phrygian cult of Cybele, was undoubtedly carried to the Ægean islands and to Greece, while civilization was still in its infancy there, for the “sea-born” Aphrodite—an epithet indicative of her arrival from across the waters—is only Astarte transformed in Greek thought, which seems to explain the classic story that Aphrodite was born from an egg, with a dove brooding upon it, rolled ashore by a fish.

The focus of religious emotion in those early centuries of Greece, at least in Attica, was probably in the most ancient of oracles, that at Dodona. Tradition ascribed its origin to a dove that spoke with a human voice; and among those who served the shrine were three priestesses popularly called “Doves,” whose duty it was to announce oracles requested as if real birds uttered them from the foliage of the surrounding oaks—divine trees. Connected with the cult of Zeus at Dodona was that of Aphrodite, then regarded as the goddess of exalted love, not of the sensual passion by which in later times her cult in Rome, as Venus, became degraded. It was natural, as we have seen, that the dove should be associated with this pristine Aphrodite, and equally suitable that it should be adopted subsequently as the attendant of lascive Venus, for as De Kay^[18] observes, doves are forever making love and caressing each other. “Chaucer speaks of ‘the wedded turtil with her herte trewe’.... So the bird is by its nature and habits fitted to be the attendant and symbol of the goddess of love—the bird that draws her flower-studded chariot through the air.” A Persian poet asks:

An interesting memorandum here is the observation by A. B. Cook,^[37] the erudite author of Zeus, that the oracle in the oasis Ammon (Siwah), which Alexander the Great took such prodigious trouble to visit and consult, was, like that at Dodona, founded by a dove. “Moreover,” Mr. Cook remarks, “Semiramis is said to have learned her destiny from Ammon, and to have fulfilled it by becoming a dove.... In short, it appears that the whole apparatus of the oracle at Dodona ... was to be matched in the oasis of Ammon. Strabo adds that both oracles gave their responses in the selfsame manner, not by words but by certain tokens, such as the flight of doves.”

The conception of Aphrodite also included that of spring, ushered in by the early return of this migrant from its winter resort in Africa and the time when it cooed for a mate—the season when “a livelier iris changes on the burnished dove”; while the revival of nature in spring has always to imaginative souls typified the Resurrection as taught in Christian doctrine and exemplified in some of the customs of Easter, which, of course, is only an adaptation of the far more ancient festival of rejoicing at the return of the sun—the rebirth of the year.

Another line of thought apparently of Oriental origin, but prevalent in northern Europe, connected this dove with the Fates and with death, especially death by violence—a phase that is traced in wearisome detail back to the Rigvedas and other misty sources by the myth-readers, and which probably comes from its plaintive “cooing.” Sometimes, however, the fateful dove brings good tidings and succor to the distressed, as in the story of Queen Radegund, who in the form of a dove once delivered sailors from shipwreck.

This is an appropriate place, perhaps, to repeat the legend related by the Rhodian Apollonius in his poem Argonautica, concerning the Symplegades—the two islands that stand on opposite sides of the Bosphorus “mouth.” It appears that these islands were wont in days ancient even to Apollonius to swing together and crush any living thing that attempted to pass between them and enter the Black Sea. Phineas, who lived on the shore near by told Jason, who had arrived there on his journey in search of the Golden Fleece, and who wanted to go on into the Euxine, how to escape the fatal grasp of the island-gates. He was to sail or row the Argo as near as he dared to the entrance, then let loose a dove. The bird would fly onward, the islands would rush together to crush it; and the instant they had swung back Jason must drive his ship on between them before they could close again. This plan, so clever except for the poor bird, succeeded, and broke the magic spell. Living heroes had passed safely between them, and ever since then the malicious Symplegades have remained stable. This story has been scientifically analyzed by the mythologists in various ways, but none has deigned to consider why a dove was chosen, rather than some other bird, as the martyr of the occasion. I am inclined to think it was because among sailors of those days the dove was believed to help them; and that, in turn, was owing to its association with the “foam-born” Aphrodite, who was worshipped by mariners, especially about Cyprus, as goddess of the sea.

