Eagle: A large bird of prey with a powerful hooked bill and strong soaring flight.
The eagle is often presented as a valorous and majestic creature, and many admire the bird for good reason. It is a revered bird with a symbolic and rich history. Like the hawk, or the vulture, it has the ability to strike both fear and awe in the reactions of those who observe the bird while in flight or hunting. The swooping motion of the eagle, and its soaring capabilities, have inspired many great minds to look towards the skies and dream one day of being able to fly.
Greek Myth: The eagle appears in many Greek tales as an accompanying and guiding figure, a symbol, and as a creature of transformation. In the work Mythology by Edith Hamilton she describes Zeus;
"His breastplate was the aegis, awful to behold; his bird was the eagle, his tree the oak. His oracle was Dodona in the land of oak trees. The god's will was revealed by the rustling of the oak leaves which the priests interpreted."
Hamilton writes of the labours of Psyche, imposed on the girl by the Goddess Venus, one of which required her to fill a flask with blackened water from the river Styx, the creature of the eagle was kind enough to help her;
"That was the worst task yet, as Psyche saw when she approached the waterfall. Only a winged creature could reach it, so steep and slimy were the rocks on all sides, and so fearful the onrush of the descending waters. But by this time it must be evident to all the readers of this story as perhaps, deep in her heart it had become evident to Psyche herself that although each of her trials seemed impossibly hard, an excellent way out would always be provided for her. This time her saviour was an eagle, who poised on his great wings beside her, seized the flask from her with his beak and brought it back to her full of the black water."
In the story of Nisus and Scylla, the King of Megara, Nisus possessed a lock of purple hair that grew from his head that he had been warned never to chop off, the welfare and safety of his kingdom depended upon it. His daughter, Scylla, while the king was sleeping, snipped it off. She took the lock of hair to Minos, whom she loved and admitted the act she had committed. Minos was mortified by this and fled from her presence. The city was overtaken by the Cretans who banked ashore and conquered their land. When Minos was about to disembark in a boat, Scylla jumped into the vessel and tried to leave with him. Her father swooped down in the form of an eagle, the gods had taken pity on him and transformed him into the bird, and his talons closed around her and carried her off. When she fell from her father's clutches, she, too, was changed into a bird.
Hamilton on the figure Sisyphus;
"Sisyphus was King of Corinth. One day he chanced to see a mighty eagle, greater and more splendid than any mortal bird, bearing a maiden to an island not far away. When the river-god Asopus came to him tell him that his daughter Aegina had been carried off, he strongly suspected Zeus, and to ask his help in finding her, Sisyphus told him what he had seen. Thereby he drew down on himself the relentless wrath of Zeus. In Hades he was punished by having to try forever to roll a rock uphill which forever rolled back upon him. Nor did he help Asopus. The river-god went to the island but Zeus drove him away with his thunderbolt. The name of the island was changed to Aegina in honor of the maiden, and her son Aeacus was the grandfather of Achilles, who was called sometimes Aecides, descendant of Aeacus."
Celtic Mythology: There is the legend of a figure known as Tuan mac Carell. The man was reportedly a chief that was visited by an Irish abott. After having received such warm hospitality from the man, he and all of his disciples were invited back by the chief. Tuan mac Carell recounted the history of Ireland for the inquiring men, where he described all he had witnessed in his many lives, and he revealed he could change form, and at the end of one life, he was simply reborn again under the guise of another as a different animal, with all his former memories still intact to the new form. In the work Celtic Myths and Legends by T.W. Rolleston, he writes of Tuan who describes the shape-shifting process of his many forms;
"I was long-haired, clawed, decrepit, grey, naked, wretched, miserable. Then one evening I fell asleep, and when I woke again on the morrow I was changed into a stag. I was young again, and glad of heart. Then I sang of the coming of Nemed and of his race, and of my own transformation...'I have put on a new form, a skin rough and grey. Victory and joy are easy to me; a little while ago I was weak and defenceless."
Rolleston goes on to write of Tuan's description of the race of the Nemedians;
"Tuan is the king of all the deer of Ireland, and so remained all the days of Nemed and his race. He tells how the Nemedians sailed for Ireland in a fleet of thirty-two barks, in each bark thirty persons. They went astray on the seas for a year and a half, and most of them perished of hunger and thirst or of shipwreck. Nine only escaped-Nemed himself, with four men and four women. These landed in Ireland, and increased their numbers in the course of time till they were 8060 men and women. Then all of them mysteriously died. Again old age and decrepitude fell upon Tuan, but another transformation awaited him."
