ABSTRACT

The sense of this name has excited speculation. It clearly means a bee-wolf; only, what animal is that? I believe Mr Sweet once suggested that it means a bear, because bears are fond of honey [in an unpublished paper, see item 87]. I wish to draw attention to the fact that the Old Dutch biewolf, according to Kilian [1599], was a woodpecker. I read that the great black woodpecker is common in Norway and Sweden, and that its food consists of the larvae of wasps, bees, and other insects. Also, that the green woodpecker, found in most countries of Europe, has been known to take bees from a hive. The question remains, why should the woodpecker be selected as the type of a hero? The answer is simple-viz., because of its indomitable nature; it is a bird that fights to the death. Wilson says of an ivory-billed woodpecker whom he put into a cage, that he did not survive his captivity more than three days, during which he manifested an unconquerable spirit, and refused all sustenance. This bird severely wounded Wilson while he was sketching him, and died with unabated spirit. ‘This unconquerable courage most probably gave the head and bill of the bird so much value in the eyes of the Indians’. [I have been unable to trace Skeat’s reference: ‘English Cyclop. Nat. Hist.’, IV, 345. ‘Wilson’ is probably John Marius Wilson, a zoologist who produced two other ‘Cyclopaedias’ between 1847 and 1867.]

If the Indians were thus impressed, it is easy to see that our ancestors may have been the same.