“I heard the owl scream.”
Its appearance at a birth has been said to foretell ill-luck to the infant, a superstition to which King Henry, in “3 Henry VI.” (v. 6), addressing Gloster, refers:
“The owl shriek’d at thy birth, an evil sign.”
Its cries[283] have been supposed to presage death, and, to quote the words of the Spectator, “a screech-owl at midnight has alarmed a family more than a band of robbers.” Thus, in “A Midsummer-Night’s Dream” (v. 1), we are told how
“the screech-owl, screeching loud,
Puts the wretch that lies in woe
In remembrance of a shroud;”
and in “1 Henry VI.” (iv. 2), it is called the “ominous and fearful owl of death.” Again, in “Richard III.” (iv. 4), where Richard is exasperated by the bad news, he interrupts the third messenger by saying:
“Out on ye, owls! nothing but songs of death?”
The owl by day is considered by some equally ominous, as in “3 Henry VI.” (v. 4):
“the owl by day,
If he arise, is mock’d and wonder’d at.”
And in “Julius Cæsar” (i. 3), Casca says: