Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review Volumes 32 and 33.djvu/343

 A sinus in Tegulis. 35

or intended to be so, not horrible ; I mention it, however, for I am of opinion that many stock jokes have for their subject something which was till lately feared or reverenced, often something which is still feared on occasion ; e.g. the many mediaeval jokes at the expense of the powerful clergy or the dreaded devil. Commentators on Petronius seem to have nothing better to offer than one or more of the passages which I will shortly quote. My own attempts to get a little more definite information have led me by a long and I think a not uninteresting road to the con- clusions which I wish to summarise and illustrate in this paper.

I. Animals on the roof in general, (a) If the ass were in itself a portentous beast, it would not be strange that its appearance on the roof should terrify the householder. In ancient and modern times alike a roof is a favourite place for some ominous creature, such as a raven or an owl, to perch on when he has a bad omen to deliver. For instance, in Vergil [Aen. iv. 462), the screech-owl warns Dido by perching on the roof and crying : solaque cul- minibus ferali carmine bubo | saepe queri. In the Central Provinces of India, sickness is portended by a vulture or kite perching seven days running on the roof, or a dog barking thereon ; ^ in Rumania, owls hooting in the chimney bode death ; ^ the same in Germany is, or was in the eighteenth century, the meaning of ravens or crows perching on the roof under which a sick man lies, and calling.^ In Wales, a swallow who deserts her nest on a house denotes ill-luck, while if bees swarm on the roof it is lucky."* In Webster's White Devil, V. iv., Cornelia in her half-crazed wanderings (" alas, her grief | hath turned

^ W. Crooke in Folk-Lore, xxix. p. 135. ^ Mrs. Murgo9i, ibid. xxx. p. 90. 3 Grimm, D.M. (fourth ed.), iii. p. 438.

? 1896), pp. 330-339.
 * Rev. E. Owen, Welsh Folk-Lore (Oswestry and Wrexham, n.d.,