Why is the stork with a baby

In Egyptian mythology, the soul of a person—the ba —was usually represented by a stork. The return of a stork meant the return of the soul, at which point the person could become animated again. In Norse mythology, the stork represented family values and commitment to one another. In several mythologies, storks are also a symbol of fidelity and monogamous marriage because storks are widely believed to mate for life.

Storks are also represented in Chinese, Israeli, and various European cultures mythologies, but the association of storks bringing couples a newborn baby is believed to have started in Germany several hundred years ago.

The natural behaviour of storks lends a clue to their association with birth. As a migratory bird, white storks would fly south in the fall and return to Europe nine months later. Usually they could be seen heading north and nesting around March and April.

Like any myth, its origins are hard to trace, especially since this one spans the globe, appearing in folklore from Europe, the Americas, North Africa and the Middle East. The array of similar myths suggests that they all draw common inspiration from the birds' most noticeable features. Many popular accounts trace the myth back to ancient Greece and the story of a vengeful goddess named Hera.

According to this story, Hera grew jealous of a beautiful queen named Gerana and transformed her into a stork. The heartbroken Gerana then sought to retrieve her child from Hera's clutches, and the Greeks depicted the transformed bird with a baby dangling from its beak.

But, when doing research for her book, Warren Chadd discovered that the original myth actually describes the baby-snatching bird as a crane , not a stork. Similarly, in Egyptian mythology, storks are associated with the birth of the world.

The theme of babies being brought by storks appears in a number of different depictions and variations. Our plates were purchased at a flea market in Warsaw, Poland. Plate 1: The sky-blue centre field contains a stork holding in its beak a diaper with a baby. The bird stands on a chimney, and a church tower and part of a roof can also be seen.

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