The Marriage of the Robin and the Wren

IT is doubtless well known that linguistic analysis can, on occasion, throw light on a problem of folklore. A striking case in point concerns the fable of the stork as baby-bringer, the origin of which has been the subject of so much inconclusive speculation. But the answer is there for the asking the moment we discover that 'stork' is properly a nickname with the primary sense 'stick; an allusion to the characteristic pose-standing on one leg. Our evidence comes from Germany, where the cognate Storch not only denotes the bird, but in dialect retains traces of the basic meaning; to this may be added a tell-tale attestation for the phrase des mannes storch, found in an Austrian medical miscellany of the first half of the fifteenth century.1 We wish here to draw attention to another item of bird lore which has not been treated so far: the alliance celebrated in the popular distich

Art · Circumstantial evidence · Epistemology · Folklore · Genealogy · Linguistics · Literature · Meaning (existential · Miscellany · Phrase · Stork · Subject (documents · Wish · Classics · Computer Science · Folklore, Mythology, and Literature Studies · History · Linguistics and Cultural Studies · Linguistics and language evolution · Philosophy

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