BLACK FEATHERS MAKE BLACK BIRDS
No one bird known to Americans is so entangled with whatever witchcraft
belongs to birds as is the raven, yet little of it is American besides
Poe’s melodramatic mummery, whose raven was a borrowed piece of
theatrical property. The shrewd people of this country pay little
attention to signs and portents, yet some survive among us, for the
extravagant notions popularly held as to the sagacity of our crow, with
its “courts” and “consultations,” are no doubt traceable in some measure
to the bird’s history in Old World superstition.
In Europe no bird, save possibly the cuckoo, is so laden with legends
and superstitious veneration as the raven, chiefly, however, in the
North, where it is not only most numerous and noticeable but seems to
fit better than in the gladsome South. To the rough, virile Baltic man,
or to the Himalayan mountaineer, worshipping force, careless of beauty,
this sable bird of hard endurance, challenging cry and powerful wing,
the “ravener,” tearer, was an admirable creature; while to the more
esthetic dweller by the Mediterranean or on Ægean shores such qualities
were repulsive, and the raven became a reminder of winter, when alone it
was seen in the South, and of the savage forests and hated barbarians
whence it came. Much the same antithesis belongs to this bird and its
relatives in the minds of Orientals. To understand the impression the
raven made on primitive men, and the symbolism and dread that have grown
up about it, one must have some knowledge of the real _Corvus corax_.
The raven is the largest member of the ornithological family Corvidæ,
measuring two feet from beak to tail-tip. It is everywhere black, with
steel-blue and purplish reflections, and is distinguished from its
equally black cousins, the crows, by its stouter beak, somewhat hooked
at the tip, and especially by the elongated and pointed feathers on the
throat. It is powerful in flight, and is noted for performing queer
antics in the air. Judged by its anatomy it stands high in the scale of
classification, so that some ornithologists, considering also its
intellect, have put it quite at the top of the scale—made it the true
King of Birds. In its northern home this species is to be found right
around the world, inhabiting Asia and Europe as far south as the great
ridge of mountains that extends from Spain to Siberia, and also living
in Asia Minor and Syria. It is native to all North America, where no
arctic island is too remote to be visited by it in summer. Most of the
ravens fly southward in winter from polar latitudes to kindlier regions,
but those that stay in the far north become doubly conspicuous in a
wilderness of snow, for they do not turn white in winter as do many
arctic residents; therefore Goldsmith wasted much philosophy in
explaining in his _Animated Nature_ why they “become white.” The raven’s
ordinary call-note is well enough described by the words “croak” and
“caw,” but it has many variations. Nuttall quotes Porphyrius as
declaring that no less than 64 different intonations of the raven’s
cries were distinguished by the soothsayers of his day, and given
appropriate significance. Some notes are indescribably queer.
Ravens have almost disappeared from thickly settled regions, in striking
contrast to their near relatives the crows, rooks, choughs, magpies,
jackdaws, and various related species in the Old World, which thrive and
grow tame in the company of civilized humanity. Few pairs of ravens
remain in the United States east of the Rocky Mountains, except on the
wilder parts of the Maine coast and about Lake Superior.
Readers of Charles Dickens’s novels will recall the impish specimen
“Grip” that Barnaby Rudge used to carry about with him, and which became
his fellow-prisoner in jail—and served him right, for he was always
declaring “I’m a devil!”
This raven was modelled after an actual pet, named “Grip,” in the family
of the novelist when he was writing _Barnaby Rudge_ in 1841. It died in
July of that year, and its body passed into the possession of Dr. R. T.
Judd, an English collector of Dickens’ material. In 1922 this
collection, including the stuffed skin of Grip, and its former cage,
labelled with its owner’s name, was offered for sale at the Anderson
Galleries in New York. It appears from accompanying letters that as the
novel was originally written it contained no reference to the bird; but
before the manuscript was completed it occurred to Mr. Dickens that he
could make good use of the mischievous creature in the story, as is
revealed in a letter to George Cattermole, dated January 28, 1841.
The raven may not only be tamed to the point of domestication, but will
learn to speak a few words. Goldsmith asserted, apparently from
experience, that it not only would speak but could “sing like a man.”
Like all its thievish tribe it loves to pick up and hide objects that
attract its quick eye, especially if they are bright, like a silver
spoon or a bit of jewelry; and this acquisitive disposition has more
than once involved in serious misfortune servants accused of purloining
lost articles, as happened in the case of the Jackdaw of Rheims.
The tradition on which Barham’s _Ingoldsby Legend_ is embroidered is
a very old one, the earliest statement of which, probably, is that
in Mignie’s _Patrologia Latinia_, compiled by a monk of Clairvaux.
