Myth Monday - The Woodpecker Harbinger of Rain

Thanks to Walter Lantz and Universal Pictures, since the 1940s the word woodpecker has connoted the manic, destructive, trickster, animated character known as Woody Woodpecker. According to the [www.toonopedia.com/woody.htm] Woody Woodpecker inspiration story, Walter Lantz had been annoyed by a noisy woodpecker, but wasn't too upset until a rain revealed that the noises had resulted in water-leaking holes in the roof. This isn't the only instance where a woodpecker was associated with rain.

An article from the same time period as the Lantz episode, "Picus Who Is Also Zeus," by A. H. Krappe, in Mnemosyne, (1941), pp. 241-257, says that the woodpecker (Picus) was thought to announce coming rain; among the Syrians the name for the thundergod was the same as a vulgar Arabic name for woodpecker. The noise of the hammering reminded people of the sound of thunder. The woodpecker's red-coloring was associated with heavenly fire (lightning), which the bird brought down from the heavens. Krappe says that the woodpecker-rain association isn't limited to areas of Indo-European language speakers. In the area of the Congo, it wasn't the woodpecker who brought it down, but by boring holes in the sky, the woodpecker helped the spider to bring down the the lightning.

Krappe says that the human Picus of Vergil (Virgil), who held an augur's staff, foretells the future because of his bird-namesake's ability to predict rain.

There was also a woodpecker in Roman legend, that helped people find the spring to feed the Aqua Virgo aqueduct.

Do you have other mythological/legendary references for the woodpecker's association with rain/thunder/lightning? If so, please post in the comments.

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