j6 Gleanings from the 



The poor bird, under its French name 

 carries a continual remembrance of the old belief 

 that it boded misfortune, effraie being a corrup- 

 tion of frefaie, which is connected with the Latin 

 pr*efaga. 1 It is curious that the Hindoos make 

 an owl fit upon the " inviolable tree " of their 

 mythology (as if it were connected with life), 

 near the tree which bears the foma, or drink of 

 immortality. Returning once more to the Weftern 

 world, the legend runs that the eldeft daughters 

 of the Pileck family, in Poland, are transformed 

 into doves if they die unmarried, into owls if 

 married, at their death. The ftudent of language 

 and myths will find much food for thought in 

 thefe notices of Shakefpeare's " clamorous owl." 

 There is a Flemim painter, Henri de Bles, born 

 1480, who always painted an owl in his pictures, 

 and was thus called "Civetta." A picture bought 

 for the National Gallery in 1882, from the 

 Hamilton collection, was faid to be by this painter, 

 but clofer infpection mowed that the fo-called owl 

 was a vulture. 



Until the rife of a fchool of nature-loving poets, 

 beginning with Gilbert White at the end of the 

 eighteenth century, the owl was only treated by the 

 poets as a bird of night and terror. It was a 

 fynonym for all that is moft ill-boding and fear- 

 fome. In the fo-called Chaucer's "Romaunt of 

 the Rofe," the owl "of deth the bode ybringeth." 



1 See the Saturday Review, Feb. 4, 1882, on Holland's 

 " Faune Populaire de la France," and Kelly's " Indo-European 

 Folk Lore," p. 75. 



