CHAPTER 6

THE THUNDERBIRD

IT is still fairly generally believed in England that frequent calling by the green woodpecker is a sign of coming rain. Swainson comments: “The constant iteration of its cry before rain (which brings out the insects on which it feeds) gives it the name of Rain bird; Rain pie; Rain fowl.” The parenthesis is an interesting example of arguing from folklore to fact and falling into the snare of an ex post facto explanation. The underlying assumptions are: Since a belief is widespread it must be true; since it is true the facts must be so-and-so. Thus it is inferred that increased calling by the woodpecker precedes rain, that the bird vocally announces an anticipated plenitude of food and that rain does “bring out the insects on which it feeds.” These beliefs are all unsound. Observation indicates that there is no correlation between the green woodpecker’s volubility and rainfall, nor does an imminent downpour attract wood-boring insects, ants or larvae to the surface; and to imagine that the woodpecker yaffles in anticipation of abundant food is to think in anthropomorphic terms which students of animal behaviour have shown to be mistaken.

Despite the lack of foundation for the belief that the woodpecker’s calling foretells wet weather credence is, or has been, given to it throughout most of Europe. Aubrey wrote that they were “much esteemed by the Druides for divination” and remarked: “To this day the country-people doe divine of raine by their cry.” In many languages the woodpecker is called the equivalent of “Rain bird.” Two of its Welsh names imply that it foretells storms. In Shropshire it is the “Storm cock,” in France pic de la pluie, pleu-pleu or le procureur du meunier.” The latter nickname is based on the notion that it pleads for rain as ardently as the owner of a watermill in time of drought. In Germany it is called Giessvogel, and in Austria and the Tyrol Gissvogel and Regen Vogel. The Danes name it Regnkrake or Rain Crow. In North America, on Vancouver Island, the Indians call the pileated woodpecker the Rain Bird.

Couplets in various languages also proclaim the woodpecker’s qualities as a forecaster of bad weather. In France they quote,

Lorsque le pivert crie

Il annonce la pluie.

The Milanese used to say,

Quand el picozz picozza

O che l’e vent, o che l’e gozza.

As we shall see, it is interesting that in Italy, as this proverb indicates, it is “when the pecker pecks” rather than calls, that storm or rain follows.

The woodpecker’s close association with rain also appears in legends right across Europe. This story is told in the Gironde: At the beginning of things, when God had finished creating the earth, He ordered the birds to excavate with their beaks the hollows that were destined when filled with water, to become seas, rivers and pools. All obeyed except the woodpecker, who, in sullen obstinacy sat still and refused to move. What was the result? Why, that when all was completed the good God declared that as she was unwilling to peck up the earth, her lot should be to be ever pecking at wood; and moreover, that, as she had nothing to do with making the cavities in which water was to be stored, she should drink nothing but rain and get that as she could. Hence it is that the wretched bird is ever calling to the clouds “Plui-plui,” and that she always keeps an upward, climbing posture, in order to receive in her open beak the drops which fall from the sky.¹

A German tale relates that the cock woodpecker was cursed because he refused to soil his beautiful raiment digging a well as God commanded; he was forbidden to drink, from a pond and must ever call giet, giet (giess, giess) for rain.

In Esthonia another version is current: When God had finished the heavens and the earth, He ordered the birds and beasts to set to work and excavate a vast ravine (the Embach, near Dorpat). All obeyed except the woodpecker, who flew lazily from bough to bough piping her song. Thereupon the Almighty asked her, “Hast thou nothing else to do but show off thy fine raiment and give thyself airs?” The bird replied, “The work is dirty. I cannot discard my bright golden coat and shining silver hose.” “O vain creature!” cried the Lord, “Henceforth thou shalt wear naught but a garment of sooty black, neither shalt thou quench thy thirst from brook or stream. Raindrops falling from the sky shall be thy drink and thy voice shall only be heard when other creatures are hiding themselves through fear of the approaching storm.”

