Cultural depictions of ravens

Because of its black plumage, croaking call, and diet of carrion, the raven is often associated with loss and ill omen.

French anthropologist Claude Lévi-Strauss proposed a structuralist theory that suggests the raven (like the coyote) obtained mythic status because it was a mediator animal between life and death.

According to Livy, the Roman general Marcus Valerius Corvus (c. 370–270 BC) had a raven settle on his helmet during a combat with a gigantic Gaul, which distracted the enemy's attention by flying in his face.

King Afonso Henriques (1139–1185) had the body of the saint exhumed in 1173 and brought it by ship to Lisbon, still accompanied by the ravens.

A raven is also said to have protected Saint Benedict of Nursia by taking away a loaf of bread poisoned by jealous monks after he blessed it.

According to the story, the Emperor's eyes are half-closed in sleep, but now and then, he raises his hand and sends a boy out to see if the ravens have stopped flying.

{Surah 5:27–31}[10] The story, as presented in the Quran and further postulated in the hadith, states that Cain, having murdered Abel, was bereft of a means of disposing of his brother's body.

Examples include depictions of figures often identified as Odin appear flanked with two birds on a 6th-century bracteate and on a 7th-century helmet plate from Vendel, Sweden.

In praising the bravery of a warrior named Gwawrddur, the poem's author references his affinity with ravens:[11] He fed black ravens on the rampart of a fortress Though he was no ArthurAmong the powerful ones in battleIn the front rank, Gwawrddur was a palisade.In the Middle Welsh text The Dream of Rhonabwy, King Arthur prepares for the Battle of Mount Badon with his knight Owain of Rheged, Owain is accompanied by a host of ravens and protests three times to the king that they are being attacked by the king's servants.

Brân the Blessed and his sister, Branwen are two of the best known characters from the Mabinogion, both names derive form the Welsh word for raven.

According to the Trioedd Ynys Prydein, following Brân's death he commands his men to cut off his head and carry it to "the White Mount, in London, and bury it there".

Charles, following the time of the English Civil War, superstition or not, was not prepared to take the chance, and instead had the observatory moved to Greenwich.

[citation needed] The earliest known reference to a Tower raven is a picture in the newspaper The Pictorial World in 1883,[17] as well as a poem and illustration published the same year in the children's book London Town.

[18] This and scattered subsequent references, both literary and visual, which appear in the late nineteenth to the early twentieth century, place them near the monument commemorating those beheaded at the tower, popularly known as the "scaffold."

This strongly suggests that the ravens, which are notorious for gathering at gallows, were originally used to dramatize tales of imprisonment and execution at the tower told to tourists by the Yeomen Warders.

[21] However, wild ravens, which were once abundant in London and often seen around meat markets (such as nearby Eastcheap) foraging for scraps, could have roosted at the Tower in earlier times.

[22] During the Second World War, most of the Tower's ravens perished through shock during bombing raids, leaving only a mated pair named "Mabel" and "Grip."

The incident was reported in several newspapers, and some of the stories contained the first references in print to the legend that the British Empire would fall if the ravens left the tower.

[26] The Hindu deity Shani (divine personification of Saturn) is often represented as being mounted on a giant black raven or crow.

In Persian sacred literature, a bird acted as the emissary for the diffusion of the Zoroastrian religion among the creatures living in Yima's enclosure (vara).

The raven found some female humans trapped in a chiton, freed them, and was entertained as the two sexes met and began to interact.

One ancient story told on Haida Gwaii tells about how Raven helped to bring the Sun, Moon, Stars, Fresh Water, and Fire to the world:[31] Long ago, near the beginning of the world, Gray Eagle was the guardian of the Sun, Moon and Stars, of fresh water, and of fire.

[32] The raven god or spirit Kutcha (or Kutkh, (Кутх)) is important in the shamanic tradition of the Koryaks and other indigenous Chukotko-Kamchatkan peoples of the Russian Far East.

[33][34] Kutcha is traditionally revered in various forms by various peoples and appears in many legends: as a key figure in creation, as a fertile ancestor of mankind, as a mighty shaman, and as a trickster.

He is a popular subject of the animist stories of the Chukchi people and plays a central role in the mythology of the Koryaks and Itelmens of Kamchatka.

Two ravens or crows, flying over the warrior's head in battle, symbolized in Yakut mythology the Ilbis Kyyha and Ohol Uola, two evil spirits of war and violence.

The Corbet family, which can trace unbroken male descent to the Norman conquest of England, traditionally uses a raven sable upon a field or as its symbol, only varying it by adding bordures or additional birds.

The common raven serves as a city symbol in Baltimore owing to the downtown location of Edgar Allan Poe's gravesite.

Poe's most famous poem inspired the name and colours of the Baltimore Ravens, a National Football League team.

The Norwegian Nasjonal Samling party of 1933–1945 relied heavily on Nordic and Viking symbolism and used a crest of a raven clutching a sun cross on documents and uniform insignias, particularly under the Quisling regime.