Chapter 4 THE CROWS AND THEIR RELATIONS.

TO a superficial observer of nature, there may appear to be a much greater resemblance between the Raven, the Crow, the Rook, and the Jackdaw, than we find to be actually the case. At the same time, so different to them in outward appearance are the Jay and Magpie, that it may appear extraordinary to class them all together. Nevertheless, while each, of course, has its distinguishing characters, all are included in the first section of the family of crows.

THE RAVEN,

The Raven (Corvus corax), from his size and character, naturally takes the lead. Go where we will over the face of the wide world, the well-known hoarse croak of the raven is still to be heard. He was seen perched on the bare rocks, looking over the dreary snows of the highest points visited in the Arctic Expeditions. Under the burning sun of the equator he enjoys his feast of carrion. He was discovered in the islands of the Pacific Ocean by Captain Cook; and in the lowest Southern or Antarctic regions, other travellers have found him pursuing his cautious predatory life, just as in England.61

From the earliest times the raven, with his deep and solemn voice, has always commanded attention, and superstitious people have become impressed with the idea that there is something unearthly in his nature and ominous in his voice.62 By the Romans this bird was consecrated to Apollo, and regarded as a foreteller of good or evil. Through a long course of centuries this character has clung to him; and even to this day, there are many who believe that the raven's croak predicts a death.

A BIRD OF ILL OMEN.

No wonder, then, that Shakespeare has taken advantage of this wide-spread belief, and has introduced the raven into many of the solemn passages of his Plays, to carry conviction to the minds of the people, and render his images the more impressive. He frequently alludes to "the ill-boding raven:"

"It comes o'er my memory,

As doth the raven o'er the infectious house,

Boding to all."

Othello, Act iv. Sc. 1.

Thersites, in Troilus and Cressida (Act v. Sc. 2), says,-

"Would I could meet that rogue Diomed; I would croak like a raven; I would bode, I would bode."

In the play of Henry VI, Suffolk vainly endeavours to cheer up the King, who has swooned on hearing of Gloster's death, saying:-

"Comfort, my sovereign! gracious Henry, comfort!"

But the King, likening his message to the ill-boding note of a raven, replies:-

"What, doth my lord of Suffolk comfort me?

Came he right now to sing a raven's note,

Whose dismal tune bereft my vital powers;

And thinks he that the chirping of a wren,

By crying comfort from a hollow breast,

Can chase away the first-conceived sound?"

Henry VI. Part II. Act iii. Sc. 2.

After Balthazar has sung his well-known song, "Sigh no more, ladies," (Much Ado, Act ii. Sc. 3,) Benedick observes to himself, "An he had been a dog that should have howled thus, they would have hanged him: and I pray God his bad voice bode no mischief. I had as lief have heard the night-raven, come what plague could have come after it."

THE NIGHT-CROW:

Willughby thought that the so-called "night-raven" was the bittern. Speaking of the curious noise produced by the latter bird, he says:-"This, I suppose, is the bird which the vulgar call the night-raven, and have a great dread of."63

The bittern was one of the very few birds which Goldsmith, in his "Animated Nature," described from personal observation, and he, too, calls it the "night-raven." Its hollow boom, he says, caused it to be held in detestation by the vulgar. "I remember, in the place where I was a boy, with what terror the bird's note affected the whole village; they considered it as the presage of some sad event, and generally found, or made one to succeed it. If any person in the neighbourhood died, they supposed it could not be otherwise, for the night-raven had foretold it; but if nobody happened to die, the death of a cow or a sheep gave completion to the prophecy."

Sometimes it was called the night-crow-

"The night-crow cried, aboding luckless time."

Henry VI. Part III. Act v. Sc. 6.

ITS SUPPOSED PROPHETIC POWER.

Shakespeare has introduced an allusion to the raven with much effect, in the fifth scene of the first act in Macbeth, where an attendant enters the chamber of Lady Macbeth to announce-

"The king comes here to-night.

Lady M. Thou 'rt mad to say it!-

Is not thy master with him? who, were't so,

Would have informed for preparation.

Attend. So please you, it is true:-our thane is coming:

One of my fellows had the speed of him;

Who, almost dead for breath, had scarcely more

Than would make up his message.

Lady M. Give him tending;

He brings great news. [Exit Attendant.