I have dwelt somewhat at length on these antique fables, not only to give a glimpse of the nativity of certain far more modern, or even existing, ideas and customs connected with the dove, but more especially to display the background of tradition and feeling that affected the minds of people toward this familiar bird at the time when Christianity began to manifest itself in Italy, and began to replace by a Christian symbolism the previous figurative significance of the dove. The highest place given it in early Christian thought and art was as a representative of the third member of the godhead—the Holy Ghost, and it still holds this significance, as every one may realize who recalls the hymn beginning “Come Holy Spirit, heavenly Dove,” which will be sung in perhaps hundreds of churches next Sunday. An old and natural inference followed, that the devil cannot ever take (by magic) the form of this celestial messenger.

According to an apocryphal gospel the Holy Ghost in the semblance of a dove, designated Joseph as the spouse of the Virgin Mary by alighting on his head; and in the same manner, according to Eusebius, Fabian was indicated as divinely appointed to be Pope in the third century. It is said also that at the Council of Nice (A.D. 325) the creed formulated there was signed by the Holy Spirit, appearing as a dove—a legend that magnifies the tremendous importance of that document.

Again, there is the story of the miraculous dove at the consecration of Clovis on Christmas Day, 496, at Rheims. When Clovis and St. Remi, the bishop, reached the baptistery the priest bearing the holy chrism was prevented by the density of the crowd from reaching the font. Then a dove, whiter than snow, brought a vial (ampoule) filled with chrism sent from heaven; and the bishop took it, and with this miraculous chrism perfumed the baptismal water for the Frankish chief by whose victories over Germanic barbarians France was founded.

The lives of medieval saints and martyrs—or at any rate, the records of them—abound in such incidents of supernatural recognition. Several devoted women on taking the vow of virginity received their veils from doves hatched in no earthly nest; bishops were more than once given approval of public acts, especially when unpopular, by similar manifestations of divine approbation, doves alighting on their heads. “A dove is the special emblem of Gregory the Great (A.D. 590–604), and its figure rests on his right shoulder in the magnificent statue of this pope in Rome.”

This is in allusion, according to The Catholic Encyclopedia, “to the well-known story recorded by Peter the Deacon (Vita, xxviii), who tells us that when the pope was dictating his homilies in Ezechiel a veil was drawn between his secretary and himself. As, however, the pope remained silent for long periods of time, the servant made a hole in the curtain and, looking through, beheld a dove seated on Gregory’s head with its beak between his lips. When the dove withdrew its beak the holy pontiff spoke and the secretary took down his words; but when he became silent the servant again applied his eyes to the hole and saw that the dove had again placed its beak between his lips.” Much the same incident belongs to the biography of another early pope; and apropos to the significance of this bird in the Romanist method of demonstrating that faith to the populace, Mackenzie E. Walcott contributed the following bit of history to Notes and Queries in 1873:

The dove was regarded as the symbol of the holy spirit which came in the eventide of days, bringing safety and peace to the ark of Christ and a world rescued from wreck, and to whom Christians should be conformed in innocency. A dove was suspended over the altar, as Amphilochius says of S. Basil that he broke the Holy Bread and placed one third part in the pendant golden dove over the altar. The Council of Constantinople charged a heretic with robbing the gold and silver doves that hung above the fonts and altars. The dove was also the symbol of our Blessed Lord, as we learn from Prudentius and an expression of Tertullian, “the Dove’s house,” applied to a church, probably in allusion to Coloss. i, 20.

The dove for reservation [that is, withholding a part of the eucharist] whether for communion of infants in the baptistery, or of sick under a ciborium, was suspended by a chain. One is preserved in the church of S. Nazarius at Milan, and a solitary mention of another is contained in an inventory of Salisbury. In Italy at an early date, the dove was set upon a tower for reservation.... We also find in early works of devotional art the dove represented as flooding a cross with streams of living water. There is a famous example in the Lateran, symbolical of Holy Baptism. A holy lamb and dove are placed on the canopy of the baptistery at Saragossa.

It seems unlikely that Mohammed could have heard of these pontifical sources or methods of divine inspiration, yet, according to Brewer,^[34] Prideaux, in his Life of Mahamet, relates that he taught a dove to pick seed placed in his ear as it perched on his shoulder; but the wily prophet “gave it out it was the Holy Ghost, in the form of a dove, come to impart to him the counsels of God.” This accounts probably (for Shakespeare may well have heard the tradition) for the doubting query in Henry V: “Was Mohammed inspired with a dove?”

