where does the saying wise owl come from
traditional image
title: A Wise Old Owl text: was recorded as early as 1875 and is apparently older than that. It was quoted by John D. Rockefeller in 1915 and is frequently misattributed to Edward Hersey Richards and William R. Cubbage. During World War II, the United States army used the rhyme on a poster with the tweaked ending, "Soldier... be like that old bird!" with the caption "Silence means security." A Wise Old Owl "A Wise Old Owl" is an English language nursery rhyme. It has a Roud Folk Song Index number of 7734 and in The Oxford Dictionary of Nursery Rhymes, 2nd Ed. of 1997, as title: A Wise Old Owl text: A Wise Old Owl "A Wise Old Owl" is an English language nursery rhyme. It has a Roud Folk Song Index number of 7734 and in The Oxford Dictionary of Nursery Rhymes, 2nd Ed. of 1997, as number 394. The rhyme is an improvement of a traditional nursery rhyme "There was an owl lived in an oak, wisky, wasky, weedle." <poem>A wise old owl lived in an oak The more he saw the less he spoke The less he spoke the more he heard. Why can't we all be like that wise old bird?</poem> This version was first published in title: A Wise Old Owl text: "Punch", April 10, 1875, and ran as follows: <poem>There was an owl liv'd in an oak The more he heard, the less he spoke The less he spoke, the more he heard. O, if men were all like that wise bird.</poem> One version was published upon bookmarks during the mid-1930s, and goes as follows: <poem>A wise old owl lived in an oak, The more he saw, the less he spoke The less he spoke, the more he heard, Now, wasn't he a wise old bird?</poem> The rhyme refers to the traditional image of owls as the symbol of wisdom. It title: Owl text: are carried in the form of a talisman or charm. The modern West generally associates owls with wisdom and vigilance. This link goes back at least as far as Ancient Greece, where Athens, noted for art and scholarship, and Athena, Athens' patron goddess and the goddess of wisdom, had the owl as a symbol. Marija Gimbutas traces veneration of the owl as a goddess, among other birds, to the culture of Old Europe, long pre-dating Indo-European cultures. T. F. Thiselton-Dyer in his "Folk-lore of Shakespeare" says that "from the earliest period it has been considered a bird of ill-omen," and title: Crest of The Sri Lanka Army Command and Staff College text: Crest of The Sri Lanka Army Command and Staff College The Crest of The Sri Lanka Army Command and Staff College consists of the Wise Old Owl appears in the legends of King Arthur, where Merlin is described as having an owl perched on his shoulder. Owls generally became widely accepted as symbols of learning and in the Middle Ages knowledge was vastly vested in the clergy and alchemists. During this time the owl became the companion of the wise. In Roman mythology, Minerva is the goddess of war and wisdom. Her favorite bird was the owl. Most Staff Colleges