106 RAVEN 
Odin during his last struggle with the wolf, the Raven, a 
familiar and ominous bird to the Northmen in their original 
home, must have been equally familiar to them in the 
island of their adoption, as it had been from immemorial 
times to the Celts, who adopted its name as their own, and 
commemorated it in such proverbial expressions as ‘ Cur 
meer da’n feeagh, as hig eh reeisht,+ ‘Give a piece to the 
Raven, and he ’ll come again,’ suggesting a time when the 
Raven, a tame scavenger, looked for tit-bits about the farm- 
steads and villages; and ‘Myr s’doo yn feeagh, yiow eh 
sheshey,’ ‘However black the Raven, he will find a 
mate. In Brown’s Popular Guide to the Isle of Man (ed. 
1877, p. 352) the Rev. T. E. Brown gives a folk-lore story 
of the bird as follows. (The problem is to account for leap 
year.) 
‘The feeagh mooar (big Raven) kills the lambs in February. 
How to serve him out? “Leave that to me,” says March ; 
“give me three of your days, and I’ll punish him.” So 
three days are added on to March, and the feeagh mooar 
is first induced by the mild breath of spring to build his 
nest, and the young are hatched, when behold! the three 
February days of bitter cold, and the feeagh brood perish. 
But how about leap year? ‘“ Aw,” said my informant, “ye 
see, March just gives February one day back now and then 
for a dooragh” (free gift, or gift over and above what is 
due).’ 
As mentioned hereafter the erratic allotment of days 
to the spring months was also popularly connected with 
the breeding of the ‘Crane’ (z.e. Heron) in Man. 
By the law of 24th June 1687, the Raven, like the 
Hooded Crow, was outlawed as a noxious bird, twopence 
being payable for its head. 7 
We have now about fifteen nesting places of the Raven, 
1 Cregeen's Dictionary. 
