The scarlet
honeycreeperʻiʻiwi (Vestiaria coccinea) was the main source of red feathers.[2][4][5] Yellow feathers were collected in small amounts each time from the mostly black ʻōʻō (Moho spp.) or the mamo (Drepanis pacifica).[5][2][8]
Another strictly regal item was the kāhili, a symbolic "staff of state" or
standard, consisting of pole with plumage attached to the top of it.[11][3][5][12] The
Princess Nāhiʻenaʻena in her portrait (cf. fig. right) is depicted holding a kāhili while wearing a feather cloak.[13] She would typically wear a feather cloak with a feather coronet and she would match these with a pair of pāʻū ('skirts'[14])[15] which ordinarily would be
barkcloth skirt,[16] however, she also had a magnificent yellow feather skirt made for her, which featured in her funerary services.[15][17][18][b]
Other famous examples include:
Kamehameha's feather cloak - made entirely of the golden-yellow feather of the
mamo, inherited by
Kamehameha I. King
Kalākaua displayed this artefact to emphasize his own legitimate authority.[19][20]
Kiwalao's feather cloak - King
Kīwalaʻō cloak, captured by half-brother Kamehameha I who slew him in 1782. It symbolized leadership and was worn by chieftains during times of war.[21]
A mythical enemy-incinerating kapa (barkcloth) cape, retold as a feather skirt in one telling, occurs in Hawaiian mythology. In the tradition regarding the hero
ʻAukelenuiaʻīkū,[c], the hero's grandmother Moʻoinanea who is matriarch of the divine lizards (moʻo akua, or simply moʻo) gives him her severed tail, which transforms into a cape that turns enemies into ashes (kapa lehu, i.e.
tapa), and sends him off on a quest to woo his destined wife,
Nāmaka. Nāmaka (who is predicted to attack him when he visits) will be immune to the cape's powers. She is also a granddaughter or descendant of the lizard, and has been given the lizard's battle pāʻū and kāhili, also conferred with power to destroy enemy into ashes.[23] In one retelling, Moʻoinanea (Ka-moʻo-inanea) gives her grandson ʻAukele her "feather skirt" and kāhili which "by shaking.. can reduce his enemies to ashes".[24][25]
A commentator has argued that feather garment of Nāhiʻenaʻena was regarded as imbued with the
apotropaic "powers of a woman's genitals", reminiscent of the mythic pāʻū which
Hiʻiaka was given by Pele.[27]
It has been noted there is a pan-Polynesian culture of valuing the use of feathers in garments, especially of red colour, and even trade in feathers, and though various feather garments are worn, feather capes are elsewhere known in New Zealand.[28]
Māori
The
Māori feather cloak or kahu huruhuru are known for their rectangular-shaped examples.[d][29][30] The most prized were the red feathers which in
Māori culture signified chiefly rank,[31][29] and were taken from the kaka parrot to make the kahu kura which literally means 'red cape'.[29][e]
The feather garment continues to be utilized as symbolic of rank or respect.[35][36]
The feather cloak or cape was traditional to the coastal
Tupi people, notably the
Tupinambá. The cape was called guará-abucu[37] (var. gûaráabuku[38])
Tupi–Guarani, so called from the red plumage of guará (Eudocimus ruber, scarlet ibis) and not only did it have a hood at the top,[39] but it was meant to cover the body to simulate becoming a bird,[40] and even included a buttocks piece called enduaps.[37] These feather capes were worn by Tupian shamans or pajé (var. paîé) during rituals, and clearly held religious or sacred meaning.[41][40] The cape was also worn in battle,[42] but it has been clarified that the warrior as well as his victim were deliberately dressed as birds as executioners and the offering in ritual sacrifices.[40]
Germanic
A bird-hamr (pl. hamir) or feather cloak that enable the wearers to take the form of, or become, birds are widespread in
Germanic mythology and
legend. The goddess
Freyja was known for her "feathered or falcon cloak" (fjaðrhamr, valshamr), which could be borrowed by others to use, and the jötunnÞjazi may have had something similar, referred to as an arnarhamr (eagle-shape or coat).[43] .[45]
The term hamr has the dual meaning of "skin" or "shape",[46] and in this context, fjaðrhamr has been translated variously as "feather-skin",[47][48] "feather-
