Ravenmaster

By -

 Ravenmaster: My Life With the Ravens at the Tower of London, by Christopher Skaife

If you've ever been to the Tower of London, or read very much about it, you know that there are ravens living there.  The story goes that ravens have always been at the Tower and that if they ever leave or are lost, the kingdom will fall.  There is, therefore, a Ravenmaster whose job it is to care for the ravens.  There are usually around six birds at any given time; they are usually rescues of some kind or occasionally former pets.  

Chris Skaife has been the Ravenmaster for several years and he gives us an enjoyable rundown of the history and current state of ravenkeeping at the Tower.  This ranges all over the place, and includes the Tower's history as a sort of zoo for exotic animals, details of raven life and habits, stories from Skaife's own life, and tales of hair-raising ravenic moments.  Skaife also explains how ravenkeeping has changed over time and that his own policy is that the ravens should be as free and un-interfered with as possible.  Their feathers are only barely trimmed, and they aren't trained to say things.

The sad news is that the legend of ravens having always been at the Tower, and of Charles II issuing a decree that the ravens should be cared for, lest the kingdom fall -- is just that, a legend.  There is no evidence for it existing before the 19th century, and ol' Charles issued no such decree.  However, the Tower would have been a popular raven hangout; it's not like they weren't ever there, they just weren't official or purposefully kept as captives until then.  The Welsh part of the legend, with Bran the Blessed's head buried on the White Hill (now the site of the White Tower), looking out to France, is antique.  And Bran does mean 'raven.'  So it's not totally made up, just partly, I guess.

Skaife also discusses literary ravens, but to my disappointment he left out my favorite: Joan Aiken's Mortimer.  I hope he's read the Mortimer books, nobody should miss them!

A fun and light read with a good amount of history.  I've been meaning to read it for a long time, and now I want to go see the Tower!

Comments

  1. Jenny @ Reading the EndOctober 26, 2021 at 3:58 AM

    Whoa, were they used to be trained to say things? What sort of things??

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. JeanOctober 27, 2021 at 8:00 AM

      Ravens are very smart and can be trained to say things. One of the ravens they had some years ago had been trained to say 'good morning,' but I don't know how often that happened in the past, or what they said. I'd bet money that somebody taught some raven to say 'God save the king' at some point!

      Delete

Post a Comment

I'd love to know what you think, so please comment!

Popular posts from this blog

The Four Ages of Poetry

By -
Image
  "The Four Ages of Poetry," by Thomas Love Peacock I am becoming fond of Thomas Love Peacock.  Besides his unbeatable name, he was a lot of fun.  Peacock was a minor literary figure of the early 19th century; he tried his hand at poetry but mainly succeeded in satire.  I read his short novel Nightmare Abbey last year, but at the time I didn't know that the young hero of the story, Scythrop, was modeled on Peacock's good friend Percy Shelley.  He and Shelley were quite close and Peacock was the executor of Shelley's will. Thomas Love Peacock Percy Bysshe Shelley "The Four Ages of Poetry," a tongue-in-cheek essay on the history and development of poetry, was published in 1820 in a new magazine called Literary Miscellany , which promptly died.  It would probably have been completely obscure and unknown--it nearly is anyway--but for Shelley.  Peacock sent a copy to his friend, who I guess didn't really have much of a sense of...
Read more

A few short stories in Urdu

By -
Image
 Back in August, I got hold of a book of Urdu short stories translated into English.  It's a large book, so I wanted to read just the women authors for WIT, and that would still be a good amount.  August got away from me, and I only read one or two stories back then, but I've continued reading them since.  I've now finished all the short stories in the book that were written by women (luckily for me, there are short biographies in an appendix, since I could only tell from the name about half the time).  I'll just highlight a couple: "The Wagon," by Khalida Asghar, is a hallucinatory, apocalyptic story.  The narrator meets three strange men who are watching the evening sky and point out that it has become red.  No one had noticed until they said so, but the sky is now strangely red.  Then a smell arrives, so offensive and sickening that it causes real pain -- but only once it's pointed out.  And finally, a mysterious wagon, which may be the s...
Read more

Faerie Queen Readalong I: Redcrosse, the Knight of Holiness

By -
Image
I did it, I read all of Book I!  My minimum requirement was two cantos a day, but I managed three a couple of times.  I'm hoping to read ahead, because I'll be gone for two weeks in the middle of this event and I'd like to be able to prep a post ahead of time...but the schedule is already pretty demanding.  The reading is not terribly difficult, but it is slow.  I keep thinking that I've read a large chunk, only to look back and realize that in fact I have read six verses.  So here we go with analysis... Each book in the Faerie Queene features a knight, and a story, about a particular virtue.  The Redcrosse Knight, to be known as St. George after he accomplishes his feats, is all about Holinesse .  This does not mean that Redcrosse already exemplifies holiness; he doesn't.  Holiness is what he's working towards and struggling with.  His foes symbolize various forms of unholiness, and he falls into their clutches at least as often as he ...
Read more