Leaving aside, for the moment, our discussion of the woodpecker as rain-bird, we notice that these legends bring it into association with the manifold myths found practically all over the world, examples of which were cited in the previous chapter, describing how birds or beasts helped in some way with the work of creation. As we noted then, these stories of animals with superhuman powers hark back to very ancient beliefs. It is not surprising that birds should figure prominently in these myths, for in early times men must have noticed that they were more competent than themselves in manipulating material. Even today, with all our technical ability we marvel at the dexterity with which weaverbirds, tailorbirds, and even such common European species as the chaffinch and long-tailed tit, weave their nests. Perhaps man’s first attempts at basket-making were in imitation of the nests he robbed. (In a Stone Age painting of a man robbing a bee’s nest he appears to be carrying a basket). Early pottery—basket-work reinforced with clay—may also have been inspired by the finding of birds’ nests approximating to this type.

In these narratives the reluctance of the woodpecker to dig is of interest. This feature, and the reference to its dark plumage in some of the stories, suggest that the great black woodpecker is the villain, and not the green woodpecker. The black woodpecker frequently digs when seeking ants. As we shall see, the green woodpecker is associated with ploughing in some myths. Thus when the woodpecker appears in mythology one or other of these birds, or a generalised woodpecker may be denoted.

In these tales the woodpecker acts contrary to the commands of the Almighty. It behaves like, and is treated as, one who defied God, or even as an ousted divinity. We have support for this in a Mongol tale describing how Moses, whose servant the bird was, punished it for thieving by forcing it to live on wood. So, too, in a Russian legend, the woodpecker is a man whom God changed into a bird because he worked on Sunday. Christianity evidently superseded beliefs in which the woodpecker held a place of honour. The conflict between the old and new faiths is illustrated in these stories and in the following Norse legend: In the days when our Lord and St. Peter wandered upon earth, they came to the house of an old woman and found her baking. Her name was Gertrude and she had on her head a red mutch. They had walked far and were both hungry, and our Lord begged for a bannock to stay their hunger. “Yes, they should have it”! So she took a very tiny piece of dough and rolled it out; but as she rolled the lump grew until it filled the griddle. “Nay, that is too big; you can’t have that.” So she took a tinier bit still but when that was rolled out, it covered the whole griddle just the same, and that bannock was too big, she said. They couldn’t have that either. The third time she took a still tinier bit; but it was the same story all over again—the bannock was too big. “Well,” said Gertrude, “I can’t give you anything, you must go without, for all these bannocks are too big!” Then our Lord waxed wroth, and said, “Since you loved me so little as to grudge Me a morsel of food you shall have this punishment. You shall become a bird and seek your food between bark and bole, and never get a drop to drink save when it rains.” Hardly had He said the last word when she was turned into a black woodpecker, or “Gertrude’s bird” and flew from her kneading trough right up the chimney. And to this very day you may see her flying about, with her red mutch on her head, and her body all black, because of the soot of the chimney; and so she hacks and taps away at the trees for her food, and whistles when rain is coming, for she is ever athirst, and then she looks for a drop of water to cool her tongue.” The conclusion of the story seems to carry a reminiscence of the parable of Dives and Lazarus. In Norwegian the woodpecker is Gjertrusfugl and in Swedish Gjertrudsfugl. If Rendell Harris is correct St. Gertrude took over some of the functions of Freya who, in his opinion, was a rain goddess.

If, as these stories confirm, the woodpecker was revered in pre-Christian times, the question arises, what kind of being was it supposed to be? In discussing this problem it will be convenient to begin with a consideration of the evidence from northern Europe.

Harris pointed out that the name Pikker or Pikné, the title of the son of thunder who appears in Finnish and Esthonian fairy tales, is similar to woodpecker names such as Trepikka in Norway, pic in France, Specht in Germany, and Pickatree in Yorkshire. In these stories Pikker uses bagpipes as his weapon. In one of them, the thunderclap, in the shape of the bagpipes, is stolen, and no rain falls on the earth. When the thunder instrument is sounded there is a downpour of rain. Apparently the bagpipes were used in rain ceremonies. their music being considered an imitation of the wind and thunder. Etymological similarities being notoriously deceptive the connexion between Pikker and the folk names of the woodpecker must be regarded as speculative. A document which has been quoted in this connexion has been shown to be suspect. It is the prayer of an old Esthonian farmer which appears in Johann Gutslelf’s Kurtzem Bericht published in 1644: “Beloved Pikker, we will sacrifice to thee an ox with two horns and four hoofs, and want to beg you as to our ploughing and sowing that our straw shall be red as copper and our grain as yellow as gold. Send elsewhither all black clouds over great swamps, high woods and wide wastes. But give to us ploughmen and sowers a fertile season and sweet rain.” The Esthonian scholar Loorits denies that Pikker was ever a personal god in the mythology of his country. He dismisses him as a poetic creation of Renaissance times. However, it is not impossible that we have a glimpse of the supernatural woodpecker in the Finnish epic, the Kalevala (XIV):

