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 96
Rights: public_domain
Language: English
Record updated: 2026-08-25

Record summary

By means of this sack the old man recovers the former one, and reduces his wife to obedience

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

By means of this sack the old man recovers the former one, and reduces his wife to obedience. In a variety of the same story, the stork makes to the foolish hero three presents--a horse which, when it is told to stop, is transformed into a heap of money, and, when it is told to go on, resumes its former shape; a tablecloth which both spreads itself and takes itself off; and a horn out of which come the two young floggers. In the thirty-seventh story of the fourth book of _Afanassieff_, the stork is said to be the brother of the woodcock, and they cut hay together, but do nothing else. We mentioned, in the chapter on the Bear, the storks that eat the harvests of a peasant who threatens to cut off their feet. They upset a barrel of wine in order to drink its contents; the indignant peasant takes and binds them to his waggon, but the inebriated storks are so strong, that they carry peasant, waggon, and horse up into the air. Here the stork assumes a diabolical aspect, as the representative of the wintry season; the chariot of the peasant is that of the sun.

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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