The tradition on which Barham’s Ingoldsby Legend is embroidered is a very old one, the earliest statement of which, probably, is that in Mignie’s Patrologia Latinia, compiled by a monk of Clairvaux. The narrative is that of an incident in the time of Frederick Barbarossa (12th century) when the monastery of Corvey was ruled by a prince-bishop named Conrad. One day he left his episcopal ring lying on the dining-table, and it disappeared. The bishop blamed the servants and suspected his guests, and finally issued a decree of excommunication toward any one who had stolen it. Thereupon the bishop’s pet jackdaw “began to sicken little by little, to loathe his food, to cease more and more from his droll croakings and irrational follies whereby he was wont to delight the minds of fools who neglect to fear God.”
At this dreadful stage it occurred to some bright genius that this portentous change in the bird was the effect of the curse, and that it was the sought-for thief. Its nest was searched, the precious ring was found, the curse was taken off, and the jackdaw recovered its plumage and good spirits.
Where ravens can get other food plentifully they seldom attack living animals. Bendire frequently saw them feeding among his chickens without harming them, yet undoubtedly they are occasionally guilty in our West of killing young lambs, game-birds, and poultry, sins of which they are much accused in Europe. Certainly they rob wild birds of eggs and fledglings, but these evil deeds are done mainly in spring, in providing their own nestlings with soft food. During most of the year the food of the raven consists of carrion, grasshoppers, worms, mussels and other shellfish (the larger kinds of which they lift high in the air and then drop to break their shells), and of ground-squirrels and young rabbits when they can get hold of them.
When a raven alights on a dead animal its first act is to pluck out the eyes. One of the barbarities in the ancient East was to throw the bodies of executed criminals out to be devoured by beasts and birds of prey—a custom of which the Parsee Towers of Silence is a modified relic. The popular knowledge of this gave great force to Solomon’s warning (Proverbs xxx, 17): “The eye that mocketh at his father, and despiseth to obey his mother, the ravens of the valley shall pick it out”—that is, so bad a boy would end on the gallows.
Although ravens were regarded by the ancient Zoroastrians as “pure,” because they were considered necessary to remove pollution from the face of the earth, the Jews classed this creature as “unclean” for the same reason—it ate carrion. In view of this the Biblical legend that the Prophet Elijah, when he hid by the brook Kerith from the wrath of Ahab, was fed by ravens at command of the Lord, is so unnatural that commentators have done their best to explain it away. To this day the Moors regard ravens as belonging to Satan. In Chapter V of the Koran, where the killing of Cain by his brother is described, we read: “And God sent a raven which scratched the earth to show him how he should hide the shame [that is, the corpse] of his brother, and he said ‘Woe is me! am I to be like this raven?’ ... and he became one of those who repent.” This is from Sale’s edition, Philadelphia, 1868; and the editor adds a note that this legend was derived from the Jews, but that in their version the raven appears not to Cain but to Adam, who thereupon buried Abel.
That a bird black as night and its mysteries, a familiar of the lightning-riven pine and the storm-beaten crag, a ghoulish attendant of battling men and feasting on their slain, muttering strange soliloquies, and diabolically cunning withal—that such a creature should have appealed to the rough mariners of the North is far from surprising. The supreme Norse god was Odin, an impersonation of force and intellect—an apotheosis, indeed, of the Viking himself; and his ministers were two ravens, Hugin and Munin, i.e., Reflection and Memory. “They sit upon his shoulders and whisper in his ears,” says history. “He sends them out at daybreak to fly over the world, and they come back at eve, toward meal-time.” Hence it is that Odin knows so much, and is called Rafnagud, Raven-god. Most solicitously does Odin express himself about these ministers in Grunner’s lay in the Elder Edda:
Hugin and Munin fly each day
Over the spacious earth. I fear for Hugin
That he come not back,
Yet more anxious am I for Munin.