Philadelphia has landmarks galore. The most unusual is this stuffed bird recently declared a “Literary Landmark” by a national library association. Certainly no bird in history contributed more to literature then this chatty raven who inspired the prose of both Charles Dickens and Edgar Allan Poe. Perched on a log, preserved with arsenic, frozen inside his shadow box he stands as a strange piece of history. Though he has been dead...
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One of the oldest symbols in Japanese mythology is the 3-Legged Bird, called Yatagarasu (八咫烏) in Japanese. This legendary bird was said to have led the Emperor Jimmu from Kumano no kuni (熊の国), which is present-day Wakyama Prefecture, to Yamato no kuni (大和国), which is present-day Nara Prefecture. The three-legged (or “tripedal”) bird is a creature found in various mythologies and arts of Asia, Asia Minor, and North...
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One of my fondest memories as a little girl was reading any one of my Little Golden Books to my stuffed animal audience, with my favorite being Dumbo. As I grew up, it evolved into me sitting alone in my aunt’s cozy living room watching Disney’s Dumbo. I must have seen it a hundred times, and it is the only one that, to this day, I could still probably recite. The story was one of overcoming the odds and accepting oneself. These were...
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Brian Keene is a two-time Bram Stoker Award winning horror author, first in 2001 for his non-fiction work Jobs In Hell and then again in 2003 for his debut novel, the post-apocalyptic zombie tale The Rising. In 2004, he won the Shocker Award for his non-fiction work Sympathy For the Devil. His other novels include Dead Sea, Ghoul, City of the Dead, Terminal, The Conqueror Worms, Fear Of Gravity, and more. Several of his books and stories have...
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According to the Native American legend told by many Pacific Northwest tribes, including the Inuit, “In the beginning the world was in total darkness.” This is a common beginning to most creation stories, but this one has a twist. The Raven, who had existed from the beginning of time, was tired of groping about and bumping into things in the dark. One day the Raven came upon the mouth of a great river, where lived a chief and his...
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Ravens figure heavily in Celtic mythology and legend. They were linked to darkness and death – especially the death of warriors in battle. Celtic war goddesses often took the form of a raven. In “The Dream of Rhonabwy”, the knight Owein battles King Arthur in a dream world assisted by ravens. Some tales suggest that the great King Arthur himself was turned in to a raven upon his death. Rhonabwy is the most literary of the...
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“Crows and people share similar traits and social strategies. To a surprising extent, to know the crow is to know ourselves.”—from the Preface From the cave walls at Lascaux to the last painting by Van Gogh, from the works of Shakespeare to those of Mark Twain, there is clear evidence that crows and ravens influence human culture. Yet this influence is not unidirectional, say the authors of this fascinating book: people profoundly...
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