down by Jupiter to conclude the scene between Æneas and Turnus takes the form of the bird, "Quæ quondam in bustis aut culminibus desertis, Fertque refertque sonans, clypeumque everberat alis—” His un till all manhood melted within the Rutulian like wax. happy sister Juturna no sooner hears and sees the fatal advent, than she exclaims in despair, "alarum verbera nosco Letalemque sonum." There can be little or no doubt that Canidia's Strix was a species of this genus; nor need we be surprised that it should find a fit place among the ingredients of her infernal magazine— "Et uncta turpis ova ranæ sanguine, Plumamque nocturnæ strigis."* Pliny, indeed, says, "Esse in maledictis jam antiquis strigem convenit: sed quæ sit avium, constare non arbitror:" allowing its bad name, but not considering it certain what bird is meant. That the portions of Canidia's laboratory above noticed, were usually considered potent in a love-charm, appears from the fifth Elegy of Propertius (lib. 3). "Illum turgentis rane portenta rubetæ Et lecta exsectis anguibus ossa trahunt, Again, in Ovid (Metam. lib. vii.), the bird is used by wholesale to make Medea's gruel thick and slab— "Et strigis infames ipsis cum carnibus alas." Now we find these Striges just in the company where we should expect owls to be in the Thebaid of Statius, "Monstra volant, diræ strident in nube volucres, And when we presently come nearer to our own times, we shall endeavour to show that some of these passages at least must have been present to the mind of "Rare Ben," and that he, who was a ripe scholar, accepted the Strix as a screech-owl. Indeed, the description in Ovid's Fasti (lib. vi.), presenting us with the great Hor. Epod. Lib. Ode v. head, unmoved staring eyes, beak formed for rapine, and hooked claws, suits no bird so well as an owl. In the meantime we shall take the liberty of considering the Strix as good an owl after its kind as the Bubo itself, and follow out, with the patience of the reader, other evidence of its exceedingly wicked character. The Striges appear to have been the terror of all mothers and negligent nurses: "Nocte volant, puerosque petunt nutricis egentes; Et vitiant cunis corpora rapta suis. Carpere dicuntur lactentia viscera rostris, FASTI, LIB. VI. In the case particularly alluded to by Ovid, the nurse, alarmed by his cry, runs to the aid of the almost exhausted infant, who is restored; and the return of the Striges is prevented by charms, among which is the arbutus leaf. According to that learned physician, Serenus Samonicus, female children were also subject to their nocturnal attacks. "The little owl and the great owl" are placed under the unclean birds in our versions of the eleventh chapter of Leviticus (v. 17), though some dispute the propriety of the translation. The Seventy do not so render the words, but the Zurich edition and the Vulgate have each an owl (Bubo) in that verse. At any rate, owls had a very unclean reputation, and the transformation of the tell-tale Ascalaphus is marked by a concentration of the bad qualities of the form with which he was cursed; "Fœdaque fit volucris venturi nuntia luctûs Ignavus bubo, dirum mortalibus omen." In the same spirit Queen Labe in her vengeance changed King Beder into "a vile owl," a metamorphosis still less desirable than his previous transformation into a white bird with a red bill and feet, to which incarnation the Princess Giauhara had consigned him. According to a provincial tradition, a baker's daughter was turned into an owl for refusing bread to our Saviour. Shakspere in "Hamlet," and Fletcher in "The Nice Valour," allude to the tale: which if not invented by some Gloucestershire monk, with a design on the oven, was probably of Eastern origin. The body of an owl was considered by Minerva a meet receptacle for the spirit of the polluted Nyctimene. It is not to be wondered at that such a detested bird as the Bubo should be conspicuous in Pliny's chapter De Inauspicatis avibus :*—“ Bubo funebris et maximè abominatus, publicis *Nat. Hist. lib. x. c. xii. præcipuè auspiciis, deserta incolit: nec tantum desolata, sed dira etiam et inaccessa: noctis monstrum, nec cantu aliquo vocalis, sed gemitu. Itaque in urbibus aut omnino in luce visus, dirum ostentum est." These be hard words, my masters, and though the Roman naturalist softens them a little by assuring us that to his knowledge the perching of the bird upon the houses of private individuals had not been fatal to them, he does not the less forget to tell us that Rome underwent lustration twice in consequence of its abominable visitation; and that on one of these occasions it had penetrated to the cella of the Capitol; Julius Obsequens in his book "De Prodigiis" mentions one of these luckless birds which was caught and burnt, and its ashes thrown into the Tiber. The private visitations of the owl do not however appear to have been thought so harmless by the generality as they were by Pliny, or the offending birds would not have been nailed to the doors to avert the calamity their presence threatened. It was in the shape of an owl that the Thessalian witch loved "To sail in the air When the moon shone fair!" How exquisitely is the scene described in one of the most entertaining romances that ever was written.