Cranes are birds of striking characteristics, as we have seen, and seem to have impressed very forcibly the ancient Greeks as well as recent Orientals, the latter finding in them an extraordinary symbolism. The Greeks believed that during their winter absence the cranes were in constant battle with the Pygmies—“That small infantry warred on by cranes,” as Milton characterized those diminutive, but pugnacious folks who lived no one knew exactly where, but certainly at the ends of the earth. “The cranes travel,” Aristotle records, “from Scythia to the marshes in the higher parts of Egypt from which the Nile originates. This is the place where the Pygmies dwell; and this is no fable, for there is really, it is said, a race of dwarfs, both men and horses, which lead the life of troglodytes.”
When the shrill clouds of Cranes do give alarmes, The valiant _Pigmy_ stands unto his armes: Straight, too weak for the _Thracian_ bird, he’s swept, And through the eye in crooked tallons rapt.[48]
But this is only one item in the crane’s list of wonders. When this bird migrates it always flies against the wind, according to ancient bird-minders, and carries a swallowed stone as ballast so that it may not be swept out of its course by a change of wind; and this stone when it is vomited up is useful as a touchstone for gold. Aristotle had heard of this ballasting precaution, and expressly denies it, but he says nothing about other stones associated with the history of the bird, perhaps because they had not been discovered in his day. The sagacious cranes were also said to post sentinels, while halting at night, and to insure their necessary vigilance these sentinels were required to stand on one foot, and to hold in the other, uplifted one a large stone. Should one of these sentinel-birds drowse the stone would drop and by its noise awaken the sleepy sentry. This explains the fact that in British heraldry the crane is always represented with a bit of rock in its fist, the pose signifying “vigilance.”
Lyly,[49] in that queer old book _Euphues_, confesses: “What I have done was only to keep myselfe from sleepe, as the Crane doth the Stone in her foote; and I would also, with the same Crane, that I had been silent, holding a Stone in my mouth.” His 16th-century readers understood this second simile, for they remembered that cranes were said to be thus gagged when migrating, so as not to utter any cries that would bring eagles or other birds of prey to attack them.