Winter--Auroral Displays in the West Highlands always indicative
of a coming Storm--Corvus Corax--Wonderful Ravens--Edgar Allan Poe.
Snow continues to accumulate on the mountain summits [December 1870],
which all around, from Ben Nevis to Ben Cruachan, and from the peaks
of Glen-Arkaig to Benmore in Mull, now present so many Sierra Nevadas,
while you are conscious at last, and to an extent that admits of no
possible mistake on the subject, that the wind, which, whether it blows
adown the glen or across the sea, has a chill and penetrating edge to
it, is neither the breeze of autumn nor the zephyr of summer, but the
breath of winter itself--the hoary-headed and icicle-bearded season,
that, with all its drawbacks, has its uses in the general economy
as well as its gentler confrères in the annual. With the exception
of one or two pet days, the weather of the past fortnight has been
stormy and wild, with heavy falls of rain on the lowlands, and sleet
and snow among the mountains. In no one season since we first became
a student of the heavens, now more than a quarter of a century ago,
have we had so many splendid exhibitions of aurora borealis as the last
three weeks have presented us with in a series of tableaux vivants,
which, while they charmed and delighted the intelligent observer,
made the vulgar gape in astonishment and alarm. In every instance
these auroral displays have invariably been followed within twelve
hours by heavy gales of wind and much rain, and so constantly have
we noticed this sequence throughout the observations of many years,
that there is perhaps no meteorological prediction on which we should
be disposed to venture with so much confidence and boldness as that
within twelve or fifteen hours of a bright auroral display there
shall be a storm, and that that storm shall be of heavy rain or sleet,
as well as of high wind. We speak principally of the West Highlands,
but we have no doubt that observation would prove the phenomena to
be the same throughout the kingdom. If we were in command of a ship
at sea, we should consider ourselves quite as justified in making all
necessary preparations for a coming storm on the back of a brilliant
aurora, as we should on observing a sudden fall in the barometer, the
only difference being that the "merry dancers" give you longer notice
of the approaching gale than does the mercury. The latter exclaims,
"Look out!" and if you don't look out, and that instantly, calling
all hands and making everything snug, you come to grief, while time
enough generally elapses after the auroral warning, to enable you
to prepare at leisure for the coming storm, and, if it catch you
napping, the fault is all your own. The recent auroral displays seem
to have been very general over the whole of Europe, and are said to
have been unusually brilliant in Canada and the Northern States of
America. A more than ordinarily severe and protracted winter may be
expected after all these aerial perturbations, which, when a French
savant remarked the other day to a compatriot, "Tant pis," replied the
chassepot-bearing mobile, with the invariable shoulder shrug and grin,
"Tant pis pour Messieurs les Prussiens!"--thinking, no doubt, of the
disastrous retreat from Moscow, and hoping to see it repeated in a
different direction at no distant day. Except the wren and redbreast,
whose pluck is indomitable, and who are never altogether out of voice,
our singing birds are now songless and silent, or if they do utter a
note, it is but a cheep and a chirp, not a song, another sign that our
winter is to be regarded as having fairly set in. We notice, besides,
that some of our winter visitors from Arctic seas have made their
appearance along our shores, while we observe that the rook and grey
crow have already begun to frequent the beach at low water in search
of what may be picked up in the way of a meal, a sure sign that they
also look upon it as already come, and that their food in more inland
parts has disappeared until a kindlier season has come round.