Whether this legend is credible or not, it is certain that Islam has preserved the ancient Oriental reverence for this bird, which now flocks in great numbers around all the mosques; and the Moslems have a half-superstitious feeling that any bird that seeks its rest and makes its nest about temples and holy buildings must not be disturbed—a kindly regard in which swallows share, at least in the Near East, where the Mohammedans say that the swallow must be a very holy bird, because it makes an annual pilgrimage to Mecca.

John Keane,^[14] an Englishman who spent a long time in Arabia about forty years ago, records that at Mecca vast flocks of pigeons were to be seen in the public space surrounding the kaaba. By repeated observations he estimated that between 5000 and 6000 pigeons assembled there daily, all so tame that they would alight on men’s heads and shoulders. They are still held as almost sacred, are never killed, and nest in nearly every building in niches left for that purpose in the walls of the rooms. Pilgrims purchase baskets of grain to give to the pigeons as a pious act, and each benefactor “becomes the vortex of a revolving storm of pigeons.” In some remote places, indeed, these temple-pets become themselves almost objects of worship. For example, on the direct road between Yarkand and Khotan, Chinese Turkestan, stands the locally celebrated pigeon-shrine (Kaptar Mazzar), where all good Moslems must dismount and reverently approach the sacred spot. “Legend has it that Imam Shakir Padshah, trying to convert the Buddhist inhabitants of the country to Islam by the drastic agency of the sword, fell here in battle against the army of Khotan, and was buried in the little cemetery. It is affirmed that two doves flew forth from the heart of the dead saint, and became the ancestors of the swarms of pigeons we saw ... sated with the offerings of the Faithful, and extremely fat.... We were told that if a hawk were to venture to attack them it would fall down dead.”

A pretty story is related by E. Dinet, a French artist, in his book of sketches in Algeria. “Doves, which the Arabs name imams, because,” he was told, “like the imam in the mosques, they call the faithful to prayer, and because, like him, they do not cease to prostrate themselves by inclining their necks in devotions to the Creator.” Newspapers of the year 1921 contained an account of how two European boys ignorantly provoked a riot in Bombay by killing a couple of pigeons in the street. The Mohammedans were horrified and the police had difficulty in suppressing an extensive disturbance; the stock exchange and other general markets were closed, and a wide-spread strike of workmen in India was threatened, as an evidence of the deep feeling aroused by the boys’ sacrilegious act. It was evidence also of the panic-force of superstition under an appropriate stimulus, and a good illustration of Professor George Santayana’s definition of superstition as “reverence for what hurts.” In the same year it was reported by telegraph from Brownsville, Texas, that a snow-white pigeon flew into Sacred Heart Church there on the morning of November 11, during a service celebrating Armistice Day, and perched over a memorial window, where it remained throughout the service. Had it been a sparrow or woodpecker no one would have thought of recording the incident.

Men in the Middle Ages had perfect faith in prodigies such as those connected with the holy ampoule of St. Remi and the subsequent miracles in which it was so efficacious; and everyone understood their meaning. This continued as long as the Church held sway over hearts and minds of the populace. Nobody, probably, had the disposition, not to say the hardihood, to deny the story—you may read it in Froissart—that at the battle of Roosebeek (or Rosebeque), which put an end to the power of Philip van Artevelde in 1382, a white dove was seen to circle about and alight on the French oriflame, which then swept on to victory.

Readers of Malory’s Morte D’Arthur will recall that as on its appearance the Holy Grail passes before Lancelot’s eyes in the castle of Pelleas, a dove, entering at the window and carrying a small golden censer in its beak, impressed the awe-struck knights of the Table Round as a lovely token of the purity and worship to which the castle was devoted. Nothing could be more natural in medieval romance than this incident—a miracle commemorated in the opera Parsifal. The Venetians still assert that the pigeons so familiar and petted in the piazza of St. Mark fly three times daily around the city in honor of the Trinity.

