Where the forest murmurs

by William Sharp

I wonder how many names the Owl has! Those alone which, like the archetypal name, derive from the old root-word ul (to howl or hoot or screech), must run to some thirty to forty at least, from the Anglo-Saxon ‘hule’ and later ‘ullet’ to the familiar ‘hoolet’ or ‘hoolit’ or ‘howlet,’ or, again, the still current south English ‘ullud,’ ‘ullot,’ or ‘ullyet.’ We have many Gaelic names also, as (for the snowy or barn owl) ‘cailleach-bhan,’ the white auld wife, or ‘cailleach-oidhche,’ the night-witch; or (for the tawny owl) ‘bodach-oidhche,’ the night-bogle; or (for the screech-owl) the onomatopœic ‘corra-sgriachaig,’ or several terms meaning ‘long-eared’ or ‘horned’; and three or four designations, either onomatopœic, as perhaps ‘ulacan’ (though both in sound and meaning it is the same as the southland ‘hooligan’), or adaptations of the Teutonic root-word, as ‘Olcadan’ or ‘ullaid.’ The name ‘yogle’ may be heard along the Lothian, Yorkshire, and East Anglian coast-lands, and is doubtless a ‘lift’ from the Danish ‘Katyugle’ or ‘Katogle’: indeed ‘catyogle,’ ‘catogle,’ and ‘catyool’ (with the quaint by-throw ‘cherubim’) occur in several parts of England. In Clydesdale I have often heard the horned owl called the ‘luggie’ (long-ears). Some names with probably only local meaning I do not understand, as for example, the ‘Wite’ (not the adjective, but possibly the old word for churchyard and even church); the ‘padge’ or ‘pudge’ of Leicestershire; the Jack-baker, billy-wix, and the eastland ‘will-a-wix.’ (Is this the cry of the young owl awaiting food?) The ‘jilly,’ which I heard once at or near Windermere, is probably a corruption of the Gaelic ‘gheal’ (white), as many north-Celtic names survive in that region. Our commonest name in the Highlands is ‘comhachag’ (co-achak) probably as onomatopœic a term as ‘cuach’ or ‘cuthag’ (coo-ak) for the cuckoo, or ‘fitheach’ (fee-ak) for the raven. It is said that the longest poem on the Owl in any language is in Gaelic. The Oran na Comhachaig or Song of the Owl was composed by an aged Highland bard named Donald Finlay somewhere about three hundred years ago—about 1590 says one local account, though I do not know on what authority: a rinn Domhnull Mac Fhionnlaidh nan Dan, sealgair ’us bard ainmeil Abrach, mu thiomchioll 1590 (done by Donald Finlay of the Songs, the celebrated Lochaber huntsman and poet, in or about 1590). I have again and again heard the second of its sixty-seven—in another version seventy—quatrains quoted in support of the theory that an owl lives at least a hundred years; some are credited with far greater age:

“’S co-aoise mise do’n daraig,
Bha na fhaillain ann sa choinnich,
’S ioma linn a chuir mi romham,
’S gur mi comhachag bhochd na sroine.”

(I am old as the oak ... lit. ‘the ancientness upon me is that of the oak’ ... whose mossy roots spread wide: many a race have I seen come and go: and still I am the lonely owl of Srona.)

In every country the owl is a bird of mourning. It is also the bird of night pre-eminently (what a pity the old-English owl-light as a variant for twilight has become obsolete); the bird of moonlight or the Moon; the bird of Silence, of Ruin, of the Grave, of Death. In some places a dead owl is still transfixed to the outside of a door, to avert lightning. Perhaps it is for the same reason that a caged owl is held to be a dangerous co-inmate of a house during a thunderstorm. A thousand legends have woven this sombre raiment of associations, though the owl’s only distinction from other birds of prey is that it can see in the dark and is nocturnal in habit. It loves solitary places, because there undisturbed, but is not all darkness solitary? In Syria the peasant calls the owl ‘the mother of ruins,’ which is poetically apt, as is the German ‘the sorrowing mother,’ but our northern ‘night-witch’ and the grim Breton ‘soul-harrier’ (surely a survival of the Greek idea of the owl as a soul-guide) are unjust to an inoffensive bird whose concern is not with souls and graves and ruins but with rats and mice. A German naturalist has even, I remember, written to prove that the owl is pre-eminently a bird of love, of single-hearted devotion, ‘the dove of the night’: and there is a Danish poem about ‘the Silver-Spinner’ weaving a thin invisible web in the dusk wherein to entangle and bring close the hearts of lovers. Old Donald Finlay of the Songs must have had some such idea in his mind when in his Song of the Owl he makes the bird say in effect, ‘I may be old and forlorn, but am not to be blamed for that: neither of rapine nor of lies have I ever been guilty: is there a grave anywhere that I have ever violated? and to the mate of my choice have I ever been faithless?’