The raven himself is hoarse

That croaks the fatal entrance of Duncan

Under my battlements."

On this passage Johnson remarks: "The messenger, says the servant, had hardly breath to make up his message; to which the lady answers mentally, that he may well want breath; such a message would add hoarseness to the raven. That even the bird whose harsh voice is accustomed to predict calamities, could not croak the entrance of Duncan but in a note of unwonted harshness."

The preference which the raven evinces for "sickly prey," or carrion, is not unnoticed by the poet:-

"Now powers from home, and discontents at home,

Meet in one line; and vast confusion waits,

As doth a raven on a sick-fallen beast,

The imminent decay of wrested pomp."

King John, Act iv. Sc. 3.

And again-

"Ravens

Fly o'er our heads, and downward look on us,

As we were sickly prey."

Julius C?sar, Act v. Sc. 3.

ITS PRESENCE ON BATTLE-FIELDS.

In Henry V. (Act iv. Sc. 2) we have a graphic picture of a distressed army followed by ravens on the look-out for corpses:-

"Yond island carrions, desperate of their bones,

Ill-favour'dly become the morning field:

Their ragged curtains poorly are let loose,

And our air shakes them passing scornfully.

And their executors, the knavish crows,

Fly o'er them all, impatient for their hour."

It is most probable that the supposed prophetic power of the raven, respecting battles and bloodshed, originated in its frequent presence on these occasions, drawn to the field of slaughter by an attractive banquet of unburied bodies of the slain. Hence poets have described this bird as possessing a mysterious knowledge of these things. The Icelanders, notwithstanding their endeavours to destroy as many as they can, yet give them credit for the gift of prophecy, and have a high opinion of them as soothsayers. And the priests of the North American Indians wear, as a distinguishing mark of their sacred profession, two or three raven skins, fixed to the girdle behind their back, in such a manner that the tails stick out horizontally from the body. They have also a split raven skin on the head, so fastened as to let the beak project from the forehead.64

ITS FOOD.

The solitary habits of this bird during the nesting season are thus alluded to:-

"A barren detested vale, you see, it is;

The trees, though summer, yet forlorn and lean,

O'ercome with moss and baleful misseltoe:

Here never shines the sun; here nothing breeds,

Unless the nightly owl or fatal raven."

Titus Andronicus, Act ii. Sc. 3.

And a curious belief is mentioned with regard to the rearing of its young:-

"Some say that ravens foster forlorn children,

The whilst their own birds famish in their nests."

Titus Andronicus, Act ii. Sc. 3.

ALLEGED DESERTION OF YOUNG.

It would appear, from some passages in the sacred Scriptures, that the desertion of their young had not escaped the observation of the inspired writers. It was certainly a current belief in olden times, that when the raven saw its young ones newly hatched, and covered with down, it conceived such an aversion that it forsook them, and did not return to the nest until a darker plumage had shown itself. And to this belief commentators suppose the Psalmist alludes when he says:-"He giveth to the beast his food, and to the young ravens which cry." (Psalm cxlvii. 9.) And again, in Job, "Who provideth for the raven his food? When his young ones cry unto God, they wander for lack of meat." (Job xxxviii. 41.)

In Batman "upon Bartholome his book, 'De proprietatibus Rerum,' folio, 1582," we find the following passage bearing upon the question:-"The raven is called Corvus of Corax. It is said that ravens birdes (i.e., young ravens) be fed with deaw of heaven all the time that they have no black feathers by benefite of age." (Lib. xii. c. 10.)

Izaak Walton, in his "Compleat Angler," speaking of fish without mouths, which "are nourished and take breath by the porousness of their gills, man knows not how," observes that "this may be believed if we consider that when the raven hath hatched her eggs, she takes no further care, but leaves her young ones to the care of the God of nature, who is said in the Psalms (Psal. cxlvii. 9) 'to feed the young ravens that call upon him.' And they be kept alive, and fed by a dew or worms that breed in their nests; or some other ways that we mortals know not."

Shakespeare, no doubt, had the words of the Psalmist in his mind when he wrote-

"And He that doth the ravens feed,

Yea, providently caters for the sparrow,

Be comfort to my age!"

As You Like It, Act ii. Sc. 3.