Rolleston has written as from Tuan;
"Once I was standing at the mouth of my cave-I still remember it-and I knew my body was changing into another form. I was a wild boar..Then I became young again, and I was glad. I was king of the boar herds in Ireland; and, faithful to any custom, I went in the rounds of my abode when I returned into the lands of Ulster, at the times old age and wretchedness came upon me. For it was always there that my transformation took place, and that is why I went back thither to await the renewal of my body."
Tuan is later written to have described the lineage of the Firblogs, (the giants), who descended from Semion son of Stariat who settled in Ireland, and then goes on to tell another transformation experienced by Tuan;
"He becomes a 'great eagle of the sea,' and once more rejoices in renewed youth and vigour. He then tells how the people of Dana came in, 'gods and false gods from whom everyone knows the Irish men of learning are sprung.' After these came the Sons of Miled, who conquered the people of Dana. All this time Tuan kept the shape of the sea-eagle, till one day, finding himself about to undergo another transformation, he fasted nine days; 'then fell asleep upon me, and I was changed into a salmon.' He rejoices in his new life, escaping for many years the snares of the fishermen, till at last he is captured by one of them and brought to the wife of Carell, chief of the country. 'The woman desired me and ate me by herself, whole, so that I passed into her womb."
Rolleston writes of the permanence of his memory, and lived experiences that get passed on into every new form he assumes;
"He is born again, and passes for Tuan son of Carell; but the memory of his pre-existence an all his transformations and all the history of Ireland that he witnessed since the days of Parthalon still abides with him, and he teaches these things to the Christian monks, who carefully preserve him. This wild tale, with its atmosphere of grey antiquity and of childlike wonder, reminds us of the transformations of the Welsh Taliessen, who also became an eagle, and points to that doctrine of the transmigration of the soul which, as we have seen, haunted the imagination of the Celt."
Rolleston writes of a specific destination from the Voyage of Maeldun, a journey undertaken by the warrior Maeldun and his company through multiple islands. He included this passage;
The Island of the Eagle
A large island, with woods of oak and yew on one side of it, and on the other, a plain, whereon were herds of sheep, and a little lake in it; and there also they found a small church and a fort, and an ancient grey cleric clad only in his hair. Maeldun asked him who he was.
'I am the fifteenth man of the monks of St. Brennan of Birr,' he said. 'We went on our pilgrimage into the ocean, and they have all died save me alone.' He showed them the tablet..of the Holy Brennan, and they prostrated themselves before it, and Maeldun kissed it. They stayed there for a season, feeding on the sheep of the island.
One day they saw what seemed to be a cloud coming up from the south-west. As it drew near, however, they saw the waving of pinions and perceived that it was an enormous bird. It came into the island, and, alighting very wearily on a hill near the lake, it began eating the red berries, like grapes, which grew on a huge tree branch as big as a full-grown oak, that it had brought with it, and the juice and fragments of the berries fell into the lake, reddening all the water. Fearful that it would seize them in its talons and bear them out to sea, they lay hid in the woods and watched it. After a while however, Maeldun went out to the foot of the hill, but the bird did him no harm, and then the rest followed cautiously, behind their shields, and one of them gathered the berries off the branch which the bird held in its talons, but it did them no evil, and regarded them not at all. And they saw that it was very old, and its plumage dull and decayed.
At the hour of noon two eagles came up from the southwest and alit in front the great bird, and after resting awhile they set to work picking off the insects that infested its jaws and eyes and ears. This they continued till vespers, when all three ate of the berries again. At last, on the following day, when the great bird had been completely cleansed, it plunged into the lake, and again the two eagles picked and cleansed it. Till the third day the great bird remained preening and shaking its pinions, and its feathers became glossy and abundant, and then, soaring upwards, it flew thrice round the island, and away to the quarter whence it had come, and its flight was now swift and strong; whence it was manifest to them that this had been its renewal from old age to youth, according as the prophet said, Thy youth is renewed like the eagle.
Then Diuran said: 'Let us bathe in the lake and renew ourselves where the bird hath been renewed.' 'Nay,' said another, 'for the bird hath left his venom in it.' But Diuran plunged in and drank of the water. From that time so long as he lived his eyes were strong and keen and not a tooth fell from his jaw nor a hair from his head, and he never knew illness or infirmity. Thereafter they bade farewell to the anchorite, and fared forth on the ocean once more.