* You see Fotis and Lucius moving with stealthy pace towards the chink through which, scarcely daring to breathe, he beholds Pamphile take from the chest the box from which she anoints herself as she mutters her charm, till completely feathered and transformed into an owl (Bubo), she spurns the floor with a shriek, and flies forth with full power of wing. Man is an imitative animal, and no sooner does Lucius recover from his astonishment, than he is earnest with the reluctant Fotis to assist him with a similar ceremonial, so that in the form of a winged cupid, he may clasp her to his bosom. She yields to his entreaties at last, and takes down the magic chest, handing to him from it the precious pyx. Eagerly does the ardent Lucius plunge his hand into the ointment, and having besmeared himself most diligently, confidently does he raise his arms and winnow the air in expectation of the sprouting feathers: but alas for curiosity! Fotis in her trepidation had made a slight mistake, and the discomfited Lucius, as his visage and ears lengthen, and his smooth skin becomes a hairy hide, whilst his hands and feet become solipede and quadrupedal, and his heavy head is balanced by a length of tail, discovers in agony that he has got into the wrong box. How does the distracted Fotis beat her beauteous face and bewail herself, when she sees her lover thus translated! Apuleii Madaurensis Metamorph. It was not to be expected that the Germans would neglect to associate this bird of evil omen with scenes of horror. It figures in Faust and in Retzsch's admirable illustrations. What would the incantation scene in the "Freischutz" be, either on the stage, or in H. B.'s piquant cartoon, without the owl! Nor have our poets been less apt to take up the dark ideas of the ancients. Ben Jonson and Shakspere, among a host of others, have immortalised the evil principle embodied in this nocturnal wanderer. In "The Masque of Queens," a witch of the Canidian school* thus chaunts: "The screech-owl's eggs, and the feathers black, The blood of the frog, and the bone in his back, The third charm in the same masque runs thus: "The owl is abroad, the bat and the toad, And so is the cat-a-mountain; The ant and the mole sit both in a hole, The moon it is red, and the stars are fled, Another witch boasts in the same masque. I scratch'd out the eyes of the owl before, I tore the bat's wing,-what would you have more." Shakspere has introduced the bird into the most fearful scenes of one of his most fearful tragedies. The "owlet's wing" is an ingredient of the cauldron wherein the witches prepare their charm. Its doleful cry pierces Lady Macbeth's ear whilst the murder is doing: "Hark! Peace! It was the owl that shrieked, the fatal bell-man, Which gives the stern'st good-night-he is about it :" *It is evident that Jonson had the fifth Epode of Horace in his mind throughout this witch scene. Another of his witches sings “I from the jaws of a gardener's bitch, Did snatch these bones, and then leap'd the ditch." Here we have the "Ossa ab ore rapta jejuna canis," and in the third charm we trace the "Suburana canes." The "plumam nocturnæ strigis" we have already noticed. and immediately afterwards, when the murderer rushes in exclaiming, "I've done the deed-did'st thou not hear a noise?" she answers, I heard the owl scream and the crickets cry." Richard the Third, when he is irritated by the ill-news showered thick upon him, interrupts the third messenger with, "Out on ye, owls! nothing but songs of death.” In Fletcher's song, which begins, "Hence all ye vain delights," and not improbably, was the model from which Milton drew his "Il Penseroso," the owl is not forgotten: "Fountain heads and pathless groves, These are the sounds we feed upon; Then stretch our bones in a still gloomy valley, Poor Chatterton, in the spirit but not in the phraseology of the age which he selected for the date of his beautiful but transparent forgeries, thus writes in the "Mynstrelle's Songe" in his "Ælla, a tragycal enterlude,' Gray introduces the complaint of the "moping owl" among the solemn sounds which usher in his celebrated elegy; and Scott and Coleridge have associated it with supernatural machinery. When the Lady of Branksome sits "In old Lord David's western tower," and listens to the Spirit of the Flood as he calls on the Spirit of the Fell, "At the sullen, moaning sound The ban-dogs bay and howl; |