RAVENS' FEATHERS.

We read in the First Book of Kings, xvii. 4, that when the prophet Elijah fled from the tyranny of King Ahab, and concealed himself by the brook Cherith, God commanded the ravens to feed him there. The remembrance of this passage may have been in our poet's mind when he penned the following lines in the Winter's Tale. Antigonus, ordered by Leontes to expose the infant Perdita to death, says, with a touch of pity:-

"Come on, poor babe:

Some powerful spirit instruct the kites and ravens

To be thy nurses!"

Winter's Tale, Act ii. Sc. 3.

As in the case of the owl, it appears that ravens' feathers were employed by the witches of old in their incantations; for it was believed that the wings of this bird carried contagion with them wherever they appeared. Marlowe, in his Jew of Malta, speaks of-

... "the sad presaging raven, that tolls

The sick man's passport in her hollow beak,

And in the shadow of the silent night

Doth shake contagion from her sable wings."

Hence the curse which Shakespeare puts into the mouth of Caliban:-

"As wicked dew as e'er my mother brush'd

With raven's feather from unwholesome fen,

Drop on you both!"

Tempest, Act i. Sc. 2.

Here "wicked" may be taken to mean pernicious or destructive-the antonym being "virtuous," as in the expression "the virtuous properties of plants." A bad sore is described, in an old tract on hawking (Harl. MS. 2,340), as "a wykked felone."

A BLACK CHARACTER.

As the type of blackness, both as regards colour and character, we find the raven frequently contrasted with the white dove, the emblem of all that is pure and gentle.

"Who will not change a raven for a dove?"

Midsummer Nights Dream, Act ii. Sc. 2.

"I'll sacrifice the lamb that I do love,

To spite a raven's heart within a dove."

Twelfth Night, Act v. Sc. 1.

"Beautiful tyrant! fiend angelical!

Dove-feather'd raven!

······

Just opposite to what thou justly seem'st."

Romeo and Juliet, Act iii. Sc. 2.

The quarto (1599) and folio here read, "ravenous, dove-feather'd raven," &c.

As colour is intensified by contrast, so we read-

"Whiter than snow upon a raven's back."

So the undated quarto. Other editions have the emendation-

"Whiter than new snow on a raven's back."

Romeo and Juliet, Act iii. Sc. 2.

VARIATION IN COLOUR.

We have seen a variety of the jackdaw of a dirty yellowish-white colour; it could scarcely be called "amber-colour'd." No doubt other members of the genus Corvus have occasionally been observed to vary quite as much in their plumage. Shakespeare says,-

"An amber-colour'd raven was well noted."

Love's Labour's Lost, Act iv. Sc. 3.

No doubt it was; quite as much as a white blackbird. This apparent contradiction of terms is in reality no myth. We have seen three or four albino varieties of the blackbird, and could give a tolerably long list of dark-plumaged birds of which pure white, or almost pure white, varieties have been found. This may be the result of disease, or of old age, drying up the animal secretions, and causing the absence of colour which we call white. According to ancient authors, ravens were formerly white, but were changed to black for babbling. The great age to which the raven sometimes attains has been alluded to in the first chapter, where some reference is made to "ancient" eagles, and tame ravens have been known to outlive several masters who owned them successively. But birds, like all things else, succumb to time. Shakespeare tells us,-

"Time's glory is to calm contending Kings, ...

To fill with worm-holes stately monuments, ...

To pluck the quills from ancient ravens' wings."

Lucrece.

THE CARRION CROW:

Next to the raven, the Carrion-Crow (Corvus corone) claims our attention, from his close relationship to his larger congener. So closely, indeed, does he resemble the raven upon a slightly modified scale, that we might also fancy him-

"A crow of the same nest."

All's Well that Ends Well, Act iv. Sc. 3.

Like him, he leads a predatory life, carrying off young game-birds, chickens, and eggs; and where he cannot obtain a fresh meal, he has no objection to carrion and offal of all kinds. Should a sheep die in the field, the crows of the neighbourhood are sure to be attracted to it.

"The fold stands empty in the drowned field,

And crows are fatted with the murrain flock."

Midsummer Night's Dream, Act ii. Sc. 1.