A very large raven (Corvus corax), the biggest specimen of this bird
we have ever seen, was trapped at the head of Glencreran a few days
ago by a bird-catcher that annually pays the West Highlands a visit at
this season. It was a female, as fat and plump as a Michaelmas goose,
and weighed within an ounce or two of four pounds. The plumage, as
might be expected in a bird of such high condition, was perfect,
with the exception of two of the upper alar feathers, which were
perfectly white, an abnormality, however, that only rendered the
specimen all the more interesting. The raven is the craftiest and
shyest of birds, never venturing within shot of fowling-piece or rifle,
and more difficult than any other bird, perhaps, to be outwitted or
circumvented in any way. With all his craft and caution, however,
the raven is, when occasion calls, one of the most courageous and
boldest of birds. At the time of nidification, for instance, the
male will fearlessly attack the largest falcon and drive him from
what he considers his own proper territory, nor will he shun the
combat, as we have often observed, even with the osprey or bald
buzzard when they met in mid-air on their predatory excursions,
and a sufficient casus belli has been found or feigned by either
belligerent. We remember seeing an encounter of this kind several
years ago, which continued nearly an hour, and was a very pretty and
interesting sight, the combatants performing the most beautiful aerial
evolutions as they charged, and parried, and soared, and swooped in
fierce and determined conflict. We noticed that the raven frequently
uttered his hoarse and threatening croak, as if to intimidate his
opponent, while the osprey fought in perfect silence. The combat
finally resulted in a drawn battle, the belligerents separating as
if by mutual consent, and slowly winging their flight in opposite
directions. The probability is that the raven's pugnacity was excited
on this occasion (March 1863) by the osprey's cruising about, however
unwittingly, in the vicinity of the precipice in a cleft of which the
female raven was at the time brooding on her nest. At such a time the
raven will boldly attack the passing eagle, and harass and annoy it
until the eagle, pestered and teased by the assault, rather than in
any way alarmed, with great good nature evacuates the territory which
the raven claims as its own. The raven has from the earliest ages
been accounted a bird of evil omen, and an object of superstitious
dread and awe, and allusions to the bird in this connection are to
be met with in the literature of most countries, the raven being as
cosmopolitan as man himself. Its croak, so disagreeable, and dismal,
and hoarse, and startling; its colour, a funereal black; its habitat,
the lonely and demon-haunted mountain peaks, giddy precipices, and
dreary solitudes; its lamb-slaying and carrion-eating propensities;
its shy and suspicious manner, as if he knew that he had done evil and
was apprehensive of well-merited punishment--all combine to render him
in the first instance a noticeable and remarkable bird, and one sure
to be selected for frequent reference in the days of bird divination,
a superstition of which traces may probably be found in the early
history of every country, and thus it would readily be raised to the
"bad eminence" of a bird of evilest omen--
"The hateful messenger of heavy things,
Of death and dolour telling."
The Moor of Venice says--
"It comes o'er my memory,
As doth the raven o'er the infected house,
Boding to all."
And you remember Macbeth, and cannot fail to catch the allusion--
"The raven himself is hoarse,
That croaks the fatal entrance of Duncan
Under my battlements."
During his tour in the Highlands with Dr. Johnson, Boswell writes
a highly characteristic letter to David Garrick, and, describing
their visit to Macbeth's Castle, says--"The situation of the old
castle corresponds exactly to Shakspeare's description. While we were
there to-day, it happened oddly that a raven perched upon one of the
chimney tops and croaked. Then I, in my turn, repeated 'The raven
himself,' &c." Now, if a raven in truth did so perch, all we can say
is that it was a very curious place for a raven to be, or ravens,
within a hundred years, must have very much changed their habits
and nature. The explanation probably is that it was a tame raven,
or a rook perhaps, or, likeliest of all, that it was a common jackdaw
(Corvus monedula), a pert, impudent, and garrulous little gentleman
in black--no bigger than a dovecot pigeon--that Mr. Boswell mistook
(proh pudor!) for the grave, stately, and sagacious raven, who is as
much bigger, and weightier, and wiser than his loquacious cousin the
daw, as Samuel Johnson was bigger, and weightier, and wiser than his
travelling companion, James Boswell. It is curious to meet with the
following on the authority of no less renowned a personage than the
valorous and puissant knight Don Quixote de la Mancha, the flower of
chivalry. "Have you not read, sir," proceeds the knight, "the annals
and histories of England, wherein are recorded the famous exploits
of King Arthur, whom in our Castilian tongue we perpetually called
King Artus, of whom there exists an ancient tradition, universally
received over the whole kingdom of Great Britain, that he did not die,
but that by magic art he was transformed into a raven, for which reason
it cannot be proved that from that time to this any Englishman hath
killed a raven."