The narrative is that of an incident in the time of Frederick
Barbarossa (12th century) when the monastery of Corvey was ruled by
a prince-bishop named Conrad. One day he left his episcopal ring
lying on the dining-table, and it disappeared. The bishop blamed the
servants and suspected his guests, and finally issued a decree of
excommunication toward any one who had stolen it. Thereupon the
bishop’s pet jackdaw “began to sicken little by little, to loathe
his food, to cease more and more from his droll croakings and
irrational follies whereby he was wont to delight the minds of fools
who neglect to fear God.”
At this dreadful stage it occurred to some bright genius that this
portentous change in the bird was the effect of the curse, and that
it was the sought-for thief. Its nest was searched, the precious
ring was found, the curse was taken off, and the jackdaw recovered
its plumage and good spirits.
Where ravens can get other food plentifully they seldom attack living
animals. Bendire frequently saw them feeding among his chickens without
harming them, yet undoubtedly they are occasionally guilty in our West
of killing young lambs, game-birds, and poultry, sins of which they are
much accused in Europe. Certainly they rob wild birds of eggs and
fledglings, but these evil deeds are done mainly in spring, in providing
their own nestlings with soft food. During most of the year the food of
the raven consists of carrion, grasshoppers, worms, mussels and other
shellfish (the larger kinds of which they lift high in the air and then
drop to break their shells), and of ground-squirrels and young rabbits
when they can get hold of them.
When a raven alights on a dead animal its first act is to pluck out the
eyes. One of the barbarities in the ancient East was to throw the bodies
of executed criminals out to be devoured by beasts and birds of prey—a
custom of which the Parsee Towers of Silence is a modified relic. The
popular knowledge of this gave great force to Solomon’s warning
(_Proverbs_ xxx, 17): “The eye that mocketh at his father, and despiseth
to obey his mother, the ravens of the valley shall pick it out”—that is,
so bad a boy would end on the gallows.
Although ravens were regarded by the ancient Zoroastrians as “pure,”
because they were considered necessary to remove pollution from the face
of the earth, the Jews classed this creature as “unclean” for the same
reason—it ate carrion. In view of this the Biblical legend that the
Prophet Elijah, when he hid by the brook Kerith from the wrath of Ahab,
was fed by ravens at command of the Lord, is so unnatural that
commentators have done their best to explain it away. To this day the
Moors regard ravens as belonging to Satan. In Chapter V of the _Koran_,
where the killing of Cain by his brother is described, we read: “And God
sent a raven which scratched the earth to show him how he should hide
the shame [that is, the corpse] of his brother, and he said ‘Woe is me!
am I to be like this raven?’ ... and he became one of those who repent.”
This is from Sale’s edition, Philadelphia, 1868; and the editor adds a
note that this legend was derived from the Jews, but that in their
version the raven appears not to Cain but to Adam, who thereupon buried
Abel.
That a bird black as night and its mysteries, a familiar of the
lightning-riven pine and the storm-beaten crag, a ghoulish attendant of
battling men and feasting on their slain, muttering strange soliloquies,
and diabolically cunning withal—that such a creature should have
appealed to the rough mariners of the North is far from surprising. The
supreme Norse god was Odin, an impersonation of force and intellect—an
apotheosis, indeed, of the Viking himself; and his ministers were two
ravens, Hugin and Munin, _i.e._, Reflection and Memory. “They sit upon
his shoulders and whisper in his ears,” says history. “He sends them out
at daybreak to fly over the world, and they come back at eve, toward
meal-time.” Hence it is that Odin knows so much, and is called
_Rafnagud_, Raven-god. Most solicitously does Odin express himself about
these ministers in Grunner’s lay in the _Elder Edda_:
Hugin and Munin fly each day
Over the spacious earth. I fear for Hugin
That he come not back,
Yet more anxious am I for Munin.
Again, in Odin’s fierce _Raven Song_, Hugin goes “to explore the
heavens.” Jupiter’s two eagles, sent east and west, will be recalled by
readers of classic tales.
As the eagle of Jove became the standard of the Roman legions, so Odin’s
bird was inscribed on the shields and the banners of his warrior sons.
You may see such banners illustrated in the Bayeux tapestry. The Dane
called his standard _landeyda_ (land-waster), and had faith in its
miraculous virtues. The original ensign, that is, the one brought to
England by the first invaders, is described in St. Neot’s biographical
_Chronicles_ (9th century). In 878, it records, a wild Danish rover
named Hubba came with twenty-three ships on a raid into Devon: but the
people rose and killed or drove away all the vikings.
