the birds get their revenge

By anders pearson 23 Oct 2005

i’ve been reading <a href=”http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0684826305/“>The Golden Bough</a> lately. it’s sort of an exhaustive study of old rituals, myths, and superstitions. the other night i came across this passage in the chapter on rituals for transference of evil or illness to animals (page 631):

A Bohemian cure for fever is to go out into the forest before the sun is up and look for a snipe’s nest. When you have found it, take out one of the young birds and keep it beside you for three days. Then go back into the wood and set the snipe free. The fever will leave you at once. The snipe has taken it away. So in Vedic times the Hindoos of old sent consumption away with a blue jay. They said, “O consumption, fly away, fly away with the blue jay! With the wild rush of the storm and the whirlwind, oh, vanish away!” In the village of Llandegla in Wales there is a church dedicated to the virgin martyr St. Tecla, where the falling sickness is, or used to be, cured by being transferred to a fowl. The patient first washed his limbs in a sacred well hard by, dropped fourpence into it as an offering, walked thrice round the well, and thrice repeated the Lord’s prayer. Then the fowl, which was a cock or a hen according as the patient was a man or a woman, was put into a basket and carried round first the well and afterwards the church. Next the sufferer entered the church and lay down under the communion table till break of day. After that he offered sixpence and departed, leaving the fowl in the church. If the bird died, the sickness was supposed to have been transferred to it from the man or woman, who was now rid of the disorder. As late as 1855 the old parish clerk of the village remembered quite well to have seen the birds staggering about from the effects of the fits which had been transferred to them.

reading that, it occurred to me that with all the avian flu stuff going on now, that the tables have turned. now the birds are transferring the sickness back to us.

Tags: birds avian flu ritual anthropology