160 BIRDS IN LEGEND 



named Hubba came with twenty-three ships on a raid 

 into Devon : but the people rose and killed or drove away 

 all the vikings. 



"And there got they [that is, the Devon men] no 

 small spoil, wherein they took, moreover, that banner 

 which men call the Raven. For they say that the three 

 sisters of Ingwar and Hubba, the daughters, sooth to 

 say, of Lodbrock, wove that banner, and made it all 

 wholly ready between morn and night of a single day. 

 They say, too, that in every fight wherein that flag went 

 before them, if they were to win the raven in the midst 

 thereof seemed to flutter, as if it were alive, but were 

 their doom to be worsted, then it would droop, still and 

 lifeless." 



Britain came to know well that portentous flag — 



The Danish raven, lured by annual prey, 

 Hung o'er the land incessant, 



as Thomson laments. Finally Harold hurled the power 

 of Canute from England's shores forever, and Tennyson 

 sings Harold's paean: 



We have shattered back 

 The hugest wave from Norseland ever yet 

 Surged on us, and our battle-axes broken 

 The Raven's wing, and dumbed the carrion croak 

 From the gray sea forever. 



"The crow and the raven," MacBain 71 announces, "are 

 constantly connected in the Northern mythologies with 

 battle-deities. 'How is it with you, Ravens?' says the 

 Norse Raven Song. 'Whence are you come with gory 

 beak at the dawning of the day. . . . You lodged last 



