Ravens and Crows – Halloween Symbols
People Associate These Black Birds With Death and Bad Luck
Oct 18, 2008
An “unkindness of ravens” and a “murder of crows”—these expressions suggest birds that are well suited to the dark side of life. Both have been considered birds of ill omen for centuries. Large uniformly black birds that look very similar, many people can’t tell ravens and crows apart and the mythology and folklore surrounding them are similarly muddled.
Why Do People Fear Ravens and Crows?
Their black colour, associated with the powers of darkness in many cultures, is the most persistent reason that crows are linked to evil and death, but there are other things about these birds that inspire horror:
- Both ravens and crows eat carrion—dead animals, including humans left in the open. They are familiar visitors to battlefields. Of the raven, John Hogg writes “All that has a deathly smack he prefers (p. 100).”
- They tend to go first for the soft eyes of carrion, moving on to other soft tissues. Crows in particular don’t have strong enough beaks to break through intact skin.
- Both ravens and crows can learn to imitate human speech.
- Crows gather in large roosts, sometimes including millions of birds. Their rustling, noisy presence, blanketing groups of trees is an unnerving sight.
- Neither bird is a beautiful songster; both produce a variety of rather harsh and sometimes disturbing noises.
Myths and Superstitions About Crows and Ravens
There are many dark superstitions about ravens and crows involving ghosts, fairies, the Devil, witches and death:
- In Germany, Ravens were thought to be able to find the souls of the dead, and contain the souls of the damned. Witches rode on ravens.
- Swedes believed the croaking calls of ravens were the voices of murdered people who had not been properly buried.
- An Irish superstition said crows were fairies, bent on malicious mischief.
- In England, six ravens are kept in the Tower of London: the legend says that if anything should befall them, the country will be invaded.
- European tradition has it that both crows and ravens are birds of the Devil, and that all birds in this family descend into Hell annually while they are moulting to give feathers to the Devil.
- A crow or raven on the roof foretells death or misfortune to the home's inhabitants; a raven on the church steeple is bad news for the entire community.
The Truth About Ravens and Crows
The connection between these birds and carrion is well earned. Both are known to occasionally attack and kill live small animals as well, hence the “unkindness of ravens,” and the “murder of crows,” both phrases used to describe flocks of these birds. A similar phrase, “a parliament of crows” arises from the apparent crow habit of mobbing and killing members of their own kind. In reality, however, they eat many other foods, including berries, insects, grain, earthworms etc. When they do eat carrion, their scavenging ways help clean up dead animals.
Both crows and ravens are among the most intelligent birds, capable of cooperation amongst themselves and some tool use. Both have been domesticated by people. If they were a different colour, we’d probably like them.
Sources:
“American Crow.” Cornell Lab of Ornithology All About Birds.
Birds in Legend Fable and Folklore. Ingersoll, Ernest. New York: Longmans, Green and Co.; 1923
Firefly Encyclopedia of Birds. Perrins, Christopher ed. Buffalo: Firefly Books, 2003
The Parlour Menagerie. Hogg, John. London: John Hogg & Co., 1878
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