Owl’s Bean Sí call may go way of piseogs

EATING OWL flesh will help a child’s whooping cough and owl’s eyes contain a cure for blindness, or so the piseogs claim. According to the ancient Doctrine of Signatures, an animal’s special attributes indicate the medicinal benefits its flesh has to offer.

Owls have excellent vision, so eating their eyes must improve a patient’s sight and the hooting of owls resembles a child’s coughing. You may hear the hoot of a long-eared owl near woodland but the ghostly shriek of the Bean Sí might be heard almost anywhere; it was a familiar sound in Limerick city when I was a child.

The shrieker was, of course, the barn owl which, thanks to the Late Late Show and advertisements for Odlum’s Flour, is a familiar bird to Irish people. Its nocturnal ways, pale plumage and human-like face, give the bird ghostly associations and it’s regarded as a portent of doom.