The folklore of birds: An enquiry into the origin & distribution of some magico-religious traditions

Collins New Naturalist #39

by Edward Allworthy Armstrong

1959 FIRST US EDITION w/ original dustwrapper

Genres: Birds, Folklore, Nonfiction

272 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1958

About the author

Edward Allworthy Armstrong (1900–1978) was a British ornithologist and Church of England clergyman.

Armstrong was the author of a number of ornithological books, including Bird display: an introduction to the study of bird psychology (1942), The Wren (New Naturalist Monograph no.3) (1955) and The study of bird song (1963). He was awarded the John Burroughs Medal for his book Birds of the Grey Wind.

Reviews

[ALX · Rating 3 out of 5]

I picked this up as a counterpoint to a book about the symbolism of birds to Medieval Christians. The Folklore of Birds doesn't contain many religious references so I got what I wanted there. But this book was published in 1958 and focuses almost exclusively on British folklore, so much of the time I felt I was missing a lot of the background that would be obvious to an English person who grew up around the 1950s. Still, there's a ton of very interesting and strange descriptions of beliefs, rituals and stories about a variety of birds. I also loved all the pictures and drawings of rock engravings, ritual objects, cave paintings, reliefs and burial objects from prehistory to more recent times which gave a lot of context and enjoyment to the folklore. One complaint is that I wish the author had given the Latin names for the birds mentioned, only the common names are given so it's harder to do further research.