In the United States, this long-legged waterfowl is commonly associated with childbirth folklore. For many cultures the world over, the stork serves as a powerful symbol of good fortune, and has been so regarded for centuries before the Common Era. Farmers, in particular, welcome storks as a sign of good fortune if they linger, or bad luck if they depart. For this reason, some farmers have gone out of their way to encourage storks to nest on the roofs or chimneys of their properties.
Within this mythology, storks are reputed to have strong family loyalties. They are known for being faithful to their mates, gracious to their relatives, and devoted to their children. Storks are said to be particularly solicitous of their parents, feeding and caring for them in their old age.
The stork also functions as a religious symbol. In some narrative traditions, a stork was present at the birth of Christ, where it offered prayers and plucked some of its own feathers to soften the bed of the baby Jesus. Swedish legend holds that a stork cried out with words of comfort and encouragement while Jesus was on the cross. On the basis of these acts of compassion, the birds are considered blessed creatures.
In addition, storks have long been associated with the journey of the human soul. As migratory birds, storks often function in folklore as messengers, bearing souls into the afterlife. In fact, when depicting the soul, Egyptian mythology typically pictures it with the body of a stork. In Asian cultures, the stork is indicative of longevity, even immortality. Chinese folk belief portrays storks carrying souls of the deceased to heaven. Some also associate storks with rebirth and resurrection. Slavic culture portrays storks as carriers of the souls of the unborn.
The popular imagination often associates storks with fertility. This connection may originate from the annual travel pattern of storks returning in the spring, a season customarily associated with renewal. In particular, the white stork is often credited with delivering human infants to their parents’ homes. In some versions of this legend, the child would be borne to his or her destination in a sling or basket. While the origins of this legend are not recorded definitively, the connection between storks and newborns may be traced back to the belief that the souls of those not yet born dwell in watery areas, such as might be populated by storks. German folklore suggests that families eager for babies should set treats for the stork on the windowsill in their household to signal the stork to come. Other lore directs boys and girls who wish the arrival of younger siblings to sing to summon the stork.
While the linkage between storks and human infants may at first seem obscure, storks figure prominently as a euphemism used to explain to children how babies enter the world. A Scandinavian version of this tale can be found in Hans Christian Andersen’s nineteenth-century tale, “The Storks.” In this somewhat dark story, a group of youths taunt and torment baby storks, and consequently their families receive stillborn babies as a punishment.
In the United States, as well as some countries in Europe, there is considerable oral lore regarding storks as deliverers of babies. It is not uncommon for children to ask questions that prove difficult or awkward for their parents, especially regarding the facts of life. Depending upon the age and maturity of a child, his or her parents may respond with varying degrees of directness. Older sons and daughters may receive a more medical response to this inquiry. Younger ones, however, may be answered with a fabricated story that satisfies a child for the moment, with the expectation that a fuller explanation will be in order once he or she is older.
At some point, although the date remains uncertain, parents and older siblings began telling their young children stories about how the stork brought newborns to their families’ homes. Although the custom has subsided somewhat, pictures of storks were quite commonly displayed in the decorations used at baby showers and similar occasions throughout the twentieth century in America.
Typically, this story describes the stork flying along with a length of fabric, enfolding the baby, clasped firmly in its beak. In some cases, the infant is depicted riding on the bird’s back. The stork is said to deliver the babies to their families much in the same way that Santa Claus is said to enter homes: through the chimneys. In other cases, however, the stork deposits newborns on the doorstep of the family home.
This representation of the stork is recalled in various idioms. For example, when a baby is born, he or she may be described as a “bundle of joy.” When a newborn enters the world with pinkish markings on the eyelids, these pigmentations are playfully described as “stork bites.” In some instances, stillborn babies are attributed to being dropped by the stork on the journey to their intended family’s house.
Are Babies Born in a Cabbage Patch?
If the stork provides the baby delivery system in popular folklore for children, the cabbage patch offers the place and means through which babies are brought into the world in such stories. Curious children seek to discover the nature of their own origin at an age far younger than most American parents have traditionally been willing to discuss the mechanics of reproduction with them. The notion of the baby discovered under a cabbage leaf, then, provides such parents with a colorful and satisfying answer for very young children. The notion of the baby born under a cabbage leaf is so widespread and pervasive in American culture, in fact, that it spawned a whole doll craze in the 1980s: “Cabbage Patch Kids,” dolls that came with birth certificates and adoption papers, cashed in on this folk tradition with slick marketing and catchy alliteration.
C. Fee
Whether as emblems of tenderness toward infants, icons of filial loyalty, or conveyors of souls to heaven or earth, storks enjoy many positive connotations in world folklore.
Linda S. Watts
See also Animal Tales; Baby Train; Easter Eggs; Good Luck Charms
Further Reading
McGinley, Phyllis, and Leonard Weisgard. 1967. A Wreath of Christmas Legends. New York: Macmillan.
Mercatante, Anthony S. 1974. Zoo of the Gods: Animals in Myth, Legend, and Fable. New York: Harper and Row.
Milbourne, Anna, Heather Amery, and Gillian Doherty. 2007. The Usborne Book of Myths and Legends. Tulsa, OK: EDC.
Tate, Peter. 2007. Flights of Fancy: Birds in Myth, Legend, and Superstition. London: Random House.
