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 104
- Rights
- public_domain
- Language
- English
- Record updated
- 2026-08-25
Record summary
which, accompanied sometimes by songs and proverbs, so many popular customs, mythologically in accordance, are current in the various countries of Europe, celebrate the resurrection of the celestial egg, a symbol of abundance,[432] the sun of spring
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 onlywhich, accompanied sometimes by songs and proverbs, so many popular customs, mythologically in accordance, are current in the various countries of Europe, celebrate the resurrection of the celestial egg, a symbol of abundance,[432] the sun of spring. The hen of the fable and the fairy tales, which lays golden eggs, is the mythical hen (the earth or the sky) which gives birth every day to the sun. The golden egg is the beginning of life in Orphic and Hindoo cosmogony; by the golden egg the world begins to move, and movement is the principle of good. The golden egg brings forth the luminous, laborious, and beneficent day. Hence it is an excellent augury to begin with the egg, which represents the principle of good, whence the equivocal Latin proverb, "Ab ovo ad malum," which signified "from good to evil," but which properly meant, "from the egg to the apple," the Latins being accustomed to begin their dinners with hard-boiled eggs and to end them with apples (a custom which is still preserved among numerous Italian families).[433]
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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