Ragozin tells us that in the _Vendida_, the “Bible” of the ancient Medes, great credit is given to the cock as the messenger who calls men to the performance of their religious duties: “Arise, O men! Whichever first gets up shall enter paradise!” A Hebrew legendary saying is that when a cock crows before dawn it warns: “Remember thy Creator, O thoughtless man!” Finally Drayton sings of—
The cock, the country horologe that rings The cheerful warning to the sun’s awake.
Nowadays, if chanticleer calls to mind anything in particular, except wrath at his too early rising to adore the god of day, it is the spirit of boastfulness and “cocksureness”; while his humble mate represents maternal cares carried to the extreme of fussiness.
The names of a good many birds serve as synonyms of prevailing ideas, or become figures of speech, without having a special myth or story behind them. Thus the words _eagle_ and _falcon_ convey to the listener the notion of nobility in power, while _hawk_ simply means fierceness, with somewhat of prying, detective skill. _Owl_ provokes in the imagination a rather smiling picture of solemn pretence of wisdom—a reputation, by the way, almost wholly due to the little European screech-owl’s accidental association with Pallas Athene. _Swallow_ suggests spring all over the world; _goose_ and _gull_ connote easy credulity and foolishness; _vulture_ and _raven_, rapine and cruelty; _parrot_ senseless chatter or the lavish repetition of another’s ideas or sayings; _cuckoo_, poaching on another man’s domestic preserves; and so on down to the _stork_, which in Germany symbolizes filial piety because of its fancied solicitude toward aged storks, and which children are taught to believe brings babies from the fountain to their mothers’ laps. The Chinese and Japanese peasantry hold the _Mandarin duck_ in high esteem as a model of conjugal virtues, because it is said to mate for life, and Hindoos feel the same toward their (sarus) _crane_—a bird that figures extensively in the legendary lore of both China and Japan. Figures of the crane are found decorating bridal attire in Japan, and this bird is commended to womankind generally in Nippon as an example of motherhood to be emulated. “In this respect it is like the _pheasant_, which is said to stay by her young during a grass-fire, covering them with her outstretched wings until, together, they perish in the flames; for in a similar way the crane shields her young from the bitter cold of the winter snows.”