NIGHT WITCHERY. 53 



foreboding, tremulous wail ; for it would seem that the bird of 

 wisdom has not yet lived down the evil aspersion of its antique 

 slanderers. " The scritch owl," says Pliny, " alwaies betokeneth 

 some heavie newes, and is most execrable and accursed. In 

 summe he is the very monster of the night, neither crying nor 

 singing out cleare, but uttering a certaine heavie groane of dole- 

 ful mourning, and therefore if it be scene to fly abroad in any 

 place it prognosticateth some fearful misfortune ;" a belief which 

 still prevails quite commonly among credulous country-folk, to 

 whom this nightly visitant in the orchard or maples is the signal 

 for the direst foreboding. Poor maligned, 

 feathered grimalkin ! What does he say 

 to me here in the moonlight gloom of the 

 woods, as he sits there in the shadow 

 on the pine branch, his glowing 

 eyes revealing all the mys- 

 teries of the darkness 

 in their illuminated 

 searching shafts, and 



*^s 



now with alert poise 

 and ears uppricked, his 

 eyes quenched as he turns 

 his head away towards the 

 opening of the wood, filling 

 the leafy vault with the soft, tremulous cry ? And what is this 

 to the rightly informed ear but the message, not of " doleful 

 mourning " and " heavie newes," but the same that is borne in the 

 song of the thrush, the tidings rather of life and love, a wooing 

 to the listening mate, whose echo answers with near and nearer 

 response across the valley mist? How infinitely more musical 

 and welcome, this witching nocturne of the owl, than the dismal 

 midnight duo of his quadrupedal counterpart of the backyard 

 fence, that yet brings no compensating terrors of superstition ! 



As in the owl we have our nocturnal puss of featherdom, so 

 also in the dusky bat have we our winged mouse. We hear 

 their nightly squeaking convocation in the loosened clapboards 



