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Author
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Comment
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sarahbendix
Unregistered User
(9/6/04 4:24 pm)
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Birds
I working on a show right now that is somewhat of an adaptation of The Snow Queen. One of the themes we are looking at right now is the recurrence of bird characters or images. I have been trying to find sources of bird mythology or folklore (for sparrows, crows, hens, etc) and specifically something from what I believe is Jewish mythology about the bank of souls and birds as soul carriers. I think it is called something *like* the gull, but I don't think that is it exactly. Any thoughts or advice would be much appreciated!!!
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Celeste
Unregistered User
(9/6/04 6:25 pm)
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The Birdwoman
This isn't quite what you have asked for, but it may be of general interest to you.
There is a contemporary children's picture book story by Irena Sibley called The Bird Woman (1995).
The Birdwoman is about an old lady who lives in the countryside at a place called Bird Mountain. She lives in a cute little house and feeds dozens of birds every day. She has many friends in her town, and life is sweet.
As time goes by, her human friends age and die and the only friends that she has left are the birds. Then one day, a man offers to buy her home and, in return, give her a high rise apartment in the city plus some cash. She reluctantly accepts the offer, but when she moves there, she is terribly unhappy and lonely. So, she lays food out for the local birds on the rooftop, and before long there are hundreds of birds visiting her. Various things happen in the story, but eventually she dies in her sleep. The birds congregate outside her bedroom window, and peck at it until the glass shatters. In a great flurry of wings, they fly into the house, pick up her body and carry her back to Bird Mountain. Thousands of birds form a river in the sky as they take her home.
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Heather KT
Registered User
(9/6/04 9:39 pm)
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Birds
If medieval folklore isn't too "dated" for your project, you might take a look at the Aberdeen Bestiary, which I just found on-line last week--
www.abdn.ac.uk/bestiary/bestiary.hti
It's a 12th-13th century manuscript, with references to a variety of birds (check the index), including swans, doves, crows, hawks, etc.
Heather
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Terri Windling
Registered User
(9/7/04 7:54 am)
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Re: Birds
There's an article on "The Magical Lore of Birds" on the
Endicott site: www.endicott-studio.com/forbird.html.
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CrCeres
Unregistered User
(9/7/04 2:08 pm)
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Albatross
The link above is very good--I believe all the mythological birds I could remember were mentioned. There is one more bird that appears in a poem that has its own mythological flavor, however, which hasn't been mentioned. Coleridge's "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner" has an albatross that follows a ship lost amongst icebergs. When one of the sailors shoots it the ship is becalmed and everyone but him dies (the bird, apparently, was the pet of some local deity). Though the albatross is not the soul-carrying bird you're looking for, it is connected to that idea, I think.
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Random
Registered User
(9/7/04 8:19 pm)
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Birds in stories
This probably isn't quite what you want, but a couple of fairytales that I can think of in which birds are important (that haven't, to my knowledge, been mentioned yet) are 'Jorinda and Joringel', where she gets turned into a nightingale, and 'the Juniper Tree' where the boy is reincarnated as a bird in order to punish the wicked stepmother.
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Celeste
Unregistered User
(9/7/04 8:43 pm)
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Terri's link
I've clicked on Terri's link 4 times and on each occasion my Internet Browser (Explorer 5.1) has crashed. I can't recall that happening to me with any other site.
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midori snyder
Registered User
(9/8/04 3:55 am)
ezSupporter
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Re: Terri's link
Hi Celeste,
As Endicott's website trouble shooter I am sorry to hear of your
trouble. I have checked the link out on several browsers and computers
and can't seem to duplicate your problem. Can you enter the site
without trouble if you go through the main page? www.endicott-studio.com--if
you can get there, click on the "Reading Room" and that
will show you the list of articles--where you will find "Lore
of Birds." If you still have trouble, please let me know and
I will try to puzzle it further.
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Celeste
Unregistered User
(9/8/04 6:59 pm)
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Magical Lore of Birds
Hi Midori, yes, same problem doing it that way too, the page starts loading for about 2 seconds and then Explorer unexpectedly quits.
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midori snyder
Registered User
(9/10/04 4:20 am)
ezSupporter
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Re: Magical Lore of Birds
Hmmm...let me check with our webserver. The only other 2 questions I can think to ask are you are using dial up or broadband and is it happening when you visit any other pages on the Endicott site? (also if you have some kind of internet security program, you might want to check for virus or spyware stuff cluttering up your computer. My school computer behaved in a similar fashion--half loading only certain pages and then crashing--its was maddening until we cleaned out the spyware roaming through it.)
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redtriskell
Registered User
(9/11/04 12:52 am)
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the guff and albatrosses
I think the folklore reference to the hall of souls is called the guff. It is a repository of all souls- supposedly when the last soul is used, the apocolypse will follow. I read about this in a very old Oxford Biblical Apocrypha. It was interesting reading, and used to fairly good effect in the movie, "The Seventh Sign" with Demi Moore. The movie (surprise, surprise) simplified the story a bit. On another note, the albatross is widely held in marine lore to be the spirit of drowned sailors. Hence the mariner's evil fortune for killing one in the poem. It is also one of the first birds one sees when getting close to land. The albatross flies quite far out to sea, so I suppose it would be a good omen when one was heading home.
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tapestrybee
Registered User
(9/23/04 12:10 am)
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Re: the guff and albatrosses
Neil Ruff, a Jungian analyst in San Francisco, wrote a book called "Animal Guides in Myth, Life and Dreams" in which there is part of a chapter on birds. There is no back index in this short book, so could not find the guff, but he does site Marja Gimbutas work with waterbirds, and later references by the author to "Hansel and Gretel," Aphrodite's image on a goose, among other references.
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mikalina
Registered User
(9/24/04 9:07 am)
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thanks!
i am working on this show with sarah and i just wanted to thank all of you--the endicott site is really wonderful--and i think the biblical reference will be useful too. what a wonderful resource you all are!!1:D
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sarahbendix
Unregistered User
(10/6/04 10:33 pm)
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THANK YOU!!!
Yes, yes, I heartily second Mikalina. Thank you all so much for your help, I can not even tell you all how much we appreciate it!
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