Bats, witchcraft and omens
 Folklore collections of the 19th and 20th centuries show remarkably few instances of recent additions to the lore regarding bats. Superstitions connected with these mammals extend a long way into human culture in the distant past.
Bats are known to have evolved and diversified over the past 50 million
years, and today present a range of endangered species. They make a fascinating
study, whose adherents seem now to be on the increase. Their mysterious
lifestyle, since they do not go out of their way to attract notice, is
part of their charm.
In former times these creatures were closely associated with witches,
vampires and demons. However, in Europe, where true vampire bats are
not encountered, argue Jacqueline Simpson and Steve Roud in their 'Dictionary
of English folklore' (2000), much of the notion of the bloodsucking nature
of bats has been derived from modern horror films rather than folklore
traditions. In particular, Bram Stoker's book 'Dracula' (1897) played
a major role in encouraging the view that bats are sinister creatures.
And there has been a widely held belief that bats make a habit of entangling
themselves in the hair of women and children, a claim that was disproved
by a research investigation in 1959 which demonstrated that a bat deliberately
placed in a woman's hair could easily disentangle itself. William Blake
commented in 1803: "The bat that flits at close of eve / Has left the
brain that won't believe."
In Scotland a century ago the bat, there called "the bawkie-bird",
was distinctly associated with witchcraft. If you observed one flying
high and then descending quickly, it was the hour when witches come into
their own, and woe to you if you had no counter spell to protect you.
Richard Jefferies in 1879 noted that if on a warm summer evening a
bat entered your sitting room through an open window, it was an evil
omen, made worse if the creature collided with a candle. He wrote further
that to encounter a bat in the hours of broad daylight was a bad sign,
though he did not specify what the evil might be. Meanwhile, in Shropshire
it was highly unlucky to bring a bat into the house, or to kill one.
Shakespeare seems to have had a fondness for bats. We read in 'The
Tempest' of flight on a bat's back. On the other hand, we are told in 'Macbeth' that "wool
of bat" was one of the ingredients of the witches' brew. And in the same
play we learn of the evil portent of the creature. "Ere the bat hath
flown / His cloistered flight, ere to black Hecate's summons / The shard-borne
beetle with his drowsy hum / Hath rung night's yawning peal, there shall
be done / A deed of dreadful note." By contrast, I find Alfred Tennyson's: "Come
into the garden, Maud / For the black bat, night, has flown" remarkably
soothing. And the tail-end of a summer's evening, with the large noctules
sweeping majestically over the surface of a lake, can be similarly relaxing,
as opposed to the erratic flitter of a group of tiny pipistrelles as
they dart in all directions.
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