“And there got they [that is, the Devon men] no small spoil, wherein
they took, moreover, that banner which men call the Raven. For they say
that the three sisters of Ingwar and Hubba, the daughters, sooth to say,
of Lodbrock, wove that banner, and made it all wholly ready between morn
and night of a single day. They say, too, that in every fight wherein
that flag went before them, if they were to win the raven in the midst
thereof seemed to flutter, as if it were alive, but were their doom to
be worsted, then it would droop, still and lifeless.”
Britain came to know well that portentous flag—
The Danish raven, lured by annual prey,
Hung o’er the land incessant,
as Thomson laments. Finally Harold hurled the power of Canute from
England’s shores forever, and Tennyson sings Harold’s paean:
We have shattered back
The hugest wave from Norseland ever yet
Surged on us, and our battle-axes broken
The Raven’s wing, and dumbed the carrion croak
From the gray sea forever.
“The crow and the raven,” MacBain[71] announces, “are constantly
connected in the Northern mythologies with battle-deities. ‘How is it
with you, Ravens?’ says the Norse _Raven Song_. ‘Whence are you come
with gory beak at the dawning of the day.... You lodged last night, I
ween, where ye knew the corses were lying.’ The ravens also assist and
protect heroes both in Irish and Norse myth. It was a lucky sign if a
raven followed a warrior.”
But the bold Norse sailors made a more practical use also of this
knowing bird, for in those days, before the compass, they used to take
ravens with them in their adventurous voyages on the fog-bound northern
seas, and trust the birds to show them the way back to land. A notable
instance was Floki’s voyage to Iceland in 864 A. D., a few years after
that island’s discovery; and the French historian Mallet[30] narrates it
thus:
We are told that Floki, previous to setting out on his expedition,
performed a great sacrifice, and having consecrated three ravens to
the gods took them with him to guide him on his voyage. After
touching at the Shetland and Faroë islands he steered northwest, and
when he was fairly out at sea, let loose one of his ravens, which,
after rising to a considerable elevation, directed its flight to the
land they had quitted.... The second bird, after being some time on
the wing, returned to the ship, a sign that the land was too far
distant to be descried even by a raven hovering in the sky. Floki
therefore continued his course, and shortly afterwards let loose his
third raven, which he followed in its flight until he reached the
eastern coast of Iceland.
This is a somewhat poetic account, I imagine, of what perhaps was a more
prosaic custom of seamanship, for doubtless it was usual at that time to
carry several birds on such voyages, and to let them fly from time to
time that they might learn and indicate to the voyagers whether land was
near, and in what direction, as did old Captain Noah, master of the good
ship _Ark_. Berthold Lauffer[52] treats of this point with his customary
thoroughness in his pamphlet _Bird Divination_:
Indian Hindoo navigators kept birds on board ship for the purpose of
despatching them in search of land. In the _Baveru-Jataka_ it is “a
crow serving to direct navigators in the four quarters”.... Pliny
relates that the seafarers of Taprobane (Ceylon) did not observe the
stars for the purpose of navigation, but carried birds out to sea,
which they sent off from time to time and then followed the course
of the birds’ flying in the direction of the land. The connection of
this practice with that described in the Babylonian and Hebraic
traditions of the deluge was long ago recognized.... When the people
of Thera, an island in the Ægean Sea emigrated to Libya, ravens flew
along with them ahead of the ships to show the way. According to
Justin ... it was by the flight of birds that the Gauls who invaded
Illyricum were guided. Emperor Jimmu of Japan (7th century) engaged
in a war expedition and marched under the guidance of a gold-colored
raven.
Mr. Lauffer might have added that Callisthenes relates that two
heaven-sent ravens led the expedition of Alexander across the
trackless desert from the Mediterranean coast to the oasis of Ammon
(Siwah), recalling stragglers now and then by hoarse croaking.
The folklore of northern Europe is full of the cunning and exploits of
this bird and its congeners, which it would be a weary task to
disentangle from pure myth. In Germany there is, or was, a stone gibbet
called, with gruesome memories, Ravenstone, to which Byron alludes in
_Werner_—
Do you think
I’ll honor you so much as save your throat
From the Ravenstone by choking myself?
We read that the old Welsh king Owein, son of Urien, had in his army
three hundred doughty ravens, constituting an irresistible force;
perhaps they were only human “shock” troops who bore this device on
their targes. Cuchulain, the savage hero of Irish fables, had, like
Odin, two magic ravens that advised him of the approach of foes.
