supposed to have been foreboded by the appearance of owls in the halls or on the roofs of their palaces. Brande, in his Popular Antiquities, has given many curious illustrations from old writers of the misfortunes of which these birds were the prophetic precursors. One of the most sacrilegious acts ever committed by an owl took place during the reign of Pope John XXIV., when the bird of night had the effrontery to fly into the hall where the Holy Father was holding a council, disturbing its deliberations by his ill-omened presence. It is not strange that the owl in modern times should be the victim of inherited aversion. As the perverse fowl has not so far profited by criticism as to change its nature or habits, the same causes which occasioned its classical ill-repute help to perpetuate it. A bird that shuns the honest light of day and disturbs drowsy rustics by hooting and screeching at night, that haunts ruined and deserted places, prowls round church-yards, and hides in hollow trees, must expect to be maligned. It is natural, therefore, to find traces of this superstitious dread in the works of modern poets and prose writers. Chaucer speaks of the owl as bringing the bode of death. Spenser, too, gives it the same ghastly character: "The rueful Stritch still waiting on the beere, The whistler shrill, that whoso heares doth die ;" and again: "The ill-faced owle, death's dreadful messenger." Marston, in enumerating the gloomy creatures that prowl about at dead of night, associates screeching owls with 66 meagre ghosts, Piero, and black thoughts," and in Reed's Old Plays it is said that the croaking of screechowls upon the chimney-tops is certain to be followed by hearing of a corpse. There was a prevalent popular superstition in England, in the olden time, that if a screech-owl flapped its wings 1 The prevalence of a belief in such a transformation by Christ is very curious, though the traditions vary somewhat in different countries In Norway the story is told of a woman with a red hood, named Gertrud. As she flew up the kitchen chimney her body was blackened with soot, and thus she appears as the red-crested black wood or screeched near the windows of a sick person's chamber one of the family would soon die; and in a paper in the Spectator in which the belief in omen's is keenly satirized, it is observed that a screech-owl at midnight has alarmed a family more than a band of robbers. Shakespeare largely availed himself of the sinister reputation of the bird of doom. "The ominous and fearful owl of death," as he has graphically characterized it, is associated with goblins and elvish sprites, and King Henry VI. mentions the shriek of the owl at the birth of Gloster among the portents of his infamous career. And when Lady Macbeth is waiting in suspense for tidings of the murder of Duncan by her husband, "It was the owl that shrieked, the fatal bellman, Which gives the stern'st good night." The phrase in Hamlet, " They say the owl was a baker's daughter," probably had reference to the story still common among the peasantry in Gloucestershire, of a baker's daughter being transformed into this bird by our Saviour, as a punishment for reducing to a very small size the large piece of dough which her mother had agreed to bake for him. The dough, however, swelled in the oven to enormous proportions, to the great astonishment of the baker's daughter, who cried out "Heugh, heugh, heugh." This owl-like noise suggested her transformation into that bird. The story is told to deter children from illiberal treatment of the poor. It is evidently alluded to in Beaumont and Fletcher's play of The Nice Valour, where the Passionate Lord says, after speaking of a nest of owls, " Happy is he whose window opens to a brown baker's chimney! he shall be sure there to hear the bird sometimes after twilight.” 1 According to a legend prevalent in the north of England, Pharaoh's daughter was transformed into an owl, and when pecker, which the Norwegians call Gertrud's bird. According to the North Germans a baker's man was the offender. He was turned into a cuckoo, whose dun-colored plumage, seemingly sprinkled with flour, recalls its origin. Thorpe's Northern Mythology, vols. ii. and iii. Compare Hazlitt's English Proverbs and Proverbial Phrases, p. 381. Nuttall, the ornithologist, says he often heard this couplet when a child, in the old country. In Sweden the owl is considered a bird of sorcery. Great caution is necessary in speaking of such birds to avoid being insnared. It is dangerous to kill one of them, as its associates might avenge its death. Although the owl is worshiped at Hindoo festivals, it is generally regarded as a bird of ill omen. If one happens to perch on the house of a native, it is a sign that one of his household will die, or some other misfortune befall him within a year. This can be averted only by giving the house or its value in money to the Brahmins, or making