Birds: Agents of Justice
Birds, of all breeds and descriptions, surface in fairy tales often as agent of magic, with a wide variety of missions to carry out, including warning, intelligence gathering, or revenge.
The Juniper Tree is a classic example. The evil or demonically possessed stepmother might well have gotten away with her senseless act of murder of her stepson, were it not for the warning message delivered by a bird, who mysteriously appears in the story, not long after the boy’s death. We are led to believe but not explicitly told that the bird is the avatar of the murdered child. The characters’ interactions with the bird reinforce that The Juniper Tree fits squarely with the fairy tale form: the willingness of all parties involved to unquestioningly engage with the bird, and interact with him as if he were a sentient creature, underscores the normalization of magic in the tale. No one stops the action and exclaims, “Holy cow! A talking bird.”
Birds are powerful enough fairy tale creatures that they resurface even in modern reinterpretations of classic tales. In the hit musical, Into the Woods, by Stephen Sondheim, Cinderella conjures birds to assist her in preparing for the ball, singing “Fly Birds, Back to the Sky.” Later, in the same retelling, birds appear as agents of retribution to pluck out the stepsisters’ eyes, a nod to the original story. In Into the Woods, it is unclear whether Cinderella controls the birds, or whether they act on their own volition or as agents or instruments of karmic justice, rewarding the good and punishing the guilty (the stepsisters).
Birds play an important role in literature and folklore far beyond the realm of fairy tales. One of the most revered gods of ancient Egypt was Horus, a falcon-headed deity, whose veneration traces back to the Third Millenium B.C. In the New Testament, the white dove symbolizes the Holy Spirit. As in Matthew 3:16, which reads, “And the Holy Spirit descended on him like a dove.” This reference itself is a callback to the much older Genesis story of the dove appearing at the end of Noah’s flood to symbolize the promise of the reappearance of dry land. In Islam, a pair of pigeons distract evildoers from their search for the prophet Muhammad’s hiding place.
This imbuing of birds with divine/mystical powers is reflected in the way the creatures have sometimes been treated in real life. Owners of parrots and other birds capable of mimicry frequently ascribe human intelligence to their pets, even if their sole skill is the repetition of sounds. In World War II, carrier pigeons were entrusted with high-value message delivery and reconnaissance missions. A carrier pigeon named Commando was even awarded a medal for conspicuous bravery for his role in flying intelligence back to Britain from Nazi-held France. This ascribing of the human quality of “bravery” to a pigeon to say nothing of the assumption that the animal actively supported Britain against the Nazis speaks volumes about our long history of imbuing birds with human agency in our imaginations.
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