Her locks as white as snow,
Once shamed the swarthy crow;
By-and-by
That fowl’s avenging sprite
Set his cruel foot for spite
Near her eye.
The expression of course is a suggestion of the radiating form of the wrinkles at the outer corner of the eye to a crow’s track; and this reminds us of the fact that when soon after the Norman conquest in England there was a vast popular interest in royal genealogy, people spoke of the branching form of a family tree, when drawn on paper, as a “crane’s foot” (pied de grue), whence our term pedigree.
Omens are deduced from the flight and cries of ravens, crows, magpies, and certain other corvine species, especially as regards their direction relative to the inquirer. Horace, for example, in his Ode to Galatea on her undertaking a journey, tells her that he, as a “provident augur,”
Ere the weird crow, re-seeking stagnant marshes,
Predict the rainstorm, will invoke the raven