120 THE RAVEN IN POETRY AND FOLK-LORE 



companions of the hermit, pursued them with loud 

 croakings over hill and dale, and then kept flapping 

 their wings against the window of their room, till the 

 terror-stricken murderers confessed their sin. The 

 inn has, ever since, been called " The Raven Inn," 

 and the two avenging birds are carved in black 

 stone on one of its walls. When Longfellow visited 

 it, the murderers seem to have been succeeded by 

 extortioners ; for he writes thus in his " Hyperion " 

 of the sorry entertainment that he received there, 

 and of its costliness : 



" Beware of the Raven of Zurich ! 

 'Tis a bird of omen ill, 

 With a noisy and unclean breast, 

 And a very, very long bill ! " * 



The deeds of a bird which the sacred traditions 

 of so many centuries, or millenniums, from the 

 prophet Elijah down to St Meinrad or St Hugh of 

 Lincoln, represent as the cherished and faithful 

 companion of so many saints, as rendering services 

 of every kind to them, as so ready to prevent, to 

 detect, or to punish crime, might, almost of them- 

 selves, deserve a place in the magnificent folios of 

 the Acta Sanctorum. 



But to return from the saints to the poets and 



* Quoted in Provincial Names of British Birds, p. 91. 



