Bird Gods in Ancient Europe 



Shakespeare must mean the owl when he 

 says In his mystical Phoenix and Turtle : 



But thou, shrieking harbinger. 

 Foul pre-curser of the fiend. 

 Augur of the fever's end. 

 To this troop come thou not near ! 



And before him Chaucer remarked of the 

 owl that"wonde" or stayed all night on the 

 " balkes " or beams of the house, that it was 

 a foreteller of woe — 



The owle al nyght aboute the balkes wonde. 

 That prophete ys of woo and of myschaunce. 



The European form of Christianity has 

 been hard on birds, harder than Judaism. 

 Perhaps it is for that reason one sees so much 

 cruelty exercised toward birds in Italy, where 

 at the hands of a ruthless race of men Chris- 

 tianity has been perverted from its original 

 beauty. Like other heathen peoples the 

 Etruscans and Romans at least reverenced, 

 at least feared the birds whose cries and 

 devious flight seemed to foretell the future. 

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