FABLE AND FOLKLORE 121 



kill it at the time of the annual Christian feast as a sign 

 of abnegation of Druidical connections. The stoning of 

 the birds on St. Stephen's Day might be regarded as a 

 vengeful reminder of the manner of that martyr's 

 murder by a mob. 



One more bird-story is connected with Christianity in 

 general — that alluded to in Hamlet, where Ophelia says: 

 "Well, God 'ield you ! They say the owl was a baker's 

 daughter!" This enigmatical remark probably had ref- 

 erence to the story formerly, and perhaps still, com- 

 mon among the peasantry in the English Midlands, of a 

 baker's daughter that was transformed into an owl by 

 Jesus 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 girl's great astonish- 

 ment, and she gasped out "Heu, heu, heu!" This owl- 

 like noise suggested her transformation into that bird. 

 The story is told to children as a warning lesson against 

 illiberal treatment of the poor. It is evidently alluded to, 

 also, in Beaumont and Fletcher's play 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." In northern Germany they 

 say a baker's man was the offender; and that he was 

 changed by Jesus into a cuckoo, the white spots in whose 

 wings show where the flour was sprinkled on the man's 

 dun coat. The Norse people apply the same moral by 

 means of their common woodpecker, whose pattern of 

 dress is indicated in the legend known to Norse children 

 as the Gertrud story, which is prettily related by Miss 

 Walker. 39 Brewer's Handbook notes that a maid-ser- 



