84. ITS USE IN MEDICINE. 
In the ancient pharmacopoeia, which savoured not a 
little of magic, the owl appears to have been “ great medi- 
cine.” Ovid tells us that this bird was used wholesale in 
the composition of Medea’s gruel :—- 
‘Et strigis infames ipsis cum carnibus alas.” 
While, according to Horace, the old witch Canidia made 
use of the feathers in her incantations :— 
“ Plumamque nocturne strigis.” 
The “owlet’s wing” was an ingredient of the cauldron 
wherein the witches prepared their “charm of powerful 
trouble” (Macbeth, Act iv. Sc. 1); and, with the character 
assigned to it by the ancients, Shakespeare, no doubt, felt 
that the introduction of an owl in a dreadful scene of a 
tragedy would help to make the subject come home more 
forcibly to the people, who had, from early times, asso- 
ciated its presence with melancholy, misfortune, and 
death. Accordingly, we find the unfortunate owl stig- 
matized at various times as the “obscure,” “ominous,” 
“fearful,” and “fatal” “bird of night.” Its doleful cry 
pierces the ear of Lady Macbeth while the murder is 
being done :— 
“Hark !—Peace! It was the owl that shriek’d, 
The fatal bellman which gives the stern’st good night.” 
Macbeth, Act ii. Se. 1. 
And when the murderer rushes in immediately after- 
wards, exclaiming, — 
