This credulity relative to the Strix or screech-owl may be traced to Ovid[394:A], and is alluded to by Shakspeare in the following lines:—
"We talk of goblins, owls, and elvish sprites;
If we obey them not, this will ensue,
They'll suck out breath, and pinch us black and blue."[394:B]
Another strange legend in the history of the owl is put into the mouth of the hapless Ophelia:—
"Well, God 'ield you! They say the owl was a baker's daughter;"[394:C]
a metamorphosis of which Mr. Douce has given us the origin; he tells us that it is yet a common story among the vulgar in Gloucestershire, and is thus related:—"Our Saviour went into a baker's shop where they were baking, and asked for some bread to eat. The mistress of the shop immediately put a piece of dough into the oven to bake for him; but was reprimanded by her daughter, who insisting that the piece of dough was too large, reduced it to a very small size. The dough, however, immediately afterwards began to swell, and presently became of a most enormous size. Whereupon the baker's daughter cried out 'Heugh, heugh, heugh,' which owl-like noise, probably induced our Saviour for her wickedness to transform her into that bird." He adds that this story was often related to children, in order to deter them from such illiberal behaviour to poor people.[394:D]
The partiality shown to the ruddock or red-breast seems to have been founded on the popular ballad of The Children in the Wood, and the play of Cymbeline. The charitable office, however, which these productions have ascribed to Robin, has an earlier origin than their date; for in Thomas Johnson's Cornucopia, 4to. 1596, it is related that "the robin redbrest if he find a man or woman dead, will cover all
his face with mosse, and some thinke that if the body should remaine unburied that he would cover the whole body also."[395:A] It is highly probable that this anecdote might give birth to the burial of the babes, whom no one heeded,
"Till Robin-red-breast painfully