Norse Mythology: The eagle was an ever-watchful creature in the Nordic tales. The bird was knows to perch at the height of the cosmic world tree known as Yggdrasil. In the work by H.A. Greuber, Myths from the Norsemen from the Eddas and Sagas, there are many appearances of the eagle in the text. Greuber writes of the eagle with its companion the falcon on top of Yggdrasil;
"From its three great roots the tree attained such a marvellous height that its topmost bough, called Lerad (the peace-giver), overshadowed Odin's hall, while the other wide-spreading branches towered over the other worlds. An eagle was perched on the bough of Lerad, and between the eyes sat the falcon Vedfolnir, sending his piercing glances down into heaven, earth, and Nifl-heim, and reporting all that he saw."
Greuber writes of the connections between the animals that lived within the tree;
"Scampering continually up and down the branched and trunk of the tree, the squirrel Ratatosk (branch-borer), the typical busy-body and tale-bearer, passed its time repeating to the dragon below the remarks of the eagle above, and vice-versa, in the hope of stirring up strife between them."
Greuber describes the halls of Valhalla, where the eagle was a noticeable part of the decorum;
"This palace, called Valhalla (the hall of the chosen slain), had five hundred and forty doors, wide enough to allow the passage of eight-hundred warriors abreast, and above the principal gate were a boar's head and an eagle whose piercing glance penetrated to the far corners of the world. The walls of this marvellous building were fashioned of glittering spears, so highly polished that they illuminated the hall. The roof was of golden shields, and the benched were decorated with fine armour, the god's gifts to his guests. Here long tables afforded ample accommodation for the Einheriar, warriors fallen in battle, who were especially favoured by Odin."
The eagle also is a part of the armour of the great god Odin, which is described in a passage about Odin's Personal Appearance;
"Odin was generally represented as a tall, vigorous man, about fifty years of age, either with dark curling hair or with a long grey beard and bald head. He was clad in a suit of grey, with a blue hood, and his muscular body was enveloped in a wide blue mantle flecked with grey-an emblem of the sky with its fleecy clouds. In his hand Odin generally carried the infallible spear Gungnir, which was so sacred that an oath sworn upon its point could never be broken, and on his finger or arm he wore the marvellous ring, Draupnir, the emblem of fruitfulness, precious beyond compare. When seated upon his throne or armed for the fray, to mingle in which he would often descend to earth, Odin wore his eagle helmet; but when he wandered peacefully about the earth in human guise, to see what men were doing, he generally donned a broad-brimmed hat, drawn low over his forehead to conceal the fact that he possessed but one eye."
Odin was also known to wear feathered eagle plumes, Greuber writes of Odin taking flight after having drank from the vessels of special mead provided to him by the beautiful female figure Gunlod, whom he wooed in order to be granted some of the drink;
"Odin made good use of this permission and drank so deeply that he completely drained all three vessels. Then, having obtained all that he wanted, he emerged from the cave and, donning his eagle plumes, rose high into the blue, and, after hovering for a moment over the mountaintop, winged his flight towards Asgard."
The eagle is also written about as a creature of sacrifice by the Norns, who went by many names, they were prophetesses and had the power of divination. Grueber writes of the Norns;
"These prophetesses, who were also known as Idises, Dises, or Hagedises, officiated at the forest shrines, and in the sacred groves, and always accompanied invading armies. Riding ahead, or in the midst of the host, they would vehemently urge the warriors on to victory, and when the battle was over they would often cut the bloody eagle upon the bodies of the captives. The blood was collected into great tubs, wherein the Dises plunged their naked arms up to the shoulders, previous to joining in the wild dance with which the ceremony ended."
Fables: In Aesop's Fables, the Eagle appears in several stories; provided is a selection of tales taken from the Signet version by Jack Zipes;
The Eagle and the Fox
An eagle and a fox had lived together for a long time as good neighbours. The eagle's nest was on top of a high tree; the fox's lair, at the foot of it. One day, however, while the fox was away, the eagle could not find any food for her young ones. So she swooped down and carried off one of the fox's cubs to her nest, thinking that her lofty dwelling would protect her from the fox's revenge. She was about to divide cub. Since her entreaties were in vain, she ran to an altar in a neighbouring field and snatched a torch from the fire that had been lit to sacrifice a goat. Then she returned to the tree and set it on fire. The flames and smoke soon caused the eagle to worry about her young ones and her own life as well, and she returned the cub safe and sound to his mother.
