Raven in Tower of London
Post No. 13,805
Date uploaded in London – 22 October 2024
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Raven Bird in Shakespeare and Hindu Scriptures- Inauspicious (Post No.13,805)
Raven Bird in Shakespeare- Messenger of Death
We have seen that Shakespeare described the owl as bird of death in many of his plays; raven is also described so in Macbeth , Hamlet and other poems
When Shakespeare wanted to conjure up a sense of foreboding he often used the image of the birds of the crow family: crows, magpies, ravens and rooks. Lady Macbeth chillingly predicts the King’s murder:
from Macbeth, spoken by Lady Macbeth)
The raven himself is hoarse
That croaks the fatal entrance of Duncan
Under my battlements. Come, you spirits
That tend on mortal thoughts, unsex me here,
And fill me, from the crown to the toe, top-full
Of direst cruelty! Make thick my blood,
Stop up th’ access and passage to remorse,
That no compunctious visitings of nature
Shake my fell purpose, nor keep peace between
The effect and it! Come to my woman’s breasts,
And take my milk for gall, you murd’ring ministers,
Wherever in your sightless substances…….
Lady Macbeth, who just finished reading the message from her husband, is informed by a servant that King Duncan will soon be at her home to rest. The bird she chooses to name the messenger is a raven (1.5.38-40). According to Hazlitt, in his book Faiths and Folklore of the British Iles, the raven is a messenger of terrible things, a bad omen, and a forewarner of death (Hazlitt 507). He quotes another when he says, “by ravens both publick and private calamities and death have been portended” (Hazlitt 507). Again he states, “Private men have been forewarned of their death by ravens, …a messenger of death”, naming one such man forewarned as being Cicero (Hazlitt 507). Hazlitt even goes as far to say that “the croaking of a raven” is included among “omens” and that if one “hears a raven croak from the next roof, he at once should make his will” (Hazlitt 508).
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The Sergeant tells King Duncan how, just at the moment when Macbeth’s forces defeated Macdonwald’s rebels, the Norwegian king attacked the Scots. King Duncan asks if this new attack dismayed Macbeth and Banquo. The Sergeant, making a tough-guy joke, says “Yes / As sparrows [dismay] eagles, or the hare the lion” (1.2.34-35).
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After he has arranged for the murder of Banquo, Macbeth boasts to his wife that a terrible deed will be done which will solve their problems. The deed is to be done at nightfall, and Macbeth imagines the night coming on: Light thickens; and the crow / Makes wing to the rooky wood: / Good things of day begin to droop and drowse; / While night’s black agents to their preys do rouse” (3.2.53). “Night’s black agents” are all things that hunt and kill in the dark, including birds of prey.
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Later in the same scene, after Macbeth has finally driven away the Ghost of Banquo, he reflects that a murder will always be discovered, sometimes in strange ways: “Stones have been known to move and trees to speak; / Augurs and understood relations have / By magot-pies and choughs and rooks brought forth / The secret’st man of blood” (3.4.122-125). Magot-pies (magpies), choughs (jackdaws), and rooks are all birds that can be taught to speak a few words. And of course, Macbeth himself is a secret man of blood, a murderer.
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Image of Five Bird Predictions in Tamil Almanac- Panchanga
When Ross tells Macduff of the slaughter of his wife and children, Macduff cries out in passionate grief: All my pretty ones? / Did you say all? O hell-kite! All? / What, all my pretty chickens and their dam / At one fell swoop?” (4.3.217-220). The “hell-kite” is Macbeth, who has killed all the “pretty chickens” in one murderous dive (“fell swoop”).
Crow.—This has from the earliest times been reckoned a bird of bad omen; and in “Julius Cæsar,” (v. 1), Cassius, on
the eve of battle, predicted a defeat, because, to use his own words:—
“Crows and kites
Fly o’er our heads and downward look on us,
As we were sickly prey: their shadows seem
A canopy most fatal, under which
Our army lies, ready to give up the ghost.”
