"Foedaque fit volucris, venturi nuncia luctus,
Ignavus bubo, dirum mortalibus omen."[1]

In his _Fasti_ he openly accuses it of felony:--

"Nocte volant, puerosque petunt nutricis egentes."[2]

Lucan, too, has hit it hard:--

"Et laetae juranter aves, bubone sinistro:"[3]

and the Englishman who continued the _Pharsalia_, says--

"Tristia mille locis Stylus dedit omina bubo."[4]

Horace tells us that the old witch Canidia used part of the plumage of the
owl in her dealings with the devil:--

"Plumamque nocturnae strigis."[5]

Virgil, in fine, joined in the hue and cry against this injured family:--

"Solaque culminibus ferali carmine bubo Saepe queri, et longas in fletum
ducere voces."[6]

In our own times we find that the village maid cannot return home from
seeing her dying swain, without a doleful salutation from the owl:--

"Thus homeward as she hopeless went,
The churchyard path along,