The Sicilian poet Giovani Meli, in the little poem, Pianto di Palemone, refers to the sinister presage of the horned owl in the following verses—
"Ah! miu patri lu predissi,
E trimava 'ntra li robbi,
Ch'eu nascivi 'ntra l'ecclissi
E chiancìanu li jacobbi."
In the popular Sicilian legend, entitled La Principessa di Carini, when the friar goes to act as a spy, the moon envelops itself in clouds, the horned owl flies round, screeching—
"Lu jacobbu chiancennu svulazzau."
In several German popular songs, the horned owl and the common owl complain that they are alone and deserted in the forest. The owl (as the moon) is also represented in German tradition as a nocturnal weaver.[390] In the same tradition, the funereal owl is found mentioned in connection with the funereal crow.[391]
I have already mentioned, in the chapter on the Wolf, that vṛikas, in the Vedic hymns, may mean both wolf and crow. The crow, like the wolf, represents the dark night. The owl with yellow eyes (whence in Athens certain coins bearing the effigies of an owl were called owls, and in Italy golden coins are vulgarly called owls'-eyes) seems to represent the crepuscular bird in particular (from which we can understand why it was especially sacred to Athênê), and much oftener still the night with the yellow eye of the moon. The crow, on the other hand, seems to be the representative of the gloomy night or cloud. The owl which destroys the crow's nest, and discovers the deceit of the crow when disguised in the feathers of other birds, seems to be the same as the moon that disperses the darkness, or the sahasrâkshas (the heavenly peacock), that shuts the thousand eyes of the starry sky, and makes the thousand stars of the heaven grow pale. The owl, as the king of birds (we know also the Indras-moon as Mṛigarâǵas, or king of beasts) seems generally to be the same as the moon, the mistress of the night. Indras is often the peacock-god, the azure starry sky of night; but blue and black, as we have said, are two equivalent colours (the azure god Indras becomes the azure or dark Kṛishṇas, and, on the contrary, the crow becomes a peacock), and are expressed by one and the same word; hence the black bird and the blue one are substituted for one another. According to Festus, the crow was, before the peacock, sacred to Juno. The crow-peacock has already become proverbial in the Pańćatantram,[392] where we read that the hasty fool takes a crow for a peacock. The voice of the peacock is as shrill as that of the crow; in the Râmâyaṇam,[393] the water-cock (ǵalakukkubhas, the heron, the halcyon, the duck, the swan) laughs at the peacock when striving to answer the cuckoo. Thus, the Greek proverb laughs at the crows which are more honoured than the nightingales (korakes aêdonôn aîdesimôteroi). Martial places them in contrast with the swans—
"Inter Lædæos ridetur corvus Olores;"
and the Greek proverb turns into ridicule the rook amongst the Muses (koloios en tais mousais), and the Latin one, the "Gracculus ad fides." In a variety of the forty-sixth story of the sixth book of Afanassieff, the crow occupies the place of the prophetic nightingale. The fox (the spring aurora) takes the cheese (the moon) from the crow (the winter night), by making it sing. In the Mahâbhâratam,[394] the monster Râhus disguises himself as a god, that he may go and drink the ambrosia of the gods; the sun and the moon denounce the imposture; Râhus is recognised, and Vishṇus cuts off his head with his disc; this is an ancient variety of the fable of the crow among the peacocks. This disguise of the crow, however, will appear quite natural when we reflect that Indras is a peacock, and that in the Râmâyaṇam[395] a certain learned crow (pâṇḍitas) is called by Hanumant the son of Indras (putraḥ kila sa çakrasya; in the Ornithes of Aristophanes, I read that at Athens men swore by the crow and by Zeus). I have observed, on a previous occasion, that the Vedic Indras assumes in the Hindoo poems a sinister, and sometimes even a diabolical aspect. In the Râmâyaṇam,[396] a crow attacks Sîtâ with wings, beak, and claws; Râmas hurls an enchanted dart at it; the bird, by divine grace, does not die, but as it flies rapidly, between drop and drop, whilst it rains from the cloud, it sees nothing but darts and shadows of darts in the air. Then it returns to Râmas to beseech him to deliver it from this enchantment; Râmas says that the enchantment must run its full course, but that he can make it take effect in one part of the body alone; let the crow choose the part that Râmas must aim at. The