extraordinary peace-offerings to the gods. The oblations to Vishnu and other deities are followed by an entertainment of clarified butter and rice milk to the Brahmins, who after receiving the sacrificial fees will give a benediction to their deluded followers. Among some of the North American tribes it is customary for an Indian to whistle when he hears the cry of a peculiar kind of owl. If the bird does not answer him he expects to die speedily. On account of the superstition, this owl, which inhabits both Europe and North America, is called the Bird of Death.1 There is a strange fascination in the appearance of the owl at midnight in the stillness of the woods, as he wings his spectral flight and utters his moan of lamentation, and it is not surprising that his nocturnal habits and unearthly shriek should make him an object of dread to the ignorant and credulous. But the intelligent observer detects a harmony between this ghostly visitor and the scenes amid which he sounds his sombre notes. The moping owl in 1 Otherwise known as Tengmalm's Owl. his ivy-mantled tower is in unison with the solemn pathos of Gray's Elegy, and the cry of the boding owl had a plaintive charm to the sensitive ear of Cowper. The naturalist also appreciates the qualities which have been recognized by the poet, and the owl no where appears to better advantage than in the pictured pages of Audubon, who calls him the Sancho Panza of the woods. Indeed, we could not well spare the owl either in literature or life, in the domain of soaring fancy or of groveling fact. He is the fitting embodiment of that supernatural influence which lends such a shadowy charm to bygone days, innocent alike of scientific knowledge and scientific skepticism. Crows and ravens have generally been regarded by superstitious people as birds of ill omen. Their croaking garrulity was believed by the ancients to portend calamity, and the belief still lingers among the moderns. Pliny observes that the crow is most inauspicious at the time of incubation, just after the summer solstice. Ravens, he tells us, are the only birds that seem to understand the meaning of their auspices, for when the guests of Medus were assassinated, the ravens all took their departure from Attica and the Peloponnesus. He adds that they are of the very worst omen when they swallow their voice, as if they were being choked. It was supposed that these birds uttered their shrill, discordant cry as a note of warning to persons about to die, and Alexander the Great is said to have been thus admonished that his end was near. "He that employed a raven to be the feeder of Elias," says an old writer, "may employ the same bird as a messenger of death to others." Appian and other authors have made special mention of the crows which were believed to have foreboded the death of Cicero. As the great Roman orator lay sleeping in his Formian villa after his temporary escape from his pursuers, large numbers of these birds are said to have fluttered and screamed about the windows, as if to warn him of his approaching fate. One of them, after entering his chamber, pulled away the bedclothes from solicitude for his safety, till his faithful slaves, frightened by the omens, roused him from his slumbers and carried him away in the litter in which he was soon after assassinated. This story affords a good illustration of the ancient belief in the prophetic powers of the raven which caused it to be sacred to Apollo. Virgil, who had the good sense to regard the actions of these birds as the result of natural, rather than supernatural causes, refers in the Georgies to the joyful notes of the raven after a storm as indicative of fair weather, and mentions the dismal croak of the impudent crow stalking solitarily on the dry sand, as a sign of approaching rain. If a raven appeared on the left of a person the omen was particularly bad "Sæpe sinistra cava prædixit ab ilice cornix." The evil repute attached to these birds in ancient times has lingered for centuries among the moderns. Abundant evidence of it is found in English literature. Spenser speaks of "The hoarse night raven, trompe of doleful dreere." Marston associates the screeching crow, "fluttering 'bout casements of departing souls," with gaping graves and the most dismal voices of the night. In the Barons' Wars, Drayton mentions the baleful notes of the ominous raven as begetting strange, imaginary fears, and telling through his hoarse beak of following horror. The prevalence of this superstition is thus referred to in Butler's Hudibras: "Is it not om'nous in all countries When crows and ravens croak upon trees?" It is natural that there should be many illustrations of this belief in the pages of Shakespeare, who turns to good account the weird fancies of all ages in his inimitable creations. Hoarse, hateful, fatal, wolfish, bellowing, are the epithets which he applies to the raven, and the crow does not fare much