t901-1902.] The Folk-Lore of Natural History. 329 
THE OWL. 
The countryman wending his way across some desolate moor 
on some dark night— 
“When winter scowls along our northern sky ”— 
sees a light flitting across the peat moss: he clutches his stick 
and hastens his steps, for is not that “spunkie” trying to wile 
him off his road and drown him in his watery den? What to 
us is the will o’ the wisp flickering amongst the marshes was 
then directly attributed to the presence of fairies or spunkies. 
We can easily imagine how, in the long dark winter nights 
in the lowly Scottish homes of a past generation, the talk 
would turn on things weird and supernatural, and stories of 
ghosts and witches would be eagerly listened to, and as firmly 
believed. In an environment such as this the simplest inci- 
dents of natural history came to possess a significance the origin 
of which cannot always be easily traced. But any one who has 
been startled by the scream of an owl on a lonely road can 
readily suppose that it would then be put down to something 
uncanny. Tannahill, in one of his finest Scottish songs, says— 
“The cry 0’ howlets maks me eerie ”— 
and the owl has been generally regarded as a bird of ill-omen, 
and superstitiously considered a messenger of woe. The Romans 
_ viewed the ow] with detestation and dread. “The owlet’s wing” 
was an ingredient of the cauldron wherein the witches prepared 
the charm of powerful trouble (“ Macbeth,” Act IV. se. i.) 
Should an owl appear at a birth, it is said to forebode ill-luck 
to the infant. King Henry VL., addressing Gloster, says— 
“The owl shrieked at thy birth,—an evil sign.” 
When Richard III. is irritated by the ill news showered thick 
f on him, he interrupts the third messenger with— 
b “Out on ye, owls, nothing but songs of death.” 
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1 
Among the strange occurrences presaging King Duncan’s 
murder is mentioned— 
“On Tuesday last, 
A falcon, towering in her pride of place, 
Was by a mousing owl hawked at and killed.” 
—“ Macbeth,” Act II. se. iv. 