fell",[49] "feather-cloak",[50] "feather coat",[51] "feather-dress",[52] "coat of feathers",[53] or form, shape or guise.[54][55][56][f][g]
Gods and jötnar
In Norse mythology, goddesses Freyja (as aforementioned) and
Frigg each own a feather cloak that imparts the ability of flight.[56][59]
Freyja is not attested as using the cloak herself,[61] however she lent her fjaðrhamr ("feather cloak") to Loki so he could fly to
Jötunheimr after
Þórr's hammer went missing in
Þrymskviða, and to rescue
Iðunn from the jötunn Þjazi in Skáldskaparmál who had abducted the goddess while in an arnarhamr ("eagle shape").[45][54][62][66] This episode is also attested in the poem Haustlöng, where Freyja's garment is referred to as hauks flugbjalfa "hawk's flying-fur",[67][68] and the jötunn employs a gemlishamr "cloak/shape of eagle".[69]
Loki also uses Frigg's feather cloak to journey to
Geirröðargarða, referred to here as a valshamr ("falcon-feathered cloak").[72]
Óðinn is described as being able to change his shape into that of animals, as attested in the Ynglinga saga.[73][74] Furthermore, in the story of the
Mead of Poetry from Skáldskaparmál, he does not explicitly require a physical item to assume an arnarhamr ("eagle-form") to flee with the mead,[75] in contrast to the jötunnSuttungr, who must put on his (arnarhamr) in order to pursue him.[76][77][h]
Völsunga saga
In the Völsunga saga, the wife of King Rerir is unable to conceive a child and so the couple prays to Odin and Frigg for help. Hearing this, Frigg then sends one of her maids wearing a krákuhamr (crow-cloak) to the king with a magic apple that, when eaten, made the queen pregnant with her son
Völsung.[79][80][81]
Wayland
The master smith
Wayland (
Old Norse: Völundr) uses some sort of device to fly away and escape from
King Niðhad after he is hamstrung, as described in the
Eddic lay Völundarkviða.[82][83] The lay has Völundr saying he has regained his "webbed feet" which soldiers had taken away from him, and with it he is able to soar into air. This is explained as a circumlocution for him recovering a magical artifact (perhaps a ring), which allows him to transform into a swan or such waterfowl with webbed feet.[82][83] An alternate interpretation is that the text here should not be construed as "feet" but "wings" ("feather coat or artificial wings"[84]), which gave him ability to fly away.[86][87][i]
The second "wing" scenario coincides with the version of the story given in Þiðreks saga, where Völundr's brother
Egill shot birds and collected plumage for him, providing him with the raw material for crafting a set of wings,[82] and this latter story is corroborated also corroborated on depictions on the panels of the 8th-century whale-bone
Franks Casket.[82][85][89]
In the Þiðreks saga Wayland (here
Old Norse: Velent)'s device is referred to as "wings" or "a wing" (
Old Norse: flygill, a term borrowed from the German Flügel[90]) but is described as resembling a fjaðrhamr, supposedly flayed from a griffin, or vulture, or an ostrich.[j][k][l][95][94][96] Modern commentators suggest that the Low German source[99] originally just meant "wings", but the Norse translators took license to interpret it as being just like a "feather cloak".[91][89] In the saga version, Velent not only requested his brother Egill to obtain the plumage material
McKinnel 2002, p. 201 (as aforementioned) but also asks Egill to wear the wings first to perform a test flight.[94][89] Afterwards Velent himself escapes with the wings, and instructs Egil to shoot him, but aiming for his blood sack prop to fake his death.[94]
Furthermore, the three
swan-maidens, also described as valkyrjur, in the prose prologue of Völundarkviða own álftarhamir ("swan cloaks" or "swan garments") which give the wearer the form of a swan.[100][101][102][103] This bears similarity to the account of the eight valkyrjur with hamir in Helreið Brynhildar.[104][105][101]
There are bird-people depicted on the
Oseberg tapestry fragments, which may be some personage or deity wearing winged cloaks, but it is difficult to identify the figures or even ascertain gender.[110]
Celtic
King Bladud of Britain created artificial wings to enable flight according to
Galfridian sources,
conceived of as "feather skin" in Old Norse and Middle English versions (as already discussed above in
§ Bladud's wings ).