Allusions to the same superstition occur in “Troilus and Cressida” (i. 2); “King John” (v. 2), etc. Virgil (Bucolic i., 18), mentions the croaking of the crow as a bad omen:—
“Sæpe sinistra cava prædixit ab ilice cornix.”
And Butler in his “Hudibras” (part ii, canto 3), remarks:—
“Is it not ominous in all countries,
When crows and ravens croak upon trees.”
Even children now-a-days regard with no friendly feelings this bird of ill-omen; 1 and in the north of England there is a rhyme to the following effect:—
“Crow, crow, get out of my sight,
Or else I’ll eat thy liver and lights.”
Among other allusions, mentioned by Shakspeare, to the crow, may be noticed the crow-keeper—a person employed to drive away crows from the fields. At present, 2 in all the midland counties, a boy set to drive away the birds is said to keep birds; hence, a stuffed figure, now called a scare-crow, was also called a crow-keeper, as in “King Lear” (iv. 6):—
“That fellow handles his bow like a crow-keeper.”
One of Tusser’s directions for September is—
“No sooner a-sowing, but out by-and-by,
With mother or boy that alarum can cry:
And let them be armed with a sling or a bow,
To scare away pigeon, the rook, or the crow.”
In “Romeo and Juliet,” (i. 4), a scare-crow seems meant—
“Bearing a Tartar’s painted bow of lath,
Scaring the ladies like a crow-keeper.”
Among further references to this practice, is that in “1 Henry VI.” (i. 4), where Lord Talbot relates that, when a prisoner in France, he was publicly exhibited in the market-place:—
“Here, said they, is the terror of the French,
The scarecrow that affrights our children so.” 1
And once more, in “Measure for Measure,” (ii. 1):—
“We must not make a scare-crow of the law,
Setting it up to fear the birds of prey,
And let it keep one shape, till custom make it
Their perch and not their terror.”
The phrase “to pluck a crow” is to complain good-naturedly but reproachfully, and to threaten retaliation. 2 It occurs in “Comedy of Errors,” (iii. 1):—”We’ll pluck a crow together.” Sometimes the word pull is substituted for pluck, as in Butler’s “Hudibras,” part ii. canto 2:—
“If not, resolve before we go
That you and I must pull a crow.”
The crow has been regarded as the emblem of darkness, which has not escaped the notice of Shakspeare, who in “Pericles” (iv. introd.), speaking of the white dove, says:—
“With the dove of Paphos might the crow
Vie feathers white.”
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Hindu Omens
Hindus linked crows with Saturn and fed them every day. Crow was planet Saturn’s Vahana.
It is part of Pancha Pakshi predictions in Tamil almanacs until this day.
But it is not seen as a bird of death as we ear in Shakespeare Plays.
Varahamihira has chapters on crows and Wagtail predictions. But wagtail is not part of Crow / Raven family
Chapter 88 Omens (Taken from wisdomlib.org)
11. If the Vañjula bird be heard to sound as Tittiḍ, such sound is inauspicious; but if it be heard to sound as Kilkilī the sound is auspicious. The other than natural sounds of the hawk, the parrot, the vulture and the crow are inauspicious.
24. If the crow and the blue-jay be seen to pass to the right fighting, the jay suffering defeat, the traveller will be killed and if the reverse be the case, there will be success.
34. The cock crows as Kuku except when it sounds fearfully at night and also when ill; the long natural and high sound heard in the morning indicates prosperity to the country, the town and the king.
Chapter 45 – On the Wagtail (khañjana-kalakṣaṇa)
Note: This bird is known as Khañjana in Sanskrit. It is a species of wagtail. Mounta alla, Alba.
1. I shall here state the effects of the first appearance of the bird known as Khañjana (wagtail) on the king’s march as stated by Ṛṣis.
