1 88 BIRDS IN LEGEND 



screech-owl spoke of coming death; but the birds were 

 considered sensitive to countercharms put upon them 

 from within the house over which they crooned their 

 tremulous monologue. "Jest J am de shevel inter de fire, 

 en time hit git red-hot dee '11 hesh dere shiverin' !" If 

 you don't like that, sprinkle salt on the blaze, or turn a pair 

 of shoes up on the floor with the soles against the wall. 

 "Perhaps this faint semblance to a laid-out corpse will 

 pacify the hungry spirit; the charm certainly, according 

 to negro belief, will silence its harsh-voiced emissary." 



The darkies warn you that you must turn back on 

 any journey you are making if a screech-owl cries above 

 you. An old "hoot-owl," however, may foretell either 

 good or bad fortune according as its three hoots are 

 given on the right or left hand. This is an unfailing sign, 

 and is especially heeded in 'coon or 'possum hunting, 

 at night, when three hoots from the left will send any 

 hunter home hopeless. 



All these indications and charms bear the familiar 

 marks of the Old World fears and formulas, but it is 

 surprising to meet them on the fields of Dixie-land. 



Owls were too well understood by our native redmen 

 to be regarded with much superstition, and the smaller 

 ones were well liked. Prince Maximilian mentions in 

 his Travels (about 1836) that owls were kept in the 

 lodges of the Mandans and Minnitarees, who lived in 

 permanent villages in the upper Missouri Valley, and 

 were regarded as "soothsayers," but I think they were no 

 more than pets, as they are now in Zufii houses. Yet in 

 the American Museum of Natural History in New York 

 is a stuffed owl mounted on a stick, labeled as an object 

 "worshipped" by the sorcerers among the Menominee 

 Indians (eastern Wisconsin), "who believe they can 