The Fighting Cocks and the Eagle
Two young cocks were fighting fiercely for the right to rule a dunghill. At last, the one who was beaten crept into the corner of the hen house, covered with wounds. The victor flew straight to the top of an outhouse, clapped his wings, and crowed loudly to announce his victory. Just then an eagle swooped down from the sky, grabbed him with his talons, and carried him away. After watching all this from his hiding place, the defeated rival came out, took possession of the dunghill, and strutted about among his hens with all the dignity of a majestic king.
The Eagle and the Arrow
A bowman took aim at an eagle and struck him in the heart. As the eagle turned his head in the agony of death, he saw that the arrow was winged with his own feathers. 'How sharper and more painful,' said he, 'are the wounds made by weapons we ourselves have supplied!'
The Eagle and the Crow
A crow watched an eagle swoop down with majestic air from a nearby cliff, descend upon a flock of sheep, and then carry off a lamb in his talons. The whole thing looked so graceful and easy that the crow was eager to imitate it. So he swept down upon a large, fat ram with all the force he could muster and expected to carry him off as a prize. His claws became entangled in the wool, however, and as he tried to escape, he fluttered and made such a commotion that he drew the shepherd's attention, enabling the man to seize him and clip his wings. That evening the shepherd brought the bird home to his family, and his children asked, 'What kind of bird is this, Father?' 'Well,' he said, 'if you were to ask him, he would tell you that he's an eagle. But if you will take my word for it, I know him to be nothing but a poor crow.'
Animal Sacrifice: In the work by James Frazer, known as The Golden Bough, he writes in the chapter of Killing the Divine Animal, of hunting and pastoral tribes where it was customary to kill and eat the Gods they worshiped. With many of these animals that were slain and consumed, he writes of the belief in the renewed spirit of the animal, or their regeneration in some form or other, once dead. Frazer writes of the caged eagle that was worshiped by the Aino;
"The Aino keep eagles in cages, worship them as divinities and ask them to defend the people from evil. Yes, they offer the bird in sacrifice, and when they are about to do so they pray to him saying; 'O precious divinity, O thou divine bird, pray listen to my words. Thou dost not belong to this world, for thy home is with the Creator and his Golden eagles. This being so, I present thee with these inao and cakes and other precious things. Do thou ride upon the inao and ascend to thy glorious home in the glorious heavens. When thou arrives, assemble the deities of thy own kind and thank them for us for having governed the world. Do thou come again, I beseech thee, and rule over us. O my precious one, go thou quietly.'"
Frazer goes on to write about the gainful advantages of the Aino by this sacrificial exchange;
"Thus the Aino hopes to profit in various ways by slaughtering the creatures, which nevertheless, he treats as divine. He expects them to carry messages for him to their kindred or to the gods in the upper world; he hopes to partake of their virtues by imbibing parts of their bodies or in other ways; and apparently, he looks forward to their bodily resurrection in this world, which will enable him again to catch and kill them, and to reap all the benefits which he has already derived from their slaughter. For in the prayers addressed to the worshipful bear and worshipful eagle before they are knocked on the head the creatures are invited to come again, which seems clearly to point to a faith in their future resurrection."
Frazer further writes of the treatment of eagles and their preparation before being sacrificed and released from their bodies;
"When a Blackfoot Indian has caught eagles in a trap and killed them, he takes them home to a special lodge, called the eagle's lodge, which has been prepared for reception outside the camp. Here he sets the birds in a row on the ground, and propping up their heads on a stick, puts a piece of dried meat in each of their mouths in order that the spirits of the dead eagles may go and tell the other eagles how well they are being treated by the Indians. So when Indian hunters of the Orinoco region have killed an animal, they open its mouth and pour into it a few drops of liquor they generally carry with them, in order that the soul of the dead beast may inform its fellows of the welcome it has met with, and that they too, cheered by the prospect of the same kind of reception, may come with alacrity to be killed. A Cherokee hunter who has killed an eagle stands over the dead bird and prays it not to avenge itself on his tribe, because it is not he but a Spaniard who has done the cruel deed."
In the work by Alexander Porteous, The Forest in Folklore and Mythology, he writes of a virgin's visit to an orange tree;
"Professor de Gubernatis gives an Andalusian legend regarding the Orange tree. When the Virgin was traveling with the infant Jesus and Joseph, she came to an Orange tree which was guarded by an eagle. She begged the tree to give her one of its fruits, whereupon the eagle miraculously fell asleep. She then plucked three oranges, giving one to Jesus, one to Joseph, and keeping the third for herself. The golden apples of the Hesperides were in all probability oranges."
