90

STORK.

CHILD FOUNTAIN.

be killed, for he is a sacred bird; nor must his nest be disturbed, lest the house be struck with lightning. At Rothenburg an incensed stork, whose young had been flung out of the nest, fetched a firebrand in his bill, threw it into the empty nest, and set the house on fire.* When the storks are seen fluttering round the steeple, a fire may be expected to break out somewhere; then they come with water in their bills, and let it fall from the air into the flames.+

Our English nursery fable of the Parsley-bed in which little strangers are found, is doubtless a remnant of a fuller tradition, like that of the woodpecker among the Romans and that of the stork among our continental kinsmen. Adebar or Odebaro, an ancient German name of the stork, means literally child or soul bringer; ‡ and it is not unknown to Hans Andersen's readers that Danish ladies are often obliged to keep their beds, because the stork, which has brought another little brother or sister to the house, has bitten mamma in the leg. There is hardly a German village that has not its kinderbrunnen (child fountain), where the stork takes up the little ones and brings them home.§

* Wolf, Beiträge, ii. 435.

D.M. 638. Kuhn, Herabk. p. 106.

+ Mannhardt, 193.

§ The Sanscrit word utsa, fountain, is a frequent Vedic appellation of the clouds.

FRAU HOLDA. THE VIRGIN.

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The fountain is an image of the fire and light bearing cloud, and is named in many places after Frau Holda, or Lady Gracious, the goddess who sits in her radiant hall beneath the waters, and cherishes the unborn babes on her motherly bosom. Other accounts tell of a beautiful sunny garden, in the very heart of a hill or mountain (another image of the clouds), where the little ones play about under the eye of the divine protectress, and sip honey from the blossoms. A woman, whose child had disappeared, made her way into such a subterraneous garden, which she found thronged with babies. In the midst of them sat a lady of noble presence, clad in white, nursing the lost child on her lap. Instead of the heathen goddess, the Mother of God is commonly spoken of in modern times as the Lady of the Fountain. She has her nursery, for instance, in the Cunibert's Fountain in Cologne; and the Queckbrunnen* in Dresden, out of which "the clapperstork fetches the Dresden children," is sacred to her. Its waters, through our Lady's grace, make childless women fruitful, and a chapel was built over them in 1514, repaired in 1745, and enlarged in 1783. In place of a weather vane the chapel is surmounted by the figure of a stork, holding a

*That is, quick or 'live fountain.

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HOLLOW TREES. PARSLEY BED.

babe in swaddling clothes in its beak, and two others in its claws.*

Instead of the usual fountain, a hollow tree overhanging a pool is known in many places, both in North and South Germany, as the first abode of unborn infants. In this form of the common tradition we have both the cloud sea and the tree growing beside it, whence the spark of life is immediately derived; and here, too, we discover a relic of the old belief, common to the Greeks and the Germans, that the progenitors of mankind were born of trees. "Frau Holda's tree" is a common name in Germany for old decayed boles; and she herself, the cloud-goddess, is described in a Hessian legend as having, in front, the form of a beautiful woman, and behind, that of a hollow tree with a rugged bark. It is not unimportant, with reference to the parsley-bed theory, that the baby's tree is sometimes spoken of as growing in a kitchengarden (krautgarten); that in Saterland they say "infants are fetched out of the cabbage," and that in the Walloon part of Belgium they are said to be found in the parson's garden. Parsley, cabbage, and other vegetables may stand for the wholesome and

* Mannhardt, 280—3.

+ Ibid. 284.

CHILDREN FOUND IN A ROCK.

93

precious plants that clustered round the foot of the heavenly tree (p. 74).

But trees, plants, fountains, and hills are not the only cloud-forms that present themselves in this legendary cycle. "Northward of the island of Gristow, about halfway between Cammin and Zünz, there is a huge block of granite in the Diwenow, not far from its bank. Many a grey year ago that rock was a fine castle, in which dwelt a greedy robber. Maidens above all were his prey; but one of them to whom he offered violence, happening to be skilled in magic, shrunk the whole castle together into a big block of stone, and shut the wicked robber up in it for ever. They tell the children in Cammin that the stork brings them to their parents from the big stone."*

The legend is transparent in all its details. It is a meteoric drama, with its action and scenery transplanted from sky to earth. The robber and ravisher is the storm-god who issues from his cloud-castle, and chases the white-cloud maidens; but his force is spent, his cloud-castle collapses, and he is banned by the power of nature's magic.

The stork must needs be a supernatural being, like the Manx wren and the picus or woodpecker.

* Kuhn u. Schwartz, Ndd. p. 14.

94

+

He too is both bird and man, as we learn from Gervase of Tilbury.* The transformation of storks into men, and vice versa, is an article of popular belief in Friesland,† and in Prussia, where it is forbidden to hurt a stork, "for he is elsewhere a man." A Flemish legend recounts that a citizen of Bruges met a man near Mount Sinai, who told him they were neighbours in Bruges, for the nest of the one was next door to the house of the other. In confirmation of this statement the stork-man showed a ring he had stolen from the Fleming once upon a time, and gave it back to him on condition that he would not for the future allow his herdsman to molest his feathered neighbour.§

The goddess Holda is only another form of Freyja or Fria, the wife of Odin and sister of Freyr or Fro, the god of the sun and of love, in whose attributes she participates. The Ladybird has many names, all of them mythic,|| and it is sacred to both goddesses. Its home is in heaven or in the sun, and

* P. 35.

Tettau und Temme, 285.

+ D.M. 638.

§ Liebrecht, G. T. 157.

In England, Lady bird, lady fly, lady cow-names pointing originally to Freyja, but subsequently to the Virgin; in Holland, our Dear Lady's little beast; in Germany, sun calf, moon calf, sun chick, God's calf-little bird, Mary bird-chafer-calf, Lady hen, Lady cow, &c.; in Bretagne, la petite vache du bon dieu; in Bohemia, the same (Bozj krawicku). TD.M. 658.