cunning bird, hoping that Râmas will miss his aim, says one of its eyes; Râmas aims at it and strikes it, to the great wonder of Sîtâ, against whom the crow had begun to make war, after that Râmas had marked her forehead in red (probably after the evening aurora; the legendary husband and wife exchange the ring of recognition, now the sun and now the moon, in the evening or the autumn, in order to find themselves together again, by its means, in the morning or the spring). I have cited in the preceding chapter, from the Pańćatantram, the popular Hindoo belief that the crow is the most cunning of birds, as the fox is the most cunning of animals. Aristotle says that the crow is the fox's friend; in the Râmâyaṇam, the stratagem adopted by the fox in the Western fable to make the cheese fall out of the crow's beak, obliging it to open its beak and let the booty fall, is advised by the rook or crow (sârikâ or gracula religiosa). A bird of prey holds a parrot in its claws, and a sârikâ in its beak; the rook says, "Parrot, bite the foot of the enemy whilst he is alone and in the air, and whilst his beak presses me; and as his beak is occupied and cannot bite thee, bite thou him, in order that he may let you go;" the rook thus hoped that, by opening its beak, which it did with pain, the bird of prey would let it too go. In Plautus a crafty servant is compared to a crow. The crow also personifies in Hindoo tradition the shadow of a dead man; to give food to the crows is for the Hindoos the same as to give food to the souls of the dead; hence part of their meals was always, and is still, according to all travellers in India, left for the crows. Even in the Râmâyaṇam,[397] Râmas orders Sîtâ to preserve the rest of the food for the crows. In the flight of the gods before the demons, described in the last book of the Râmâyaṇam, the god Indras hides himself in the form of a peacock, and Yamas, the god of the dead, in that of a crow (in Hellenic mythology, during the war against the giants, it is Apollo that transforms himself into a crow, but probably into a white one, as white crows were, according to the Greek belief, dedicated to the sun. It is said that the crow was once white, but that Apollo made it black, indignant at that animal for bringing to him the unwelcome news of having surprised in adultery his mistress, the Princess Korônis; here the crow occupies the place of the mythical cuckoo. In another Hellenic myth, the crow loses the favour of Pallas for having brought the intelligence that Erichtonios, born to Pallas by the seed of the celestial blacksmith, which had fallen upon the earth, had been found by the three daughters of Kekrops. In reward for the services of the crow, Yamas conceded to it the right of eating the funereal food, for which reason the shades of the dead, when this food is given to the crow, are enabled to pass into a better world. In the Clouds of Aristophanes, the Greek proverb, "Go to the crows" (ball' es korakas), means "die." Hence in India as in Persia, in Russia as in Germany, in Greece as in Italy, the crow is pre-eminently a funereal bird of sinister omen. According to Ælianos, the Venetians of ancient Hadria were accustomed to appease the rooks, in order that they should not devastate the fields, by solemnly sending to meet them two ambassadors, who presented to them a mixture of oil and flour. If the rooks accepted the offering, it was a good sign. In Lambert of Aschaffenburg, a pilgrim sees in a dream a horrid crow which caws and flies round Cologne, and which is hunted away by a splendid horseman; the pilgrim explains that the crow is the devil, and the horseman St George. In the Chronicles of the Beatified Anthony, we find described fetid and black pools "in regione Puteolorum in Apulia," whence the souls arise in the forms of monstrous birds in the evening hours of the Sabbath, which neither eat nor let themselves be caught, but wander till in the morning an enormous crow compels them to submerge themselves in the waters. In Germany, according to Rochholtz, when a crow places itself upon the roof of a house where there is a dead body, it means that the dead man's soul is damned. At Brusasco, in Piedmont, children sing to the crow this funereal verse, counterfeiting in the chorus the crow's cry—
"Curnaiáss,
Porta 'l sćiass (the colander);
Me mari l'è morta
Sut la porta.
Qué!"
In a popular Swedish song, in the collection translated into German by Warrens, I read this verse, where the crow assumes an entirely monstrous form; men spit at it, as they do at the devil—