schamir, is the dark storm-cloud, so the rock-splitting worm
or plant or pebble which the bird carries in its beak and lets
fall to the ground is nothing more or less than the flash of
lightning carried and dropped by the cloud. "If the cloud was
supposed to be a great bird, the lightnings were regarded as
writhing worms or serpents in its beak. These fiery serpents,
elikiai gram-moeidws feromenoi, are believed in to this day by
the Canadian Indians, who call the thunder their hissing."[41]

[41] Baring-Gould, Curious Myths, Vol. II. p. 146. Compare
Tylor, Primitive Culture, Vol. II. p. 237, seq.

But these are not the only mythical conceptions which are to
be found wrapped up in the various myths of schamir and the
divining-rod. The persons who told these stories were not
weaving ingenious allegories about thunder-storms; they were
telling stories, or giving utterance to superstitions, of
which the original meaning was forgotten. The old grannies
who, along with a stoical indifference to the fate of quails
and partridges, used to impress upon me the wickedness of
killing robins, did not add that I should be struck by
lightning if I failed to heed their admonitions. They had
never heard that the robin was the bird of Thor; they merely
rehearsed the remnant of the superstition which had survived
to their own times, while the essential part of it had long
since faded from recollection. The reason for regarding a
robin's life as more sacred than a partridge's had been
forgotten; but it left behind, as was natural, a vague
recognition of that mythical sanctity. The primitive meaning
of a myth fades away as inevitably as the primitive meaning of