O Nyrikki, mountain hero,

Son of Tapio of forests,

Hero with the scarlet headgear,

Notches make along the pathway,

Landmarks upward on the mountain,

That the hunter may not wander.

Thus Tapio’s son, the minor wood-god whom Lemminkainen calls on to help him capture the magic elk, wears a red cap like Gertrude in the Norse folk-tale and the woodpecker itself, and blazes a notched path across the forested hills.

The mediaeval German notion that a woodpecker flying to the right is a lucky sign might conceivably be connected with an old belief in the woodpecker as guide. It must have been derived from much older sources for Horace (C.iii.27) and Plautus (Asin.ii.1.12) mention omens derived from the direction of its flight. The woodpecker was certainly regarded by some folk as an oracular bird endowed with special insight as a guide, for we are told that when the Sabines (or Picentes) migrated to Picenum (Woodpecker Town) it was a woodpecker which led their chieftains (Strabo, V.iv.2), as a wolf guided the Hirpini, and a raven led the Boeotians. The name Picenum persisted to commemorate the beneficence of the supernatural woodpecker.

As Gertrude was transformed into a black woodpecker, so Picus, King of Latium, was metamorphosed by Circe in revenge for his refusal to respond to the enchantress’s amatory advances (Ovid, Met. xiv.320 ff.) (751A). Vergil (Aen. vii.187 ff.), describing the interview between the messengers of Aeneas and the aged Latinus in the palace-sanctuary of Laurentian Picus, where successive divine kings had received the sceptre, says: “There sat one, holding the Quirinal staff and girt with a short robe, his left hand bearing the sacred shield—even Picus, tamer of steeds, whom his bride Circe, smitten with love’s longings, struck with her golden rod, and with drugs changed into a bird with plumes of dappled hue.” Such is the tradition but there is much to suggest that in this and other such tales the transformation is in the reverse direction from the real one. The sacred or supernatural bird which has become humanised is represented as returning to its original form and function. They point to the time when chieftains ruled by virtue of being supposed to possess some bird attributes. Thus many transformation tales have a secondary, more esoteric and deeper significance. They depict the transformation of beliefs as well as of birds and human beings.

Quirinus, Rome’s first Augur, was Romulus, one of the twins who were cared for, not only by the she-wolf but also by the woodpecker (Met. iii,531) (Fig. 67). This type of tradition is very old. Minoan and Mycenaean seals show a child being suckled by a goat and there are many legends of this kind. Wolf children are still believed in though the rearing of an infant by a wolf is biologically impossible.

FIG. 67. Denarius of Sextus Pompeius Faustulus showing Romulus and Remus suckled by the wolf with the woodpecker in the tree above. (After Babelon, E. Traité 2. 336).

But of all creatures to be thought of as caring for an abandoned baby one could hardly find a more incongruous than the woodpecker. Obviously there was some important mythological reason why the woodpecker should have this function attributed to it. Its appearance in the legend is more readily understood when we notice that the lives of the twins, Romulus and Remus, were regarded as being bound up with certain sacred trees. We are told that when the trees were in danger the woodpecker and the wolf came to the rescue (Ovid, Fasti, iii.37). So behind the façade of the classical legends we catch a glimpse of the divine king in the sacred grove guarded by the oracular woodpecker.

Dionysios of Halicarnassus (Antiq. 1.14) viewing Roman manners through Greek eyes and remarking on customs which might not have attracted the attention of a Latin, gives us an important piece of information supporting this reconstruction: “Three hundred stadia further (in the country of the Appenines) is Tiora, called Matiene. Here there is said to have been an oracle of Mars of great antiquity. It is reported to have been similar in character to the fabled oracle at Dodona, except that, whereas at Dodona it was said that a dove perched on a sacred oak gave oracles, among the aborigines the oracles were given in like fashion by a god-sent bird called by them Picus (the Greeks name it Dryokolaptes), which appears on a wooden pillar.”