Poet's cloak
In Ireland, the elite class of poets known as the
filid wore a feathered cloak, the tuigen, according to Sanas Cormaic ("Cormac's glossary"). Although the term may merey refer to a "precious" sort of toga, as
Cormac glosses in Latin, it can also signify tuige 'covering ' tuige 'of birds', and goes on to describe the composition of this garment in minute detail.[111][112][m]
Since it is attested in the Lebor na Cert ("Book of Rights") that the rights of the
Kings of Cashel rested with the chief poet of Ireland, together with his taiden,[114][115]
Cormac, being the king of Cashel, would have had firsthand knowledge.
Cormac's glossary goes on to describe the tuigen thus: "for it is of skins (croiccenn, dat. chroicnib[116]) of birds white and many-coloured that the poets' toga is made from their girdle downwards, and of mallards' necks and of their crests from the girdle upwards to their neck".[112]
In the Konungs skuggsjá, we can read a description of these poets in the chapter dealing with Irish marvels (XI):
There is still another matter, that about the men who are called “gelts,” which must seem wonderful. Men appear to become gelts in this way: when hostile forces meet and are drawn up in two lines and both set up a terrifying battle-cry, it happens that timid and youthful men who have never been in the host before are sometimes seized with such fear and terror that they lose their wits and run away from the rest into the forest, where they seek food like beasts and shun the meeting of men like wild animals. It is also told that if these people live in the woods for twenty winters in this way, feathers will grow upon their bodies as on birds; these serve to protect them from frost and cold, but they have no large feathers to use in flight as birds have. But so great is their fleetness said to be that it is not possible for other men or even for greyhounds to come near them; for those men can dash up into a tree almost as swiftly as apes or squirrels.[117]
Regarding the above description of the "Gelts" sprouting feathers, compare Buile Shuibhne where Suibhne Gelt seems to transform into a feathered form.
This concept is adapted to the Greek mythology ; Mercury, god of medicine, wears a "bird covering" or "feather mantle" rather than talaria (usually conceived of as feathered slippers) in medieval Irish versions of the Greco-Roman classics, such as the Aeneid.[118]
See also
Hagoromo, the feathered stole of Japanese-Buddhist mythology.
Explanatory notes
^Similar in design to cape worn by Nahiennaena in portrait above, and also similar to Bishop Museum piece catalogued C.9558[1]
^Incidentally, a tertiary meaning of pāʻū is that it signifies the red feathers around the yellow in an ornamental feather bundle, called ʻuo.[14]
^Of which there are nine version according to Brown (2022).
^Whereas the Hawaiian feather cape developed from rectangular to circular shape, as aforementioned
^Though the kahu kura was literally 'red cape' it was understood to signify a cape made from the feathers of the kaka parrot.[32] Māori kahu kura may be cognate with Hawaiian ʻahu ʻula, since the latter will result from dropping the k.[33] Though not the kaka parrot, Hiroa elsewhere states that koko is an olden name for the
tūī bird, and he also suggests dropping the k yields Hawaiian ʻōʻō, a source of yellow feathers there.[34]
^The Cleasby-Vigufsson definition of fjaðr-hamr as "'feather ham' or winged haunch.."[57] is avoided by the aforementioned translators and commentators; Haymes's translation The Saga of Thidrek being an exception.