Old-fashioned Germans believe that Frederick I (Barbarossa) is sleeping
under Raven’s Hill at Kaiserlauten, ready to come forth in the last
emergency of his country. There in his grotto-palace a shepherd found
him sleeping. Barbarossa awoke and asked: “Are the ravens still flying
around the hill?” The shepherd answered that they were. “Then,” sighed
the king, “I must sleep another hundred years.”
Waterton[73] tells us that a tradition was once current throughout the
whole of Great Britain that King Arthur was changed into a raven (some
say a chough) by the art of witchcraft; and that in due time he would be
restored to human form, and return with crown and sceptre. In Brittany,
where Arthur and his knights are much more real than even in Cornwall,
the sailor-peasants will assure you that he was buried on the little
isle of Avalon, just off the foreshore of Tregastel, but they will add
very seriously that he is not dead. If you inquire how that can be, they
will explain that the great king was conveyed thither magically by
Morgan le Fay, and he and she dwell there in an underground palace. They
are invisible now to all human eyes, and when Arthur wants to go out
into the air his companion turns him into a raven; and perchance, in
proof, your boatman may point your gaze toward a real raven sitting on
the rocks of the islet.
Ravens figure in many monkish legends, too, usually in a beneficent
attitude, in remembrance of their friendly offices toward Elijah. Saint
Cuthbert and several lesser saints and hermits were fed by these or
similar birds. One hermit subsisted many years on a daily ration of half
a loaf of bread brought him by a raven, and one time, when another saint
visited him, the bird provided a whole loaf! Fish was frequently
brought: and once when a certain eremite was ill, the bird furnished the
fish already cooked, and fed it to the patient bit by bit. Miss
Walker[39] shows that as a companion of saints this bird has had a wide
and beneficent experience, which may be set against the more conspicuous
pages of misdeeds in his highly variegated record. Thus we learn that
St. Benedict’s raven saved his life by bearing away the poisoned loaf
sent to this saint by a jealous priest. “After his torture and death at
Saragossa, when the body of St. Vincent was thrown to the wild beasts it
was rescued by ravens and borne to his brothers at Valencia, where it
reposed in a tomb till the Christians of that place were expelled by the
Moors. The remains of the saint were ... again placed in a tomb [at Cape
St. Vincent] to be guarded forever more by the faithful ravens.” Have
you doubts about this story? Go to that wild headland, where Portugal
sets a firm foot against the Atlantic, watch the ravens hovering above
it, and be convinced! And to many other holy men did these noble birds
render substantial service—to St. Meinrad especially, as is affirmed by
no less an authority than the great Jerome.
“In some parts of Germany,” Miss Walker records, “these birds are
believed to hold the souls of the damned, while in other sections wicked
priests only are supposed to be so re-incarnated. In Sweden the ravens
croaking at night in the swamps are said to be the ghosts of murdered
persons who have been denied Christian burial.” A local and humorous
touch is given to this conception by the Irish in Kerry, who allege that
the rooks there are the ghosts of bad old landlords, because they steal
vegetables from the peasants’ gardens—“Always robbin’ the poor!”
This eerie feeling is of long descent. The supreme war-goddess of the
Gaels, as Squire[74] explains, was Morrigu, the Red Woman or
war-goddess, who figures in the adventures of Cuchulain, and whose
favorite disguise was to change herself into a carrion-crow, the
“hoodie-crow” of the Scotch. She had assistants who revelled among the
slain on a battlefield. “These grim creatures of the savage mind had
immense vitality ... indeed, they may be said to survive still in the
superstitious dislike and suspicion shown in all Keltic-speaking
countries for their avatar—the hoodie crow.”
In Pennant’s _Tour in Scotland_ (1771) is described a curious ceremony
in which offerings were made by Scottish herdsmen to the hooded crow,
eagle and other enemies of sheep to induce them to spare the flocks. A
Morayshire saying in old times ran thus:
The guil, the Gordon, and the hoodie crow,
Were the three worst things Murray ever saw.
(The guil, Swann explains, is an obnoxious weed, the Gordon refers to
the thieving propensities of a neighboring clan, and the crow killed
lambs and annoyed sickly sheep.) “It is interesting,” says Wentz,[62]
“to observe that this Irish war-goddess Morrigu, the _bodb_ or
_babd_, ... has survived to our own day in the fairy-lore of the chief
Celtic countries. In Ireland the survival in the popular and still
almost general belief among the peasantry that the fairies often
exercise their magical powers under the form of royston crows; and for
this reason these birds are always greatly dreaded and avoided. The
resting of one of them on a peasant’s cottage may signify many things,
but often it means the death of one of the family or some great
misfortune, the bird in such case playing the part of a _bean-sidhe_
(banshee).” In the western Highlands “the hoody crow plays the same
rôle; and in Brittany fairies assume the form of the magpie.”
