1 84 BIRDS IN LEGEND 



hero of that fine old romance, The Golden Ass of 

 Apuleius, fell into his ridiculous and painful predicament. 

 British poets, and especially the dramatists from 

 Chatterton down, have taken advantage of the black re- 

 pute of owls to enhance any scene of horror they want to 

 depict, Ben Jonson's Masque of Queens furnished ex- 

 cellent examples; and my friend J. E. Harting, 42 of 

 London, has gathered into his admirable Ornithology of 

 Shakespeare many owl-extracts from the great master's 

 play. 'The owlet's wing," Mr. Harting finds, "was an 

 ingredient in the cauldron wherein the witches prepared 

 their 'charm of powerful trouble' (Macbeth, iv, i); 

 and with the character assigned to it by the ancients, 

 Shakespeare, no doubt, felt that the introduction of an 

 owl in a dreadful scene of tragedy would help to make 

 the scene come home more forcibly to the people who 

 had from early times associated its presence with melan- 

 choly, misfortune and death. ... Its doleful cry pierces 

 the ear of Lady Macbeth while the murder is being done : 



Hark! Peace! 

 It was the owl that shrieked, the fatal bellman 

 Which gives stern'st good-night. 



"And when the murderer rushes in immediately after- 

 wards, exclaiming 'I have done the deed. Did thou not 

 hear a noise?' she replies 'I have heard the owl scream.' 

 And later on : The obscure bird clamored the live-long 

 night!' . . . Should an owl appear at a birth, it is said 

 to forebode ill luck to the infant. King Henry VI, ad- 

 dressing Gloster, says: The owl shrieked at thy birth, 

 an evil sign'; while upon another occasion its presence 

 was supposed to predict a death or at least some dire mis- 

 hap. . . . When Richard III is irritated by the ill news 