better, being stigmatized as ribald and knavish. The reputation of the raven as a prophet of disaster is illustrated in two memorable instances. Thus, when Lady Macbeth is plotting the murder of the king, she seeks to have his doom foreboded by the voice of the ill-omened bird: "The raven himself is hoarse That croaks the fatal entrance of Duncan And when Othello is reminded by Iago, to rouse his jealousy, of Desdemona's missing handkerchief, he exclaims in the agony of his grief, Oh, it comes o'er my memory, It is difficult for us to realize the impressiveness which these illustrations must have had in the olden time, when the raven, instead of being the plaything of fancy, was an object of dread as a veritable doom-bird. This popu lar conception of the corvus family, which existed in full force long after Shakespeare's day, is still prevalent in the Old World. Bishop Hall, in enumerating the omens that terrified the superstitious man in the early part of the seventeenth century, says that if he heare but a raven croke from the next roofe he makes his will." At a later day Ramesey remarked in his Elminthologia: "If a crow fly but over the house and croak thrice, how do they fear they, or some one else in the family, shall die!" Home, in his Dæmonologie in 1650, mentions the flying and croaking of ravens over a house as the dreaded portent of death. In the following century we find the gloomy superstition still strong in the minds of the vulgar. It is quaintly said in the Secret Memoirs of Duncan Campbell, that "Some will defer going abroad, though called by business of the greatest consequence, if, happening to look out of the window, they see a single crow." The poet Gay, in his amusing fable of The Farmer's Wife and the Raven, makes the former mention among the omens which caused her grief, — "That raven on yon left-hand oak It may surprise some people to learn that dread of the croaking raven still exists in many parts of Great Britain. Collectors of folk lore narrate mary 66 a curious instances of it in recent days. In his entertaining work on Romances and Drolls of the West of England, London, 1865, second series, Mr. Hunt relates an anecdote told to him by really intelligent man," which illustrates this feeling. The family of this person were annoyed by the croaking of a raven over their house, some of them believing it to be a death-token, while others ridiculed the idea. By the advice of a good lady who lived next door, they noted the day and hour of the occurrence, and five months afterward they received a black-edged letter from Australia announcing the death of one of the members of the family in that country. On comparing the dates of the death and the raven's croak, they were found to have occurred on the same day. A writer in Notes and Queries, May 21, 1853, relates an incident showing the power of this superstition over bodily as well as mental health. At a meeting of the guardians of the poor a parish in Cornwall, which took place a short time previous, an application was made by the relieving officer on behalf of a single woman residing in the church village at Altarnum. The cause of seeking relief was stated to be grief,' and on asking for an explanation, the officer said that the applicant's inability to work was owing to depressed spirits produced by the flight of a croaking raven over her dwelling on the morning of her visit to the village. The pauper was by this circumstance, in connection with its well-known ominous character, actually frightened into a state of wretched nervous depression, which induced physical want.' 6 of Nowhere is superstition more rife than in the north of Europe, and there the raven is invested with more ghastly qualities than in sunnier climes. In Sweden the ravens that scream by night in forest-swamps and wild moors are said to be the ghosts of murdered men concealed there by their undetected murderers, and denied Christian burial. By the peasantry of Denmark the nightraven is considered an exorcised spirit. There is a hole in its left wing, caused by the stake driven into the earth where a spirit has been exorcised. It is dangerous to look up when it is flying overhead, for whoever sees through the hole in its wing will be transformed into a night-raven, and the bird will be released from its weary flight. Its course is ever towards the East, in order to reach the Holy Sepulchre, where it will obtain rest. In the Danish isles the appearance of a raven in a village is a sign that the parish priest will soon die. Though the raven and the owl are mentioned together in Scripture as typical of desolation, yet the former, as the first messenger sent from the Ark, and the feeder of Elijah in the wilderness, is a more pleasing object than the owl of the desert, the companion of dragons, and the representative of mourning and lamentation. The figure of the raven which darkened the banners of the Danes and Saxons may