Owlglass

[Dave Monroe]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b_IICzXDug8

Owlglass

>From Brewer's Dictionary of Phrase & Fable :

Eulenspiegel, Till. The name (owl-glass) of a 14th-century villager of
Brunswick round whom gathered a large number of popular tales of
mischievous pranks and often crude jests, first printed in 1515. The
work was translated into many languages and rapidly achieved wide
popularity. Till Eulenspiegel is the subject of the picaresque novel
Ulenspiegel by Charles de Coster (1867) and of a symphonic poem by
Richard Strauss, Till Eulenspiegel's Merry Pranks (1895). (p.384)

>From Funk & Wagnalls Standard Dictionary of Folklore, Mythology, and Legend :

 Hero and title of a 16th century German chapbook, a collection of
satirical tales pointed at certain class distinctions of the period
and region. Till Eulenspiegel, son of a peasant, was born in Brunswick
somewhere around the turn of the 13th-14th century, and died at Mölln
in 1350. The tales recount a long series of jests and pranks showing
up the superior wit of the clever peasant (often under the guise of
thick-headedness) over the typical townsman: tradesman, shopkeeper,
innkeeper, even priest and lord. The jokes are scurrilous, sometimes
cruel. [...] [H]e has been known to every German schoolboy since the
Middle Ages as a personification of peasant wit over bourgeois
dullness and smugness. (p.1114)

>From The White Goddess, by Robert Graves:

"Owls are most vocal on moonlight nights in November and then remain
silent until February. It is this habit, with their silent flight, the
carrion-smell of their nests, their diet of mice, and the shining of
their eyes in the dark, which makes owls messengers of the
Death-goddess Hecate, or Athene, or Persephone: from whom, as the
supreme source of prophecy, they derive their reputation for wisdom."
(p.211)

According to ancient Celtic myth, when the Love-goddess Blodeuwedd
(another manefestation of Venus, the Virgin, Athene, &c.) attempted
unsuccessfully to have Llew Llaw Gyffes (a god sometimes associated
with Apollo or a Sea-god) slain, she was turned into an owl as
punishment. Graves continues:

"When Blodeuwedd has betrayed Llew, she is punished by Gwydion who
transmogrifies her into an Owl. This is further patriarchal
interference. She had been an Owl thousands of years before Gwydion
was born--the same Owl that occurs on the coins of Athens as the
symbol of Athene, the Goddess of Wisdom, the same owl that gave its
name to Adam's first wife Lilith and as Annis the Blue Hag sucks the
blood of children in primitive British folk-lore." (p.315)

"The Sirens ('Entanglers') were a Triad [...] living on an island in
the Ionian Sea. Their wings were perhaps owl-wings, since Hesychius
mentions a variety of owl called 'the Siren', and since owls,
according to Homer, lived in Calypso's alder-girt isle of Ogygia along
with the oracular sea-crows." (p.418)

"The poet is in love with the White Goddess, with Truth: his heart
breaks with longing and love for her. She is the Flower-goddess Olwen
or Blodeuwedd; but she is also Blodeuwedd the Owl, lamp-eyed, hooting
dismally, with her foul nest in the hollow of a dead tree [...]"
(p.448)

>From Funk & Wagnalls Standard Dictionary of Folklore, Mythology, and Legend :

"As the bird of Athena (companion and attribute) the owl was
auspicious in classical Greece; old Greek vases associated with the
worship of Athena depict owls with breasts, and vulva represented by a
circle. But in Rome the owl was a bird of ill-omen and its hooting
presaged death.
[...]
 "In European and American folklore in general, the owl is also a bird
of ill-omen whose hooting is an omen of death.
 [...]
 "In India, owl's flesh is regarded as an aphrodisiac, but eating it
will turn a man into a fool. Eating the eyeballs, however, enables one
to see in the dark. In medieval magic and medicine, owl feathers laid
on a person would cause him to fall into a soothing sleep. [...] The
Wends say the sight of an owl would cause a woman to have an easy
delivery." (p.838)

http://v.pynchonwiki.com/wiki/index.php?title=Rachel_Owlglass

http://www.thomaspynchon.com/v/extra/eti.html

Till Eulenspiegel's Merry Pranks

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Till_Eulenspiegel's_Merry_Pranks