The god-sent woodpecker in the ancient sacred grove seems to belong to the same tradition as the bird which guarded Romulus and Remus. It was probably not unique though we have no means of knowing exactly how widespread was the woodpecker cult. In addition to the vestiges in Europe which we are considering the bird is worshipped by the Ostyaks, Voguls and Ainu. In India the woodpecker was one of the victims at the horse sacrifice and, as the Romans regarded the bird as a transformed king so in Indian legend he is a Raja who lost his throne. However, we cannot be quite sure that all these beliefs and customs sprang from a common root.

Dionysios’ comparison of Tiora with Dodona is interesting. At both we have the sacred bird perched on the sacred tree. At Dodona the divine king is Zeus, at Tiora Matiene he is Mars. So tenacious is tradition that in the village of Monterubbiano in the Abruzzi there is still celebrated a strange ancient ceremony which is undoubtedly a survival of the cult of the oracular woodpecker at Tiora Matiene.

We have pictorial as well as literary evidence of the importance of the woodpecker among the Romans. On a denarius of Sextus Pompeius Faustulus, we see the wolf feeding the twins and two woodpeckers perched on the sacred fig tree (Ficus ruminalis). An engraved carnelian preserved in Corpus Christi college, Cambridge, depicts a warrior consulting the oracular woodpecker of Mars on a post or pillar up which a serpent climbs (Figs. 68-69). Ovid refers to the woodpecker perched, not on a pole or tree, but on a young man’s head (Fasti, 312 ff.). (This motif, a bird perched on a head is frequent in ancient art). Thus there is ample proof of Plutarch’s remark that the woodpecker was specially honoured and worshipped by the Romans.

The association between the woodpecker and Mars is very ancient. There is a reference to Piquier Martier in an Umbrian inscription. The bird and the god are still linked in the scientific name of the black woodpecker, Picus martius and one of its French names, grande marte. Probably because of an etymological misunderstanding it is called St. Martin’s bird in France. Mars was the father of Romulus and Remus by the Vestal Virgin Rhea Silvia. No doubt the association goes back to the time when Mars was an agricultural deity. Cato (de Agri. cult. 141) quotes a farmer’s prayer addressed to him at the lustration of the fields. The connexion which exists between war gods and rain gods may be due to the thunderstorm being viewed ambivalently as destructive and also as the bringer of the fertilising rain.

Professor Pollard, who thinks the rôle of the woodpecker in antiquity has been greatly exaggerated admits that it was held to be a prophet of rain, as Jane Harrison had pointed out, but concludes that “Picus belonged to folklore rather than cult.” This is doing less than justice to the facts and is based on the assumption that folklore of the kind we are considering is not, as this work is concerned to emphasize, cult in decay. The Latin evidence alone is sufficient to show that woodpecker beliefs were once serious and important.

FIG. 68. An engraved carnelian at Corpus Christi College, Cambridge showing a warrior consulting the woodpecker of Mars at Tiora Matiene. (After Cook, 1925).

FIG. 69. Carnelian in Berlin Museum depicting a warrior at the shrine of Mars with a woodpecker perched on the sacred pillar and a ram sacrificed beneath. (After Harrison, 1927).

The evidence for a woodpecker cult in Greece is rather scanty and equivocal but in Aristophanes’ Birds (480-485; Cf. 979) we find Euelpides declaring,

Zeus won’t in a hurry the sceptre restore to the woodpecker tapping the oak.

In times prehistoric ‘is easily proved, by evidence weighty and ample,

That Birds and not Gods were the rulers of men, and the lords of the world, for example

Time was that the Persians were ruled by a cock a king autocratic, alone;

The sceptre he wielded or ever the names, Megabazus, Darius, were known;

And the Persian he still by the people is called, from the Empire that once was his own.

This is dismissed by Pollard as a reference “to some legend about Zeus and the woodpecker.” After discussing the allusions in Greek to a number of birds, he concludes, that there is “no reason to suppose the references to the woodpecker, cuckoo and cock were intended to be anything more than mere fairy tales.”

