The Jews believe that their cry causes the death of young children; so, in order to prevent this, they pour a vessel of water out into the courtyard every time they hear the cry of one of these owls, the idea being that thus they will distract the bird’s attention, and the infant will escape the intended malice. The Arabs believe these owls can cause all kinds of evil to old as well as young, but they content themselves with cursing the bird whenever it is seen or heard. The Mohammedans say: “When these birds cry they are only cursing in their own language; but their malediction is harmless unless they know the name of the individual to whom they wish evil, or unless they have the malignity to point out that person when passing him. As the Devil sleeps but little when there is evil work to be done, he would infallibly execute the commands of his favorite, if one did not, by cursing him, thus guard against the power of that enemy.”
It is a pleasure to have this long record of misdemeanors and diabolism relieved by at least one good deed in history. Having read in Watters’s[[57]] curious little volume that the Tartars attribute to the barn-owl the saving of the life of their great commander Genghis Khan, I searched far and wide for the particulars of what seemed likely to be an entertaining incident, and at last I came upon the facts in the eleventh volume of Purchase His Pilgrims. It appears that Changius Can, as the old historian spells it, had his horse shot under him in a certain fight that was going against him, and he ran and hid in a thicket of shrubs—which is a novel view of the “Tartar Terror.” “Whither, when the enemies were returned, with purpose to spoil the dead Carkass, and to seek out such as were hidden, it happened that an Owle came and sate upon those little trees or shrubs which he had chose for his court, which when they had perceived they sought no further in that place, supposing that the said bird would not have sat there if any man had been hidden underneath.”
A very similar legend in China accounts for the use of peacock plumes as insignia of rank and is related as follows by Katherine M. Ball[[68]]: In the Chin dynasty a defeated general took refuge in a forest where there were many peacocks. When the pursuing forces arrived, and found the fowl so quiet and undisturbed, they concluded that no one could possibly have come that way, and forthwith abandoned the search. The general—who later became the ancestor of five kings—was thus able to escape, and so grateful was he that later, when he came into power, he instituted the custom of conferring a peacock feather as an honor for the achievement of bravery in battle.
Japan has a similar mythical legend.
Frenchmen call the common brown owl of Europe chouette; and when in 1793 disgruntled smugglers and Royalist soldiers were carrying on guerrilla warfare in Brittany and Poitu against the new order of things, they came to be called Chouans, “owls,” from the signal-cries they made to one another in their nocturnal forays as appears so often in Balzac’s novel The Chouans.
Not much of this spookish and legendary lore seems to have been imported into the United States, or else it has disappeared, except that which still lingers among the superstitious negroes of the South. A writer in one of the early issues of The Cosmopolitan (magazine) related that to the black folks of the Cotton Belt forty years or so ago the quavering “song” of our small mottled screech-owl spoke of coming death; but the birds were considered sensitive to countercharms put upon them from within the house over which they crooned their tremulous monologue. “Jest jam de shevel inter de fire, en time hit git red-hot dee ’ll hesh dere shiverin’!” If you don’t like that, sprinkle salt on the blaze, or turn a pair of shoes up on the floor with the soles against the wall. “Perhaps this faint semblance to a laid-out corpse will pacify the hungry spirit; the charm certainly, according to negro belief, will silence its harsh-voiced emissary.”
The darkies warn you that you must turn back on any journey you are making if a screech-owl cries above you. An old “hoot-owl,” however, may foretell either good or bad fortune according as its three hoots are given on the right or left hand. This is an unfailing sign, and is especially heeded in ’coon or ’possum hunting, at night, when three hoots from the left will send any hunter home hopeless.
All these indications and charms bear the familiar marks of the Old World fears and formulas, but it is surprising to meet them on the fields of Dixie-land.
Owls were too well understood by our native redmen to be regarded with much superstition, and the smaller ones were well liked. Prince Maximilian mentions in his Travels (about 1836) that owls were kept in the lodges of the Mandans and Minnitarees, who lived in permanent villages in the upper Missouri Valley, and were regarded as “soothsayers,” but I think they were no more than pets, as they are now in Zuñi houses. Yet in the American Museum of Natural History in New York is a stuffed owl mounted on a stick, labeled as an object “worshipped” by the sorcerers among the Menominee Indians (eastern Wisconsin), “who believe they can assume the shape of an owl, and can in this disguise attack and kill their enemies”—that is, they try to make others believe so. The owl is chosen for their disguise, of course, because it typifies the sly, unseen method of attack in darkness with which they sought to terrify the people.
Mr. Stuart Culin tells me that in Zuñi owls, of which four kinds are recognized by names, are not considered sacred, and are killed for their feathers, which are used on ceremonial masks, and, once a year, to decorate long prayer-sticks. The people, he says, think that a certain big gray owl lives in a house like a man, and if any Indian goes to its house and the owl looks at him he will surely die. When the headmen go out at night for some ceremony, and this owl is heard, it is a sign that rain will come very soon. This large owl and the small burrowing-owl are kept in houses as pets. Children are afraid of them, and they are utilized by parents to make the youngsters behave themselves.