2. If the bird be one of the species possessing a large body and a long and black neck, it is known as Bhadra; it forebodes good-luck; if it be one of the species black up to the neck or face, it is known as Sampūrṇa; it forebodes success.
3. If it be one of the species with a dark spot in the neck and with white cheeks, it is known as Rikta; it forebodes evil. If it be yellow, it is known as Gopīta; it also forebodes evil.
4-6. If it be seen on trees of sweet fruits and fragrant flowers or close to sacred water, or on the heads of elephants, horses and serpents, on the tops of temples and on the king’s palace, in flower gardens or on the mansions of the rich; near cows, cow-pens, gatherings of Sādhus or holymen, sacrificial fire-sites, festival places, kings, Brāhmaṇas, elephant-sheds, horse-sheds, an umbrella, a flag-staff, a Cāmara and the like; near gold, white cloth, places adorned with the lotus and the water lily, in places washed with cow-dung, on vessels containing curdled milk or on heaps of grain, it forebodes prosperity to the king.
7. If it be seen near swampy places, the king would eat sumptuous meals; if on cow-dung, he will get a good supply of milk and curd; if on green turf he would get good cloths and if on chariots, he would leave his kingdom.
8. If it be seen seated on the tops of houses, the king would lose his wealth; if on snares, he would be imprisoned; if on impure places, he would suffer from disease; and if on the back of the sheep, he would soon obtain his desired object.
9. If it should be seen seated on the back of a buffalo, a camel, an ass, on the bones of animals, on cremation grounds, in the corners of houses, on pebbles or gravels, on rocks, on the walls of towns, on ash or on hair, there would be deaths, diseases and fears in the land.
10. If it should be seen when it is shaking off its wings, there would be misery in the land; if when in the act of drinking water from the river, there would be prosperity; there would also be prosperity if seen about sunrise; and if about sunset, there would be misery in the land.
11. If the king should march in the direction in which the wagtail should be seen to fly immediately after the Lustration ceremony is over, he would triumph over his enemies.
12. Where the wagtail should be seen to copulate, there would be treasure in the ground under; where it should be found to vomit, there will be crystal beads in the ground under it; where it passes stool, there would be found charcoal under ground; these may be found to be the case on actual examination.
13. If the wagtail should be found dead, the king would die; if of broken limbs, the king would suffer similarly; if covered with wounds, a similar fate will befall the king; if found to enter its nest, the king would get wealth and if perceived in its flight his relatives will visit him.
14. If the king should chance to see in some pure spot a wagtail foreboding good, he shall then and there perform pūjā on the ground with sandal paste, flower and perfumed smoke; he is then sure to prosper.
15. If he should chance to see a wagtail foreboding evil, he shall perform pūjā to Brāhmaṇas, preceptors, yogins and the Devas; he will escape the evil effects. He shall abstain from meal for seven days.
16. The effects of the first appearance of the wagtail will come to pass within a year; if during this period the wagtail should be seen again, the effects of such second sight will come to pass that same day before sunset. In making predictions from the wagtail the astrologer shall take into account the direction of its flight, its place, body, the rising Zodiacal sign at the time, the Nakṣatra or the Moon’s place at the time, and whethér the bird is seen with its face turned to the sun or away from the sun.
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Tamil Panchapakshi Satra
It is published every year in the Panchangas (almanacs) in Tamil. It is a complicated way of predicting.
Also read my earlier posts on Ravens and Crows
Strange Belief about Crows in India and Britain!! February 26, 2015 –
Strange Belief about Crows in India and Britain!!
Research Article No. 1678; Dated 26 February 2015.
Crow in Chanakya Niti (Post No4733)February 12, 2018In “Nature”
DIVINATION in The Vedas, Babylonian and EtruscanApril 10, 2015In “Astrology”
–subham—
Tags- Crow, Raven, Wagtails, Bird omens, Shakespeare plays, Brhat Samhita , Messenger of Death, Macbeth, Hamlet
Tamil and Vedas 