A later example: in the first voyage of Hernando Cortez to America water and food were almost exhausted, and everybody in the vessel was discouraged and mutinous, when “came a Dove flying to the Shippe, being Good Friday at Sunsett; and sat him on the Shippe-top; whereat they were all comforted, and tooke it for a miracle and good token ... and all gave heartie thanks to God, directing their course the way the Dove flew.” Any sort of bird would have been welcome as an indication of nearness of land, but a dove meant to them a heavenly pilot. No wonder that they were comforted! And when they had landed they found in abundance a flower (the orchid Peristeria elata) which they at once named La Flor del Espiritu Santu—Flower of the Holy Ghost. Why? Because in its center the consolidated pistil and stamens form an unmistakable image of a dove.

The immediate source of this symbolism is evidently the account in the gospels of the divine sanction witnessed at the baptism of Jesus. Matthew (iii, 16) records: “Lo, the heavens were opened unto him, and he saw the Spirit of God descending like a dove, and lighting upon him”; and St. Luke strengthens the realism by writing that “the Holy Ghost descended in a bodily shape like a dove.” Hence this bird is constantly associated with Christ and with the Cross by artists and decorative designers; and it is no wonder that in so strictly Catholic countries as Italy it is considered sacrilegious by many of the people to eat the flesh of pigeons.

“In the fifth century,” as Mrs. Jenner tells us in her book on Christian symbolism,^[63] the dove is shown descending on the Blessed Virgin at the Annunciation. After this date the Holy Dove is commonly shown in depicting both these subjects, as well as the sacrament of baptism. It appears frequently also over the pictures of the Virgin and Child, and in pictures of the Creation, where “the spirit of God moved on the face of the waters.... The Holy Spirit as a dove bestowing the Gift of Tongues is shown with flames proceeding from Him.”

The prophet Elisha is represented in a window of Lincoln College, England, with a two-headed dove on his shoulder—evidently an allusion to his petition to Elijah (II Kings, ii, 9): “I pray thee, let a double portion of thy spirit be upon me.”

But this venerated bird has many other meanings in Christian art and parable, sometimes so comprehensive as to include the Church, or Pope, or Christians generally in the sense that they are distinguished from Pagans by their gentleness and innocence.

Reference has been made to the funereal quality of this bird, which appears on medieval funerary monuments as testimony of death in Christian faith. In the miracle-play depicting the career and martyrdom of St. Eulalia of Barcelona, which is still enacted annually in the Catalan village-churches of the eastern Pyrenees, it is represented that the tortured soul of the Christian maiden escapes to heaven in the form of a dove. Even to-day one sees these birds, or a pair of them, carved on tombstones, or their stuffed skins employed as a part of funeral wreaths and accessories, and certain superstitions have grown out of this practice, as is related elsewhere.

The white domestic dove has always been a figure of purity by reason, no doubt, of its whiteness, as of unstained snow or light—the same feeling that prescribes white raiment in such church services as the confirmation of girls, and white veils and flowers for brides. This, probably, was the reason, too, why white doves, and even geese, were acceptable for sacrifice in the Jewish temple of old from those who could not afford to give a lamb. Mary, mother of Jesus, offered doves at her sacrificial purification; and that these birds were commonly used for that purpose is evident from the fact that a great trade in them had grown up in and around the temple in Jerusalem, profaning it, so that later Jesus drove away from its hallowed precincts “them that sold doves.” A tradition says that Moses, a good economist, decreed as a proper sacrifice-offering either a turtle-dove or two young pigeons, because doves were good to eat at any time, whereas pigeons (the larger and wilder stock) were tough and unpalatable except as squabs; and it is to be remembered that the edible flesh of sacrificed animals was afterward eaten, and for that end was divided equally between the offerer and the priests.

A more widespread, popular and persistent notion makes the dove the symbol of peace, usually depicted with a spray of olive in its beak. How the olive came to have this character has been thoroughly discussed by the Rev. H. Friend.^[11] It appears to be largely an accidental acquisition, even if one believes that the idea is derived from the olive-leaf brought back by the dove that Noah sent forth from the ark. In old times a tree-branch of any sort served as does a modern flag of truce between warring factions; or was held aloft as a sign of friendly intentions when strangers approached others without hostile purpose. The tradition of the Deluge suggested, and usage has strengthened, the supposition that the olive was the proper sort of branch to show (without danger of misunderstanding), as was the practice of Roman heralds, and the fact that this bird was associated with the olive in Biblical legend has made the dove the “bird of peace.” The olive-tree was given to Athens and the world by Pallas Athene, patron of peace and plenty.

