'Kalevala,' tells how Ilmarinen the Smith 'forged an eagle of
fire,' with 'boat's walls between the wings,' after which he
'sat down on the bird's back and bones,' and flew.

Pure myths, these, telling how the desire to fly was
characteristic of every age and every people, and how, from time
to time, there arose an experimenter bolder than his fellows,
who made some attempt to translate desire into achievement. And
the spirit that animated these pioneers, in a time when things
new were accounted things accursed, for the most part, has found
expression in this present century in the utter daring and
disregard of both danger and pain that stamps the flying man, a
type of humanity differing in spirit from his earthbound fellows
as fully as the soldier differs from the priest.

Throughout mediaeval times, records attest that here and there
some man believed in and attempted flight, and at the same
time it is clear that such were regarded as in league with the
powers of evil. There is the half-legend, half-history of
Simon the Magician, who, in the third year of the reign of Nero
announced that he would raise himself in the air, in order to
assert his superiority over St Paul. The legend states that by
the aid of certain demons whom he had prevailed on to assist
him, he actually lifted himself in the air-- but St Paul prayed
him down again. He slipped through the claws of the demons and
fell headlong on the Forum at Rome, breaking his neck. The
'demons' may have been some primitive form of hot-air balloon,
or a glider with which the magician attempted to rise into the
wind; more probably, however, Simon threatened to ascend and
made the attempt with apparatus as unsuitable as Bladud's wings,