Untitled - Centrostudirpinia.it

COCK. EAVEN. 671
ing for fear of him : monasteries eo quod Gallus, deus ejus,
ignipotens sit, tandem omisso (ibid. 106). 1
Tit. 407: iiz golde
ein ar geroetet, gefiuret unde gefunkelt ufjeglich
kriuze gelcetet/
True, the cock is an emblem of vigilance, and the watchman, to
2 command a wide view, must be highly placed but it is
;
quite
possible that the Christian teachers, to humour a heathen custom
of tying cocks to the tops of holy trees, made room for them on
church-towers also, and merely put a more general meaning on
the symbol afterwards (see Suppl.).
At the head of wildfowl the eagle stands as king, and is the
messenger of Jove. In our beast-fables the raven seems to take
upon him the parts both of wolf and of fox, uniting the greed
of the one with the other s cunning. Two ravens, Huginn and
Muninn, are, like the two wolves, constant companions of CVSinn
(p. 147) ; their names express power of thought and remembrance :
Compare the sage
sparrow (sporr) of the Norse king Dag (Yngl. saga 21), who
gathers news for him out of all countries, and whose death he
avenges by an invasion. Those scouts of OSinn seem to be
alluded to in several stories, e.g., Olaf Tryggv. cap. 28, where
they bring him tidings of all that happens. 3
screaming ravens testify that Oftinn accepts the offering pre
sented ; and in Nialss. 119 two ravens attend a traveller all day.
In like manner St. Gregory is escorted by three flying ravens,
Paul. Diac. 1, 26. In the beautiful myth of king Oswald, the
raven who gets his plumage bound with gold (conf. the falcon,
Ms. 1, 38 b ) acts an essential part : he has nothing
of the fiendish
nature afterwards imputed to this bird. It shews the same
tendency, that where the Bible says of the raven sent out of the
ark by Noah, simply that he e%e~\,@a)v ov/c dveaTpetye (Gren. 8, 7),
of Herzfeld
1 All very legendary for the ; Hungarian attack on the monastery
(Hirutfeld) on the Lippe is related much in the same way in the Vita S. Idae, viz.
that having scaled the nolarius, but not succeeded in wrenching off the bells, they
suddenly fled, aliquid ibi esse divalis numinis suspicati sunt (Pertz 2, 573). Here
the cock does not come into play, the bells do it all.
2 Minister s Sinnbilder der alteii Christen, p. 55. As Gregory the Great explains
gallus by praedicator (Opp., Paris 1705. i, 959. 961), and again speculator by the
same praedicator, he may in the following passage have had the cock in view,
without naming him : speculator semper in altitudine stat, ut quidquid ventururn
sit longe prospiciat, ibid, i, 1283.
3 In a Slovenic fairy-tale somebody had a raven (vrdna) who was all-knowing
(vedezh), and used to tell him everything when he came home. Murko s Sloven,
deutsches \vtb. Gratz 1833. p. 696.