Research source

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 62
Rights: public_domain
Language: English
Record updated: 2026-08-25

Record summary

piegel says in a note, Khorda-Avesta, p

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 only

piegel says in a note, _Khorda-Avesta_, p. 147: "Die Beschwörung vormittelst einer Feder ist gewiss eine alteranische Vorstellung."--In a story, hitherto unpublished, of the Monferrato, communicated to me by Signor Ferraro, a woman, who had gone to eat parsley in the garden of a sorceress, was obliged to give her daughter up to her as a penalty for the offence. The girl was afterwards subjected to three difficult trials; to sunder in one day a mountain of wheat and millet into the grains composing it, to eat in one day a mountain of apples, and to wash, dry, and iron in one hour all the linen of a year. In the first trial, by means of two bird's feathers, she calls up a thousand birds, who separate the grain from the millet.--In the fourth story of the fifth book of the _Pentamerone_, the birds strip themselves of their feathers to fill a mattress which the witch has ordered the young Permetella to make.

Historical context

Contextual commentary · mention only

This 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 only

Lattice 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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