Chapter Sun to Superstitions of S by Brewer's Readers Handbook

(37) Mole. Moles are blind. Hence the common expression, “Blind as a mole.”

Pray you, tread softly, that the blind mole may not Hear a footfall.
   —Shakespeare: The Tempest, act iv. sc. 1 (1609).

(38) Moon-Calf, the offspring of a woman, engendered solely by the power of the moon.—Pliny: Natural History, x. 64.

(39) Mouse. To eat food which a mouse has nibbled will give a sore throat

It is a bad omen if a mouse gnaws the clothes which a person is wearing.—Burton: Anatomy of Melancholy, 214 (1621).

A fried mouse is a specific for small-pox.

(40) Ostrich. An ostrich can digest iron.

Stephen. I could eat the very hilts for anger.

Kno’well. A sign of your good digestion; you have an ostrich stomach.—Ben Jonson: Every Man in His Humour, iii. 1 (1598).

I’ll make thee eat iron like an ostrich, and swallow my sword.—Shakespeare: 2 Henry VI. act iv. sc. 10 (1591).

(41) Owl. If owls screech with a hoarse and dismal voice, it bodes impending calamity. (See Owl, p. 792.)

The oulê that of deth the bodê bringeth.

Chaucer: Assembly of Foules (1358).

(42) Pelican. A pelican feeds its young brood with its blood.

The pelican turneth her beak against her brest, and therewith pierceth it till the blood gush out, wherewith she nourisheth her young.—Eugenius Philalethes: Brief Natural History, 93.

Than sayd the Pellycane,
“When my brydts be slayne,
With my bloude I them reuyue [revive].”
Scrypture doth record,
The same dyd our Lord,
And rose from deth to lyue [life].
   —Skelton: Armoury of Byrdts (died 1529).

And, like the kind, life-rendering pelican,
Repast them with my blood.
   —Shakespeare: Hamlet, act iv. sc. 5 (1596).

(43) Phœnix. There is but one phœnix in the world, which, after many hundred years, burns itself to death, and from its ashes another phœnix rises up.

Now I will believe, … that in Arabia
There is one tree, the phœnix’ throne; one phœnix
At this hour reigning there.
   —Shakespeare: The Tempest, act iii. sc. 3 (1609).

The phœnix is said to have fifty orifices in its bill, continued to its tail. After living its 1000 or 500 years, it builds itself a funeral pile, sings a melodious elegy, flaps its wings to fan the fire, and is burnt to ashes.

The enchanted pile of that lonely bird
Who sings at the last his own death-lay,
And in music and perfume dies away.
   —Moore: Lalla Rookh (“Paradise and the Peri,” 1817).