Breathless In the Bush: Odin

Monday, 2 February 2015

It’s All Good Until the Raven Arrives

by Cassandra Samuels

Using myths and legend in storytelling

In my book A Scandalous Wager my heroine, Lisbeth Carslake, Countess of Blackhurst, is accused of killing her husband. Although she is acquitted in a court of law, the high society of London (the ton) start calling her The Black Raven – bringer of bad luck and death. They cross themselves as they cross the street to avoid her and generally give her such a hard time she becomes a social pariah who seldom leaves her house. Thus this was the precedence for the wager which the hero, Oliver Whitely, Earl of Bellamy, takes on at the beginning of the story.

Before writing this story I had come across an article regarding folklore, myths and legends and was especially drawn to those of the raven. Firstly, there is a common misunderstanding that crows and ravens are the same. They do come from the same family of bird but are not the same. The raven is larger, shaggier and has a deeper, croaky call than that of its crow cousin. However, both feature heavily in mythology.

Raven at the Tower of London taken on my visit there.

In Welsh myths the raven (Mabinogion) is the harbinger of death. The often bleak reputation surrounding this magnificent black bird is likely to be because it is a scavenger and often found picking the flesh of dead things.

Odin in Norse mythology had two ravens. One called Thought and the other Memory which he sent out daily to spy and report on the goings on in Midgard (Earth).

Odin with his Ravens - Thought and Memory

Some tribes in North America knew the raven as a stealer of souls, while others saw it as a symbol of transformation.

Anyone who has gone to the Tower of London will be familiar with the legend surrounding the ravens there. It is said that if ever the ravens left the tower the kingdom of England would fall. Charles II even went so far as to move his royal astrologer and his whole observatory from the tower rather than relocate the ravens. Even now they always keep a breeding pair of ravens at the Tower of London.