There are many references to crows and ravens in legends and literature. Because of its black plumage, croaking call and diet of carrion, the crow has long been considered a bird of ill omen.
French anthropologist Claude Levi-Strauss suggests that crows and ravens, like coyotes and wolves, obtain mythic status because they are mediators between life and death. As a carrion bird, crows became associated with death and with lost souls.
Crows and ravens appear in a number of Celtic, Welsh, Norse and Native American mythologies. In some cases these birds are considered an omen of bad tidings, but in others they bear welcome messages from the divine.
Of course, crows appear in the works of William Shakespeare, notably in Hamlet, Macbeth and King Lear.
"The crow or corvid family have been associated with doom-laden myths and legends for centuries, making Hallowe'en a particularly suitable time to be thinking about them," wrote Sylvia Morris on her Shakespeare Blog in 2013.
"When Shakespeare wanted to conjure up a sense of foreboding he often used the image of the birds of the crow family: crows, magpies, ravens and rooks," she added.
Edgar Allen Poe was another author who dealt in crows. His narrative poem, "The Raven," may be the most well-known literary work dealing with these birds. Some say it was written when Poe was in an opium-induced state of depression. In the poem, a talking raven is the macabre embodiment of the authors' former lover, Lenore. When the writer wonders if they will reunite again; the raven answers, "Nevermore."
Even Disney films have incorporated images of ravens to create a mood. In Sleeping Beauty, Maleficent's loyal pet raven, Diablo, finds Aurora's hiding place in the woods. In Snow White, the Evil Queen [Grimhilde] has a pet raven as her familiar.
Crows play a prominent role in the popular HBO series, Game of Thrones. For example, in a dream, Bran Stark has a crow lead him into the crypt to find his dead father, and that's before he knows that his father is really dead. Also, communiques get flown around by a raven to deliver messages of gloom and doom.
Finally, in the schoolhouse scene of Alfred Hitchcock's classic film, The Birds, thousands of ravens, crows and fish crows are seen collecting on the powerlines, swing sets and trees around a school. At a particularly tense point in the movie they swoop down on the playground to menace the children and eventually kill their teacher. The footage for this scary scene was collected from actual instances of mobbing crows, and not from computer-generated images that might be used if the film were made today.
This Hitchcock depiction of crows is a more recent example in a long list of mythic, literary and media works to present crows as macabre creatures with dark, other-worldly powers.
-- Jerry Butler
ActiveStyle on 10/31/2016