Aristophanes’ allusion to the woodpecker was such as could be understood by the crowd and evidently referred to a current tradition. Even sophisticated Athenians cannot be supposed to have concocted, purely from imagination, a fantastic fairy tale about the chief deity in their pantheon having once been a woodpecker. This would have some plausibility only if there were no evidence elsewhere of the bird having in some sense “wielded the sceptre.” On the contrary, as we have seen, the woodpecker emerges as something more than a weather prophet wherever ancient beliefs about it are preserved. If the Athenians showed their reverence for kites by bowing to them, as Aristophanes’ play shows, it is more than a possibility that there were still reminiscences of a time when the woodpecker was given greater honour.

Antoninus Liberalis tells a queer story which he picked up in the Ornithogonia of Boeus (Boios), who at an early date had been priestess of Apollo at Delphi. It is a Cretan tradition of the visit of Keleos (“green woodpecker”) with three companions to the sacred birth-cave of Zeus with the intention of stealing the honey which nourished the infant god. As Themis and the Fates prevented Zeus from striking the intruders dead he turned Keleos into a green woodpecker. This tale is obviously very old. It has been discussed by several writers but we need only ask, Why, when Zeus might have vented his anger in so many other ways should he punish bold Keleos by turning him into a green woodpecker? There must be some mythological reason for this. It may well be that Zeus regarded the bird, so closely connected with Zeus’ special tree, the oak, as a pretender to his authority.¹

Who was Keleos? According to the Athenians he was the father of Triptolemos. He, in turn, was the Inventor of the Plough and the First Ploughman. The Hymn to Demeter tells us that he was a king or chief whom Demeter instructed in mystic rites in order to procure the fertility of the soil. Apparently he was named after the three furrows traced in the holy field to initiate the annual ploughing. Anybody who had closely observed the green woodpecker searching for ants, which it does more frequently than any of our other woodpeckers, thrusting its bill into the earth in similar fashion to the prong of wood which served as share on a primitive plough, would be impressed by the similarity between the action of the bird and the ploughshare. To simple folk the bird’s green garb might confirm the inference that it was engaged in fertility magic. The myth tells us in so many words that the bird was regarded as having inspired the invention of the plough. There has been a long association between the activities of hoeing or ploughing Mother Earth and sexual intercourse. The ithyphallic sacrificial victims surrounded by bird-masked men at Addaura, and the bird-headed man at Lascaux (Frontispiece and Plate 4) suggest that from the Old Stone Age birds have been thought of in connection with reproduction as well as death.

The view that the woodpecker’s activities inspired its association with ploughing is supported by a story told by the Lettish folk of Polish Livland. “Once upon a time God and the Devil were good fellows together, and each of them had a field to plough. The Devil was ploughing with horses, but God with a woodpecker. By day’s end the Devil had ploughed much ground and God very little; so at night God took the Devil’s horses and got his field ploughed. When the Devil saw the result next morning, he said, ‘Goodman God, let us change over: you take the horses and give me your woodpecker.’ For he thought it would be less trouble to feed a woodpecker than a pair of horses. The exchange being made, the Devil harnessed his woodpecker, who couldn’t stir the plough. Enraged, the Devil struck at him and broke his head. So now the woodpecker is dappled and his head is red.”

Thus although in the Greek myths only traces of the supernatural woodpecker can be detected these are sufficient to justify the belief that at one time the woodpecker had a place in Greek magico-religious beliefs, or, more exactly, perhaps, in the cultures ancestral to those of which we have detailed records.¹

Tracing the mystic woodpecker to the remotest epoch preserving in its literature any hint of its presence we find a few slender clues. In Babylonia it was known as “The Axe of Ishtar.” Evidently this refers to the green woodpecker for it is described in a syllabary as green. “Pilakku” or “hatchet bird” possibly is woodpecker. In Syriac palka is hatchet, and the woodpecker was called “axe-bird” by the Greeks—pelekas, pelekdn, spelektos. Thus we can identify the bird called after Ishtar with fair certainty as the green woodpecker. There is no other green bird which could so naturally be regarded as an axe-bird. Ishtar was, of course, a fertility goddess tracing her ancestry back to the Palaeolithic female figurines. Like the woodpecker she was a wood-lander to the extent that she possessed sacred precincts within a cedar forest. In the ancient Sumerian liturgies which bewail the descent of Tammuz into the underworld a fallen cedar is the symbol of the dead god and on pre-Sargonid seals a figure is seen cutting down a tree on a mountain. We thus learn that there was seasonal ritual originating in the mountains. It cannot have arisen in the plains of Sumer where the only trees are palms. So these early gods originally dwelt in the forests overlooking the Babylonian plain.

