[CHAPTER VI.]
THE OWL, THE CROW, THE MAGPIE, AND THE STORK.
SUMMARY.
The funereal owl.—The owl and the vulture.—The owl and the crow.—The owls as friends of the swans and enemies of the crows.—The wise owl.—The Eulenspiegel.—The owl as the daughter of Nükteos.—The enemy of Nükteos.—An ill-omened bird.—Prophetic virtue of the owl.—The horned owl.—The owl as a weaver.—The owl and the coins.—The crow and the peacock.—The crow and the nightingale.—The crow and the swan.—Gracculus ad fides.—The prophetic crow.—The crow and the cheese.—The crow as the son of Indras; the Athenians swore by the crow and by Zeus.—The crow and Sîtâ.—The cunning crow.—The crow, the parrot, and the bird of prey.—The crow as the shadow of a dead man.—Yamas as a crow.—The white crow.—Go to the crows.—The rooks.—The crow as a devil.—It helps an old man to pick grains of corn up.—The crow and the cuckoo.—The crow and the waters.—The crow and the figs.—The crow and the hydromel.—The crow and the water of life and death.—The crow as the bird of light.—The crow on a mountain covered with diamonds.—The crows as brothers and sisters of the heroine and of the hero.—The crow as the messenger of St Oswald.—The crow, the maiden, and the crab.—The corvus pica.—The blue magpie.—The two magpies.—Huginn and Muninn.—The magpie as the bringer of the balsam herb.—The magpie sacred to Bacchus.—The magpie and the nightingale.—The daughters of Euippes as magpies.—The rook and the magpie as friends of gold.—The magpie as an infernal bird.—The malice of the magpie.—The white and black magpie.—The magpie and the guests.—The stork.—The stork and the heron.—The stork as the bringer of children.—Funereal presage of the stork.—The stork and the old man.—Paternal and filial affection of the stork.—The presents of the stork.—The stork brother of the woodcock.—The inebriated storks.—The storks in the other world.
The owl, the crow, the magpie, and the stork are in intimate mythical relation with each other. To give an idea of the monster that wanders in the night, the Ṛigvedas compares him to a khargalâ[382], which is probably an owl (also called naktaćaras); it also directs the devotee to curse death and the god of the dead (to conjure them away), when the owl emits her painful cry, and when the kapotas or dark dove touches the fire[383] (thus we read in the fragments of Menander, "if the owl should cry, we have reason to be afraid"); in the Pańćatantram,[384] the king of the crows also compares the hostile owl that arrives towards night to the god of the dead (the god Yamas). In Hungary the owl is called the bird of death. In the Mahâbhâratam,[385] the mind of the wicked which sees clearly, fishes in turbid waters, and is dexterous in foul actions, is compared to the owl, who (probably as moon) distinguishes every shape in the night. In the Mahâbhâratam, again,[386] the owl kills the crows by night whilst they are sleeping. In the Râmâyaṇam,[387] the owl (as the moon) contends with the vulture (the sun), who had usurped its nest; the two disputants appeal to Râmas, who asks each how long the nest had belonged to it; the vulture answers, "Since the earth was peopled with men," and the owl, "Since the earth was covered with trees." Râmas, with justice, decides in favour of the owl, observing that his claim is the more ancient, since there were trees before there were men, and is for punishing the vulture, but desists upon learning that the latter was once King Brahmadattas, condemned to become a vulture by the wise Gâutamas, because he had once offered meat and fish to that penitent to eat. Râmas touches the vulture, which, the malediction having come to an end, immediately resumes its human form. The third book of the Pańćatantram treats of the war between the owls and the crows. The birds are weary of having a useless king like Garuḍas, who thinks of no one but the god Vishṇus, and does not trouble himself to protect the nests of the little birds his subjects; they meditate electing a king, and are about to choose the owl,[388] when the crow (the dark night) comes to give its veto, of which the Pańćatantram says, that it is the most cunning amongst birds, as the barber among men, the fox among animals, and the mendicant friars among religious orders. The war between the owl and the crow (the moon and the dark night) is popular in Hindoo tradition; kâkâris, or enemy of the crow, is one of the Sanskṛit names of the owl, and the kâkolûkikâ or owl-like crow, as has already several times been observed by the learned men who have studied Hindoo literary chronology, is already mentioned in the Grammar of Pâṇinis.
In the thirtieth story of the fourth book of Afanassieff, the crow eats the eggs of the geese and the swans. The owl, out of hatred to the crow, accuses him to the eagle; the lying crow denies, but is nevertheless condemned to be imprisoned.
In the ninth book of Aristotle's History of Animals, I also find that the crow fights with the owl, whose eggs it destroys at midday, whilst the owl, on the other hand, eats the crow's eggs during the night. In Italian, the expression "the owl amongst the crows," is used to indicate a serious danger. In John Tzetza, we also find an apologue, according to which the crow was about to be elected king of the birds, having arrayed itself in the feathers that had fallen from the other birds, when the owl comes up (in Babrios, instead of the owl, it is the swallow that does the same), recognises one of its own feathers, and plucks it out, setting thus an example to the other birds, who in a short time despoil the crow entirely. (This is a variety of the well-known fable of the crow in the peacock's feathers, and of the same fable, in an opposite sense, contained in the Pańćatantram, where the crow is the wise bird, and the owl the simple one.) There are other instances of cunning ascribed to the owl in fables; for instance, it predicted to the birds that an archer would kill them with their own feathers, and advised them not to let the oak-trees grow, because on them the mistletoe grows, and birds are caught by means of it. The German Eulenspiegel, the legendary malicious buffoon, who wears a great hat, is probably of the same mythical family. The Greeks considered the owl to be a form of the daughter of Nükteus of Lesbio (according to others, of the king of the Ethiopians. Nükteus and the black Ethiopian, both being the night, correspond to each other), who, having become enamoured of her father, lay with him without his knowledge; her father wished to kill her, but Athênê took pity upon her, and transformed her into an owl, which, remembering its crime, always flees from the light (it is far from the day, like the moon). The owl was sacred to Athênê, the goddess of wisdom, inasmuch as she sees in darkness; the flight of the bird of night was, therefore, for the Athenians a sign that the goddess who protected their city was propitious; hence the owls of Athens passed into a proverb. The owl, otherwise (according to the superstition of the ancient Greeks, recorded by Pliny among the Latin writers), was the enemy of Dionysos (who loves the mysteries, which the moon and the aurora disperse); hence the prescription of ancient medicine, that the eggs of the owl, drunk for three days in wine, make drunkards abstemious. Philostratos, in the Life of Apollonius, goes so far as to say that when one eats an owl's egg, one takes a dislike to wine before having tasted it. But, even in antiquity, the owl was generally looked upon as the ignoble and ill-omened bird that it really is. It is said of Demosthenes, that before going into exile, he declared that Athênê delighted in three fear-inspiring beasts—the owl, the dragon, and the Athenian people. In Ælianos and Apuleius, the owls are spoken of as birds of ill omen. But the male owl was and is still especially considered as a bird of the worst and most funereal character in Italy, Russia, Germany, and Hungary.[389] In the fourth book of Virgil's Æneid, the song of the male owl is fatal—