Gamekeepers, knowing this propensity, and having an eye to the better preservation of pheasants' eggs for the future, avail themselves of the opportunity, when a sheep dies, to place a little strychnine in the mouth and eyes, and on a second visit they are seldom disappointed in finding two or three dead crows.

ITS PREDATORY HABITS.

Throughout the Plays we meet with frequent allusions to the crow, and its partiality for carrion. In the fifth act of Cymbeline a scene is laid in a field between the British and Roman camps, where the following dialogue takes place:-

"British Captain. Stand! who's there?

Posthumus. A Roman,

Who had not now been drooping here, if seconds

Had answer'd him.

British Captain. Lay hands on him; a dog!

A leg of Rome shall not return to tell

What crows have peck'd them here."

Cymbeline, Act v. Sc. 3.

Again-

"Boy. Mine host Pistol, you must come to my master,-and you, hostess;-he is very sick, and would to bed....

Host. By my troth, he'll yield the crow a pudding one of these days."

Henry V. Act ii. Sc. 1.

The Duke of York, on the field of St. Albans, boasting of his victory over Lord Clifford, says, in reply to the Earl of Warwick:-

"The deadly-handed Clifford slew my steed,

But match to match I have encounter'd him,

And made a prey for carrion kites and crows

Even of the bonny beast he lov'd so well."

Henry VI. Part II. Act v. Sc. 2.

FOOD FOR CROWS.

Cassius, on the eve of battle, augured a defeat because, as he said,-

"Crows

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."

Julius C?sar, Act v. Sc. 1.

In the third act of Cymbeline (Sc. 1), when Caius Lucius, the Roman Ambassador, comes to demand tribute from the British King, he is met with a flat refusal, and Cloten, one of the lords in waiting, deriding his threat of war, says:-

"His Majesty bids you welcome. Make pastime with us a day or two, or longer: if you seek us afterwards in other terms, you shall find us in our salt-water girdle: if you beat us out of it, it is yours; if you fall in the adventure, our crows shall fare the better for you; and there's an end."

Alexander Iden, addressing the lifeless body of Jack Cade, whom he had just slain, exclaims:-

"Hence will I drag thee headlong by the heels

Unto a dunghill, which shall be thy grave,

And there cut off thy most ungracious head;

Which I will bear in triumph to the king,

Leaving thy trunk for crows to feed upon."

Henry VI. Part II. Act iv. Sc. 10.

BLACK AS A CROW.

Many similar instances might be brought forward. As in the case of the raven, we find the crow, as the emblem of blackness, contrasted with the white dove:-

"With the dove of Paphos might the crow

Vie feathers white."

Pericles, Act iv. Introd.

Again-

"Lawn as white as driven snow;

Cyprus black as e'er was crow."

Winter's Tale, Act iv. Sc. 3.

Here we have not only the crow contrasted with snow, but also cyprus, a thin transparent black stuff, somewhat like crape, placed in contradistinction with lawn, which is a white material, like muslin.65

"So shows a snowy dove trooping with crows,

As yonder lady o'er her fellows shows."

Romeo and Juliet, Act i. Sc. 5.

"Compare her face with some that I shall show,

And I will make thee think thy swan a crow."

Romeo and Juliet, Act i. Sc. 2.

Beatrice says (Much Ado about Nothing, Act i. Sc. 1),-"I had rather hear my dog bark at a crow than a man swear he loves me;" but then this was meant to be personal, for Benedick, whom she addressed, was not a favoured suitor. She might have added, with Dromio, in the Comedy of Errors, Act iii. Sc. 1:-

"We'll pluck a crow together."

This saying appears to be of some antiquity, but the origin of it is not very clear.

CROW-KEEPER AND SCARE-CROW.

The custom of protecting newly sown wheat from the birds by keeping a lad to shout, or putting up a "scare-crow," is no doubt an old one. Shakespeare makes allusion to both methods:-

"That fellow handles his bow like a crow-keeper."

King Lear, Act iv. Sc. 6.

That is like a boy employed to keep the crows from the corn. So again-

"Scaring the ladies like a crow-keeper."

Romeo and Juliet, Act i. Sc. 4.

The rustic, although entrusted with a bow and arrows, was not expected to have much skill in archery, and Roger Ascham, in his "Toxophilus," when speaking of a clumsy archer, has a similar comparison to that in the passage just quoted:-"Another coureth downe and layeth out his buttockes, as though hee should shoote at crowes."

