The Curious Case of the Little Owl

Can any bird claim so illustrious a place in history and legend as the Little Owl, Athene noctua?

 

The Little Owl is the smallest of the British Strigiformes. It is a plump bird, about the length of a mistle thrush, with a flat head and pronounced whiteish eyebrows which can give it a stern, censorious appearance.

It inhabits all but the colder parts of Europe and Asia as far east as the Korean peninsula. It is also present in parts of North Africa and Arabia. As if to emphasise its adaptability, the Little Owl has also been established in New Zealand. Nor is is it native to Britain. It was first introduced in 1842 by Thomas Powys and in the succeeding decades further introductions were made. Since the turn of the nineteenth century it has become a successful breeding bird in all counties of England and Wales and is now breeding in the Scottish Lowlands also.

As a "no status" bird, conservation groups take a rather stuffy view. The British Trust for Ornithology (BTO) has asserted that "as a non-native species we do not consider it to be of conservation value". Mark Avery, formerly conservation officer of the RSPB has said that he "probably wouldn't be very keen on an introduction like this nowadays" before admitting "I don't know of any harm done to  our native fauna by the Little Owl". It is truly native, of course,  just 20 miles away across the Channel!

Nesting takes place from about mid April to June often in pollarded trees or in derelict buildings though crevices or even rabbit burrows may also be used. Typically 3-5 eggs are laid with incubation lasting about four weeks; at about 35 days old the young fledge.
Territories frequently remain occupied throughout the year.
Beetles, grasshoppers and earthworms form the dietary staple but lizards, frogs and small birds are taken when the opportunity presents.




According to Greek Mythology, Athene, Goddess of Wisdom, was so impressed by the sagacity of the Little Owl that she conferred upon it the honour of noblest of all birds. Its watchfulness, implacability and wraith-like ability to arrive unobserved was without equal. The Little Owl's  taxonomic name, Athene noctua, recalls the unique distinction which the Olympian goddess of war, commerce, wise counsel and heroic endeavour deemed befitting this small owl.


Athenian tetradrachm of 5th century B.C.

Athenian tetradrachm of 2nd century B.C.

The Little Owl possessed a supernatural "inner light" which gave it not only an ability to see in the dark but also the power of prescience: the ability to see into the future. It was, and still is, a familiar sight around Greek classical temples and this served to strengthen the perception of the Little Owl in the everyday lives of the Ancients both as guardian and as foreteller of danger.

Equally in the commerce of peacetime as in the perils of war the Little Owl was a potent omen. If Athenian soldiers sighted it on the eve of battle they were emboldened in the knowledge that they could not be defeated.

Oddly it seems that the converse was true if one were to dream of the Little Owl. The second century Roman soothsayer Artemidorus  warned that this foretold a shipwreck: sailors would desperately seek an anchorage and traders would see this inauspicious sign as reason to put off their bargaining for another day.

Like Athene before her Minerva, the Roman Goddess of Wisdom, was similarly to adopt the Little Owl as her chosen companion. The Athenian owl legends would gain new currency this time with Minervan provenance.
These legends are recalled in the present day name for the Little Owl in Sweden: Minervauggla; in Finland it is known as Minervanpollo.

Just as for the Greeks, the Little Owl, gifted with the power of divination, was the most ominous of birds: its appearance foretold the deaths of Caesars Augustus, Commodus Aurelius and Agrippa. Most famously perhaps, as Shakespeare reminds us, it  also announced the imminent death of Julius Caesar:

"...yesterday, the bird of night did sit Even at noonday, upon the market place, Hooting and shrieking". 

In Roman mythology Proserpine (Persephone) was consigned to the underworld where Ascalpus reported her as eating the forbidden fruit of a pomegranate. He expected to be rewarded for this piece of intelligence but was instead turned into an owl, a "loathsome bird".

In contrast to Greek beliefs, a Roman army would regard the sight of an owl before battle as a harbinger of disaster. At Carrhae on the ancient plains of Mesopotamia the appearance of the Little Owl presaged a most inglorious day. Here in 53 B.C. the army of the Parthian Empire inflicted an humiliating defeat upon the invading force of Romans, who, though superior in numbers, were put to rout by the Parthian cavalry. The Roman commander Crassus was killed and the surviving members of his army were enslaved.

This was to endure as one of Rome's most crushing defeats.

Modern science has demystified much of the lore surrounding the Little Owl and indeed owls in general but to hear its call at night or to meet its gaze still, in me at least, invokes a sort of primal response.
One English superstition had it that in order to negate the baleful effect of an owl observing you, you should walk around and around the tree in which he sat in order that he may wring his own neck.

In Britain, as recently as the eighteenth century, owls would be nailed to barn doors to protect livestock from curse, lightning strike or similar misadventure.

Birds of omen dark and foul,
Night-crow, raven, bat, and owl,
Leave the sick man to his dream --All night long he heard your scream.

-Sir Walter Scott

In many societies owls are still associated with death and even in the West the notion of the "wise old owl" retains its currency.

Although severely  affected by bad winters the Little Owl is a species of "least concern".

Photographs (all taken in Sefton) remain copyright of C McIndoe.

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A Tale of Two Crosbys

The villages of Great Crosby and Little Crosby, separated by less than a mile of farmland, have developed their own discrete and distinctive personalities over the centuries.

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct

to Heaven, we were all going direct the other way. . . .