We have just called the raven our "friend," nor are we at all ashamed
so to designate a bird whom we have known long, and regarding whom,
if other people speak nothing but evil, we at least can speak a great
deal that is good. There is a well-known proverb to the effect that a
certain potentate of sable hue is not so black as he is painted, nor
is the raven. First of all, he is an apt scholar, and a bird generally
of much sagacity, of long memory, and ready wit. It is on record that
on one occasion when the Emperor Augustus was returning victorious
from a battlefield, a tame raven that had received his lesson, and
remembered it to the letter, alighted on the conqueror's chariot,
and saluted him in these words--Ave Cæsar, Victor, Imperator! The
Emperor was pleased, as he well might be, and ordered the raven a
handsome pension for life. Bechstein, who probably knew more about
the habits and economy of ravens, especially in their tame state,
than any other ornithologist before his day or since, vouches for
the facility with which they may be taught to speak, and for their
sagacity and docility generally. He tells the following amusing
story:--"A very clever raven was kept at a nobleman's residence in
the district of Mannsfeldt. Among other things he could say, 'Well,
who are you?' very strongly and distinctly. One day, as he was walking
about among the grass in the garden, he observed a setter dog which
remained near him, and kept constantly walking after him. Not liking
to be thus watched and followed, the raven turned rapidly round and
sternly exclaimed, 'Well, who are you?' The dog was alarmed at this,
hung his tail, and ran hastily away, and not until he had gained
a considerable distance did he turn round and howl." The raven,
besides, is a thorough anti-Mormonite, and wouldn't live in Utah for
the world. If he visits the polygamist colony at all, it is always
under protest against the institutions of that delectable land,
and to be ready to pick the bones of the first many-wived "elder"
he may catch in articulo mortis. Rather should the raven be elected
to a seat upon the bench of bishops, for he is ever careful to fulfil
the apostolic injunction to be the husband but of one wife; and until
accident or old age deprives him of her, he is the model and pattern
of faithful and affectionate husbands, never violating his conjugal
vows, not even to the extent of the most innocent of flirtations
or the most Platonic of intimacies with a neighbouring raveness,
even though she should be younger, and sleeker, and glossier than
his own. The raven, in short, when he pairs, which he does at the
earliest moment permitted by the laws of ravendom, pairs for life,
and while his first choice is spared to him he will no more think of
paying court to another, be her charms what they may, than he will
of dying of hunger while there is a bone to pick, a tender lamb, or
braxied sheep within a circuit of a hundred miles of his eyrie, in the
most inaccessible cleft of yonder beetling precipice. We might now say
something if we liked of the raven's usefulness in the general economy
as a hard-working and indefatigable inspector of nuisances, and how
putrid animal matter of every description disappears, as if by magic,
wherever he is known and appreciated; but this is a utilitarian age,
and as we hate utilitarianism, we are content merely to hint that
the raven deserves special regard as a sanitary reformer. We prefer
insisting on the fact that the raven is a gentleman of very ancient
descent, being able, in the clearest manner, to trace his pedigree
in unbroken line up to the days of "Captain" Noah himself, as Byron
irreverently styles the patriarch. When any one in our day becomes
distinguished and attracts our special regard, we instantly set to work
to trace his descent, and although he himself can hardly tell who was
his grandfather, we are never satisfied until we have, by hook and by
crook, traced his ancestry to the Ragman Roll or the Norman Conquest,
and, having thus ennobled him to our own entire satisfaction, we cease
not to pet and praise him until he is dead, and then the newspapers
swarm with obituary notices of the distinguished man who has just
departed, and a monument, erected by public subscription, concludes
the farce. The raven's ancestor was unquestionably with Noah in the
ark, and although he has incurred some odium in connection with the
assuaging of the waters, we confess we cannot well tell why, for all
that the ancient, and beautiful, and simple narrative says of him
is this: "And he sent forth a raven, which went forth to and fro,
until the waters were dried up from off the earth." On the point
of ancestry, in short, there is no bird that has a better right to
hold up his head than the raven. And just consider: wasn't Dickens'
stuffed raven "Grip" sold the other day for a hundred and twenty
guineas! although if his portrait in the Graphic is to be depended
on, he never was a handsome specimen of the family, or if he was,
then the man who stuffed and "set him up" should have received a
flogging for his pains. Should the reader wish to know more about our
friend Corvus corax, we can confidently recommend him to make the
acquaintance, the intimate acquaintance if he can, of "The Raven"
to be met with in the works of Edgar Allan Poe, the most weird and
wonderful raven that has ever yet appeared in song or story.