This name of the Silver-Spinner, however, though often in Germany, Scandinavia, and our own country associated with the poetic legend alluded to, is really a romantic derivative from the ancient connection of the small owl with the Maiden Maid goddess who presided over spinning as one of her foremost womanly attributes. ‘The Woman’s Bird,’ as the small owl is sometimes called, deserves the name, for in almost every language ancient and modern, except English and Finnish, its name is feminine. The sacred bird of Athens or the Lesbian Nyctimenê is still ‘the woman’s bird’ among the Australian aborigines: Sanskrit, Greek, Latin, Celtic, Icelandic, Vendish, German, French, Hungarian, all afford the same sex-indication. The great white owl, however, is the bird of heroes, wanderers, the night-foray, war, lightning, desolation, solitude, and death. It is said, I know not how demonstrated or traced, that the name Ulysses is but the variant of the Etruscan Ulixé or Sikulian Oulixes, words supposed to indicate the ululation of the owl’s cry (in Italy I have heard the name of the sweet and plaintive little aziola or aziolo derived from the same source): and that it was given to the Homeric hero because he was the first to adventure sea-voyaging on moonlit nights, because he too was a night-wanderer. But unless Ulixé or Oulixes be older than the Greek name, what of Odysseus? In like fashion some speculative philologists derive ‘Pallas’ from the Turanian owl-name Pöllö.

I heard a singular fragment of owl-folklore once on the island of Arran. The narrator said the white owl had seven distinct hoots, but all I need recall here is that the seventh was when the ‘Reul Fheasgair’ ceased to be the Evening Star and became the ‘Reul na Maidne,’ the Day-Star. Was this a memory of some myth associating the owl with the otherworld (or darkness or moontide or Night) disclosed every eve at the opening of the Gates of Dusk?... the time of sleep and dreams, of strange nocturnal life, of silence and mystery, between the soft white fire of the Vesper Star, the star of Labour as the Bretons call it, meaning that with its advent the long day’s labour ceases, and its cold serenity when it has climbed the ramparts of the midsummer night, and, as Phosphoros, the Day-Star, Son of the Morning, flashes like a lance-point against the milky onflood of the dawn?

THE GARDENS OF THE SEA
(A MIDSUMMER NOON’S DREAM)

I recall a singular legend, where heard, where read, I do not remember, nor even am I sure of what race the offspring, of what land the denizen. It was to the effect that, in the ancient days of the world, flowers had voices, had song to them as the saying is: and that there were kingdoms among these populations of beauty, and that in the course of ages (would they be flower-æons, and so of a measure in time different from our longer or shorter periods?) satraps revolted against the dominion of the Rose, and tropical princes led new hosts, and scarlet forest-queens filled the jungle and the savannah with their chants of victory. And the end was a conflict so great that even the isles of the sea were shaken by it, and the pale green moss of polar rocks whispered of the great world-war of the peoples of Flowry. At last, after the shadow-flitting passage of an æon, the gods were roused from their calm, and, looking down into the shaken mirror of the world, beheld all their dreams and visions and desires no longer children of loveliness and breaths of song. In these æons while they had slept in peace the Empire of Flowry had come to a dissolution: race fought with race, tribe with tribe, clan with clan. Among all the nations there was a madness for supremacy, so that the weed in the grass and the flame-crowned spire of the aloe were at one in a fierce discontent and a blind lust of dominion. Thereupon the gods pondered among themselves. Kronos, who had been the last to wake and was already drowsy with old immemorial returning slumber, murmured: ‘A divine moment, O ye Brotherhood of Eternity, is a long time wherein to be disturbed by the mortal reflection of our dreams and the passions and emotions of our enchanted hearts.’

And as all the calm-eyed Immortals agreed, Kronos sighed out the mandate of silence, and turning his face to Eternity was again among the august dreams of the Everlasting Ones.

In that long moment—for there in the other world it was but a brief leaning on their elbows of the drowsy gods while the fans of Immortal Sleep for a second stayed the vast waves of Peace—the divine messengers, or were they the listening powers and dominions of the earth, fulfilled destiny. From every flower-nation, from every people by far waters, from every tribe in dim woods and the wilderness, from every clan habiting the most far hills beyond the ever-receding pale blue horizons, song was taken as stars are pluckt away from the Night by the grey fingers of the Dawn. The Rose breathed no more a flusht magic of sound; the Lily no more exhaled a foamwhite cadence. Silence was come upon the wild chant of orchids in old, forgotten woods; stillness upon the tinkling cymbals of the little hands of the dim, myriad, incalculable host of blossom; a hush upon the songs of meadow-flowers; a spell upon the singing of honeysuckles in the white dews at the rising of the moon. Everywhere, from all the green tribes, from all the glowing nations of Flowry, from each and every of the wandering folk of the Reed, the Moss, and the Lichen, from all the Clans of the Grass, the added loveliness of song was taken. Silence fell upon one and all: a strange and awful stillness came upon the woods and valleys. It was then that the God of Youth, wandering through the hushed world, took the last song of a single rose that in a secret place had not yet heard the common doom, and with his breath gave it a body, and a pulse to its heart, and fashioned for it a feather-covering made of down of the bog-cotton and the soft undersides of alder-leaf and olive. Then, from a single blade of grass that still whispered in a twilight hollow, he made a like marvel, to be a mate to the first, and sent out both into the green world, to carry song to the woods and the valleys, the hills and the wildernesses, the furthest shores, the furthest isles. Thus was the nightingale created, the first bird, the herald of all the small clans of the bushes that have kept wild-song in the world, and are our delight.