172 THE TAWNY HOOTING OWL. 



classed them all in the one genus Strix, as screechers, which, as 



already said, Shakespeare bears out in saying — 



" The bird of night did sit, 

 Even at noon-day, upon the market place, 

 Hootiivj and shrieking." 



In " Love's Labour Lost," he alludes to the hooting owl by 



making Winter sing — 



" When blood is nipp'd, and ways be foul, 

 Then nightly sings the staring owl, 



To-who ; 

 Tu-whit, to-ivho, a merry note. 

 While greasy Joan doth *"keel the pot." 



Ina" Midsummer Night's Dream," he also makes Titania, the 

 fairy queen, say to her train — 



" Come, now a roundel, and a fairy song; 

 Then, for the third part of a minute, hence ; 

 Some, to kill cankers in the musk-rose beds ; 

 Some, war with frear-mice for their leathern wings ; 

 To make my small elves coats ; and some, keep back 

 The clamorous owl, that nightly hoots, and wonders 

 At our quaint spirits." 



Wordsworth, too, in his " Idiot Boy," alludes to this owl in 

 March, when it hoots most, and tells a truth, as the sound comes 

 from " nobody knows where" — 



'* 'Tis eight o'clock — a clear March night — 

 The moon is up, the sky is blue, 

 The owlet, in the moonlight air, 

 Shouts, from nobody knows where ; 

 He lengthens out his lonely shout, 

 Hallo ! halloo ! a long halloo /" 



The too silent Gray, also, in his beautiful " Elegy on a Church- 

 yard," says — 



" Now fades the glimmering landscape on the sight, 

 And all the air a solemn stillness holds, 

 Save where the beetle wheels his droning flight, 

 And drowsy tinklings lull the distant folds. 



Save that, from yonder ivy-mantled tower, 



The moping oui docs to the moon complain 

 Of such as, wand'ring near her secret bower, 



Molest her ancient, solitary reign." 



And Bums, too, amid the ruins of Lincluden Abbey, as already 



said, pays tribute to this owl — 



" As I stood by yon roofless tower, 



Where the wa'flower scents the dewy air, 

 The howlct mourns in her ivy bower, 

 And tells the midnight moon her care." 



-Keel or scum the pot. \ Rear-mice— Bats. 



