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The raven is by far the largest of the British crows, with a four foot wing span. In the air it can be distinguished from the other crows by its longer wings in relation to its body and its longer and more rounded tail. It has a honking call unique to itself, although it will also caw and chatter. The plumage is of course black, with a blue, purple and greenish iridescent sheen. The beak and legs are also black and the eye is a deep brown.
The beak is curved at the base and is extremely strong, capable of killing a rat or hedgehog with a single strike. The raven is renowned for its uncanny ability to find well concealed carrion, often being followed upon its travels by eagles and buzzards, who will then attempt to chase it from its quarry. A raven will also eat grubs, insects, berries, fruit, grain, frogs, moles, rabbits and shellfish. Although he will stop at nothing in the hunt of a favourite titbit - even creeping along puffins’ burrows for an egg - he will not take from his close neighbours.
Ravens were once, not so long ago, common throughout Britain, with a raven tree in every village, but they have been cruelly hunted and are now mostly confined to Scotland and the Scottish islands, the Lake District and part of the Northern Pennines, Wales, Devon and Cornwall. In Ireland they are more evenly if still quite thinly spread, the birds there favouring the coastal areas.
There are many tales from antiquity to the present day about the wisdom and cunning of the raven. The raven who wished for a drink when the water was too low in the tank is an example; he collected stones from nearby and dropped them into the tank, thus heightening the level of the water. And it was not the dove but the raven whom Noah first sent forth from the ark to spy for land. The raven did not return, however, since it was too busy feeding on the floating corpses of the drowned.
The Vikings were aided in their discovery of new lands by the raven. They would loose a bird when lost within foreign seas, and should the raven choose not to return to the ship but to fly for some new horizon then the pilot would mark and follow its path. It is said that in this way the Norseman Flokki discovered Iceland, and it is likely that Greenland and Nova Scotia were happened upon in a similar way.
The Vikings in fact carried a raven banner, woven to a strict magical edict, into battle with them. When the wind blew the bird’s wings wide it was considered an excellent omen and aided the warriors perhaps into a berserker’s killing frenzy. Members of the crow family were also used as messengers during battle and war. Conversely, when a desperate Alfred the Great succeeded in capturing the Danes’ raven standard his fortunes turned and England was reclaimed.
William the Conqueror, descendant of the Vikings, is portrayed on the Bayeux tapestry entering into battle at Senlac behind the raven standard. Ravens have stood guard at the Tower of London since 1078. Charles II was warned that if there were no ravens in the Tower, the White Tower would fall and the British Empire would collapse, since which time it has been the custom to clip a wing of each raven. These birds do not breed, but are taken as fledglings from various parts of Britain.
The legend of the Raven Stone is typical of the wealth of superstition and awe surrounding the raven. It was believed that when a young raven died, a parent would away to seek a magic stone, discernible only to one with the degree of magical knowledge which these birds possess. The stone would be returned to the nest and forced into the beak of the dead young bird to protect him between incarnations and to ensure that his next life would be as a raven. For these stones ravens were cruelly hunted and young even killed in order to send a parent on the quest.
The raven has inspired much verse, albeit mostly as a dark ominous figure. Spenser in his Faerie Queene writes:
After him...night ravens flew,
The hateful messengers of heavy things,
Of death and dolor telling sad tidings.
Marlowe in The Jew of Malta:
Like the sick 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.
Shakespeare has more reference to the raven than to any other bird, for example in Othello:
O’ it comes o’er my memory,
As doth the raven o’er the infected house,
Boding to all.
The raven indeed holds a unique position in history and literature, being equally associated with the darkness and the light. Long after St Hugh’s death in 1365 his jewelled hand was stolen away by thieves, who stripped it bare of its gems and threw it into a field. A raven is said to have guarded it and croaked attention toward its location, causing the relic to be returned to its holy resting place. The thieves, upon hearing of the strangeness of the discovery, feared for their souls and gave themselves up and were hanged in Lincoln. I cannot help but wonder if their dangling corpses were not fed upon by the self same bird.
Corax - truly a raven worthy of the name - try your luck on the machina magica