I fear no one would admit that a book of this character was anywhere near complete did it not include at least one chapter on the observances and superstitions connected with owls. Nevertheless I doubt whether I should not have taken the risk of the reader’s displeasure had I not been able to avail myself of essays by several men who have handled this large and intricate phase of bird-lore in a way that discourages any rivalry.
The Atlantic Monthly for September, 1874, contained an article by Alexander Young on “Birds of Ill omen,” in which one may find treated not only the historic dread of owls, but many similar facts and fears connected with ravens, crows, magpies, and their fellow-craftsmen in alleged diabolism. “Most birds,” Mr. Young remarks, “were considered ominous of good or evil according to the place and manner of their appearance.... It is noticeable that this stigma has been affixed only to those birds whose appearance or voice is disagreeable, and whose habits are somewhat peculiar.” The nocturnal owls perhaps fulfil these conditions as well as any bird could. “Their retired habits,” to quote Broderip,[[78]] “the desolate places that are their favorite haunts, their hollow hootings, fearful shrieks, serpent-like hissings and coffin-maker-like snappings, have helped to give them a bad eminence, more than overbalancing all the glory that Minerva and her own Athens could shed around them.”
The little Grecian owl—it is a foreign replica of our own small screech owl, which, as a matter of fact, gurgles rather melodiously instead of screeching—was well thought of in Athens in its prime, and was the special cognizance of the wise and dignified goddess of her citizens, Pallas Athene—Minerva of the Romans. De Kay,[[18]] indeed, reasons her out an owl-goddess, and it is said that statues of her have been found with an owl’s instead of a human head. If she was a humanized expression for the moon, as some interpret her, this little lover of moonlight is most suitable as her symbol. Therefore one need not speculate on the reputed “wisdom” of the owl, any owl—said to be proved wise by its being the only bird that looks straight before it—for that reputation is merely a reflection from the attributes of its patron, the stately goddess. Homer makes Athene the special protector of those, chiefly women, engaged in textile crafts; and there is an old saying that the owl was a weaver’s daughter, spinning with silver threads. When, therefore, in the midst of the momentous naval battle of Salamis an owl alighted on the mast of the flagship of Admiral Themistocles, as tradition attests, it was received as an assurance from Pallas Athene herself that she was fighting with and for the harassed Greeks. The bird is displayed as large as space permits on Greek coins of the period.
When the Romans took over Athene as Minerva her owl came with her, but its symbolic importance quickly faded. The Italians cared nothing for their little “strix”—had no use for it except to eat it or make it a lure for their bird-catching nets, and even charged it with sucking the blood of children; and they had no respect at all for the rest of its tribe. The language applied to them by the Latin poets reveals the detestation and dread with which owls were held among the Romans. Derogatory references abound in books of the classical era, and similar sentiments might be quoted from authors down into medieval times. Even the elder Pliny, called a naturalist, but really hardly more than a too credulous compiler, condemns the tribe in very harsh words—especially the big-horned species; yet he only reflected the general belief that they were messengers of death, whence everybody trembled if one was seen in the town or alighted on any housetop. One luckless owl that made a flying trip to the Capitol was caught and burnt, and its ashes were cast into the Tiber. Twice Rome underwent ceremonial purification on this account, whence Butler’s jibe in Hudibras:
The Roman senate, when within
The city walls an owl was seen,
Did cause their clergy with lustrations
(Our synod calls humiliations)
The round-faced prodigy t’ avert
From doing town and country hurt.