"We must not make a scare-crow of the law,

Setting it up to fear66 the birds of prey,

And let it keep one shape, till custom make it

Their perch, and not their terror."

Measure for Measure, Act ii. Sc. 1.

Lord Talbot relates that, when a prisoner in France, he was exhibited publicly in the market-place:-

"Here, said they, is the terror of the French,

The scare-crow that affrights our children so."

Henry VI. Part I. Act i. Sc. 4.

And Falstaff, alluding to his recruits on the march to Shrewsbury, says of them:-

"No eye hath seen such scare-crows."

Henry IV. Part I. Act iv. Sc. 2.

THE CHOUGH.

Associated with the crow by many of the poets is the Red-legged Crow, or Chough-the Cornish Chough, as it is sometimes called, from its being considered a bird peculiar to the south-west coast of England. Since this last name was applied to it, the study of ornithology has become so universally courted, that it can scarcely be necessary to show that the geographical distribution of the species is much wider than was formerly supposed.

THE CHOUGH AND CROW.

The old song of "The Chough and Crow" will probably be remembered as long as the English language lasts.

Shakespeare has introduced both these birds in a fine description of Dover Cliff. It is not improbable that the chough, which affects precipices and sea-cliffs, may once have frequented the cliffs at Dover; but whatever may have been the case formerly, this haunt, if it ever was one, has long since been deserted. Shakespeare, at all events, has placed this bird in a situation most natural to it:-

"Come on, sir; here's the place:-stand still.-How fearful

And dizzy 't is, to cast one's eyes so low!

The crows and choughs, that wing the midway air,

Show scarce so gross as beetles: half way down

Hangs one that gathers samphire,-dreadful trade!

Methinks he seems no bigger than his head:

The fishermen, that walk upon the beach,

Appear like mice; and yond tall anchoring bark,

Diminish'd to her cock; her cock, a buoy

Almost too small for sight: the murmuring surge,

That on the unnumber'd idle pebbles chafes,

Cannot be heard so high.-I'll look no more,

Lest my brain turn, and the deficient sight

Topple down headlong."

King Lear, Act iv. Sc. 6.

The chough is easily tamed, and a prettier sight than three or four of these birds, with their bright red legs and bills, strutting about on a well-mown lawn, can scarcely be conceived.

It is to be regretted that the species is not more plentiful and more generally domesticated.

CHOUGH'S LANGUAGE.

Instances, we believe, are on record of choughs being taught to speak, but Shakespeare appears to have entertained no great opinion of their talking powers. He speaks of

"Chough's language, gabble enough, and good enough."

All's Well that Ends Well, Act iv. Sc. 1.

And probably there was a good deal more chattering than talking, as we understand the term.

"There be ...

... lords that can prate

As amply and unnecessarily

As this Gonzalo; I myself could make

A chough of as deep chat."

Tempest, Act ii. Sc. 1.

In Henry IV., in the scene where Falstaff, with the Prince and Poins, meet to rob the travellers at Gadshill, Falstaff calls the victims "fat chuffs," probably from their strutting about with much noise.

VARIOUS CHOUGHS.

In the Winter's Tale, the rogue Autolycus appears as a pedlar, and while drawing the attention of those around him to his wares, he takes the opportunity to pick their pockets. His power of persuasion was so great that, as he himself said,-

"They throng who should buy first, as if my trinkets had been hallowed, and brought a benediction to the buyer: by which means I saw whose purse was best in picture; and what I saw, to my good use I remembered."

He proceeds to compare them to choughs whom he had allured by his chaff, and says:-

"In this time of lethargy, I picked and cut most of their festive purses; and had not the old man come in with a whoobub against his daughter and the king's son, and scared my choughs from the chaff, I had not left a purse alive in the whole army."-Winter's Tale, Act iv. Sc. 3.

THE JACKDAW.

The word "chough," it appears, was not always intended to refer to the bird with red legs and bill, as we may infer from the following passage in O'Flaherty's "West or H'Iar Connaught, 1684," p. 13:-"I omit other ordinary fowl and birds, as bernacles, wild geese, swans, cocks-of-the-wood, woodcocks, choughs, rooks, Cornish choughs, with red legs and bills," &c. Here the first-mentioned choughs were in all probability jackdaws.

