THE OWLS 229 



unravel the mystery of its death. There was one tiny 

 shot-hole in its skull. On inquiry I found that some few 

 weeks before, when an adjoining withy bed was being 

 'beaten' for game, a boy, anxious, like others of his kind, 

 to ' kill something,' had fired at a big Brown Owl which 

 had come lumbering out of an ivy-tree, its winter resting- 

 place. 



" The bird had quivered as he struck it, but had not 

 fallen to the ground, and, escaping for the time, had 

 evidently been dying, by inches, ever since, in the hollow 

 in which I had found it. Her devoted mate had kejDt her 

 supplied with mice and rats, several of which, quite 

 recently killed, I found therein, and also stored in the 

 hedge below." 



The White or BARN OWL is the Screech-OwJ, which 

 figures so prominently both in English jDoetry and 

 English folk-lore. In the old sujoerstitious days, when 

 ignorance reigned in the villages of our land, and M^ien 

 even to the city-dweller and those who had had some 

 schooling the hours of darkness brought all manner of 

 fears, it is not surprising that the shrill cry of this Owl 

 should have suggested many gruesome fancies. 



All the terror of such fancies seems to have crept 

 into one of Shakespeare's magical lines, where he 

 pictures the wicked Lady Macbeth standing listening, 

 at dead of night, while a grim murder is taking place 

 in her castle. She starts at a sound, and exclaims to 

 herself, — 



" Hark ! Peace ! 

 It was the owl that shriek'd, the fatal bellman, 

 Which gives the stern'st good-night." 



Perhaps our forefathers ought not to be blamed over- 

 much for being so ready to shiver and shake at the weird 



