WWW: THE WHIPPOO WHAT?

First off if I may ... Its come to my attention that some of those using Akismet Spam Protection are encountering difficulties with comments using my now name being labelled as spam. If you weren't aware of this name change and use Akismet could you please look out for any comments under the name of Felicity Grace Terry ... they are not spam. Thank you. FGT

Not a creature of myth and legend as say the mermaid or the vampire or even the luchorpain.  Magpies aside never has a bird been surrounded by so many myths many of them involving death ...



Its call best ignored according to the Native American Omaha tribe as to answer it meant certain death,

One New England legend says  it can sense a soul departing, and can capture it as it flees, 

According to H.P. Lovecraft in "The Dunwich Horror"

"It is vowed that the birds are psychopomps lying in wait for the souls of the dying, and that they time their eerie cries in unison with the sufferer's struggling breath. If they can catch the fleeing soul when it leaves the body, they instantly flutter away chittering in daemoniac laughter; but if they fail, they subside gradually into a disappointed silence",

Also mentioned in a short story by James Thurber in which the protagonist, driven mad by the insomnia caused by its persistent call, kills the occupants of the household and then himself,

Believed to be one of the gods of the night according to the The Colorado Utes who had it that it could turn a frog into the moon,

The Mohegan Tribe held the belief that makiwasug (magical little people) travelled through the forest at night in the shape of them,

'Old wives' tales had it that in springtime if a single woman heard its call only once she was destined to remain unmarried for that year. However if the song was to continue she was destined to remain a spinster for life ... unless of course that it is she made a wish upon hearing that first call,

As well as books and stories it features in many songs including the below ditty by Blackburry Smoke (A favourite group of Mr T's younger brother; the middle bro Terry.

It is of course the whippoorwill to which I refer

 - Here its call here.

Not your typical Wondrous Words Wednesday post (WWW being a Meme hosted by BermudaOnion's Weblog) I grant you but hey-ho a word I haven't come across before. Care to share any you have come across lately?