THE BARN OWL;
and the Benefits it confers on Man. By Charles Waterton, Esq.
This pretty aerial wanderer of the night often comes into my room; and after flitting to and fro, on wing so soft and silent that he is scarcely heard, he takes his departure from the same window at which he had entered.
I own I have a great liking for this bird; and I have offered it hospitality and protection on account of its persecutions, and for its many services to me,—I say services, as you will see in the sequel. I wish that any little thing I could write or say might cause it to stand better with the world at large than it has hitherto done: but I have slender hopes on this score; because old and deep-rooted prejudices are seldom overcome; and when I look back into the annals of remote antiquity, I see too clearly that defamation has done its worst to ruin the whole family, in all its branches, of this poor, harmless, useful friend of mine.
Ovid, nearly two thousand years ago, was extremely severe against the owl. In his Metamorphoses he says:—
"Foedaque fit volucris, venturi nuncia luctus,
Ignavus bubo, dirum mortalibus omen." [5]
In his Fasti he openly accuses it of felony:—
"Nocte volant, puerosque petunt nutricis egentes." [6]
Lucan, too, has hit it hard:—
"Et laetae juranter aves, bubone sinistro:" [7]
and the Englishman who continued the Pharsalia, says—
"Tristia mille locis Stylus dedit omina bubo." [8]
Horace tells us that the old witch Canidia used part of the plumage of the owl in her dealings with the devil:—
"Plumamque nocturnae strigis." [9]
Virgil, in fine, joined in the hue and cry against this injured family:—
"Solaque culminibus ferali carmine bubo
Saepe queri, et longas in fletum ducere voces." [10]
In our own times we find that the village maid cannot return home from seeing her dying swain, without a doleful salutation from the owl:—
"Thus homeward as she hopeless went,
The churchyard path along,
The blast grew cold, the dark owl scream'd
Her lover's funeral song."
Amongst the numberless verses which might be quoted against the family of the owl, I think I only know of one little ode which expresses any pity for it. Our nursery maid used to sing it to the tune of the Storm, "Cease rude Boreas, blust'ring railer." I remember the first two stanzas of it:—
"Once I was a monarch's daughter,
And sat on a lady's knee;
But am now a nightly rover,
Banish'd to the ivy tree—
Crying, hoo hoo, hoo hoo, hoo hoo,
Hoo hoo hoo, my feet are cold!
Pity me, for here you see me,
Persecuted, poor, and old."
I beg the reader's pardon for this exordium. I have introduced it, in order to show how little chance there has been, from days long passed and gone to the present time, of studying the haunts and economy of the owl, because its unmerited bad name has created it a host of foes, and doomed it to destruction from all quarters. Some few, certainly, from time to time, have been kept in cages and in aviaries. But nature rarely thrives in captivity, and very seldom appears in her true character when she is encumbered with chains, or is to be looked at by the passing crowd through bars of iron. However, the scene is now going to change; and I trust that the reader will contemplate the owl with more friendly feelings, and quite under different circumstances. Here, no rude schoolboy ever approaches its retreat; and those who once dreaded its diabolical doings are now fully satisfied that it no longer meddles with their destinies, or has any thing to do with the repose of their departed friends. Indeed, human wretches in the shape of body-snatchers seem here in England to have usurped the office of the owl in our churchyards; "et vendunt tumulis corpora rapta suis." [11]
Up to the year 1813, the barn owl had a sad time of it at Walton Hall. Its supposed mournful notes alarmed the aged housekeeper. She knew full well what sorrow it had brought into other houses when she was a young woman; and there was enough of mischief in the midnight wintry blast, without having it increased by the dismal screams of something which people knew very little about, and which every body said was far too busy in the churchyard at nighttime. Nay, it was a well-known fact, that if any person were sick in the neighbourhood, it would be for ever looking in at the window, and holding a conversation outside with somebody, they did not know whom. The gamekeeper agreed with her in every thing she said on this important subject; and he always stood better in her books when he had managed to shoot a bird of this bad and mischievous family. However, in 1813, on my return from the wilds of Guiana, having suffered myself, and learned mercy, I broke in pieces the code of penal laws which the knavery of the gamekeeper and the lamentable ignorance of the other servants had hitherto put in force, far too successfully, to thin the numbers of this poor, harmless, unsuspecting tribe. On the ruin of the old gateway, against which, tradition says, the waves of the lake have dashed for the better part of a thousand years, I made a place with stone and mortar, about 4 ft. square, and fixed a thick oaken stick firmly into it. Huge masses of ivy now quite cover it. In about a month or so after it was finished, a pair of barn owls came and took up their abode in it. I threatened to strangle the keeper if ever, after this, he molested either the old birds or their young ones; and I assured the housekeeper that I would take upon myself the whole responsibility of all the sickness, woe, and sorrow that the new tenants might bring into the Hall. She made a low courtesy; as much as to say, "Sir, I fall into your will and pleasure:" but I saw in her eye that she had made up her mind to have to do with things of fearful and portentous shape, and to hear many a midnight wailing in the surrounding woods. I do not think that up to the day of this old lady's death, which took place in her eighty-fourth year, she ever looked with pleasure or contentment on the barn owl, as it flew round the large sycamore trees which grow near the old ruined gateway.
(To be concluded in our next.)