Folk Beliefs: Owl
- To hear the hooting of an owl, especially during the day, is considered unlucky.
- Looking into an owls nest will cause the person concerned, to suffer depression for the rest of their life.
- If an owl hoots near the home, salt should be thrown into the fire to prevent misfortune...if someone in the house is sick when the owl is heard hooting, it was suggested that the bird should be killed, and then placed onto the patients chest.
- If a pregnant woman is in the presence of an owl when it hoots, her child will be a girl.
- An owl hooting around multiple houses, was believed to be a warning that an unmarried girl may be about to lose her virginity.
- Sightings of owls were usually seen as ill omens
- Farmers believed that cows would give bloodied milk, if an owl were simply to brush against them.
- It was once common practice to nail the bodies of dead owls to barn doors to protect livestock from witchcraft, and the damaging effects of thunderstorms.
- Warriors carrying an owl's heart into battle, were guaranteed courage throughout the fight.
- In Germany, those ailing from the bite of a rabid dog, should keep the heart and right foot of an owl in their left armpit to prevent rabies.

🖌️"The Owl" by Valentine Cameron Prinsep (1904

Folklore of Maine: North Woods

The loggers of the Maine North Woods were very superstitious.

They had many stories among their communities to tell of the caution one should use out in the wilderness....

Razor- shins:
An immortal humanoid with razor sharp shin bones. Razor- shins had a passion for hard liquor. New logging employees were coaxed to leave out a jug of whiskey for Razor-shins, before settling down for the night.
If the creature was satisfied, he might help the loggers by using his legs to fell a tree.
However, should new employees fail to do this, Razor-shins would hunt them down, scalp them and commit other mutilations to their bodies.

Will-am-alones:
Squirrel-like creatures that were said to roll poisonous lichen into balls, and drop them into the eyes and ears of sleeping loggers. These lichen balls would cause hallucinations and blood boiling headaches

Dingball:
Dingball was said to be a cougar with a spiked ball at the end of his tail. Dingball loved human meat more than anything. He would lure the loggers from camp by singing in a woman's voice. When the logger came upon him, he would crush their skills with his tail.

“The age in which we live is remarkable, as in other points of view, so in this, that old habits and customs, old laws and sayings, old beliefs and superstitions, which have held their ground in the universal mind from the remotest antiquity, are fast fading away and perishing. We of the nineteenth century may congratulate ourselves on their disappearance; we may lament it, but the fact remains the same; and I for one will frankly acknowledge that I regret much which we are losing, that I would not have these vestiges of the past altogether effaced. It were pity that they should utterly pass away, and leave no trace behind.
My heart as well as my imagination is too closely bound up with the sayings and doings which gave zest to the life of my forefathers, and so I became a FolkLore student.”

William Henderson, reflecting on age-old British customs and folklore dying out in 1866.

Nature's Temples: A Natural History of Old-Growth Forests Revised and Expanded
Joan Maloof