I have not to this day forgotten the sense of shame and sorrow with which I was overwhelmed, when, as a boy, being permitted for the first time to discharge a fowling-piece at a small bird in a shrubbery, I discovered that the feathered songster whose life I had taken was a robin-redbreast.
The stork is, in Germany especially, ever a welcome guest, and wheels (sun emblems) are placed on the roofs of houses in Hesse, in order to encourage the storks to build their nests thereupon. Their presence is supposed to render the building safe against the ravages of fire. Mannhardt mentions an instance in which, to avenge the abstraction of her young, it is said a stork carried a flaming brand in her beak, threw it into the nest, and thus set the house on fire. The German name for stork, Grimm says, is literally child or soul-bringer. Hence the belief that the advent of infants is presided over by this bird, which obtains so largely in Denmark and Germany.
Amongst the remains of birds and animals consumed as food by the framers of the Danish "kjökkenmöddings," or shell-mounds, the absence of the bones of the domestic fowl, two species of swallow, the sparrow and the stork, has been commented upon by several archæologists. This is attributable, doubtless, to the sacred character with which they were invested by the inhabitants of the district when the said mounds were formed. For a similar reason, as has been previously observed, no bones of the hare have been found in these ancient "kitchen-middens."
Amongst the birds of evil omen, the owl appears to rank with the foremost. Bourne says, "If an owl, which is reckoned a most abominable and unlucky bird, send forth its hoarse and dismal voice, it is an omen of the approach of some terrible thing; that some dire calamity and some great misfortune is near at hand." Chaucer speaks of the "owl eke that of deth the bode bringeth." Amongst the Romans its appearance was regarded as a most certain portent of death. In the year 312, on the day on which Constantine saw the vision of the cross in the heavens, with the legend "In hoc signo vinces," Zosimus, the pagan historian, informs us that his opponent, Maxentius, was disconcerted by the adverse portent of a flight of owls. Speaking of the prodigies which were said to accompany the passing away of Augustus Cæsar, Xiphilinus says that an "owl sung on the top of the Curia." Our Elizabethan and later poets often refer to this superstition. In one of Reed's old plays we have:—
When screech owls croak upon the chimney tops,
It's certain then you of a corse shall hear.
Spencer speaks of "the ill-fac'd owl, death's dreadful messenger," and Pennant, when describing what is called the tawny owl, says, "this is what we call the screech owl, to which the folly of superstition had given the power of presaging death by its cries." Shakspere makes Lennox say, on the night of the murder of Duncan, that—
The obscure bird
Clamoured the live-long night.
Puck, in Midsummer Night's Dream, says,—
Now the hungry lion roars,
And the wolf be-howls the moon;
Whilst the heavy ploughman snores,
All with weary task fordone.
Now the wanted brands do glow,
Whilst the scritch-owl, scritching loud,
Puts the wretch, that lies in woe,
In remembrance of a shroud.
Referring to the advent of the Duke of Gloucester, afterwards King Richard III., King Henry says:—