Shakespeare alludes to-

"Russet-pated choughs, many in sort,

Rising and cawing at the gun's report."

Midsummer Night's Dream, Act iii. Sc. 2.

Now the jackdaw, though having a grey head, would more appropriately bear the designation of "russet-pated" than any of his congeners. We may presume, therefore, that this is the species to which Shakespeare intended to refer. The head of the chough, like the rest of its body, is perfectly black.

The Jackdaw (Corvus monedula) has not been so frequently noticed by Shakespeare as many other birds, and in the half-dozen instances in which it is mentioned, we find it referred to as the "daw." The word occurs in Coriolanus, Act iv. Sc. 5; Troilus and Cressida, Act i. Sc. 2; Much Ado about Nothing, Act ii. Sc. 3; Twelfth Night, Act iii. Sc. 4; and in a song in Love's Labour's Lost. Warwick, expressing his ignorance of legal matters, says:-

"But in these nice sharp quillets of the law,

Good faith, I am no wiser than a daw."

Henry VI. Part I. Act ii. Sc. 4.

And the crafty and dissembling Iago remarks that-

"When my outward action doth demonstrate

The native act and figure of my heart

In compliment extern, 'tis not long after

But I will wear my heart upon my sleeve

For daws to peck at."

Othello, Act i. Sc. 1.

THE MAGPIE.

With the ancients, much superstition prevailed in regard to various species of the crow family; and Shakespeare has specially mentioned three of these as birds of omen:-

"Augurs that understood relations have,

By magot-pies, and choughs, and rooks, brought forth

The secret'st man of blood."

Macbeth, Act iii. Sc. 4.

Even at the present day, there are many who profess to augur good or evil from the flight of a magpie, or from the number of magpies seen together at one time. An old rhyme on the subject runs thus:-

"One for sorrow, two for mirth;

Three for a wedding, four for a birth."

The origin of the word magpie we have not heard explained, but it is possible, from the manner in which the name is spelled above, that "mag" may be an abbreviation of "maggot," pointing to a certain propensity of the bird, which, however, is not peculiar. Those who have spent much time in the country, must have observed not only the magpie, but also the jackdaw and starling, busily engaged in searching for insects on the back of a sheep.

As in the case of the jackdaw, the magpie is sometimes called by the latter half of his name:-

"And chattering pies in dismal discords sung."

Henry VI. Part III. Act v. Sc. 6.

THE ROOK.

Before taking leave of the crow family, we have yet to notice another bird mentioned by Shakespeare, which is nearly related to the crow. This is the Rook (Corvus frugilegus). But, notwithstanding the usefulness of the bird, the poet has not said much in its favour. It is noticed in the song in Love's Labour's Lost, and is included amongst the birds of omen in the quotation lately given from Macbeth.

In the Merry Wives of Windsor, Act i. Sc. 3, we find the expression "bully-rook," and it would seem that this epithet in Shakespeare's time bore much the same signification as "jolly-dog" does now-a-days. But it came subsequently to have a more offensive meaning, and was applied to a cheat and a sharper.

THE JAY.

We had well-nigh forgotten the Jay (Corvus glandarius),-Winter's Tale (Act iv. Sc. 3),-and only allude to it now to show that Shakespeare has not omitted it from his long list of birds. In Cymbeline, the name is applied to a gaudily-dressed person:-

"Some jay of Italy hath betray'd him."

Cymbeline, Act iii. Sc. 4.

No doubt on account of the bright plumage of this bird.

"What, is the jay more precious than the lark,

Because his feathers are more beautiful?"

Taming of the Shrew, Act iv. Sc. 3.

Caliban, addressing Trinculo, in The Tempest (Act ii. Sc. 2), exclaims:-

"I pr'ythee let me bring thee where crabs grow,

And I with my long nails will dig thee pig-nuts;

Show thee a jay's nest, and instruct thee how

To snare the nimble marmozet; I'll bring thee

To clust'ring filberds, and sometimes I'll get thee

Young sea-mells from the rock. Wilt thou go with me?"

This tempting offer is irresistible, and Stephano interrupts him at once by saying,-

"I pr'ythee now, lead the way, without any more talking."