RAVEN LORE 



ORIGIN OF THE EAYEN 



TRUE it is — and it would be an injustice to conceal 

 the fact, much more to deny it — that ravens of 

 old fed Elijah ; but that was the punishment of 

 some old sin committed by two who before the flood bore the 

 human shape, and who, soon after the ark rested on Mount 

 Ararat, flew off to the desolation of swamped forests and the 

 disfigured solitudes of the drowned glens. Dying ravens 

 hide themselves from daylight in burial places among the 

 rocks, and are seen hobbling into their tombs, as if driven 

 thither by a flock of fears, and crouching under a remorse 

 that disturbs instinct, even as if it were conscience. So sings 

 and says the Celtic superstition — ^muttered to us in a dream 

 — adding that there are raven ghosts ; great black bundles of 

 feathers, forever in the forest, night-hunting in famine for 

 prey, emitting a last feeble croak at the blush of dawn, and 

 then all at once invisible." 



— Wilson's "Recreations of Christopher North." 



ORIGIN OF CROWS — ESKIMO 



In the moon of falling leaves, an Indian mother, the wife 

 of a chief, took with her into the forest her children that they; 



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