Under the influence of Christian teaching Odin gradually became
identified throughout northern Europe with Satan: so the raven and all
the Corvidae are now “Devil’s birds” in the folklore of the North. Even
the magpie is said to have devils’ blood in its tongue, and its
chattering is ominous of evil, requiring various rustic charms to
counteract its harm—in fact, if the farmer-folk are correctly informed,
virtually all the birds of this family was naturally tainted with
deviltry. It is not surprising then to hear that European crows go down
to hell once every year, when they must appear before Old Nick and give
him a tribute of feathers. The time of this visit coincides with their
moulting-season in midsummer, when the crows retire and remain
inconspicuous and silent for a time—so maybe it’s true!
An extraordinary survival of this last notion—unless it be original—is
found among the negroes of some of our Southern States, who say that the
“jaybird” (bluejay) is never to be seen on Friday, because on that day
he is carrying sticks to the Devil in hell; that in general this bird is
the Devil’s messenger and spy; and that the reason he is so gay and
noisy on Saturday is that he is so glad to get back to earth. An old
Georgia darky explained the matter a follows:
“Some folks say Br’er Jay takes a piece er wood, des a splinter,
down to de bad Place ev’y Friday fer ter help out Mister Devil, so’s
to let him ’n’ his wife, ole Aunty Squatty, have good kindlin’ wood
all de time.... But some folks tell de tale ’nother way. Dey say he
make dat trip ever’ Friday ter tote down des a grit er dirt. He make
de trip sho’. Ever’body knows dat. But for what he goes folks tells
diffunt tales. You sho’ly can’t see a jay bird in dis worl’ on
Friday fum twelve o’clock twel three—hit takes ’em des dat long ter
make de trip.... Some folks say Bre’r Jay and all his fambly, his
folks, his cousins, and his kin, does go dat way and d’rection, ev’y
one totin’ dey grain o’ sand in der bill an’ drappin’ hit in—des one
teeny weeny grit—wid de good hopes er fillin’ up dat awful
place.”[2]
Louisiana negroes are of the opinion that the jay is condemned to this
weekly trip as a punishment for misbehavior at Christ’s crucifixion, but
what dreadful deed he did has been forgotten. Every reader of “Uncle
Remus,” or of the stories of Mrs. Ruth McEnery Stuart, Mr. Harry
Stillwell Edwards, and other Southern writers, knows how largely the
“jaybird” figures in the plantation-tales of the negroes, especially of
the coastal districts, where the bluejay is one of the most conspicuous
and interesting of resident birds.
The coming of Christianity, as has been said, swept away the images of
Odin and of his Pagan familiars Hugin and Munin out of both Teutonic and
Keltic Europe, but it did not sweep away the birds themselves, nor
discolor their sable wings, nor silence the baleful croak; and the
impression left by the old tales lingered long in the minds of the
people. To the horror of the raven and his kind among the natives of
Britain, as a symbol of the northern marauders from whom they had so
long suffered, was now added the anathema of pious missionaries who
condemned everything pagan as diabolic, and all things black—except
their own robes—as typifying the powers of darkness. Truly, remarked St.
Ambrose, all shamelessness and sin are dark and gloomy, and feed on the
dead like the crow. A Chinese epithet for the raven is “Mongol’s
coffin.”
The people were sincere enough in this, for behind them was not only the
Devil-fearing superstition of the Middle Ages but a long line of parent
myths and folklore that made the bird’s reputation as black as its
plumage, and added to this was the new and terrifying idea of prophecy.
You get a hint of the feeling in Gower’s _Confessio Amantis_:
A Raven by whom yet men maie
Take evidence, when he crieth,
That some mishap it signifieth.
In Greece and Italy ravens were sacred to Apollo, the great patron of
augurs, who in a pet turned this bird from white to black—and an ill
turn it was, _for black feathers make black birds_; and in this
blackness of coat lies, in my opinion, the root of their sinister
repute.
The “jumbie-bird,” or “big witch,” of the West Indian region, for
example, is the dead-black ani, a kind of cuckoo. Spenser speaks of “the
hoarse night-raven, trompe of doleful dreer,” but his “night-raven” was
not a raven at all, but the bittern.
It is only in an earlier day and under a brighter sky that we find these
corvine prophets taking a more cheerful view of the future. Of course
they are among the “rain-birds”:
Hark
How the curst raven with his harmless voice
Invokes the rain.