As a matter of ornithology the choice of this bird as a representative of peace is an unfortunate one, for pigeons are unusually quarrelsome among themselves; it is noticeable, however, that in all these relations the symbolic dove is a white one—not the gray ring-dove. In Japan, on the contrary doves are considered messengers of war, which perhaps originated in the legend of an escape from his enemies by the mythical hero Yoritomo. He was hiding in a hollow tree, and when his pursuers saw two doves fly out of the hollow they concluded no one could be there and passed on. Yoritomo afterward became shogun, and he erected shrines to the god of war, whose birds are doves, become so, perhaps, by reason of their pugnacity.

Next to the dove (or perhaps the eagle) the peacock appears to have most importance among birds as a symbol. To us it stands as a vainglorious and foppish personality of very little use in a practical world; and India has a proverb that the crow that puts on peacock’s feathers finds that they fall out and that he has left only the harsh voice. De Gubernatis^[54] quotes another Hindoo saying, that this bird has angel’s feathers, a devil’s voice and a thief’s walk. Other stories tell of the proud bird’s chagrin when he looks down and perceives how black and glossy are his feet—as old Robert Chester sang it in Love’s Martyr:

A still earlier poet had sung of this secret chagrin attributed to the conceited fowl, and had accounted for it by a popular Moslem tradition, illustrated to this day by the fact that the Devil-worshipping sect of Yezd, in northern Mesopotamia, reverence the peacock as the accomplice of Eblis, which is Satan; my reference is to the Persian Azz’ Eddin Elmocadessi,^[88] who wrote—

The native home of this resplendent pheasant is India and Malaya, and the brilliance of its plumage (in the male sex, to which all that follows refers), the radiating, rustling quills and prismatic eye-spots of the magnificent tail-coverts, together with other features of the bird’s life, led to its association in Eastern mythology with the sun and sometimes with the rainbow. Taken westward by adventurous traders, the glittering dress of the cock entered into the popular conception of the phenix, and thus the peacock came to be accepted in pagan Greece and Italy as a substitute for that gorgeous fiction, as no real phenix was obtainable. Naturally the new bird was assigned, superseding her homely goose, to Hera (Juno) the consort of Zeus (Jupiter) whose cognizance was the eagle—the other component of the hybrid phenix; and, as Juno was queen of heaven, the bird was used by pre-christian artists as the symbol of the apotheosis of an empress as was the eagle that of an emperor.

These ideas were of Eastern origin, and came with the bird when it was introduced into the western world from its home in southern Asia, where its harsh cry of warning to the jungle whenever it espied a tiger, leopard or big snake, was also a welcome signal to the people of the woodland villages to be on their guard. “For this reason, as well as its habit of foretelling rain by its dancing and cries of delight, it has from time immemorial been held in the East as a bird of magic, or the embodiment of some god of the forest whose beneficence is well worth supplication, and whose resentment might bring disaster. Hence it was ever protected, not by law, but from a feeling of veneration.”

The words quoted are from one of a series of articles on Oriental Art by Mrs. Katherine M. Ball,^[68] printed in Japan (July, 1922), from which the reader may gather further facts as to the place the bird holds in the religious and artistic thought of the Orient. In China, for example, in the time of the Tang dynasty (8th century, A. D.), “many thousand districts,” according to the chronicles, “paid tribute in peacocks, because their feathers were required by the state, not only as decorations for the imperial processions, but for the designation of official rank; for the peacock feather was bestowed upon officials, both military and civil, as a reward for faithful service.” Such feathers differed according to the honor to be dispensed, hence there are the “flower” feather, the “green” feather, and the “one-eyed,” “two-eyed” and “three-eyed,” all of which were greatly treasured and worn on special occasions. This use of the feather is accounted for by Mrs. Ball in this way: “In the Chin dynasty a defeated general took refuge in a forest where there were many peacocks. When the pursuing forces arrived, and found the fowl so quiet and undisturbed, they concluded that no one could possibly have come that way, and forthwith abandoned the search. The general—who later became known as the ancestor of five kings—was thus able to escape, and so grateful was he that later when he came into power he instituted the custom of conferring a peacock feather as an honor for the achievement of bravery in battle.” This incident reminds us of the escape of Yoritomo of Japan, and of the Tartar general who avoided capture under the protection of a quiet owl, as related elsewhere.

