Owen Meredith, Robert Bulwer Lytton, afterwards Lord Lytton, son of the poet and novelist (1831-1892).
Owl (The), sacred to Minerva, was the emblem of Athens.
Owls hoot in B♭ and G♭, or in F♯ and A♭.—Rev. G. White, Natural History of Selborne, xlv. (1789).
Owl a Baker’s Daughter (The). Our Lord once went into a baker’s shop to ask for bread. The mistress instantly put a cake in the oven for Him, but the daughter, thinking it to be too large, reduced it to half the size. The dough, howover, swelled to an enormous bulk, and the daughter cried out, “Heugh! heugh! heugh!” and was transformed into an owl.
Well, God ’ield you! They say the owl was a baker’s daughter.—Shakespeare, Hamlet (1596).
Ox (The Dumb), St. Thomas Aqui´nas; so named by his fellow-students on account of his taciturnity (1224-1274).
An ox once spoke as learned men deliver.—Beaumont and Fletcher, Rule a Wife and Have a Wife, iii. 1 (1640).
Ox. The black ox hath trod on his foot, he has married and is hen-pecked; calamity has befallen him. The black ox was sacrificed to the infernals, and was consequently held accursed. When Tusser says the best way to thrive is to get married, the objector says:
Why, then, do folk this proverb put,
“The black ox near trod on thy foot,”
If that way were to thrive?
Wiving and Thriving, lvii. (1557).