So the “foresight of a raven” became proverbial, as Waterton[73]
illustrates by an anecdote: “Good farmer Muckdrag’s wife, while jogging
on with eggs to market, knew there was mischief brewing as soon as she
had heard a raven croak on the unlucky side of the road:
“That raven on the left-hand oak,
Curse on his ill-betiding croak,
Bodes me no good!”
“She had scarcely uttered this when down came her old stumbling mare to
the ground. Her every egg was smashed to atoms; and whilst she lay
sprawling ... she was perfectly convinced in her own mind that the raven
had clearly foreseen her irreparable misadventure.”
If one alighted on a church-tower the whole parish trembled, and when a
cottager saw one perched on his roof-tree he made his will; or if it
happened that a man or woman was ill in his house the death of that
person was regarded as certain. The more learned would quote for you how
Tiberius, Plato, Cicero and other great men of the past had been
similarly warned, and doubtless many a person has died in these
circumstances of nervous fright and discouragement. It is to this dread
that Marlowe refers in his _Jew of Malta_:
Like the sad presaging raven that tolls
The sick man’s passport in her hollow beak,
And, in the shadow of the silent night,
Does shake contagion from her sable wing.
The last line contains a new and heinous calumny widely credited. So
Shakespeare makes Caliban threaten Prospero and Ariel with
As wicked dew as e’er my mother brushed
With raven’s feather from unwholesome fen.
I wonder, by the way, who first spoke—the simile is, at any rate, as old
as Chaucer’s time—of the wrinkles that gather about the corners of our
eyes when we get on in life, as “crow’s feet”? Frederick Locker sings of
his grandmother:
Her locks as white as snow,
Once shamed the swarthy crow;
By-and-by
That fowl’s avenging sprite
Set his cruel foot for spite
Near her eye.
The expression of course is a suggestion of the radiating form of the
wrinkles at the outer corner of the eye to a crow’s track; and this
reminds us of the fact that when soon after the Norman conquest in
England there was a vast popular interest in royal genealogy, people
spoke of the branching form of a family tree, when drawn on paper, as a
“crane’s foot” (_pied de grue_), whence our term _pedigree_.
Omens are deduced from the flight and cries of ravens, crows, magpies,
and certain other corvine species, especially as regards their direction
relative to the inquirer. Horace, for example, in his _Ode to Galatea_
on her undertaking a journey, tells her that he, as a “provident augur,”
Ere the weird crow, re-seeking stagnant marshes,
Predict the rainstorm, will invoke the raven
From the far East, who, as the priestlier croaker,
Shall overawe him.
That is to say, Horace will make the raven, appearing or heard from the
eastward (the lucky direction), over-rule the bad omen of the crow.
There is also grave meaning in the number visible at one time, as
Matthew Lewis knew when he wrote the ballad _Bill Jones_:
“Ah, well-a-day,” the sailor said,
“Some danger must impend,
Three ravens sit in yonder glade,
And evil will happen I’m sore afraid
Ere we reach our journey’s end.”
“And what have the ravens with us to do?
Does their sight betoken us evil?”
“To see one raven is luck, ’tis true,
But it’s certain misfortune to light upon two,
And meeting with three is the devil.”
Quoting Margaret Walker:[39]
The belief in his power of divination was so general that knowledge
of the whereabouts of the lost has come to be known as “raven’s
knowledge.” To the Romans he was able to reveal the means of
restoring lost eyesight even. In Germany he was able to tell not
only where lost articles were, but could also make known to
survivors where the souls of their lost friends were to be found. In
Bohemia he was assigned the task usually performed by the stork in
other lands, while in some parts of Germany witches were credited
with riding upon his back instead of on the conventional broomstick.
Regular formulas regarding magpies are repeated in rural Britain, where
magpies are numerous—they are common in our American West, also, but
nobody is superstitious about them there—of which a common example runs:
One for sorrow, two for mirth,
Three for a wedding, four for a birth.
Many variations of these formulas are on record, some carrying the rimes
up to eight or nine pies seen at once; and folklore has many quaint ways
of dissipating the evil effects feared from their presence.
Now all this is but the ragtag and bobtail, as it were, of the _science_
of the ancient Oriental world that has come down to us in frayed and
disconnected fragments, to be now a matter more of amusing research than
of belief or practice among most of us. It was old even at the beginning
of the Christian era, but all the ornithomancy of the Greek and Roman
soothsayers was inherited in its principle, if not always in its forms,
from the remotely antique “wisdom” of the East, in which the
consultation of birds appears to be the basis of divination.