The Japanese are fond of the peacock as a motive in their exquisite art, and frequently combine it with the peony, as do the Chinese, who consider that the only flower worthy of such association. Another subject frequently seen illustrated is a representation of the Buddhist healing deity Kujako Myowo, the Japanese analogue of the Hindoo deification of this fowl.

Whether the peacock was brought to the Mediterranean region from India or Persia or from Phoenicia is unknown. It is commonly said that Alexander the Great was its introducer; but wherever it went its symbolic significance accompanied it, otherwise the peoples of Greece and Italy would hardly have given it the name of their own goddess of light and day, or have held it to be a visible sign of the rainbow itself. In combination with the eagle it was originally an attribute of Pan, who later was obliged to yield it to Juno, the goddess of Heaven, thus making it the star-bird, the symbol of the starry firmament, on account of the “eyes” in its tail-feathers, which were regarded as the very stars themselves. Out of this arose many myths, chief among which is that of the hundred-eyed Argus—how Argus was set by Juno to watch Io, of whom she had been jealous, but was killed by Mercury in the interest of the queen’s unrepentant husband; and how Juno makes the best of a bad situation:

But the Christians, in their revolt against everything Pagan, regarded this bird, which like so many other facts and fancies of the ancient rÉgime they could not destroy, from a new and different angle. They observed that although it lost (by molting) its splendid raiment yet as often it was re-acquired—manifestly a similitude of the resurrection of the devoted soul into renewed glories after death. The fact was true, of course of all birds, but it was most noticeable in this gaudy stranger from the land of sunrise; and, in addition, a belief was borrowed from the phenix that its flesh was incorruptible. Thus the peacock became in early Christian art a symbol of immortality.

In the general mental lethargy that marked the Middle Ages this elevated idealism was degraded; yet that somewhat of the bird’s traditional sacredness remained is shown by the fact that among the customs of chivalry, knights and squires took oath on the king’s peacock, which, stuffed and brought ceremoniously to the table, was a feature in various solemnities. Critics trace to this the Shakespearian oath “By cock and pye!”—to my mind a dubious gloss. “It is said of Pythagoras,” De Gubernatis^[54] notes, “that he believed himself to have once been a peacock, that the peacock’s soul entered into Euphorbus, a Homeric Trojan hero, that of Euphorbus into Homer, and that of Homer into him.” Those who are familiar with classic literature may be able to continue the history of this literary metempsychosis down to the present. Hehn and Stallybrass elaborate their history of the peacock in custom and myth in exhaustive detail in their Wanderings of Plants and Animals.

A quaint relic of ancient ideas survives in the prevalent notion that the beautiful tail-plumes of the peacock are unlucky or worse, for it is widely feared that illness and death speedily follow putting them into a house, especially as affecting the health of youngsters. It occurred to me that this superstition, as foolish as it is baleful, was probably connected with the far-reaching dread of the Evil Eye, having in mind the gleaming ocellÆ that decorate these splendid feathers, but Elworthy’s exhaustive treatise^[66] on that dreaded visitation (especially feared among Italians) alludes to the matter only casually, and expresses the opinion that the alleged ill-luck is a relic of the ancient cult of Juno—a lingering fear that in some way her anger may be excited by the plucking of the feathers of her favorite bird; while the idea that so long as these plumes are kept in the house no suitors will come for the daughters points to the old attribute of spite or jealousy in love or matrimonial matters with which Juno was always accredited in Pagan times.

It occurs to me, also, that the fact that the revered peacock throws away (moulds) its quills every year suggests to a superstitious imagination that they may be distasteful to the bird, and hence something to be avoided by careful devotees. Nevertheless, on Easter Day in Rome, when the pope is borne in magnificent state into St. Peter’s, he waves over the heads of the reverent worshippers assembled there a fan (flabellum) of ostrich feathers on which have been sewn the eye-spots from peacock plumes, the latter, we are told, signifying the all-seeing vigilance of the Church—against foolishness as well as downright evil, let us hope!

