“Plumamque nocturnæ strigis.”
A BIRD OF ILL OMEN.
The “owlet’s wing” was an ingredient of the cauldron wherein the witches prepared their “charm of powerful trouble” (Macbeth, Act iv. Sc. 1); and, with the character assigned to it by the ancients, Shakespeare, no doubt, felt that the introduction of an owl in a dreadful scene of a tragedy would help to make the subject come home more forcibly to the people, who had, from early times, associated its presence with melancholy, misfortune, and death. Accordingly, we find the unfortunate owl stigmatized at various times as the “obscure,” “ominous,” “fearful,” and “fatal” “bird of night.” Its doleful cry pierces the ear of Lady Macbeth while the murder is being done:—
“Hark!—Peace! It was the owl that shriek’d,
The fatal bellman which gives the stern’st good night.”
Macbeth, Act ii. Sc. 1.
And when the murderer rushes in immediately afterwards, exclaiming,—
“I have done the deed. Didst thou not hear a noise?”
She replies,—
“I heard the owl scream.”