In the Far East the raven has been regarded from time immemorial with
dread interest, and where that species was rare the crow—equally black,
destructive, and cunning—took its place. To the primitive philosophers
of Persia and India the raven was a divine bird, of celestial origin and
supernatural abilities, and was the messenger who announced the will of
the Deity. A German commentator on the _Vedas_, H. Oldenberg, concludes
that the animals sent by the gods, as pictured in the myths, were those
of a weird, demoniacal nature, and were for this reason themselves
deified, but subsequently became mere stewards to divine mandators. “In
the belief of the Persians,” says Lauffer, “the raven was sacred to the
god of light and the sun.” Moncure D. Conway,[56] when discussing the
Biblical legend of the Deluge, suggests that the raven sent out of the
Ark may typify the “darkness of the face of the deep,” and the dove the
“spirit of God” that “moved upon the face of the waters.”
In China, Dr. Williams[76] tells us, “the sun is signalized by the
figure of a raven in a circle.” I have seen Chinese drawings of it in
which the raven (or a crow) stood on three legs, as does the toad that
the Taoists see in the moon—but why three legs? Mrs. Ball answers this
question thus:
The crow—known in China as _wuya_, and in Japan as _karasu_—is most
intimately related to the sun. Ch’un Ch’iu in an ancient poem says:
“The spirit of the sun is a crow with three legs”; while again Hwai
Nan Tse, an ancient philosopher, explains that this crow has three
legs because the number three is the emblem of _yang_ [light, good]
of which the sun is the supreme essence.... The Chinese, it would
appear, actually believed in the existence of a three-legged crow,
for in the official history of the Wei dynasty—3d century A. D.—it
is related that “more than thirty times, tributes consisting of
three-legged crows were brought from the neighboring countries....
The principal of sun-worship [in Japan] was Amateresu no Ohokami,
from whom the imperial family traces its descent. This divinity ...
had as her messenger and attendant ... a red bird having three
legs.”
Based on the fears and philosophy indicated above, the soothsayers of
India contrived a most elaborate scheme of judging meanings from the
actions of ravens and crows, for little attention seems to have been
paid to ornithological distinctions; and this spread in very early times
to China and Thibet. It is a wonderful monument of priestcraft, which
has been elucidated by several students of early Oriental manuscripts;
and I am indebted to a profoundly learned discourse on the subject by
Dr. Berthold Lauffer.[52] Briefly the scheme was as follows:
A table or chart was constructed containing ninety squares, each square
holding an interpretation of one or another sound of a raven’s or crow’s
voice; but his utterances were separated into five characters of sound,
and the day divided into five “watches,” while the direction from which
the bird’s voice came may be from any one of eight points of the
compass, or from the zenith, making nine points in all. Multiplying
these together gives the ninety squares of the mystic table, and the
intersection of two conditions gives you the square where the
appropriate interpretation or prophecy is written.
Thus if in the first watch (_i.e._, early in the morning) you hear a
raven in the east say _ka-ka_, your wish to obtain more property will be
fulfilled; but if in the fourth watch you hear a bird off in the
southeast say _da-da_ you may be sure that a storm will arise in seven
days. Five different tones of the cawing were recognized as significant.
Just where and what you see a raven do when you are travelling foretells
some sort of a fortunate or unfortunate incident of the progress or
outcome of your journey; yet these omens differ according to whether you
are moving and the bird is stationary, or you are standing still and the
bird is flying, or both or neither are motionless!
There was also a settled rule for taking prognostications from the nests
of these birds. “When a crow has built its nest on a branch on the east
side of a tree,” according to Donacila’s translation of a Thibetan
manuscript, “a good year and rain will be the result of it. When it has
built its nest on a southern branch the crops will then be bad. When it
has built its nest on a branch in the middle of a tree, a great fright
will then be the result of it. When it makes its nest below, fear of the
army of one’s adversary will be the result of it. When it makes its nest
on a wall, on the ground, or on a river, the [sick] king will be
healed.”
Whenever it appears that the omen observed portends harm, offerings of
food and so forth must be made to the bird in order to avert the evil,
and these offerings vary according to prescribed rules. It is no wonder
that an extensive priesthood was needed to aid in this intricate
guarding against danger or the foretelling of benefits to come; and one
suspects that the whole thing was a clever invention by the sacerdotal
class to provide priests with a good living. Nor have the practices, and
much less the superstitious notions behind them, become wholly obsolete,
for not only in India and China are the movements of birds now watched
with anxiety, and offerings made to them in the temples and individually
by the peasantry, but similar ideas and practices prevail in all Malayan
lands, as readers of such books as Skeat’s _Malay Magic_[7] may learn.