No bird is more often employed symbolically in Christian art than the pelican, which, like the peacock became a representative of salvation through the self-sacrifice of Christ. How this developed from the supposed habit of resuscitating her nestlings by feeding them blood from her bosom, after they had been murdered by the father, is explained in another chapter. It is said that the story originated in Egypt, with reference to a vulture. St. Jerome, however, first gave it a theological application, teaching that similarly those dead in sin were made alive again by the blood of the Christ. The form—still familiar in heraldry—is that of a bird sitting by its nest with its beak depressed and tearing at its breast, representing “the pelican in its piety,” the last word here having its original meaning of parental care. It also became a pictured symbol of the Christ and of the Passion, “and more particularly of the Eucharist, wherein Christians are nourished by Christ himself.” Thomas Aquinas (13th century) is the author of a well-known verse of this import:

A similar stanza in John Skelton’s Armoury of Birds reads:

The eagle is to be regarded rather as an emblem than as a symbol yet it has a significance of this sort, for by the early Christians it was considered a symbol of the Ascension. This may have been a pious inversion of the custom in Pagan Rome of setting free an eagle at the funeral pyre of an emperor, in the belief that this messenger of Jove would carry the dead monarch’s soul straight up to Olympus.

The notion that in death the soul leaves the body in the form of a bird is old and very general. Medieval biographies of Christian saints and martyrs abound in instances, as, for example, the story of Saint DevotÉ, found in a boat near Monaco at the moment of her expiring, with a dove issuing from her lips.^[67] The Paris Figaro, in October, 1872, describing the ceremonies at the death of a gipsy in that city, mentioned that a bird was held close to the mouth of the dying girl, ready to receive her expired soul. This is not an illogical idea, if the conception of a person’s soul as a distinct entity is conceded; for if it is to fly away to Paradise it must have something in the nature of wings, and a bird, or the semblance of a real bird, is inevitably suggested, the wings of a bat being too repulsive—reserved, in fact, for representations of Satan and his emissaries. Angels and genii have always been provided by prophets, romancers, and artists with swanlike wings, springing from behind their shoulders, reckless of comparative anatomy—otherwise how could these “heavier-than-air” beings accomplish their travelling?

I have said that the theory that the disengaged soul departs to heaven in the form of or by aid of a bird is historically very old. Probably, indeed, it is of prehistoric antiquity, for various savage peoples have arrived at the same doctrine, based on an obvious philosophy. For example: Powers^[19] tells us that the Keltas of southern California believe that when one of the tribe dies a little bird flies away with his soul. “If he was a bad Indian a hawk will catch the bird and eat it up, body, feathers and all; but if he was a good Indian the soul-bird will reach the spirit-land.”

In Christian iconography the eagle is the emblem of the evangelist St. John, an assignment originating, it is said, in Jerome’s interpretation of the amazing visions of the four “beasts” as recorded in Ezekiel i:5, and somewhat less fantastically in Revelations iv:7. Wherever in sculpture, painting, or stained glass St. John appears he may be recognized by his eagle; and sometimes the bird is rather more conspicuous than the saint, as when it is bearing him aloft on its back, both gazing, open-eyed and resolute, at the sun, as the eagle is fabled to be able to do. This association also accounts for the practice of carving the support of the reading-desk in both Catholic and Anglican churches in the form of an eagle with outstretched wings. At the beginning, we are told, figures of all four evangelists upheld the lectern; but one by one the others disappeared before the demands of artistic grace until at last John, “the beloved disciple,” alone remained, and presently he came to be represented only by his emblem. “Medieval writers,” remarks B. L. Gales, in an article in The National Review (1808), “delight in all sorts of wild and wonderful tales about his,” that is, the eagle’s “renewing his youth by gazing at the sun or plunging into a clear stream, and allegorize at length on the Waters of Baptism and the true Sun—Jesus Christ.” This, of course, is simply a comparatively modern illustration of the very ancient myth that when the sun set in the western ocean, yet arose bright and hot next morning, it had rejuvenated itself by its bath as it passed from west to east underneath the world.

