THE CUCKOO, THE HERON, THE HEATHCOCK, THE PARTRIDGE, THE NIGHTINGALE, THE SWALLOW, THE SPARROW, AND
- Date of account
- English edition published 1872
- Source
- Zoological Mythology; or, The Legends of Animals, Volume 2 (of 2)
- Reference
- Zoological Mythology; or, The Legends of Animals, Volume 2 (of 2) · selected passage 45
- Rights
- public_domain
- Language
- English
- Record updated
- 2026-08-25
Record summary
Among the customs of the primitive Christians condemned by St Augustine, St Maximus of Turin, and other sacred writers, was that of disguising one's self on the 1st of January as a hind or an old woman
Published source text
Read the available text below. Archive transcriptions may contain OCR errors; later context is labelled separately. A recorded claim is not a finding that it happened.
Source passage
Source text · mention onlyAmong the customs of the primitive Christians condemned by St Augustine, St Maximus of Turin, and other sacred writers, was that of disguising one's self on the 1st of January as a hind or an old woman. The old woman and the hind here evidently represent the witch or ugly woman of winter; and inasmuch as the winter is, like the night, under the moon's influence, the disguise of a hind was another way of representing the moon. When the moon or the sun shines, the hind is luminous and generally propitious, the wild goat is beneficent (the wild goat, the deer, and the stag are the same in the myths; the same word, _mrigas_, serves in India to express the constellation of the gazelle and that of the capricorn or wild goat), and hunts the wolves away from the sleeping hero in the forest.[139] When the sky is dark, the hind, from being luminous, has become black, and, as such, is the most sinister of omens; sometimes, in the midst of the night or of the winter, the beautiful luminous hind, or moon, or sun, disappears, and the black monster of night or of winter remains alone.
Historical context
Contextual commentary · mention onlyThis material belongs to a folklore tradition. Story type, collector, community, transmission and literary editing matter when comparing it with other sources.
Modern context
Contextual commentary · mention onlyLattice compares motifs and reported features without assuming that a traditional being is a biological species or that similar stories document one external cause.
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