Horrible, but beautiful.

Never heard of this. Figure one alive would be a lot more useful for keeping mice at bay.

What a terrible and bizarre practice. But a very lovely piece of art.

beautiful work
but hurting content

As with everyone else I feel the skill put into this is amazing, its so gorgeous and soft to look at, the content however is haunting. It does seem a terrible thing to do, I would think it much luckier to have a living owl living in your barn rather than kill one for such a practice.

Yes, it does, I make no difference.
It's disappearing here in Europe. Hopefully, education. Religious superstition (aka the owl is the symbol of the devil and sorcerers) is almost finished.

This reminds me of a David Gemmel novel that I can't recall the name of -- where people (such as traitors, or maybe just simply enemies) were speared to a tree, then they were split down the middle and their ribs opened up and nailed to the three. I don't know if such a thing was ever done in real history, but it was a rather disturbing thing to even imagine.

Heh. I'd like to think stuff like that only exists in books, but it happened indeed, it was the ultimate form of execution in the pope-ruled Rome a few centuries ago, reserved exactly for traitors and people who plotted against the rulers. The support was not a tree but actual butchery implements, to show that the executed criminal had become less than human with his actions, and like most executions of the time it was done on the main square in front of a crowd. Michel Foucault has done extensive studies on this kind of stuff.

.......................................that'z.....................me........=v.v=...

WHAT ABOUT THE BLOWFISH????

I have never heard of such a tradition. but it made you paint this?

Yes, but I had first red about it on a children's book about owls many years ago. Just lately it occurred to me that it would look like a crucifix. I even found a photo:
http://www.therootdoctor.se/swedishmagic4.jpg

Sad. But *shrug* Like hupakko said...

That's just horrible! >:O It's beyond me how backwards people can think. As someone already said, these birds could probably prevent misfortune a lot better by hunting down mice and rats, indeed. Then again, people have been killing other people without a good reason throughout the history, so why would they treat animals any better? :P

But my, as an art piece this is beautiful.

E' triste, molto triste.