ld and
friendly bird? The Chippeway Indians say he was once a young brave whose
father set him a task too cruel for his strength, and made him starve
too long when he reached man's estate. He turned into a robin, and said
to his father, "I shall always be the friend of man, and keep near their
dwellings. I could not gratify your pride as a warrior, but I will cheer
you by my songs."(1) The converse of this legend is the Greek myth of
the hawk. Why is the hawk so hated by birds? Hierax was a benevolent
person who succoured a race hated by Poseidon. The god therefore changed
him into a hawk, and made him as much detested by birds, and as fatal
to them, as he had been beloved by and gentle to men.(2) The Hervey
Islanders explain the peculiarities of several fishes by the share they
took in the adventures of Ina, who stamped, for example, on the sole,
and so flattened him for ever.(3) In Greece the dolphins were, according
to the Homeric hymn to Dionysus, metamorphosed pirates who had insulted
the god. But because the dolphin found the hidden sea-goddess whom
Poseidon loved, the dolphin, too, was raised by the grateful sea-god to
the stars.(4) The vulture and the heron, according to Boeo (said to have
been a priestess in Delphi and the author of a Greek treatise on the
traditions about birds), were once a man named Aigupios (vulture) and
his mother, Boulis. They sinned inadvertently, like Oedipus and Jocasta;
wherefore Boulis, becoming aware of the guilt, was about to put out the
eyes of her son and slay herself. Then they were changed, Boulis into
the heron, "which tears out and feeds on the eyes of snakes, birds and
fishes, and Aigupios into the vulture which bears his name". This
story, of which the more repulsive details are suppressed, is much less
pleasing and more savage than the Hervey Islanders' myth of the origin
of pigs. Maaru was an old blind man who lived with his son Kationgia.
There came a year of famine, and Kationgia had great difficulty in
finding food for himself and his father. He gave the blind old man
puddings of banana roots and fishes, while he lived himself on sea-slugs
and shellfish, like the people of Terra del Fuego. But blind old Maaru
suspected his son of giving him the worst share and keeping what was
best for himself. At last he discovered that Kationgia was really being
starved; he felt his body, and found that he was a mere living skeleton.
The two wept together, and the father made a feast o