Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review Volumes 32 and 33.djvu/344

 36 Asimis in Tegulis.

her child again ") quotes what seems to be a popular rime :

" When screech-owls croak upon the chimney-tops And the strange cricket i' the oven sings and hops, When yellow spots do on your hands appear, Be certain then you of a corse shall hear."

The Zulus again regard a dog on the housetop as a portent demanding purification by a magician ; ^ the Lolos class such an event as a slo-ta or evil portent.^ It is noteworthy that with the exception of the bees all these creatures fore- tell bad luck, and the bees would bring good luck wherever in the house they might swarm.^ The one consistent bringer of good luck who dwells on the roof is the stork, alike in Greece,'* and in several countries of modern Europe;^ unless indeed wp count the good St. Nicholas in this context, and he does not invariably come down chimney with his pack by any means.

(&) But so far as I know the ass is not in himself ominous, and we must rather class this belief among the many superstitions to the effect that almost any wingless creature becomes portentous, if only he mounts the roof. To begin again with the ancients, Livy mentions among the many

> Rev. J. Macdonald va. J. R.A.I, xx. (1890), p. 115.

" A. Henry, ibid, xxxiii. (1903), p. 104.

^ Owen, op. cit. p. 339. The ancients regarded bees rather as a bad omen, see Dio Cass. xli. 61, 2, and a score of other passages ; but this is probably because they were inclined to identify them with ghosts, see Norden, Sechstes Bitch der Aeneis, note on 1. 707.

the stork makes himself useful by killing snakes and toads. The MSS. and the Teubner editor make him say that the bird thus pays " a kind of ground-rent," iiri^adpov ri yrjs, as if it ever nested on the ground. The true reading is no doubt 7^7775, " a sort of hire for the use of the roof."
 * Plut. Q.C. viii. 727F, who gives the rationalistic explanation that

^ E.g. Grimm, op. cit. iii. pp. 438, 441. Even the stork may give a death-omen, ibid. § 587. Swallows, but not always sparrows, are unlucky, ibid. p. 439 ; Plut. I.e.