The Raven’s wing, and dumbed the carrion croak
From the gray sea forever.
“The crow and the raven,” MacBain[[71]] announces, “are constantly connected in the Northern mythologies with battle-deities. ‘How is it with you, Ravens?’ says the Norse Raven Song. ‘Whence are you come with gory beak at the dawning of the day.... You lodged last night, I ween, where ye knew the corses were lying.’ The ravens also assist and protect heroes both in Irish and Norse myth. It was a lucky sign if a raven followed a warrior.”
But the bold Norse sailors made a more practical use also of this knowing bird, for in those days, before the compass, they used to take ravens with them in their adventurous voyages on the fog-bound northern seas, and trust the birds to show them the way back to land. A notable instance was Floki’s voyage to Iceland in 864 A. D., a few years after that island’s discovery; and the French historian Mallet[[30]] narrates it thus:
We are told that Floki, previous to setting out on his expedition, performed a great sacrifice, and having consecrated three ravens to the gods took them with him to guide him on his voyage. After touching at the Shetland and Faroë islands he steered northwest, and when he was fairly out at sea, let loose one of his ravens, which, after rising to a considerable elevation, directed its flight to the land they had quitted.... The second bird, after being some time on the wing, returned to the ship, a sign that the land was too far distant to be descried even by a raven hovering in the sky. Floki therefore continued his course, and shortly afterwards let loose his third raven, which he followed in its flight until he reached the eastern coast of Iceland.
This is a somewhat poetic account, I imagine, of what perhaps was a more prosaic custom of seamanship, for doubtless it was usual at that time to carry several birds on such voyages, and to let them fly from time to time that they might learn and indicate to the voyagers whether land was near, and in what direction, as did old Captain Noah, master of the good ship Ark. Berthold Lauffer[[52]] treats of this point with his customary thoroughness in his pamphlet Bird Divination:
Indian Hindoo navigators kept birds on board ship for the purpose of despatching them in search of land. In the Baveru-Jataka it is “a crow serving to direct navigators in the four quarters”.... Pliny relates that the seafarers of Taprobane (Ceylon) did not observe the stars for the purpose of navigation, but carried birds out to sea, which they sent off from time to time and then followed the course of the birds’ flying in the direction of the land. The connection of this practice with that described in the Babylonian and Hebraic traditions of the deluge was long ago recognized.... When the people of Thera, an island in the Ægean Sea emigrated to Libya, ravens flew along with them ahead of the ships to show the way. According to Justin ... it was by the flight of birds that the Gauls who invaded Illyricum were guided. Emperor Jimmu of Japan (7th century) engaged in a war expedition and marched under the guidance of a gold-colored raven.
Mr. Lauffer might have added that Callisthenes relates that two heaven-sent ravens led the expedition of Alexander across the trackless desert from the Mediterranean coast to the oasis of Ammon (Siwah), recalling stragglers now and then by hoarse croaking.
The folklore of northern Europe is full of the cunning and exploits of this bird and its congeners, which it would be a weary task to disentangle from pure myth. In Germany there is, or was, a stone gibbet called, with gruesome memories, Ravenstone, to which Byron alludes in Werner—
Do you think