G, GORT, ivy in the Ogham alphabet. The bird ... - Rodney Mackay

totem animals of all the Gaelic Fomors or sea-giants and
their relations, especially the Tuathan-Milesians god known
as the Dagda and his daughter/sister/spouse, Mhorrigan, the
goddess of fate. Folklorist
Edward D. Ives had no difficulty assembling more than
a hundred versions of northeastern American folk tales
suggesting the disadvantages falling upon men who offended
these birds. To begin, it has to be noted that the garrag
family is more extensive in Maritime Canada and Maine than
in the Old World. Within the crow family one finds the
ravens, and the jays, the latter group being subdivided into
the Blue Jays and Canada Jays. Any one of these may be
entitled a "corby" or "gorby," but the Canada Jay has a vast
number of nicknames. We have seen him referred to as the
moose bird, the meat-bird, the grease-bird, the greaser, the
whisky-jack, the jack-whisky, the whisky john, the john
whisky, Hudson's Bay bird, caribou bird, venison hawk, grey
jay, woodsman's friend, moosebird, and camp-robber. Most
people are fairly familiar with a crow; the raven is an
enlarged version with laryngitis. The Canada Jay has been
described as a little like a robin, but with grey feathers,
excepting a white throat and forehead and a black cap. Its
cousin, the Blue Jay is essentially a similar bird but blue in
colour. All this tribe are known for their audacity, thieving
characteristics, bottomless appetites and ability to
"supernaturally" signal, to one another, the presence of food.
It has been suggested that these are the
characteristics of lumbermen, which may account for the
superstition that the gorbys reincarnate the souls of dead
woods-workers. Those who are better informed suspect
that their bodies enclose the spirits of malevolent minor
deities or that they are simply the totem-animals of
witches. Whatever the belief, few woodsman will
knowingly injure any of these birds. "Anything that happens
to a garbie is likely to happen to you...I know a woodsman
who kicked at one which was stealing his lunch. He broke
its leg; a day after that, this same man got his foot caught
in the trace-chain of a scoot and suffered a fractured leg."