The Ornithology of Shakespeare Part 16

"Good night, my good owl."

[Ill.u.s.tration]

[Ill.u.s.tration]

CHAPTER IV.

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 cla.s.s them all together. Nevertheless, while each, of course, has its distinguishing characters, all are included in the first section of the family of crows.

[Sidenote: 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 hoa.r.s.e 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 superst.i.tious 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.

[Sidenote: 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 pa.s.sages 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."

_Oth.e.l.lo_, 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,) Bened.i.c.k observes to himself, "An he had been a dog that should have howled thus, they would have hanged him: and I pray G.o.d his bad voice bode no mischief. I had as lief have heard the night-raven, come what plague could have come after it."

[Sidenote: 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 n.o.body 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.

[Sidenote: 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 hoa.r.s.e That croaks the fatal entrance of Duncan Under my battlements."

On this pa.s.sage 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 hoa.r.s.eness 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 Caesar_, Act v. Sc. 3.

[Sidenote: 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 pa.s.sing 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]