^To complicate matters, despite the choice of wording ("cloak", the primary sense), the intended meaning may be opposite. Thus Larrington's translation "Thrym's Poem" renders the term as "feather cloak", but in endnote explains this is meant as "attribute" of flying capability.[58] And vice versa: Morris says "shape" but in the next breath describes as "such a costume"[59]
^Gunnel notes that Oðinn's
heitiArnhöfði ('eagle head') may be a reference to him assuming the eagle shape to flee from Suttungr.[47]
^There is yet a third but a clear minority view that Völundr somehow regained his ability as shapeshifter to transform at will without any device.[88]
^Old Norse: "fleginn af grip eða af gambr eða af þeim fugl er struz heitir".
^The translation "griffin" here is backed by German sources, such as
Franz Rolf Schröder block-quoted in English translation,[91] and Alfred Becker.[89] But "griffin" is lacking in Haymes's English translation: the terms gripr and gambr (gammr) are both glossed as 'vulture' in Cleasby-Vigfusson,[92][93] which explains why Haymes's translation collapses three birds into two: "winged haunch of a vulture, or of a bird called ostrich". But Cleasby-Vigfusson admits gripr derives from German griff [meaning 'griffin'] and only cites this one instance in the Þiðreks saga;[92] the word is clearly a hapax legomenon.[89]
^The fjaðrhamr has also been rendered as "feather haunch" or "winged haunch",[94] as according to Cleasby-Vigfusson for the combined form,[57] though the literal translation would be "feather skin".[46][91]
^Atkinson (1901) did register some doubt whether this was a genuine bird-skin garment from the very beginning which was thus name aptly, or an ex post facto explanation later developed, based on the name (or the conjectural etymology thereof.[113] Atkinson's reservation is also noted in the eDIL.[111]
^The mamo feathers were yellow tinged with orange or even called "rich orange" compared with the ʻōʻō feathers which were "bright yellow".[6][7] And the mamo was forbidden use except by a king of an entire island.[6][3]
^Although the kāhili was strictly for the aliʻi there was a kāhili bearer appointed to hold it,[9] and it was waved over the royal during sleep, as a fly-brush[3] or
fly-whisk. Contrary to the one-handed version in the princess's painting, the multi-colored kāhili held by her bearer may be 30 feet long.[10]
^Charlot, John (June 1991). "The Feather Skirt of Nāhiʻenaʻena: an Innovation in Postcontact Hawaiian Art". The Journal of the Polynesian Society. 100 (2): 137.
JSTOR20706388.
^
abIn the narrative, Þjazi appears "in eagle form" (
Old Norse: í arnarhami) at the meal (and in the woods), but when he goes in pursuit, he "wears an eagle coat" (
Old Norse: tekr an arnarhamin.[44]
^
abcdMcKinnel, John (2014a) [2000].
"Chapter 8. Myth as Therapy: The Function of Þrymskviða". In Kick, Donata; Shafer, John D. (eds.). Essays on Eddic Poetry. University of Toronto Press. pp. 201 and note 13.
ISBN9781442615885. 13 See e.g. Breta sögur, in Hauksbók.. Eiríkur Jónsson and Finnur Jónsson (Copenhagen, 1892-6), 231-302 (p. 248); this was translated from the Latin of Geoffrey of Monmouth.. Geoffrey simply refers at this point to the wings which King Bladud orders... Originally —— (2000). "Myth as Therapy: The Function of Þrymskviða". Medium Ævum. 69 (1): 1–20.
doi:
10.2307/43631487.
JSTOR43631487.
^"Thrym's Poem". The Poetic Edda. Translated by
Larrington, Carolyne. OUP Oxford. 2014. pp. 93–98 and note to "feather cloak" at str. 3.
ISBN9780191662942.: St, 3: "feather cloak: 'attribute of Freyja which allows her to fly".
^Grimstad 1983 discusses the transformation of gods "donning a feather coat", and in the attached footnoted ((n18, p. 206) with an association with Oðinn's ability to transform into creatures in the Ynglinga saga.
^Ruggerini 2006, pp. 206 notes that the verb taka "to wear" is not used, and the bregða i meaning turning appearance into something suggests use of black magic like seiðr.