The Babylonians and Assyrians did not deify or worship birds in their official ritual but this does not imply that bird cults did not precede such ceremonial and leave their traces in it. Excavations at Nippur some years ago revealed a clay plaque representing a very graceful nude female figure with wings and claws. Like the woodpecker she has a red crown. She is also shown on the plaque depicted on Plate 5 and is known to have been an important deity. Most scholars identify her with Lilith, goddess of death. Apparently she belonged to popular rather than official state religion. Often, indeed, domestic religion retains more primitive elements than official cult, as is shown in this area by the worship of the nude goddess in popular cults—a survival from the Old Stone Age.

The traces which the supernatural woodpecker has left in Eurasia are shadowy but significant. All the evidence consistently points to the woodpecker as having been associated with fertility. If the woodpecker cult were ancient we should expect to find exactly what we do—faint traces of this superseded cult mingled with, and largely overlaid by, later sacerdotal, more anthropomorphic forms of worship.

Another strand of woodpecker lore may throw light on the status of the bird in the past. In the second half of the seventeenth century we find John Aubrey writing: “Sir Bennet Hoskins, Baronet, told me that his keeper at his parke at Morehampton in Herefordshire, did for experiment sake, drive an iron nail thwert the hole of the woodpecker’s nest, there being a tradition that the damme will bring some leafe to open it. He layed at the bottome of the tree a cleane sheet, and before many houres passed the naile came out and he found a naile lying on the sheete. Quaere the shape or figure of the leafe. They say the moone-wort will doe such things. This experiment may easily be tryed again.” Such were the ideas of country gentlemen less than two hundred years ago. These educated men were curious, interested in experimentation, but casual as to method and credulous as to the result. John Ray replied forthrightly: “The story …is without doubt a fable,” yet this eminent naturalist blamed the death of his daughter from jaundice on the use of new-fangled scientific remedies instead of the old-fashioned cure—beer flavoured with horse manure.

In Germany it was believed that if the entrance to the nest of the black or green woodpecker were plugged the bird would fetch a sprig of springwort, a herb not known to men, and hold it in front of the obstruction which would immediately pop out. To secure the magical herb you had to place a piece of red cloth beneath the nest. The bird would mistake it for a fire and let fall the sprig so that it would be destroyed by the flames. This was the version current in the Mark of Brandenburg, but in Swabia the story was told of the hoopoe, which is sometimes confused with the woodpecker, as in the myth of Poly-technos. It was said that the springwort could be secured either by kindling a fire, setting a pan of water or spreading a red cloth beneath the nest. The French version attributes to the plant properties which endow with superhuman strength whoever rubs his limbs with it. The bird uses it “to pierce the heart of the largest oak,” and sometimes treasures it in its nest. Winter and summer alike it is covered with dew. To obtain the herb you must watch the direction of the woodpecker’s flight and when you see it rub its beak on a certain plant you may congratulate yourself on having found the magical herb. But on no account must you use an iron tool to uproot it.

What is the significance of this odd group of ideas? A bird which knows a magical herb capable of opening closed cavities—the piercing of the oak—fire and water—the colour red and the characteristics of always being dew-covered? Is there a suggestion here that we are dealing with a bird connected with the weather and in particular with the thunderstorm which rends trees, drenches the countryside and is accompanied by lightning? The caution against using iron to obtain the herb reminds us of the abhorrence in which fairies hold iron objects and hints that we are concerned with ideas pre-dating the use of this metal.