In the East, where the sport of falconry originated, and where the Mongols trained and employed, and still do, eagles as well as hawks, the falcon has acquired much interesting symbolism, especially in Japan, as appears in many exquisite drawings by early artists; and often these can be fully understood and enjoyed by us of the West only when the subtle meaning involved in the picture is interpreted to us, or we learn the tradition to which it refers. For example, in Hokusai’s drawing San Puku (The Three Lucky Things) the mountain symbolizes the beauty of nature, the falcon the delights of the chase, and the eggplant the wisdom of frugality and of the simplicity of life. This undaunted bird (taka, the heroic one) is to the Japanese the symbol of victory; and the Medal of Victory, which the government confers upon distinguished warriors has emblazoned upon it a golden falcon, in commemoration of the coming to Japan of its mythical ancestor, Jimmu Tenno; for it is related that as he set foot up on the Island’s shore, a falcon flew toward him and lit on his bow, an incident which has ever been regarded as prophetic of the success of his undertaking.

Little can be added in this connection concerning the birds of prey. In ancient Egypt the vulture represented Nekht, the tutelary deity of the South, who appeared to men in that form; and the protection she accorded to the queens of Egypt was indicated by the vulture-headdress worn by these ladies at least during the Empire. The kite, too, is connected with early Egyptian history, according to a tradition, preserved by Diodorus Siculus, that the book of religious laws and customs was originally brought to Thebes by a kite; wherefore the sacred scribes wore a red cap with a kite’s feather in it.

The cock in Christian religious art is to be interpreted as an emblem of vigilance—also as an image of preachers, in which may be a touch of humor. “When introduced near the figure of St. Peter,” says one authority, “it expresses repentance; in this connection it is one of the emblems of the Passion.” The placing of the image of a cock on church towers is said to be an allusion to Peter as the head of the Church on earth, and as representing the voice of the Church, which by day and in the watches of the night calls on men to repent. Another tradition is that some early pope ordered that the weathervane on churches be in that form in order to remind the clergy of the necessity of watchfulness—a second reference to Mark, iii, 35.

Ragozin tells us that in the Vendida, the “Bible” of the ancient Medes, great credit is given to the cock as the messenger who calls men to the performance of their religious duties: “Arise, O men! Whichever first gets up shall enter paradise!” A Hebrew legendary saying is that when a cock crows before dawn it warns: “Remember thy Creator, O thoughtless man!” Finally Drayton sings of—

Nowadays, if chanticleer calls to mind anything in particular, except wrath at his too early rising to adore the god of day, it is the spirit of boastfulness and “cocksureness”; while his humble mate represents maternal cares carried to the extreme of fussiness.

The names of a good many birds serve as synonyms of prevailing ideas, or become figures of speech, without having a special myth or story behind them. Thus the words eagle and falcon convey to the listener the notion of nobility in power, while hawk simply means fierceness, with somewhat of prying, detective skill. Owl provokes in the imagination a rather smiling picture of solemn pretence of wisdom—a reputation, by the way, almost wholly due to the little European screech-owl’s accidental association with Pallas Athene. Swallow suggests spring all over the world; goose and gull connote easy credulity and foolishness; vulture and raven, rapine and cruelty; parrot senseless chatter or the lavish repetition of another’s ideas or sayings; cuckoo, poaching on another man’s domestic preserves; and so on down to the stork, which in Germany symbolizes filial piety because of its fancied solicitude toward aged storks, and which children are taught to believe brings babies from the fountain to their mothers’ laps. The Chinese and Japanese peasantry hold the Mandarin duck in high esteem as a model of conjugal virtues, because it is said to mate for life, and Hindoos feel the same toward their (sarus) crane—a bird that figures extensively in the legendary lore of both China and Japan. Figures of the crane are found decorating bridal attire in Japan, and this bird is commended to womankind generally in Nippon as an example of motherhood to be emulated. “In this respect it is like the pheasant, which is said to stay by her young during a grass-fire, covering them with her outstretched wings until, together, they perish in the flames; for in a similar way the crane shields her young from the bitter cold of the winter snows.”

In ancient Egypt the plume of the ostrich, “on account of the mathematical equality of the opposing barbs in point of length—a peculiarity not present in the primary feathers of any other bird with which the Egyptians were acquainted—was regarded as the sacred symbol of justice.” Osiris was represented with two ostrich plumes in his crown. Says Dr. Cyrus Adler: “The Egyptian considered the hoopoe as symbolical of gratitude because it repays the early kindness of its parents in their old age by trimming their wings and bringing them food when they are acquiring new plumage. The Arabs call it ‘doctor,’ believing it to possess marvellous medicinal qualities, and they use its head in charms and incantations.”