"'The day and hour were carefully noted. Months passed away, and
unbelievers were loud in their boastings and enquiries after the token. The fifth month arrived, and with it a black-edged letter from
Australia, announcing the death of one of the members of the family in
that country. On comparing the dates of the death and the raven's croak,
they were found to have occurred on the same day.'" In an old number of _Notes and Queries_ a correspondent relates that in
Somersetshire the appearance of a single jackdaw is regarded as a sure
prognostication of evil. He goes on to add that the men employed in the
quarries in the Avon Gorge, Clifton, Bristol, had more than once noticed
a jackdaw perched on the chain that spanned the river, prior to some
catastrophe among them. Dead magpies were once hung over the doorways of haunted houses to keep
away ghosts; it being almost universally believed that all phantasms
shared the same dread of this bird. Ghosts of magpies themselves are,
however, far from uncommon; on Dartmoor and Exmoor, for example, I have
seen several of them, generally in the immediate vicinity of bogs or
deep holes. Witches were much attached to this bird, and were said to often assume
its shape after death. "Magpies," says Mr. William Jones, in his _Credulities, Past and
Present_, "are mysterious everywhere. A lady living near Carlstad, in
Sweden, grievously offended a farm woman who came into the court of her
house asking for food. The woman was told 'to take that magpie hanging
upon the wall and eat it.' She took the bird and disappeared, with an
evil glance at the lady, who had been so ill-advised as to insult a
Finn, whose magical powers, it is well known, far exceed those of the
gipsies." (Other authorities corroborate this statement; and I have
heard it said that the Finns can surpass even the famous tricks of the
Indians.) Mr. Jones, in the same story, says: "Presently the number
increased, and the lady, who at first had been amused, became troubled,
and tried to drive them away by various devices. All was to no purpose. She could not move without a large company of magpies; and they became
at length so daring as to hop on her shoulder." (This reads like
hallucination. However, as I have heard of similar cases, in which there
has been no doubt as to the objectivity of the phenomena, I see no
reason why these magpies should not have been objective too.) "Then she
took to her bed in a room with closed shutters, although even this was
not an effectual protection, for the magpies kept tapping at the
shutters day and night." Mr. Jones adds: "The lady's death is not
recorded; but it is fully expected that, die when she may, all the
magpies of Wermland will be present at her funeral." There is a house in Great Russell Street, W.C., where the hauntings take
the form of a magpie that taps at one of the windows every morning
between two and three, and then appears inside the room, perched on what
looks like a huge alpine stick, suspended horizontally in the air, about
seven feet from the floor. The moment a sound is made the apparition
vanishes. It is thought to be the spirit of a magpie that was done to
death in a very cruel manner in that room many years ago. There is a
story current to the effect that a lady, when visiting the British
Museum one day, happened to pass some slighting remark about one of the
Egyptian mummy cases (not the notorious one), and that on quitting the
building she felt a sharp peck on her neck. She put up her hand to the
injured part, and felt the distinct impression of a bird's claw on it. She could see nothing, however. That night--and for every succeeding
night for six weeks--she was awakened at two o'clock by the phantom of
an enormous magpie that fluttered over the bed, and was clearly visible
to herself and her sister. The phenomenon worried her so that she became
ill, and was eventually ordered abroad. She went to Cairo and enjoyed a
brief respite; the hauntings, however, began again, and this time became
so persistent that she at last lost her reason, and had to be brought
home and confined in a private asylum, where she shortly afterwards
died. Though I cannot vouch for the truth of this story, I do think it
is somewhat risky to make fun of certain of the Egyptian relics in the
Museum. They may be haunted by something infinitely more alarming than
the ghosts of magpies. There are many sayings respecting the magpie as a
harbinger of ill luck. In Lancashire, for example, there is this rhyme:

     "One for anger, two for mirth,
     Three for a wedding, four for a birth,
     Five for rich, six for poor,
     Seven for a witch, I dare tell you no more." From further north comes this couplet:

     "Magpie, magpie, chatter and flee,
     Turn up thy tail, and good luck fall me." Rooks, again, are very psychic birds; they always leave their haunts
near an old house shortly before a death takes place in it, because
their highly developed psychic faculty of scent enables them to detect
the advent of the phantom of death, of which they have the greatest
horror. A rook is of great service, when investigating haunted houses,
as it nearly always gives warning of the appearance of the Unknown by
violent flappings of the wings, loud croaking, and other unmistakable
symptoms of terror. Owls, though no less sensitive to superphysical influence, are not
scared by it; they and bats, alone among the many kinds of animals I
have tested, take up their abode in haunted localities, and with the
utmost sang-froid appear to enjoy the presence of the Unknown, even in
its most terrifying form. The owl has been associated with the darker side of the Unknown longer
than any other bird. "Solaque, culminibus ferali carmine bubo. Saepe queri et longas in
fletum ducere voces," writes Virgil. Pliny, in describing this bird, says, "bubo funebris et maxime
abominatus"; whilst Chaucer writes: "The owl eke that of death the bode
ybringeth." In the Arundel family a white owl is said to be a sure indication of
death. That Shakespeare attached no little importance to the fatal crying of
the bird may be gathered from the scene in _Macbeth_, when the murderer
asks:

"Didst thou not hear a noise?" and Lady Macbeth answers:

"I heard the owl scream and the crickets cry"; and the scene in _Richard
III_, where Richard interrupts a messenger of evil news with the words:

"Out on ye, owls! Nothing but songs of death?" Gray speaks of "moping" owls; Chatterton exclaims, "Harke! the dethe
owle loude dothe synge"; whilst Hogarth introduces the same bird in the
murder scene of his _Four Stages of Cruelty_. Nor is the belief in the sinister prophetic properties of the owl
confined to the white races; we find it everywhere--among the Red
Indians. West Africans, Siamese, and Aborigines of Australia.