134 THE RAVEN IN POETRY AND FOLK-LORE 



If the raven has been a bird of evil repute, 

 and has had a bad time of it in many parts of 

 Europe, it has been quite otherwise in Scandinavia 

 and its dependencies ; for, there, the raven was the 

 sacred bird of Odin, who was " the war god, the 

 inventor of letters, the guardian of roads and 

 boundaries, the common Divinity of the whole 

 conquering people, and one whom every tribe held 

 to be the first ancestor of its kings " ; the god, 

 moreover, whose name is, to this day, in the mouth 

 of every one who has occasion to mention the day 

 of the week named after him, Wednesday or 

 " Wodin's day." In other words, while Odin was 

 the Jupiter, the Mars, the Cadmus, the Terminus of 

 the Scandinavian and Teutonic races all in one, the 

 raven was his spy, his messenger, his pioneer, his 

 minister for war, all in one. The banner of those 

 " kings of the sea " was, itself, made in the shape of 

 a raven ; and was so constructed that when a fresh 

 breeze bellied it, it looked as if the bird was flutter- 

 ing its wings for flight ; and, surely, no banner that 

 was ever borne before a conquering host, not the 

 Labarum of Constantine, not even the Crescent 

 of the Saracens, nor the Cross of the Crusaders, 

 nor the Oriflamme of the French, carried such 

 terror with it, as did the raven of the Norsemen 



