Owls and Bats.
The goblins of the churchyard type very often take the form of owls and bats, which haunt the abodes of the dead. “Screech owls are held unlucky in our days,” says Aubrey.123
Sedit in adverso nocturnus culmine bubo,
Funereosque graves edidit ore sonos.
The Strix, or screech owl, in Roman folk-lore was supposed to suck the blood of young children. Another form of the word in Latin is Striga, meaning a hag or witch. The Lilith of the Jews, the “night monster” of our latest version of the Old Testament, becomes in the Rabbinical stories Adam’s first wife, “the Queen of demons” and murderess of young children, who is the “night hag” of Milton.124
The Kumaun owl legend is that they had originally no plumes of their own, and were forced to borrow those of their neighbours, who pursue them if they find them abroad at daylight. Owl’s flesh is a powerful love philter, and the eating of it causes a man to become a fool and to lose his memory; hence, women give it to their husbands, that as a result of the mental weakness which it produces they may be able to carry on their flirtations with impunity. On the other hand, the owl is the type of wisdom, and eating the eyeballs of an owl gives the power of seeing in the dark, an excellent example of sympathetic magic. If you put an owl in a room, go in naked, shut the door and feed the bird with meat all night, you acquire magical powers. I once had a native clerk who was supposed to have gone through this ordeal, and was much feared accordingly. Here we have another instance of the nudity charm. In the same way in Gujarât, if a man takes seven cotton threads, goes to a place where an owl is hooting, strips naked, ties a knot at each hoot, and fastens the thread round the right arm of a fever patient, the fever goes away.125