“I found a robin’s nest within our shed,
And in the barn a wren had young ones bred.
I never take away their nest, nor try
To catch the old ones, lest a friend should die.
Dick took a wren’s nest from his cottage side,
And ere a twelvemonth past his mother dy’d.”
26. It is deemed very unlucky to hear a screech-owl at night. “If an owl,” says Bourne, “which is reckoned a most abominable and unlucky bird, send forth its hoarse and dismal voice, it is the omen of the approach of some terrible thing—that some dire calamity and some great misfortune is at hand.” (See [56].)
This omen occurs in Chaucer:
“The jelous swan, ayenst hys deth that singeth,
The oule eke, that of deth the bode bringeth.”