on owls

c. AD I5 OVID 

Ibis Il. 223-4.

The owl of the night sat on an opposite house-top, and uttered his ill-boding notes with funereal voice.

c.1374 CHAUCER, Geoffrey

Parliament of Fowls l. 343.

The oule ek, that of deth the bode bryngeth.

C.1595 SHAKESPEARE, William

Midsommer Nights Dreame v i. 

Whil'st the scritch-owle, scritching loud, 

Puts the wretch that lies in woe, 

In remembrance of a shrowd.

I623 DELONEY, Thomas 

Thomas of Reading xI. 

With that the scritch owle cried piteously .. lesu haue mercy pon me (quoth hee) what an ill fauoured cry doe yonder carrion birds make, and therewithall he laid him downe in his bed, from whence he neuer rose againe.

1967 MARSHALL, Sybil

Fenland Chronicle pt. 2 1x. 

If an owl sat on the roof, or flew up against a window at night, that meant a death actually in the house.

1725 BOURNE, Henry

Antiquitates Vulgares, or the Antiquities of the Common People: Giving an Account of Several of Their Opinions and Ceremonies 70-1. 

Omens and prognostications...are still in the Mouths of all, tho only observed by the Vulgar. In Country Places, especially they are in great Repute...If an Owl, which they reckon a most abominable and unlucky Bird, sends forth its hoarse and dismal Voice, it is an Omen of the Approach of some terrible Thing; that some dire Calamity...is near at Hand.

I829 BROCKETT, John Trotter

North Country Words I61. 

Howlet, the barn or white owl...has the reputation of being the herald of horror and disaster.

1872 Bye-Gones 18 Sept. 86 [Llansaintffraid-yn-Mechan, Monmouth.] 

Its visits and wild shriekings foretell the death of someone in the neighbourhood. It has thus gained the name of death-bird or 'Aderyn y corph'.

2003 OLIVER, Mary

Owls and Other Fantasies: Poems and Essays

In the night, when the owl is less than exquisitely swift and perfect, the scream of the rabbit is terrible. But the scream of the owl, which is not of pain and hopelessness and the fear of being plucked out of the world, but of the sheer rollicking glory of the death-bringer, is more terrible still. When I hear it resounding through the woods, and then the five black pellets of its song dropping like stones into the air, I know I am standing at the edge of the mystery, in which terror is naturally and abundantly part of life, part of even the most becalmed, intelligent, sunny life — as, for example, my own. The world where the owl is endlessly hungry and endlessly on the hunt is the world in which I live too. There is only one world.