with goblins, owls, and elvish sprites.
If we obey them not, this will ensue,
They'll suck our breath, or pinch us black and blue!"

[284] The spelling of the folios is "howlets." In Holland's
translation of Pliny (chap. xvii. book x.), we read "of owlls
or howlets." Cotgrave gives "Hulotte."

[285] Halliwell-Phillipps's, "Handbook Index," 1866, p. 354.

Singer, in his Notes on this passage (vol. ii. p. 28) says: "It has been
asked, how should Shakespeare know that screech-owls were considered by
the Romans as witches?" Do these cavillers think that Shakespeare never
looked into a book? Take an extract from the Cambridge Latin Dictionary
(1594, 8vo), probably the very book he used: "Strix, a _scritche owle_;
an unluckie kind of bird (as they of olde time said) which sucked out
the blood of infants lying in their cradles; a witch, that changeth the
favour of children; an hagge or fairie." So in the "London Prodigal," a
comedy, 1605: "Soul, I think I am sure crossed or witch'd with an
owl."[286] In "The Tempest" (v. 1) Shakespeare introduces Ariel as
saying:

"Where the bee sucks, there suck I,
In a cowslip's bell I lie,
There I couch when owls do cry."

[286] See Dyce's "Glossary," p. 302.

Ariel,[287] who sucks honey for luxury in the cowslip's bell, retreats
thither for quiet when owls are abroad and screeching. According to an
old legend, the owl was originally a baker's daughter, to which allusion
is made in "Hamlet" (iv. 5), where Ophelia exclaims: "They say the owl
was a baker's daughter. Lord! we know what we are, but know not what we
may be." Douce[288] says the following story was current among the
Gloucestershire peasantry: "Our Saviour went into a baker's shop where
they were baking, and asked for some bread to eat; the mistress of the
shop immediately put a piece of dough into the oven to bake for him; but
was reprimanded by her daughter, who, insisting that the piece of dough
was too large, reduced it to a very small size; the dough, however,
immediately began to swell, and presently became a most enormous size,
whereupon the baker's daughter cried out, 'Heugh, heugh, heugh!' which
owl-like noise probably induced our Saviour to transform her into that
bird for her wickedness." Another version of the same story, as formerly
known in Herefordshire, substitutes a fairy in the place of our Saviour.
Similar legends are found on the Continent.[289]

[287] See S