Tribes of North America: In the written work, The Myths of the North American Indians, by Lewis Spence, the eagle is worshiped, hunted, and consumed in various sections of the book;
Eagle Worship
The eagle appears to have been regarded with extreme veneration by the Red Man of the north. "Its feathers composed the war-flag of the Creeks, and its image carved in wood or its stuffed skin surmounted their council lodges. None but an approved warrior dared wear it among the Cherokees, and the Dakotas allowed such an honour only to him who had first touched the corpse of the common foe." The Natchez and other tribes esteemed it almost as a deity. The Zuni of New Mexico employed four of its feathers to represent the four winds when invoking the rain-god. Indeed, it was venerated by practically every tribe in North America. The owl, too, was employed as a symbol of wisdom, and sometimes, as by the Algonquins, was represented as the attendant of the Lord of the Dead. The Creek medicine-men carried a stuffed owl-skin as the badge of their fraternity and one above the 'medicine' stone in their council lodge. The dove also appears to have been looked upon as sacred by the Hurons and Mandans.
Spence writes of the Cree tribe and their method of catching eagles, taken from the passage of the Young Dog Dance;
"One day a young brave of the Cree tribe had gone out from his village to catch eagles, in order to provide himself with feathers for a war bonnet, or to tie in his hair. Now the Crees caught eagles in this fashion. On the top of a hill frequented by these birds, they would dig a pit and cover it over with a roof of poles, cunningly concealing the structure with grass. A piece of meat was fastened to the poles, so that the eagles, could not carry it off. Then the Indian, taking off his clothes, would descend into the pit, and remain there for hours, or days, as the case might be, until an eagle was attracted by the bait, when he would put his hand between the poles, seize the bird by the feet, and quickly dispatch it."
Fictional Works:
In the world of Middle-Earth designed by Tolkien, eagles operate as heroic creatures. They are of enormous size, rivaling that of large beasts or dragons even. They are not domesticated, they live in the wild and are their own masters, yet they are not impartial to the events of the war as they unfold. They come to they aid of Gandalf and when called and are shown swooping down in direct battle with the orcs and they are seen at they very end where they save Frodo and Sam from being swallowed up by the lava of the exploding volcano in Mordor.
In the fictional world of Conan the Barbarian by Robert E. Howard, he makes great use of terrible beasts of immense proportion whose prehistoric sizes have survived into the present landscape of his world (large cats, enormous snakes, dragons, etc). In the work of Conan the Destroyer, the character of the innocent, known as Genna, a woman-child who like the trapped maiden in the tower, has lived her whole life sequestered under the rule of an evil sorceress. She is removed from her palace of imprisonment and is sent forth on a quest accompanied by her man at arms, the warrior Conan and his company of a thief and a sorcerer. They set out to find the a mystical key and Genna is the only one who intuitively knows the way to the destination of the secret magical artifact, though never having actually been there before, she already knows the way. When they come across the palace where the key is believed to be harbored, they spend the night camped outside the dark abode. In the dead of night, the innocent Genna is kidnapped by the evil sorcerer who holds dominion over they mysterious palace. Having transformed himself into a great eagle, he swoops down and snatches the girl in the clutches of his talons and carries her off while all of her companions are asleep.
Poetry:
Eagle in New Mexico
Towards the sun, towards the southwest,
A scorched breast.
A scorched breast, breasting the sun like an answer,
Like a retort.
An eagle at the top of a low cedar-bush
On the sage-ash desert
Reflecting the scorch of the sun from his breast;
Eagle, with the sickle dripping darkly above.
Erect, scorched-pallid out of the hair of the cedar,
Erect, with the gold-thrust entering him from below,
Eagle gloved in feathers
In scorched white feathers
In burnt-dark feathers
In feathers still fire-rusted;
Sickle-overswept, sickle dripping over and above.
Sun-breaster,
Starting two ways at once, to right and left;
Masked-one
Dark-visaged
Sickle-masked
With iron between your two eyes;
You feather gloved
To the feet;
Foot-fierce;
Erect one;
The god-thrust entering you steadily from below.
You never look at the sun with your two eyes.
Only the inner eye of your scorched broad breast
Looks straight at the sun.
You are dark
Except scorch-pale-breasted;
And dark cleaves down and weapon-hard downward curving
At your scorched breast,
Like a sword of Damocles,
Beaked eagle,
You've dipped it in blood so many times
That dark-face weapon, to temper it well,
Blood-thirsty bird...
D.H. Lawrence