White-breasted Birds.
Reading edition
In Devonshire the appearance of a white-breasted bird has long been considered an omen of death. This belief has been traced to a circumstance which happened to the Oxenham family in that county, and related by Howell, in his "Familiar Letters," wherein is the following monumental inscription: "Here lies John Oxenham, a goodly young man, in whose chamber, as he was struggling with the pangs of death, a bird with a white breast was seen fluttering about his bed, and so vanished." The same circumstance is related of his sister Mary, and two or three others of the family.