Perhaps learned students of ancient ways of thinking may be able to
explain why the _direction_ of a prophetic bird from the listener was an
essential element in its message: for example, why is the cawing of a
crow east of you a more favorable portent than cawing from the west?
Lord Lytton studies this question briefly in the Notes to his
translation of the _Odes_ of Horace, who, in his Ode to Galatea,
exclaims:
May no chough’s dark shadow
Lose thee a sunbeam, nor one green woodpecker
Dare to tap leftward.
Why should “leftward” (_lævus_) signify ill-luck in this case, when the
left was considered lucky by the Romans, although unlucky by the Greeks?
“It is suggested,” is Lytton’s comment, “that the comparison may have
arisen from the different practice of the Greeks and Romans in taking
note of birds—the former facing north, the latter south [an attitude
connected with migration?] I believe, however, it was the tap of the
woodpecker, and not his flight, that was unlucky. It is so considered
still in Italy, and corresponds to our superstitious fear of the beetle
called the death-watch. If, therefore, heard on the left, or heart side,
it directly menaced life.”
I leave the solution of the general problem of the value of direction in
ancient ornithomancy to the Orientalists, advising them that a hint of
subtile and half-forgotten reasons for such distinctions may be found in
the ideas prevailing among the shamans, or “medicine men,” of our
southwestern village-Indians; among the Hopi (miscalled Mokis), for
example, North is represented in their mystical ceremonies by yellow,
West by blue, South by red, and East by white.
Religious interest in black-hued birds is not confined to the Old World,
as was tragically illustrated in that remarkable excitement among the
Indians of the Upper Missouri region in 1890, known as the Ghost Dance,
of which the crow was the honored symbol. James Mooney,[77] of the
United States Bureau of Ethnology, investigated this outburst of
sentiment very thoroughly, and explained it at length in the 14th Annual
Report of that Bureau, from which I extract the information as to the
crow’s part in the matter. Dr. Mooney reminds us in advance that the
crow was probably held sacred by all the tribes of the Algonquian race.
Roger Williams, speaking of the New England tribes, says that although
the crow did damage to the corn, hardly an Indian would kill one,
because it was their tradition that this bird had brought them their
first grain and vegetables, “carrying a grain of corn in one ear and a
bean in the other from the field of their great god Cautantouwit in
Sowwaniu, the Southwest, the happy spirit-world where dwelt the gods and
the souls of the great and good.”
The so-called Ghost Dance meant to the Plains Indians generally a
preparation for the coming of a superhuman Messiah who would restore the
old order of things when the redman was supreme in the land, and free
from the restraint of an alien and encroaching civilization; and
primarily it contained no special hostility toward white neighbors.
Among the western redmen the eagle for its general superiority, the
magpie (particularly by the Paiutes), the sagehen because connected with
the country whence the Messiah was to come, and some other birds, were
revered in certain subsidiary ceremonies; but the central bird-figure in
this excitement was the crow, for it was regarded as the directing
messenger from the spirit-world, because its color is a reminder of
death and the shadow-land. I have seen the figures of two upward flying
crows and two magpies in a “medicine shirt” made to be worn in the Ghost
Dance. The raven shared in this devotional respect, but is rare on the
northern plains, where its humbler relative was an abundant substitute.
Some understanding of this supreme position of the crow in the
Ghost-dancing—the equivalent of our “revival” meetings—may be had by
examining the Arapahoe version of the belief on which the anticipated
advent of a red Messiah was based. Dr. Mooney expounds it[77] as
follows:
In Arapahoe belief the spirit world is in the west, not on the same
level with this earth of ours, but higher up, and separated also
from it by a body of water.... The crow, as the messenger and leader
of the spirits who had gone before [i.e. the dead] collected their
armies on the other side and advanced at their head to the hither
limit of the shadow-land. Then, looking over, they saw far below
them a sea, and far out beyond it toward the east was the boundary
of the earth, where lived the friends they were marching to rejoin.
Taking up a pebble in his beak, the crow then dropped it into the
water and it became a mountain towering up to the land of the dead.
Down its rocky slope he brought his army until they halted at the
edge of the water. Then taking some dust in his bill the crow flew
out and dropped it into the water as he flew, and it became a solid
arm of land stretching from the spirit world to the earth. He
returned and flew out again, this time with some blades of grass,
which he dropped upon the land thus made and at once it was covered
with a green sod. Again he returned and again flew out, this time
with some twigs in his bill, and dropping these also upon the new
land, at once it was covered with a forest of trees. Again he flew
back to the base of the mountain, and is now [that is, at the time
of the Ghost dancing] coming on at the head of all the countless
spirit-host.