The Myths Of Wind And Weathervanes
Myths, wind and weathervanes go hand in hand like icecream and jelly. All facets of our culture that stretch back in time for more than about five minutes have some kind of myth attached to them. And of course, being the oldest part of all cultures, the wind has more myths than most.
Our imagination creates myths and environmental features like the weather work on our imagination. Folk stories and myths emerge from our interaction with our environment. We can’t feel it now in our urban society but our ancestors appeared to have no choice but to attribute the characteristics of people to the forces that acted on them.
The stories that told in past ages gave some sense and meaning to the events that happened to people. The folk stories and myths give an origin and a reason for the weather, the climate and fate.
The Iliad and the Odyssey by Homer (not Simpson) are two of the most ancient written stories we have. Homer was a Greek poet who wrote of a character named Ulysses. These stories are associated with our impression of the ancient world. To us, the ancient Greeks were not a bunch of fishermen living on some islands, but race of artists, artisans and philosophers.
In all cultures the content of our legends has been what is important to us. Take what we call “the American way of life”, the pursuit of truth and justice. This is how we in the modern world define ourselves and the fact that the actualization of that ideal contains serious contradictions does not alter the purity of the ideal.
The wind used to be the governor of the fate of people whose lives and livelihood depended on boats for fetching food, making war and escaping danger. The wind as the intrusion into the real world of supernatural forces lives in the ancient myths of Rome, the Scandinavian countries and throughout Europe. The seamen whose lives were ruled by the wind took the myths they learned to all the countries they visited.
The weathervane is a landlocked adaptation of the sailor’s homage to the forces of the wind. People who never sailed in ships still watched the wind as it heralded changes in fortune for people whose living came from the land which was, in turn, a plaything of the weather conditions.
So myths, legends and folktales are intertwined with the wind. And the faces and figures that decorate the weathervanes commemorate mens’ devotion to and dependence on the wind.