ich gives the stern'st good night."

[278] "AEneid," bk. iv. l. 462.

[279] "Metamorphoses," bk. v. l. 550; bk. vi. l. 432; bk. x. l.
453; bk. xv. l. 791.

[280] "2 Henry VI." iii. 2; iv. 1.

[281] "Titus Andronicus," ii. 3.

[282] Cf. "Lucrece," l. 165; see Yarrell's "History of British
Birds," vol. i. p. 122.

And when the murderer rushes in, exclaiming,

"I have done the deed. Didst thou not hear a noise?"

she answers:

"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?"

[283] See Brand's "Pop. Antiq.," 1849, vol. iii. p. 209.

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 Caesar" (i. 3), Casca says:

"And yesterday the bird of night did sit,
Even at noon-day, upon the market-place,
Hooting and shrieking. When these prodigies
Do so conjointly meet, let not men say,
'These are their reasons,--they are natural;'
For, I believe, they are portentous things
Unto the climate that they point upon."

Considering, however, the abhorrence with which the owl is generally
regarded, it is not surprising that the "owlet's wing"[284] should form
an ingredient of the caldron in which the witches in "Macbeth" (iv. 1)
prepared their "charm of powerful trouble." The owl is, too, in all
probability, represented by Shakespeare as a witch,[285] a companion of
the fairies in their moonlight gambols. In "Comedy of Errors" (ii. 2),
Dromio of Syracuse says:

"This is the fairy land: O, spite of spites!
We talk