74 BIRDS IN LEGEND 



servation of the solicitude of every creature for its young, 

 is one of the puzzles of history, but that they were wide- 

 spread is certain, and also that they persisted in folklore 

 down to the time when, at the dawn of the Renaissance, 

 observation and research began to replace blind confidence 

 in ancient lore. Thus J. E. Harting, 42 in his well-known 

 treatise on the natural history in Shakespeare, quotes 

 from a Latin folio of 1582 in support of his statement 

 that "it was certainly a current belief in olden times that 

 when the raven saw its young newly hatched, and covered 

 with down, it conceived such an aversion that it forsook 

 them, and did not return to its nest until a darker plumage 

 showed itself." 



Ravens have quite enough sins to answer for and 

 calumnies to live down without adding to the list this 

 murderous absurdity, contrary to the very first law of 

 bird-nature. Nevertheless the poets, as usual, take ad- 

 vantage of the thought (for its moral picturesqueness, I 

 suppose), as witness Burns's lines in The Cotters Satur- 

 day Night — 



That he who stills the raven's clamorous nest 



Would in the way his wisdom sees the best, 

 For them and for their little ones provide. 



It is plain that the plowman-poet was too canny to be- 

 lieve it, but perhaps it is well to say that there is no foun- 

 dation in fact for this extraordinary charge. Ravens 

 are faithful and careful parents: in fact Shakespeare 

 makes a character in Titus Andronicus mention that 

 "some say that ravens foster forlorn children," a view 

 quite the opposite of the other. 



Another calumny is thoughtlessly repeated by Brewer 34 



