Birds in Legend, Fable and Folklore

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The contents list chapters titled “Birds as National Emblems” and “The Folklore of Bird Migration”, among others such as Birds in Christian Tradition and Festival. Chapter X, A Flock of Fabulous Fowls, says we are pretty sure to hear of the phenix every time a tailor or soap-maker announces that he will rebuild his shop after it has been burned, and that the world first learned of this remarkable fowl when Herodotus brought back to Greece his wonder-tales from Egypt.

The Pimas of old times in the southwestern deserts had ideas of the destiny of the human soul that varied, but one theory was that at death the soul passed into the body of an owl. The text says Prussia had kept a single-headed eagle as her cognizance in remembrance of her previous “Roman” greatness. Odin, the supreme Norse god, is described as an impersonation of force and intellect, whose ministers were two ravens, Hugin and Munin, that is, Reflection and Memory.