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 152
- Rights
- public_domain
- Language
- English
- Record updated
- 2026-08-25
Record summary
From the gloomy serpent of night, the tenebrous serpent of winter, even the nocturnal and wintry heavens illumined by the moon, and from the white moon, emerges the diurnal sun, the sun of spring, the day and the warm and luminous season
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 onlyFrom the gloomy serpent of night, the tenebrous serpent of winter, even the nocturnal and wintry heavens illumined by the moon, and from the white moon, emerges the diurnal sun, the sun of spring, the day and the warm and luminous season. The ogre, dragon, or serpent keeps back the waters in the cloud and the waters in the rivers, occupies the fountains, lies at the roots of the tree which yields honey, of the ambrosial tree, of the tree in the midst of the lake of milk; the tree and the phallos are again identified. The Phrygian Attis, loved by Cybele, is deprived of his phallos, and expires; Cybele transforms him into a pine tree (which is cone-bearing and evergreen, which resists, like the moon, even the rigours of winter), in which the funereal and regeneratory phallos is personified; the cypress (cone-bearing and evergreen), which the three brothers of the fairy tales must watch during the night, and which only the youngest brother succeeds in delivering from the dragon or serpent which carries it away, is also represented in Persian tradition as in the middle of a lake of ambrosia.
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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