The Oxenham bird

The Oxenham family of South Tawton, near Okehampton, were said to be warned of every death among them by a bird with a white breast, which fluttered about the dying person’s bed and then vanished. James Howell saw a marble slab in a London shop, bound for Devon, recording that four of the family had seen it as they died. A local ballad told of Sir James Oxenham seeing the silvery bird at his daughter’s wedding feast, the night before she was stabbed at the altar. Chambers set it among the death omens that belonged to particular old families.