The springwort legend originated in the east. Aelian, Pliny, Plutarch and other Greek and Latin writers refer to it, and it appears as the Samir legend in the Arabian nights, the Koran and the Talmud. The ideas associated with the herb became generalised until it was believed that it could be used magically to discover secrets and treasures. D’Arcy Thompson thought that the belief arose from observations of the hornbill bringing food to its mate in its walled-up nesting cavity. This would imply that it originated in Africa south of the Sahara, or in India—for which there is no evidence. It is much more probable that the story is an elaboration of a common motif in which a herb is reputed to have magical powers of healing and life-giving —connected in turn with mythology concerning an elixir or soma with supernatural properties.¹

Many of these herbs, potions and elixirs in ancient folklore were regarded as useful in easing child-birth or relieving impotence. Thus in Anglo-Saxon magical leechcraft we find the following prescription: “If a man is sexually constrained give him springwort to eat.” The springwort, like the woodpecker, has fertility-giving properties and thus the plant and bird may have been brought into association.

The oak is the tree split by the springwort-wielding woodpecker. The bird has innumerable associations with the tree. The Greeks called it the “oak-tapper.” In the Russian fairy-tale, “The Dog and the Woodpecker” it is described as nesting in the oak—which it often does. But a merely naturalistic explanation is inadequate. Zeus, Jupiter and Thor were closely connected with the oak; and so, too, were Perun, Perkunas and Taara, the thundergods respectively of Slavs, Lithuanians and Esthonians. Pliny (Nat. Hist. xvi.249) states that among the Celts of Gaul the druids “performed none of their rites without oak leaves.” Thus any bird, beast or plant—such as the mistletoe—connected with the oak is apt to have some mythological association with thunder—the oak being the thunder tree. Even the stag beetle which lives on the oak is a thunder creature. It is called Donnergueg or Donnerpuppe in parts of South Germany and it is believed that if it is brought indoors lightning will strike the building. My wife tells me that as a child in London she was told that these beetles appeared before a thunderstorm.

Sir James Frazer argued that the association between the oak and thunder arose through the use of oak wood for producing and maintaining fire, but more probably it came about because of the frequency with which primitive men observed oaks to be struck by lightning. Frazer queried Grimm’s estimate that the oak is struck twenty times more often than the beech but Harris quotes figures which show that in a wood in which beech predominated the oak was struck nearly ten times as often. Contemplation of a giant oak shattered by lightning, and, even more, such destruction happening before a man’s eyes would readily awaken reverence for the thunder-power associated with the tree.¹ Frazer’s explanation might account for a connexion between the oak and a fire god but not with a thunder god.

Whatever strand of woodpecker mythology we follow it reveals a rain- or fertility-bird, and when we proceed a little further we find a thunderbird. The extent to which the woodpecker was deified or divinised is not clear, but this uncertainty may be due not only to the meagreness of the evidence which has survived but to the fact that the clear distinctions which the anthropologist makes in the functions of supernatural beings were foreign to the mind of early man. He did not discriminate clearly between forecasting rain and making it, nor between the activities of the god and his messenger. When we try to define supernatural beings by the degree of respect, reverence or worship offered to them our categories break down. We may conclude that the ancient woodpecker was a thunder spirit in so far as the bird was believed to have supernatural powers because of its association with thunder and control of rain and fertility.

Why was the woodpecker connected with thunder? Not merely because of its association with the thunder tree but because it made thunder. Primitive men watched the bird using a dead branch as a resonator as he issued his invitation to a female to join him and proclaimed his defiance of other males. They watched him up there on the oak, his head a blur as he struck the branch a rapid drum-roll with his bill. As the rain-drops pattered down they perceived the significance of the woodpecker’s activities. This magical creature was doing what they longed to do—and what rain-makers later, perhaps taking their cue from him, tried to do. He was making thunder and so bringing rain. The red lightning badge on his crown, typical of thunderbirds, authenticated his status as rain-maker.

Near Dorpat, where they tell the story of the recalcitrant woodpecker which was condemned to cry before approaching storms, a rain-making procedure was enacted in which the woodpecker’s behaviour was apparently imitated. When rain was anxiously desired a man would climb a tree in an old sacred grove, taking with him a small cask or kettle on which he drummed to imitate thunder.

