Newborn babies are often depicted alongside a long-legged, sharp-billed bird called the stork. The image of this bird - usually with a nodule dangling in its beak - has become so accustomed to babies that we already take for granted the presence of the ubiquitous stork on greeting cards, sliders and swaddling clothes.
But what is behind this association of storks with children?
The origin of this myth, like any other, is difficult to trace, especially since it spans the entire globe, appearing in the folklore of Europe, America, North Africa and the Middle East.
“These large and white birds are associated with cleanliness, their nests are large, noticeable and located near human habitation. The parental behavior of these birds is well known to humans,”explains Rachel Warren Chadd, co-author of Birds: Myths, Traditions and Legends.
Many popular sources attribute the origin of this myth to ancient Greece and to the story of the vengeful goddess Hera. According to legend, Hera envied the beautiful princess Antigone and turned her into a stork. Heartbroken Antigone decided to snatch her child from Hera's hands, and the Greeks depicted a bird with a child in its beak.
However, while doing research for his book, Warren Chedd discovered that in the first version of the myth, the bird that kidnaps children is a crane, not a stork. “It is difficult to determine which particular bird is associated with ancient myth, as there was often confusion between stork, crane and heron,” says Warren Chedd. The same story is with Egyptian mythology: storks are associated in it with the birth of the world. Historically, this legendary bird was a heron, but a little bit of imagination could later turn it into a stork.
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Paul Quinn, professor of English literature at the University of Chichester in the United Kingdom and editor of a research journal on folklore and fairy tales, suggested that the connection between storks and babies might have taken root due to such species confusion. “It seems to me that the stork's relationship with babies is the result of the stork-pelican confusion,” he says. According to him, European medieval literature associates the great white pelican with Catholicism, revival and child rearing. Somewhere along the way, this bird was replaced by a stork.
Migration lasting 9 months
Whatever the origins of this myth, historians tend to agree that the idea of a stork bringing a baby is most strongly entrenched in Northern Europe, especially in Germany and Norway. During the Pagan era, which lasted until at least the Middle Ages, couples usually married around the summer solstice, as summer was associated with fertility. At the same time, storks began to migrate south, flying through Europe to Africa, and returned in the spring, just 9 months later.
“The storks migrated and then returned to hatch their chicks in the spring, just as many babies were born,” says Warren Chedd. So storks became heralds of new life, giving rise to the bizarre idea that they bring children to people.
Over time, the story developed and became more complex. In Norse mythology, storks have come to symbolize family values and purity. This was based on an unconfirmed belief that these birds are monogamous. In the Netherlands, Germany and Eastern Europe, the stork nesting on the roof of a house was believed to bring good luck and the likelihood of having a baby.
In the 19th century, the myth was popularized by Hans Christian Andersen in his version of the tale called The Storks. In this tale, birds took sleeping babies from ponds and lakes and brought them to worthy families. However, the tale also had a dark side: dysfunctional families received a dead child as punishment from the stork.
The fairy tale taught children a moral lesson, and also formed a new tradition of children's fairy tales - specific literature for children, often of an instructive or religious nature.
In Victorian England, this tale became especially valuable as a way to hide the reality: sex and childbirth.
Talking about the process of having a baby today may not cause such shame, but we still cling to the stork myth, highlighting this graceful bird and its central role in family life. “People love fairy tales,” says Warren Chedd. Our passion for humanizing animals has made the baby stork myth one of the most enduring. In a broad sense, it is based on the behavior of birds, but also takes its roots from human hopes and fears.
Olga_Vesna