Birds

The link of birds with the sky evoked the belief that they were in contact with divine beings living high up, or that they were even intermediaries between humans and gods, and that they knew secrets and wisdom, and could bring predictions and messages. The weather was often forecasted by their behaviour. Even more - the one who knew the language of birds could hear many secrets and indeed, advance in life with their help. Estonian lore often refers to birds as messengers. For example, according to records, a bird knocking on the window or the cuckooing of a cuckoo near the house was a death omen. Black birds such as ravens and crows bring bad messages, most often in regilaul songs they are related to war. However, these ideas do have a wider social and cultural background, for example, Celtic and Irish war goddesses were believed to appear in the shape of a raven or crow as these birds are scavengers and often gather on the battlefield. In another regilaul, a woman married to an evil man reproaches the birds that they did not warn her in time. In fairy tales about animals, birds usually signify wisdom and can deceive even a generally known-to-be smart animal such as the fox.
    Estonians, being rural people, were very familiar with the lives and sounds of birds, but there was less knowledge of their migration, for which it was supposed some birds were in hibernation or transformation during winter.
    Wild birds and their eggs were important in people’s diet but hunting them was organised by habits. Hunting too much or at a wrong time could be punished by the Forest Spirit as narrated by the lore. These are probably very ancient stories about the Forest Spirit appearing in a form of supernatural bird. On the other hand, the nesting places of birds were generally not disturbed in spring or summer as the forestry work period was in winter.
    Bird’s eggs were attributed magic powers and were known as fertility symbols. The birth of a chick from a stone-like egg with a hard shell embodied one of the greatest miracles – the genesis of life out of an element to all appearances lifeless. In Estonia, as in many other countries, the painting of eggs is related to the spring feasts and awakening of nature and fertility. At Easter, girls brought painted eggs to the swing and offered them to boys. In Orthodox Setomaa, the eggs were rolled down slopes. This ritual was also known in other countries, in England for example.
    The best-known magic spell in Estonia is for sending diseases to black birds: “Kiirmus, kaarmus, magpie, take a disease, crow, take a pain...”. The idea is based on the belief that the bad cannot be fully removed from the world, but it can be sent elsewhere. Considering that the scavengers clean the world of bacteria and infectious diseases, this figure contains a grain of truth. 

The classification of birds 

The wild birds are divided into groups, listed in the menu and published on separate subpages. Below, on the current page, there are folklore texts in which the main characters are birds of different types. Poultry is included in the other main topic, "Home".

The classification of birds, based on folklore, takes into account both the content and amount of texts.

Black birds: Corvidae – raven, crow, magpie, jackdaw, jay, nutcracker etc.

Water birds – geese, swans, ducks, barnacle geese, seagulls and others.

Crane and stork.

Songbirds – swallow, lark, nightingale, starling, blackbird and others. The term songbird is used in the popular sense here, because all Estonian passerines, including crows, are officially songbirds.

Cuckoo.

Wild Galliformes – grouses, partridge and common quail.

Raptors – eagles, hawks etc.

Other birds – woodpeckers, doves etc.

The texts featuring several birds

Just as they do in nature, several different types of birds can appear together in one folklore text – and such texts are gathered on this page. In particular, outwardly similar birds tend to appear together in folklore, for example, large waterfowl – geese, swans – together with storks, which are not waterfowl. In the same way, sometimes very different birds, such as a tall crane and a small partridge, come together in a tale; in another version of the same tale, the characters are the stork and the crane. 
    In several proverbs, birds are listed together with their association to the weathercast. Such proverbs usually indicate consecutive changes in nature during the birds' migration. The birds also can presage fate, depending on the time of their singing. The structure of these proverbs with several repetitions is similar to the parallelism of regilaul song where an idea is developed over the course of similar lines. Finnish folklorist Matti Kuusi (1956) considers this structure of repetitions to date back at least a thousand years, to Viking times. 
    The riddles usually reflect the overall structure and appearance of the object. Therefore, similar-looking birds might share the same riddles. In this case, what kind of bird was meant probably depended on the local tradition. Thus, in the wider context of Estonia, there may be several correct answers.

Taive Särg