The time when screech-owls cry and lean dogs howl,
And spirits walk and ghosts break up their graves.
Even the little house lizard is, like his kinsfolk, the “murdering basilisks, their softest touch as smart as lizard’s stings,” considered by the Bengâlis very unlucky, and when they hear its twittering they postpone a journey.[137]
The hare is always a bad omen. He is a god among the Kalmucs, who call him Sakya Muni, or the Buddha, and say that on earth he allowed himself to be eaten by a starving man, for which gracious act he was raised to domineer over the moon, where they profess to see him. There are traces of the same idea in Upper India.[138] The sites of many cities are said to have been founded where a hare crossed the path of the first settler. The hare is detested by the agricultural and fishing population of the Hebrides, and it is one of the ordinary disguises of the witch in European folk-lore.[139]
Black is, of course, unlucky, and if a man, when digging the foundations of a new house, turns up a piece of charcoal, it is advisable to change the site.
Owls are naturally of evil omen. Even the stout-hearted Zâlim Sinh, the famous regent of Kota, abandoned his house because an owl hooted on the roof.[140] The hooting of the owl is a sign that the bird means to leave the place, and wise people would do well to follow his example. One kind of owl, the Raghui Chiraiya, learns people’s names, and if any one by chance answer his call he is sure to die.
To see a Dhobi, or washerman, who is associated with foul raiment, is exceedingly dangerous. I once had a bearer who was sadly afflicted because on tour he had to sleep in the same tent with a Dhobi. The old man was constantly bruising his shins over the ropes and pegs, because he was in the habit of stumbling out before dawn with his hands pressed over his eyes to protect himself from the sight of his ill-omened companion.
A one-eyed man is, as we have already said, very unlucky. When Jaswant Râo Holkar lost one of his eyes, he said, “I was before bad enough; but now I shall be the Guru, or preceptor, of rogues.”[141] I once had an office clerk afflicted in this way, and his colleagues refused to sit in the same room with him, because their accounts always went wrong when he looked in their direction. When it was impossible to provide any other accommodation for him, they insisted that he should cover the obnoxious organ with a handkerchief when he had to work in their neighbourhood.
One of the last of the Anglo-Indians, who had become thoroughly orientalized, used to insist on his valet, when he came to wake him, holding in his hand a tray containing some milk and a gold coin, so that his first glance on waking might fall on these lucky articles.