"I know a man of very high dignity who was exceedingly moved by omens, and who never went out shooting without a bittern's claw fastened to his button-hole by a riband, which he thought ensured him 'good luck.'"
Ravens and swallows both, at times, prognosticate death. In Lloyd's Stratagems of Jerusalem (1602) he says:
"By swallows lighting upon Pirrhus' tents, and lighting upon the mast of Mar. Antonius' ship, sailing after Cleopatra to Egypt, the soothsayers did prognosticate that Pirrhus should be slaine at Argos in Greece, and Mar. Antonius in Egypt."
He alludes to swallows following Cyrus from Persia to Scythia, from which the "wise men" foretold his death. Ravens followed Alexander the Great from India to Babylon, which was regarded by all who saw them as a fatal sign.
"'Tis not for nought that the raven sings now on my left and, croaking, has once scraped the earth with his feet," wrote Plautus.
Other references to the same bird are as follows:
"The raven himself is hoarse
That croaks the fatal entrance of Duncan
Under my battlements."—(Macbeth.)
"It comes o'er my memory
As doth the raven o'er the infected house,
Boding to all."—(Othello.)
"That tolls
The sick man's passport in her hollow beak,
And in the shadow of the silent night
Doth shake contagion from her sable wings."
(Jew of Malta.)
"Is it not ominous in all countries where crows
and ravens croak upon trees?"—(Hudibras.)