Yes, wonderful thread. Janice, wouldn’t warriors of that time and place, at least in a heroic poem, be more cheered by a raucous raven than a sweet-singing blackbird? They weren’t John Keats.
A medieval bestiary that I have, translated from a twelfth-century Latin source, says two things about ravens: They were thought not to feed their young until the black of their feathers showed; and the first part of a corpse they pecked out was the eyes. And both these images strike me as things a warrior would think were pretty cool. The raven in the early morning could be a sort of mascot-shout.
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