Dickens's use of the repeating phrase, or anaphora, for rhetorical impact is displayed to fine effect in the opening lines of A Tale Of Two Cities. He reverts to this same form in the concluding chapter when Carton, the dissolute but brilliant lawyer, meets his death on the guillotine.

It is a far, far better thing that I do, than I have ever done; it is a far, far better rest I go to than I have ever known.

In the death of Sydney Carton, Dickens creates a thinly veiled Christian synthesis: Carton, whose earthly life had been one of ennui and lack of purpose, relishes his end as both noble and salvational. He is certain that his enduring name will be "glorious" when he finds his rest in Heaven and is equally sure that Paris will rise from its bloody abyss to become a "beautiful city and a brilliant people".
Dickens imbues Carton, at the end, with a purposeful almost Messianic mindset which sees him embrace his fate with a serenity and a conviction as he casts off the louche excesses of his past.

The injustices in English society exacerbated by class, poverty and discrimination never led to a popular uprising quite so tumultuous as in France of 1789. But social tensions there were all the same and it was the popular uprising on the one hand and the contrasting grudging endurance of the English underclasses on the other which informed Dickens's great work.

In the century and more before the time of the French Revolution, the people of Great Crosby and more particularly Little Crosby had their own deeply divisive issues. The majority of people in Great Crosby and the farms and villages of the district embraced the new orthodoxy of the Church of England. Of course local sentiment would have reflected national sentiment and in Elizabeth I's reign the threat of the Counter-Reformation and conquest from Catholic Europe was at its highest. In spite of this the villagers of Little Crosby, like the Squire, remained stubbornly loyal to the "Old Faith".
The Church of Rome had vowed to crush Protestantism and the threat of invasion from Philip II's Spain was a terrifying one. In 1588 the Armada sailed and Elizabeth I delivered her stirring Speech to the Troops at Tilbury:

I know I have the body of a weak, feeble woman; but I have the heart and stomach of a king, and of a king of England too, and think foul scorn that Parma or Spain, or any prince of Europe, should dare to invade the borders of my realm; to which rather than any dishonour shall grow by me, I myself will take up arms, I myself will be your general, judge, and rewarder of every one of your virtues in the field.

The Armada as we all know was defeated but suspicion of those whose first allegiance was to the Catholic Church was, if anything, heightened and Catholicism was to many synonymous with plot and treason. Discrimination against those who remained faithful to the Church of Rome was common and this was understandably a major source of resentment for the recusants who continued to conduct their masses in secret and suffered imprisonment, land sequestration and fines as a consequence.

In 1590 Richard Blundell was seized upon the orders of the Earl of Derby and died in Lancaster prison on March 19th 1592.
His son and heir William Blundell was similarly imprisoned as was his wife in Chester Castle and she bore or at least nursed a son while incarcerated.
At the time of the Civil War Charles I attracted many Lancashire Catholics to his cause. One such was William Blundell whose leg was shattered by a musketball at the siege of Lancaster Castle. Many years later on June 30th 1694 at half past five in the morning three messengers of the King arrived to arrest William (the Cavalier) Blundell on suspicion of his having been involved in a popish plot. They found a sick and lame old man of 75 and so arrested his son instead. He was subsequently committed to Newgate Prison.
The arrests, fines and harrassment went on for generations and many Catholic families were reduced to beggary but against the odds the Blundells of Little Crosby managed to cling on to their faith and to their estates. To this day the 60 houses in the village remain owned by the Estate.

During the reign of Elizabeth I and for some considerable time afterwards those who clung to the "Old Faith" were denied burial in the cemetery of Sefton Church which since 1170 had been their place of final rest. Often the dead were interred in gardens.
Similar situations arose up and down the country and in Gloucestershire rioting and loss of life had resulted. The parson of St Helen's, Sefton at the time was a particularly recalcitrant character. His name (and this may seem apt) was the Rev Nutter.
His excess of zeal was such that it earned him the scorn of Queen Elizabeth herself.

In December 1610, the vicar of St Helen's church, Sefton refused the burial of a local woman, and her relatives and friends interred her body in a shallow grave close by a lane near to some common land. Unfortunately, the body was disturbed and desecrated by hogs which grazed on the common land. #

"Were best to make readie in this village of Little Crosbie a place fitt to burie suche Catholiques either if myne owne howse or of thr Neighbourhoode as should depte this lyfe duringe the tyme of these trobles.

- William Blundell of Crosby Hall (1560-1638)

  

The refusal to allow recusants a decent Christian burial constituted a very considerable problem for the Catholics of Little Crosby and further beyond. In response it was decided that Harkirk, an ancient burial ground, would be re-consecrated. The first burial here was on April 7th 1611; the last burial at Harkirk was on November 27th 1753. In all 131 people are buried here.
In 1889 Nicholas Blundell (1811-1894) built a small chapel on the site.

Today, perhaps anachronistically, Little Crosby remains a predominantly, if not wholly, Catholic village rooted in a turbulent past but living in a more harmonious today.

The ancient cross in the village centre of Great Crosby surmounts the site of St Michael's well.







The wayside cross in Little Crosby also stands on the site of a well.






Crosby Hall, the Blundell family home, was built in 1609 and remodelled in Georgian style in the 1780's.







Acknowledgements:
# - from transcript of mass held at Harkirk 2001.
Photographs of crosses remain the copyright of Paul R Allerton.
View of Crosby Hall originally published in Lancashire Life magazine.
Other photographs copyright of C McIndoe.

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