In his account of Attila's invasion of Italy in 452 AD, Priscus recounts a story, a piece of folklore which he probably picked up from Huns he knew in the East or from their Germanic allies.

Crossing the Balkans and entering Italy by the wide Julian passes, Attila was confronted by the walled and strongly garrisoned city of Aquileia:

The siege of Aquileia was long and fierce, but of no avail, for the bravest of the soldiers of the Romans withstood him from within. At last his army was discontented and eager to withdraw.

Attila chanced to be walking around the walls, considering whether to break camp or delay longer, and noticed that the white birds, namely the storks, who build their nests in the gables of houses, were bearing their young from the city and, contrary to their custom, were carrying them into the country.

Being a shrewd observer of events, he understood this and he said to his soldiers, "You see, the birds forsee the future. They are leaving the city sure to perish and are forsaking strongholds doomed to fall by reason of imminent peril. Do not think this a meaningless or uncertain sign; fear, arising from the things they forsee, has changed their custom."

Why say more? He inflamed the hearts of the soldiers to attack Aquileia again.

The Hunnic warriors attacked again, took the city by storm and reduced it to smoking ruins. It was later rebuilt, but many of its fleeing inhabitants took shelter on the islands of a nearby lagoon on the coast, and founded what was to become the city of Venice.

It is unlikely that the story of the storks is historical, however. This tale depicts Attila as a shamanic figure, who interprets the flight of the storks as a portent of the future. Maenchen-Helfen has identified it as a story found in Asian literature of a much earlier date. In the Chin shu, the biography of the Chin Era conqueror of Turkistan, Lu Kuang, a similar tale is told. In this version the general sees a golden figure flying from the besieged town of Ch'iu-tz'u and declared: "This means the Buddha and the gods are deserting them. The Hu will surely perish."

Maenchen-Helfen concludes, " ... stories like the ones told about Attila and Lu Kuang are unknown in Europe. It must be the Huns who bought them from the east." (The World of the Huns p. 134)

There are many other steppe legends about sacred animals giving guidance to men who are "shrewd observer(s) of events", including the Hun story of the sacred stag that led them into Europe. Here we find, buried in a late Roman historian writing in Greek from far off Constantinople, a piece of central Asian folklore and religious tradition, brought to Europe by the Huns.

Cheers,
Thiu

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