FABLE AND FOLKLORE 171 



There is also grave meaning in the number visible at 

 one time, as Matthew Lewis knew when he wrote the 

 ballad Bill Jones: 



"Ah, well-a-day," the sailor said, 

 "Some danger must impend, 

 Three ravens sit in yonder glade, 

 And evil will happen I'm sore afraid 

 Ere we reach our journey's end." 



"And what have the ravens with us to do? 



Does their sight betoken us evil?" 

 "To see one raven is luck, 'tis true, 

 But it's certain misfortune to light upon two, 



And meeting with three is the devil." 



Quoting Margaret Walker: 39 



The belief in his power of divination was so general that 

 knowledge of the whereabouts of the lost has come to be known 

 as "raven's knowledge." To the Romans he was able to reveal 

 the means of restoring lost eyesight even. In Germany he was 

 able to tell not only where lost articles were, but could also 

 make known to survivors where the souls of their lost friends 

 were to be found. In Bohemia he was assigned the task usually 

 performed by the stork in other lands, while in some parts 

 of Germany witches were credited with riding upon his back in- 

 stead of on the conventional broomstick. 



Regular formulas regarding magpies are repeated in 

 rural Britain, where magpies are numerous — they are 

 common in our American West, also, but nobody is super- 

 stitious about them there — of which a common example 

 runs: 



One for sorrow, two for mirth, 

 Three for a wedding, four for a birth. 



Many variations of these formulas are on record, some 

 carrying the rimes up to eight or nine pies seen at once ; 



