Moreover there is the story of the goose at Aegium that fell in love with the supremely beautiful boy Amphilochus of Olenus, and also the goose that loved Glauce, the girl that played the harp for King Ptolemy.
—Pliny the Elder The Natural History, 10.26
The supposed goose-headed child produced by Queen Bertha of France (Image: Liceti 1634, p. 181).
Fortunio Liceti (1577-1657)
Various old accounts allege the actual occurrence of goose-human hybrids. One such tale is that of the weird offspring of Queen Bertha, wife of Robert II of France. In the year 996, Robert put aside his first wife in order to marry his cousin Bertha, daughter of Conrad of Burgundy. The Pope then excommunicated them when they refused his order to separate for reasons of consanguinity.
Three years later, in 999, Bertha supposedly gave birth to a son with the entire neck and head of a goose (“filium, anserinum per omnia collum, & caput habentem”). Faced with this dreadful portent, so the story goes, Robert repudiated Bertha, who then retired into a nunnery.
This birth is cited as fact by various antique scholars, probably because it was described as fact by Peter Damian, a Catholic saint, who was born just eight years after the supposed event. Thus, the seventeenth-century physician and philosopher Fortunio Liceti (1634, p. 180) writes that
Cardinal Peter Damian, Archbishop of Ravenna, tells how Robert of the Gauls married a near relation who then gave birth to a son with the head and neck of a goose. [Translated by E. M. McCarthy. Original Latin.]
On the basis of this birth, Damian concluded that “even in this present life, omnipotent God often hands down terrible judgments” (Translated by E. M. McCarthy. Original Latin).
Note: The fore-and-aft structure described for Bertha’s weird offspring, in which the fore parts are bird-like and the hind parts like a mammal, parallels the structure described in various other reports describing distant alleged hybrids (e.g., cow × duck, capercaillie × sheep, chicken × mouse, chicken × snake, cow × fish and chicken × rat).
Article continues belowThe Excommunication of Robert II (Artist: Jean-Paul Laurens)
The reported appearance of one of the Cochstedt twins. Drawing: E. M. McCarthy.
According to medieval German records, another “terrible judgment” was handed down in Germany just 13 years later. In a chronicle of events in Thuringia (Newe vollkommene Thüringische Chronica, 1613, vol. 1, p. 78), the entry for the year 1012 states the following:
A woman at Cochstedt gave birth to two children who both had goose bills and, instead of arms, wings like those of a goose. When they were only three days old, they were seen looking at each other and laughing in amusement. They were so horrible to look upon that the judge in that place had them killed and put out of the way. [Translated by E. M. McCarthy. Original German.]
The former town of Cochstedt is today part of the city of Hecklingen in Sachsen-Anhalt.
There is a another alleged case of a goose-human, supposedly birthed some three centuries later. Thus, according to the Renaissance encyclopedist Conrad Lycosthenes (1557, p. 442, “in 1274,near the Swiss town of Laufenburg, which lies on the Rhine, a child was born with a horrible face and with the hands and feet of a goose.”
This case was cited by many writers in the early scientific era, and is even mentioned by certain modern scientists (e.g., Valentin 1938, pp. 266-267), who seem now to attribute it to a condition known as acrocephalosyndactyly.
Child with the right foot of a goose (Source: Paullini 1667).
And in the mid-nineteenth century, Australian newspapers carried a report that is certainly germane to the present discussion. The following article appeared in the Ballarat, Victoria, Star, (Jun. 11, 1857, p. 3, col. 5). The Kilmore Examiner, where this story first appeared, was a newspaper published in Kilmore, Victoria.
Lusus Naturae.—A woman, the wife of a laborer in this town [i.e., Kilmore], has lately given birth to a truly wonderful lusus naturae. The woman, who was confined rather unexpectedly, has given birth to a male child with an unheard of malformation. It possesses little or no upper lip, but in place thereof a curious cartilaginous excrescence, very much in the shape of the duck-like bill of the platypus [Apparently, a comparison is made here to a duck-billed platypus, instead of to a duck or goose, because the writer is Australian]. The child has no roof to its mouth, nor any appearance of nostrils; indeed, so remarkable an instance of malformation we never before witnessed. When we visited it, it was nearly five days old, but it seemed scarcely possible that it can long survive. It is able partially to imbibe its natural aliment from the mother, but with difficulty. Should it survive, it will be one of the most curious instances of the freaks of nature which has ever become known.—Kilmore Examiner.
