Ah-Ker means a sore place. Example, a broken leg or aching tooth.
It will be seen that the language is very condensed and in a few syllables may epitomise an entire conversation. For instance:
“Caw. Caw-Caw. Haw. Ker-Ker. Haw-Haw. Cluck-Cluck. Caw-Ker.” Freely translated, this runs as follows: “Good morning! How do you find yourself this morning? Don’t get excited, that two-legged thing is only a Man with an umbrella. There is a sick Horse in yonder field that I have my weather eye on, also a dead Donkey. Two Dogs are watching, and there are a couple of nice Chickens that appear to be spring broilers, trotting peacefully around the farmyard. The Horse is a Donkey, too; wouldn’t that make you sick? Nevertheless, those two Chickens are corkers and I intend to have them before my feathers turn white with old age and theirs fall out for the same reason.”
From this brief instruction, the intelligent reader will be able to translate the Crow language. Just here, perhaps, I ought to mention the fact that I gave Jim an anæsthetic one day and slit his tongue, hoping that he could speak English. Some of our words, as is well known, are tongue-twisters. Whether it was to spite me or not, I shall never know, but I record the painful fact that Jim never learned any English except my last name. Whenever I did anything that displeased him, he would shriek out “SITDOWN!” in a loud, compelling tone that I invariably and instinctively obeyed. Then, with a merry laugh, he would flutter off over the trees to tell his friends about it.
When a Crow sings, it reminds you of a cornet half full of molasses. They only sing when they are courting, which is extremely fortunate. If I were a lady Crow, wooed with song, I should take vows of eternal celibacy. They may not be saddest when they sing, but other people are.
I shot one of them one day, when they were doing too much singing, and the rest of the company called an indignation meeting on the spot. Having decided that I was the criminal, they sentenced me to have my eyes pecked out and appointed six of their number as executioners. Happily, I had on my spectacles, and when they had broken and eaten the lenses, they were satisfied. That night six more Crows died in great agony from the eating of broken glass. They did not molest me further, but buried their dead comrades with great pomp and ceremony.
Very few observers have ever seen a Crow funeral, but it fell to my lot to be present at this one. It was a bright moonlight night and I crouched behind a stump in a pasture lot, partly screened by the undergrowth that had sprung up around it, and had an unobstructed view of the entire affair.
Sometime during the day, a long, transverse trench had been dug and lined with leaves. The seven corpses, feet upward, were lying on burdock leaves at a distance of about seventeen feet from the trench. A long stem was left on each burdock leaf, and to it was tied a long, stout string which shone whitely in the moonlight. I did not know what it was for, then, but later I understood.
Seven of the oldest and most prominent Crows, at a given signal, advanced to the dead. Each one took the end of a string in his beak and stepped over it in such a way that the cord passed straight under his body. I noted with a thrill of pride that Jim was in the lead.
The rest of the Crows were in tiers a little to the left. At another signal, Jim and his followers began to march, to a low mournful tune produced by the other Crows, swaying their bodies in time to it. In my note-book I hastily jotted it down. It went like this: “Caw-Caw, Caw-Caw, Caw-Caw, Caw-Caw,” the first syllable of each foot being heavily accented. It was not until they reached the third measure, which, I noted, had eight feet instead of four, that it dawned upon me that they were marching to the solemn and beautifully appropriate measures of Poe’s wonderful poem, The Raven. It was so touching that the tears blinded me, and when I could see again, the procession was well under way.