"Seraque culminibus ferali carmine Bubo
Visa queri et longas in fletum ducere voces."
The Romans purified the city with water and sulphur when a male owl or a wolf happened to enter into the temple of Jupiter, or into the Capitol. According to Silius Italicus, the defeat of Cannes was also prognosticated by the male owl—
"Obseditque frequens castrorum limina Bubo."
And Ovid, in the tenth book of the Metamorphoses—
"Ignavus Bubo dirum mortalibus omen;
Nam diræ mortis nuntius esse solet."
According to the fifth book of the same Metamorphoses, Ascalaphos was transformed by Ceres into a male owl, and condemned to predict evil, because he had accused her to Jove of having eaten a pomegranate in secret, against the prohibition.
The prophetic faculty of the owl, according to popular belief, is so great, that Albertus Magnus could seriously write in his times—"Si cor ejus cum dextro pede super dormientem ponatur, statim tibi dicit quidquid fecerit, et quidquid ab eo interrogaveris. Et hoc a fratribus nostris expertum est moderno tempore." When the witches in Macbeth make the horrid mixture in the great caldron, in order to obtain from it the virtue of sinister presages, they put into it, amongst other maleficent ingredients—
"Eye of newt, and toe of frog,
Wool of bat, and tongue of dog,
Adder's fork, and blind-worm's sting,
Lizard's leg, and owlet's wing."
In Sicily, the owl that moans, the crow that caws, and the dog that howls by night near the house of a sick man, announce approaching death to him; but among owls, the horned owl (the horned moon), jacobu, or chiovu, or chiò, is especially feared. The horned owl sings near the house of a sick man three days before his death; if there are no sick people in the house, it announces to one at least of its inhabitants that he or she will be struck with squinancy of the tonsil. The peasants in Sicily, when in spring they hear the lamentation of the horned owl for the first time, go to their master to give notice of their intention of leaving his service; whence the Sicilian proverb—
"Quannu canta lu chiò
Cu 'avi patruni, tinta canciar lu pò."