This Australian case is reminiscent of reports about Sarah Walls, a girl in upstate New York, who was supposedly normal except for having the snout of a dog. The Cochstedt twins, cited above, are a somewhat similar case, except in that they supposedly had wings in addition to a bill.
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The Gingerbread Fair, Paris, 1875
L’Homme à la tête d’oie (the Goose-headed Man) achieved immediate celebrity when he first swam into Paris in 1872. This remarkable prodigy is described in the following brief summary of his career, taken from the Parisian newspaper Courrier de Sétif (Mar. 23, 1884, p. 3, col. 2):
L’Homme à la tête d’oie first obtained fame at the Gingerbread Fair [i.e., la Foire aux Pains d’Epices, a Paris fair (see photo above)] in 1872, 1873 and 1874. He was a big man, twenty years of age, who had round eyes, a long and flat nose that stretched itself out in the shape of a goose bill, and an immensely long neck. In short, his head was exactly like that of a goose, except that it lacked feathers. Nor did it bear a single strand of hair. Nothing could be more ludicrous than the way he would snake his head about on that endless neck.† He drew a huge box office. Today, L’Homme à la tête d’oie—his true name is Jean Rondier—has had a complete change of profession and is now established at Dijon as a photographer. He is married; and, thanks to enormously high collars and a wig, is now tolerably presentable. He now goes by his surname, by which he is well known in all the town. [Translated by E. M. McCarthy. Original French.]
† All mammals have seven cervical (neck) vertebrae, whereas in birds this number varies between 11 and 25. Geese have 18 or
19.
Schott’s egg—a real Medusa? (Schott 1662, ill. 20, fig. 25).
Ancient eyewitness testimony in the Babylonian Talmud records “heathens” using geese for “immoral purposes.”
One other case, if accurately reported, would constitute one of the strangest hybrids on record. In his Physica curiosa (1662, p. 715), the German Jesuit and scientist Gaspar Schott (1608-1666) described a medusa-like human head supposedly found in a goose egg (see picture right). However, in place of Medusa’s actual snakes, says Schott, this tertium quid in an egg had numerous little goose heads, each with its own little serpentine goose neck. Not only did they decorate the scalp, he said, but also the chin. Surprisingly, Ambroise Paré (1641, p. 648) reported a similar, but separate, case. Both were discussed by Schott. If these weird hybrids had any basis in reality, it would be interesting to consider whether similar finds in goose eggs inspired the Medusa myth in ancient times.
Another early case related to this cross is that of a woman who supposedly gave birth to a live gosling, reported by the German physician Valentin Andreas Möllenbrock (1671, p. 251, obs. 109). If this report could be taken at face value, it would constitute a case of xenogenesis.
Egyptian deities: Bird-humans
Thoth. The Egyptian diety Thoth, as depicted in the Papyrus of Ani (shown at left below), god of writing and knowledge, was associated with the Sacred Ibis (Threskiornis aethiopicus), and the Egyptians pictured him with the head of that bird (which, for that reason, is still called "sacred"). Mummified ibises have been found at many Egyptian burial sites.
Horus. Horus, depicted below, was one of the most important Egyptian deities. The name meant “falcon” and he was represented either as a falcon-headed man or simply as a falcon (probably a lanner or peregrine falcon).
Horus with a falcon’s head and double-crown, spearing a man who is also attacked by a lion (Egyptian, Greco-Roman period).
The supposed goose-headed child produced by Queen Bertha of France (Image: 
The Excommunication of Robert II (Artist: Jean-Paul Laurens)
The reported appearance of one of the Cochstedt twins.
The Laufenburg goose child (
Child with the right foot of a goose (Source: 
The Gingerbread Fair, Paris, 1875
Schott’s egg—a real Medusa? (Schott 1662, ill. 20, fig. 25).
Sacred Ibis (Egyptian, Wood and bronze, 664-332 B.C.)
Horus with a falcon’s head and double-crown, spearing a man who is also attacked by a lion (Egyptian, Greco-Roman period).