be seen also among the Norman ensigns in the Bayeux tapestry, and with the Scandinavians it was the usual symbol of slaughter. Magpies, or magot-pies, as they were originally called, have generally been considered birds of ill omen. In Sweden they are believed to be under the special protection of the powers of darkness. When the witches go on Walpurgis night to their scenes of elfish revelry in the Blakulle, they take the form of magpies. The baldness round the necks of these birds at the close of summer, their moulting season, is supposed by the superstitious country-people to be caused by the yoke of the Evil One, which they have worn in the Blakulle while helping him to gather in his hay. The dread of the magpie as ominous of death, which can be traced back to the olden time, still lingers in many parts of England and Scotland. Allusions to it may be found in Shakespeare, who associates the dismal discords of the "chattering pies" with those baleful sights and sounds that attended the birth of Richard III. At the beginning of this century it was truthfully said that many an old woman would more willingly see the devil, who bodes no more ill-luck than he brings, than a magpie perching in a neighboring tree; and at this late day, the boasted light of our civilization has not wholly dispelled this gloomy superstition. Henderson, in his entertaining work on the Folk Lore of the Northern Counties of England, etc., describes his astonishment, while driving an old lady in her pony carriage in his boyhood, to see her snatch the reins out of his hands and suddenly bring the pony to a stand. The object which had excited her alarm was a magpie crossing the road, upon which she was gazing with intense interest. After a short pause she exclaimed, with a sigh, "Oh, the nasty bird! Turn back, turn back!" And back they went, the old lady repeating to him on the way home the following lines illustrating the superstition: "One is sorrow, two mirth, Seven the deil's ain sel'." The first couplet, with some variations, is prevalent in Great Britain. The evil omen conveyed by this bird is generally limited to its appearance singly, and the superstitious dread of it is not confined to the poor and ignorant. A county magistrate and landowner in Yorkshire in 1825, while riding to York to deposit his rents in a bank, turned back on seeing a magpie fly across his path, and the failure of the bank on the following day was supposed to have been foreboded by the appearance of the bird. Communications in Notes and Queries as late as 1866 show that men and women of excellent education and position, chiefly of the old school, are in the habit of making certain signs whenever they see a magpie, to avert the evil consequences which they believe will otherwise ensue, and these statements are confirmed by recent works on English folk lore. The modes of dispelling the charm are various. Some persons content themselves with bowing and raising the hat, while others, more devout, make the sign of the cross on their breasts, in the air, or on the ground. The custom of crossing the thumbs for this purpose is said to be confined to Yorkshire. One elderly gentleman there not only crosses his thumbs, but to make assurance doubly sure, spits over them. In this he follows a time-honored usage, for spitting as a charm against evil was practiced by the most cultivated nations of antiquity. It is adverted to by classic poets, philosophers, and satirists, and was condemned by some of the Christian fathers. Spitting, being a sign of contempt or aversion, was a defiance of the omen. The reason given by a servant in the north of England to her master, a clergyman, for the evil reputation of the magpie, certainly justified her ill opinion, though it may not be equally convincing to Biblical scholars. She said "it was the only bird which did not go into the ark with Noah; it liked better to sit outside, jabbering over the drowned world." The thieving propensities of the magpie are well known. Time has not cured him, or his cousin, the jackdaw, of the habit of stealing gold and silver, which excited the wonder of Pliny and furnished such felicitous illustrations to Ovid and Cicero, to say nothing of modern authors. The superstitious belief that the treasures purloined by the magpie are, when found, perilous as witches' money, may afford some consolation to the owner of such property. Crowing hens are birds of ill omen. According to a Northamptonshire proverb, "A whistling woman and crowing hen Similar proverbs are current in Normandy and Cornwall. All along the border between England and Scotland a crowing hen is regarded as a portent of death. A few years ago an old woman in the parish of East Kilbride heard one of her hens crow near the house. She mentioned the circumstance to a neighbor, saying that no good would come of it. Not long afterwards her husband died. A month passed by, and once more she heard the |