Can we form any estimate as to when and where belief in the woodpecker as a supernatural thunderbird arose? It must have originated among a woodland people. The bird’s close association with the oak suggests that it did not become a thunderbird earlier than the period when oak forests were widespread in Europe—the Atlantic phase which began about B.C. 5000 and reached its close about B.C. 2000. There is nothing to show that Palaeolithic people were interested in woodpeckers. Thus we may tentatively ascribe the origin of the woodpecker thunderbird to a period not earlier than the Mesolithic. The evidence we have reviewed precludes a date later than the Bronze Age. On the whole there is much to suggest that the belief arose in Neolithic times with the spread of cultivation by means of the hoe, and later, the plough. The bird’s rise to supernatural status is most likely to have coincided with the time when men’s interest in the rainfall was immensely stimulated by concern for the growth of edible vegetation. This view is reinforced by the indications that the woodpecker was connected with plough agriculture. The absence or meagreness of woodpecker thunder associations in most of Asia and North America may well be due to other thunderbirds having evolved in those areas and, so far as Siberia and the more arid and tropical regions are concerned, the absence of plough agriculture or its comparatively late introduction.

A NOTE ON THE THUNDERBIRD CONCEPT

In Europe a number of other birds are associated to some extent with storms and rain (see the rain-goose and the eagle) but the only other species which can claim to be considered a thunderbird by virtue of making thunder is the snipe. It is called “Thunder’s she-goat” or “he-goat” pehrkon-akara or pehrkona aksis in Latvia, and Thunder-goat,” “Weather bird,” “Storm bird” and “Rain bird” in Germany. The Faeroese say that its aerial drumming or bleating portends rain (or snow, if it is heard on 25 March). In Scotland the drumming is believed to foretell frost at night and dry weather. No doubt the association with thunder arose because of the similarity which people fancied existed between thunder and the sound made by the air rushing through the birds feathers as it makes its instrumental song. Significantly, this noise, like that made by woodpeckers, is popularly called “drumming” and it is by beating tambourines or drums that Siberian shamans and rain-makers in many parts of the world claim to bring rain.

In Asia and North America other birds which make instrumental sounds are also thunderbirds. In ancient China the pheasant held this status because, as Granet points out, it “beats a drum with its wings” and so makes thunder. The young people danced in spring, imitating the movements of the bird and flapping their arms like wings in order to bring down the rain. In the New World the Hurons regarded thunder as a large bird. Le Jeune, writing in the seventeenth century, said that “they were led to this belief by a hollow sound made by a kind of swallow”—probably a reference to the nighthawk. The Indians in British Columbia described the thunderbird as like the ruby-throated hummingbird. Those familiar with hummingbirds will appreciate how this notion arose. They make miniature thunder with their wings.

FIG. 70. Lightning birds carved in soapstone at Zimbabwe, S. Rhodesia. (After Walton, 1955).

Viewing Eurasia as a cultural area, traces of the thunderbird conception are widespread but in industrialised Europe, as we might expect, they are faint. In India the thunderbird appears to have been taken up into more sophisticated beliefs but in ancient China it was of importance in belief and custom, as it still is among some Siberian and Eskimo tribes. Over much of North America, especially the northwest, it was of considerable mythological significance. Its distribution would be consistent with an origin in Eurasia, diffusion to, and elaboration in, North America. The association of a twin-cult with the symbol of the thunderbird on a pole in Europe and Africa alike suggests the transmission of culture-patterns. In Nigeria, where twin-cults are strongly developed among some tribes the thundergod is placed between two poles on which are perched representations of birds. Among many southern Bantu tribes an image of a bird is placed on a hut to ward off lightning, which is thought of as a bird varying from a flamingo to a bird of prey. On the base of such birds found at Zimbabwe, a frog, crocodile or snake is carved (Fig. 70). The Tungus of Manchuria, who believe in the thunderbird, place a large wooden swan on a pole with a fish near its base (Plate 16). Reindeer are sometimes sacrificed below such a pole. It will be recalled that on a Roman gem the thunderbird woodpecker, which was associated with twins, is depicted on a pillar with a snake entwining it and a ram sacrificed at the base (Fig. 69). It is attractive to suppose that all these practices had a common origin. The probability of such disparate elements becoming associated independently in Europe, Asia and Africa is less than that they survive in association from an earlier time when this culture-complex diffused widely.

CHAPTER 6 THE THUNDERBIRD

A NOTE ON THE THUNDERBIRD CONCEPT

CHAPTER 6

THE THUNDERBIRD