The Raven – a much maligned bird

Human societies frequently make attributions to animals. Foxes are cunning, bears hug you, badgers badger you (for some reason), the eagle is noble, the sparrow is chirpy and so on. But it’s hard to think of another animal that has such a hard time as the raven.

The ravenstone is so called because ravens would sit by the execution block hoping for a bite from the executed victim. Someone who is ravenous is very, very hungry indeed.

Poe’s Raven is a bird of doom, issuing denials at the end of several stanzas, uttering the ominous “nevermore”.

“this ominous bird of yore -
What this grim, ungainly, ghastly, gaunt, and ominous bird of yore
Meant in croaking 'Nevermore.' ”

As every Londoner knows, if the ravens should ever leave the Tower of London, the kingdom will fall, hence the birds with their clipped wings, the prisoners of the Tower.

 

Cassius, towards the denouement of Julius Caesar, just before the fatal battle of Philippi, sees the raven (with the crow and the kite) as a grim omen:

“This morning are they [two mighty eagles] fled away and gone;
And in their steads do ravens, crows and kites,
Fly o'er our heads and downward look on us,
As we were sickly prey: their shadows seem
A canopy most fatal, under which
Our army lies, ready to give up the ghost.’

At least Thomas Middleton is relatively neutral about the raven, a night bird, sure, with a poor voice, but not otherwise nasty:

“Ravens croak on chimneys' tops;

The cricket in the chamber hops;

The nibbling mouse is not asleep,

But he goes peep, peep, peep, peep, peep”

And that’s just in English. I think we can add the Scots ballad “The twa corbies” to the list, corbie can be variously raven and crow.

“As I was walking all alane,
I heard twa corbies makin a mane;
The tane unto the ither say,
"Whar sall we gang and dine the-day?"

"In ahint yon auld fail dyke,
I wot there lies a new slain knight”

and, they go on,

So we may mak oor dinner swate."

"Ye'll sit on his white hause-bane,
And I'll pike oot his bonny blue een;
Wi ae lock o his gowden hair
We'll theek oor nest whan it grows bare."

From the TLS we also learn:

“A raven deity figures, we are told, in the cosmologies of many cultures, sometimes as the creator of the world, the bringer of light to the world, or the bearer of civilization. In Celtic mythology there is, among other raven deities, the giant-king Bran the Blessed. (Bran means raven in Welsh, and the bird may be regarded as his emblem.)”

Then:

Ravens (and Crows) are associated with war and death in Irish mythology. In Cornish folklore crows are associated with the "otherworld" and so must be treated with respect. In Australian Aboriginal mythology, the crow is an ancestral being. In Buddhism the protector of the Dharma is represented by a crow in one of his physical/earthly forms.

The raven is revered as God by the indigenous peoples of the Pacific Northwest in North America and in northeast Asia. Several totem poles erected by native Americans in Washington, Alaska and Oregon depict ravens and the stories they feature in. In the Old Testament of the Bible there are several references to common Ravens. In the British Isles, ravens were symbolic to the Celts. In Irish mythology, the goddess Morrígan alighted on the hero Cú Chulainn's shoulder in the form of a raven after his death.

In many post-conversion Western traditions, ravens have long been considered to be birds of ill omen and death, in part because of the negative symbolism of their all-black plumage and the eating of carrion. In Sweden, ravens are known as the ghosts of murdered people, and in Germany as the souls of the damned. In Danish folklore, valravne that ate a king's heart gained human knowledge, could perform great malicious acts, could lead people astray, had superhuman powers, and were "terrible animals"

In French, not only is La Fontaine’s raven, Maître Corbeau (with cheese), vain, but also stupid, allowing himself to be flattered by the fox (cunning as ever), who says to him, sing, your voice is so beautiful:

Sans mentir, si votre ramage
Se rapporte à votre plumage,
Vous êtes le Phénix des hôtes de ces bois."

(Really, if your voice Is like your plumage, You are the phoenix of all the inhabitants of these woods.)

The raven sings and drops the cheese he is holding in his beak. The fox, not content with getting the better of the bird, adds a little lesson,

Mon bon Monsieur,
Apprenez que tout flatteur
Vit aux dépens de celui qui l'écoute

(Learn that every flatterer Lives at the expense of the one who listens to him.)

As if that were not enough, for the French the corbeau is the writer of poison-pen letters. Something should be done for the raven brand en France.

In German, there are Wotan’s ravens, rather more powerful than La Fontaine’s, they are his eyes that fly over the earth and report back to their master. That presumably why one of the US observation drones has been named “raven”. As Time Magazine tells us: “Already soldiers carry hand-launchable Raven surveillance drones”. I’m only surprised that there is a Wagner fan in the US Army unit responsible for naming drones, though on second thoughts why not?

Christian Morgenstern had rather poorer view of the raven, seeing it as a kind parrot:

Der Rabe Ralf

        will will hu hu
    dem niemand half
        still still du du
    half sich allein
    am Rabenstein
        will will still still
            hu hu

And in the Winterreise, the raven is evidence winter and the cold:

“Da war es kalt und finster,
Es schrien die Raben vom Dach.”

(It was cold and dark, the ravens cried from the roof.)

In Estonian, a raven-mother is the evil mother who neglects her children and, maybe, exploits them, not unlike the wicked stepmother of many a fairy tale.

The Hungarian view of the raven is rather more divided. On the negative side, there is the legend, one I was certainly brought up with, that the raven was once white, but now washes his son on Good Friday, because – so the mythic narrative – when Christ was in hiding, He was seen by the raven (cf. Wotan) and shouted “kár, kár”, (meaning “what a pity” or “shame”).

For this he was eternally punished by being turned forever black, the colour of sin, and having to eat carrion.

Ravenstone is known in Hungarian, not just in English – hollókő is the word and there is a castle of this name, but its putative origin differs considerably from the English. According to the legend, there was once a castle at Pusztavárhegy and the lord of castle, one András Kacsis kidnapped a beautiful maiden, but he evidently chose his target badly, because the young woman’s nursemaid was witch. The nursemaid then did a deal with the devil to free the maiden and that was how it came to be that many demons assumed the form of ravens and carried away the stones of Kacsis’s castle, leaving mere earthworks behind. The stones were taken  to a massive, high rock where an entirely new fortress was assembled, and this is called Hollókő.

So, it’s not enough that Hungarian ravens have to do the annual cleansing ritual on Good Friday, they are also the spawn of devil, though usefully employed in the building trade. Incidentally, the story doesn’t tell whether the kidnapped maiden lived happily ever after. Or not, as the case may be.

As against this, the raven on the coat of arms of the Hunyadi family is still celebrated. Matthias Corvinus bears his name, Arany wrote a ballad about the raven as a first rate messenger and the former Karl Marx University in Budapest is now the Corvinus University. There’s a lesson in there somewhere.

Sch. Gy.