^
abcd"Lay of Volund".
The Poetic Edda. Translated by
Larrington, Carolyne. OUP Oxford. 2014. pp. 99–111 and note to str. 29.
ISBN9780191662942.: St, 29: "'Lucky..' said Volund 'that I can use my webbed feet'/of which Nidud's warriors deprived me!'/Laughing, Volund rose into air..".
^
abIn
Grimstad 1983, p. 191, it is the "second interpretation" which postulates that a transformation ring is meant; it is further explained that the ring could have belonged to the swan-maiden wife of Volund, and the ring endowed its wearer with an ability of transformation into a swan, etc. The authorities on this point of view listed (n20) are
Richard Constant Boer (1907), Völundarkviða" Arkiv för nordisk filologi23 (Ny följd. 19): 139–140, Ferdinand Detter (1886) "Bemerkungen zu den Eddaliedern", Arkiv för nordisk filologi3: 309–319,
Halldór Halldórsson (1960) " Hringtöfrar í íslenzkum orðtökum” Íslenzk tunga2: 18–20 Deutsche Heldensagen, pp. 10–15,
Alois Wolf (München, 1965 ) "Gestaltungskerne und Gestaltungsweisen in der altgermanischen Heldendichtung", p. 84.
^Jan de Vries [1952] pp. 196–197 contended that the plural word fitjar in the phrase à fitjum need not be translated "webbed feet" but can be interpreted to mean "wings", cognate with Old Saxon federac and
Middle Low Germanvittek, though McKinnel considers this problematic.[85]
^Grimstad 1983, p. 191 places "wings" vs. "ring" as the two major schools of thought on the interpretation of this phrase.[84] As exponents of the "feather coat or a pair of artificial wings" view names (n19)
Georg Baesecke (1937),
A. G. van Hamel (1929) "On Völundarkviða" Arkiv för nordisk filologi45: 161–175,
Hellmut Rosenfeld (1955) and Philip Webster Souers (1943) as anticipating Jan de Vries (1952).
^
abAtkinson, Robert, ed. (1901).
"tugain". Ancient laws of Ireland: Glossary. Vol. VI. H.M. Stationery Office. p. 756. though one might be curious as to which was the prius here, the word or its explanation
Dliġeaḋ cach riġ ó riġ Caisil
bíḋ ceist ar ḃárdaiḃ co bráth,
fo gebthar i taeiḃ na Taiḋean
ac ruaiḋ na n-Gaeiḋel co gnáth
The Right of each king from the king of Caiseal,
Shall be question to bards for ever:
It shall be found along with the Taeidhean
With the chief post of the Geidhil constantly
Edda: Snorri Sturluson. Everyman Library. Translated by
Faulkes, Anthony. J. M. Dent. 1995 [1987]. p. 60, 81-83, 84.
ISBN978-0-4608-7616-2. The chapter numbering follows the 1848 Copenhagen edition, which is the one usually cited (p. xxiii).
Eiríkur Jónsson;
Finnur Jónsson, eds. (1892–1896).
Breta sögur. Hauksbók:udgiven efter de Arnamagnænske Händskrifter No. 371, 544 og 675 4º. samt forskellige Papirshändskrifter. Kongelige Nordiske oldskriftselskab (Denmark). Copenhagen: Thieles bogtr. "Af Madann", c. 12, line 157ff. (p. 248). het Bladvð er riki.. .xx. vetr konengr verit þa let hann gera ser fiaðrham
Egeler, Matthias (2009). "Keltisch-mediterrane Perspektiven auf die altnordischen Walkürenvorstellungen". In
Heizmann, Wilhelm;
Böldl, Klaus;
Beck, Heinrich (eds.). Analecta Septentrionalia: Beiträge zur nordgermanischen Kultur- und Literaturgeschichte. Ergänzungsbände zum Reallexikon der Germanischen Altertumskunde 65 (in German). Walter de Gruyter. pp. 393–466.
ISBN9783110218701.