1 68 BIRDS IN LEGEND 



St. Ambrose, all shamelessness and sin are dark and 

 gloomy, and feed on the dead like the crow. A Chinese 

 epithet for the raven is "Mongols' coffin." 



The people were sincere enough in this, for behind 

 them was not only the Devil-fearing superstition of the 

 Middle Ages but a long line of parent myths and folklore 

 that made the bird's reputation as black as its plumage, 

 and added to this was the new and terrifying idea of 

 prophecy. You get a hint of the feeling in Gower's 

 Confessio Amantis: 



A Raven by whom yet men maie 

 Take evidence, when he crieth, 

 That some mishap it signifieth. 



In Greece and Italy ravens were sacred to Apollo, the 

 great patron of augurs, who in a pet turned this bird from 

 white to black — and an ill turn it was, for black feathers 

 make black birds; and in this blackness of coat lies, in 

 my opinion, the root of their sinister repute. 



The "jumbie-bird," or "big witch," of the West Indian 

 region, for example, is the dead-black ani, a kind of 

 cuckoo. Spenser speaks of "the hoarse night-raven, 

 trompe of doleful dreer," but his "night-raven" was not 

 a raven at all, but the bittern. 



It is only in an earlier day and under a brighter sky 

 that we find these corvine prophets taking a more 

 cheerful view of the future. Of course they are among 

 the "rain-birds": 



Hark 

 How the curst raven with his harmless voice 

 Invokes the rain. 



So the "foresight of a raven" became proverbial, as 



