Raven. 221 



Bat this was not the only reason why the Raven was abhorred 

 in England. There was also a national cause for its abomination, 

 in that it was the symbol on their sacred standard of the hated 

 Danes. 



In old time and in heathen countries, we all know how 

 anxiously its every note was listened to and its every action 

 studied by the soothsayer, and it was consecrated to Apollo as a 

 foreteller of things to come; but it may not be so generally 

 known that at this day not only do the North American Indians 

 honour it as unearthly, and invest it with extraordinary know- 

 ledge and power, and place its skin on the heads of their 

 officiating priests as a distinguishing mark of their office, but 

 even in Christian Scandinavia and especially in Iceland, all 

 which countries are at least a century behind the rest of Europe 

 in civilization, it is regarded with like fear, so much so as to 

 have gained for itself the sobriquet of the ' bird of Odin,' whose 

 satellite it is supposed to be, on whose shoulder it was wont 

 to perch, and in whose ear it was wont to whisper all the tidings 

 it had gained in its wanderings up and down through the world. 

 In former times it was supposed to have been white, and to have 

 been changed to black as a punishment for babbling. Amongst 

 other absurd notions regarding it, is the popular belief that in 

 its body is a so-called Korb-sten or 'raven- stone,' which is 

 possessed of the remarkable property, that the individual who 

 swallows it will be invisible to mortal eyes.* 



I must not omit to mention one thing which the Ravens do not 

 do. They do not breed in the holes made by weather in the large 

 standing stones at Stonehenge, as has been asserted by an old 

 author of a history of this country, f a most erroneous and un- 

 fortunate assertion which has been copied by many writers ever 

 s.nce, even our excellent author of the latest treatise on Stone- 

 henge,]: Mr. William Long, having repeated it in his admirable 

 account. 



Lloyd's ' Scandinavian Adventures,' vol. ii., p. 331. 

 t Speed's ' History of Great Britain,' A.D. 1G72, p. 2G7. 

 J Wiltshire Magazine, vol. xvi., p. 23. 



