CHAPTER VIII 

 BLACK FEATHERS MAKE BLACK BIRDS 



NO one bird known to Americans is so entangled 

 with whatever witchcraft belongs to birds as is 

 the raven, yet little of it is American besides Poe's 

 melodramatic mummery, whose raven was a borrowed 

 piece of theatrical property. The shrewd people of this 

 country pay little attention to signs and portents, yet some 

 survive among us, for the extravagant notions popularly 

 held as to the sagacity of our crow, with its "courts" and 

 "consultations," are no doubt traceable in some measure 

 to the bird's history in Old World superstition. 



In Europe no bird, save possibly the cuckoo, is so laden 

 with legends and superstitious veneration as the raven, 

 chiefly, however, in the North, where it is not only most 

 numerous and noticeable but seems to fit better than in 

 the gladsome South. To the rough, virile Baltic man, or 

 to the Himalayan mountaineer, worshipping force, care- 

 less of beauty, this sable bird of hard endurance, challeng- 

 ing cry and powerful wing, the "ravener," tearer, was an 

 admirable creature ; while to the more esthetic dweller by 

 the Mediterranean or on /Egean shores such qualities 

 were repulsive, and the raven became a reminder of 

 winter, when alone it was seen in the South, and of the 

 savage forests and hated barbarians whence it came. 

 Much the same antithesis belongs to this bird and its 

 relatives in the minds of Orientals. To understand the 

 impression the raven made on primitive men, and the 



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