Note 38 — THE SUITOR AND THE PICTURE.

This (pronounced in English spelling chew) is the local rendering of the owl’s tu-whoo, and also the Sicilian and Calabrian dialectical form of più, which means more. The same joke is current, in a different form, in another part of Sicily, where an old church was haunted by owls, and a countryman, taking their lamentable cries for those of souls in purgatory, asked how many masses were required to set them free, and got the answer “More” to every number he suggested.