The Stork—Primary Document
Excerpts from Hans Christian Andersen, “The Storks” (1838)
Many fairy tales and children’s stories originated in Europe, particularly in the writings of the Brothers Grimm and Hans Christian Andersen. When a child asked, “Where do babies come from?” parents who wished to put off a direct answer resorted to the main idea inside this story penned by Andersen in 1838. Andersen’s tales were translated into English in the mid-nineteenth century and found their way into the hands of English-language readers in the United States by the 1860s. Andersen’s work offers an illustration of how stories made the transition from oral folklore to printed literature.
On the last house of a small town there was a stork’s nest. The stork-mother was in it with her four little young ones, who stuck their heads out, with their little black beaks, which hadn’t yet turned red. A little way off on the ridge of the roof stood the father stork, very stiff and upright; he had drawn up one leg so as to give himself some little occupation while he stood on guard. You would have thought he was carved out of wood, he stood so still. “It must look very distinguished, I’m sure, my wife having a sentry by her nest,” he thought, “people can’t possibly know I’m the husband, they’re bound to think I’m under orders to stand here. That looks very well.” So he continued to stand on one leg.
A pack of children were playing down below in the street, and when they saw the storks, one of the cheekiest of the boys, and then all the rest of them, began to sing the old rhyme about the storks—that is, they sang what they could remember of it:
Stork, Stork, Stone,
Fly home to your own,
Your wife’s on her nest
With four fat young ’uns,
The first’ll be hanged by the neck,
The second’ll be stuck,
The third’ll be burned,
The fourth’ll be overturned.
“Oh, listen to what those boys are singing,” said the little storks, “they’re saying we shall be hung and burnt.”
“Don’t you worry yourselves about that,” said the mother stork, “don’t listen to it, and then it can’t matter.”
But the boys went on singing and pointing at the storks: only one boy, whose name was Peter, said it was wrong to make game of animals, and wouldn’t join in. The mother stork, too, tried to comfort her young ones. “Don’t you worry about it,” she said. “Just look how quiet your father’s standing there, on one leg too.” “But we’re so frightened!” said the young ones, and they drew their heads right back into the nest. Next day when the children came out again to play and saw the storks, they began their song. “The first’ll be hanged by the neck, the second’ll be stuck!” “Shall we really be hanged and stuck?” said the little storks.
“No, certainly not,” said their mother, “you’ll have to learn how to fly; I shall practise you all right—and then we shall go out into the meadow and pay a visit to the frogs. They’ll make us a bow and sing ‘ko-aks, ko-aks,’ and then we’ll eat them up. That’ll be a real treat.”
“And what then?” the little storks asked.
“Why, then all the storks in the whole country will gather together, and then the autumn manœuvres will begin. You’ll have to fly very well—that’s of the greatest importance; for anyone that can’t fly, the General runs him through with his beak and kills him. So you must mind and learn when the drilling begins.”
“Then we shall be stuck all the same, as the boys said—and just listen, they’re singing it again!”
“Listen to me and not to them,” said the mother stork. “After the big manœuvres we shall fly away to the hot countries—oh, ever so far from here, over forest and mountains. Then to Egypt we shall fly, where there are some three-cornered stone houses that rise up in a peak above the clouds and are called pyramids and are older than any stork can imagine. There’s a river there that overflows, so that all the country turns into mud, and you can walk about in the mud and eat frogs.”
“Oo!” said all the young ones.
“Yes, indeed, that is beautiful. You don’t do anything but eat all day long, and while we’re enjoying ourselves so, there isn’t a single green leaf on the trees in this country; it’s so cold here that the clouds freeze to bits and come tumbling down in little white rags.” (It was the snow she meant, but she couldn’t explain it any better.)
“And do the naughty boys freeze to bits too?” asked the young ones. “No, they don’t freeze to bits, but they come very near it, and they have to sit indoors in a dark room and mope. Whereas you can fly about in a foreign land where there’s flowers and hot sunshine.” …
Then autumn came on; all the storks began to gather before they should fly to the hot countries, while we have winter here. Those were manœuvres. They were made to fly right over forests and towns, just to see how well they could fly, for indeed it was a long journey they had before them. The young storks did their affair so nicely that they got: “Excellent, with frogs and snakes.” This was the highest possible mark, and they were at liberty to eat the frogs and snakes; and so they did.
“Now for our revenge,” they said.
“To be sure,” said the mother stork. “I have thought of something that will do beautifully. I know where the pond is where all the human children lie till the stork comes and fetches them to their parents. The pretty little children sleep and dream such lovely dreams as never come to them afterwards. All fathers and mothers want a little child like that, and all children want a sister or a brother. Now then, we’ll fly to that pond and fetch one for each of the children who didn’t sing that naughty song and make fun of storks: the other children shan’t have any.”
“But the one that began the song, that horrid beastly boy,” screamed the young storks, “what are we going to do to him?”
“Why, in the pond there lies a little dead child that has dreamt itself to death; we’ll take that to him, and he’ll cry because we’ve brought him a little dead brother. But that good boy—you haven’t forgotten him—the one that said ‘it’s wrong to make game of animals.’ We’ll bring him a brother and a sister as well; and because that boy’s name is Peter, you shall all be called Peter too.”
And as she said, so it came about: and therefore all the storks were called Peter, and they are called so to this very day.
Source: Andersen, Hans Christian. Forty-Two Stories. Translated by M. R. James. London, Faber & Faber Ltd., [1838] 1930.