City of Ravens: London, the Tower and its Famous Birds

By Boria Sax

A “quirky and absorbing” exploration of the history and mythology surrounding the ravens at the Tower of London (Publishers Weekly).

Tales tell of how Charles II, fearful of ancient legends that Britain will fall if the ravens at the Tower of London ever leave their abode, ordered that the wings of the six ravens be clipped. But the truth is that the ravens only arrived at the Tower in 1883, when they were brought in as props in tales of Gothic horror that were told to tourists. The legend itself originated from the summer of 1944, when ravens in London were used as unofficial spotters for enemy bombs and planes.

Boria Sax gives us the first book to tell the true story of the ravens, which has far more high drama than any of the tales the tourists get to hear. Its heroes are the raven couple Grip and Mable, who eloped from the Tower together after World War II, leaving it empty and prompting fears that the British Empire would end; Jackie, who kept watch at a brewery; McDonald, who was murdered; and Thor, who could not accept his loss of flight. For over a century, the ravens have been symbols of cruelty, avatars of fate—and cuddly national pets. But Sax shows us how the ravens have come to represent Britain’s natural heritage, without which any nation would be impoverished. This informing and reflective volume addresses the need to connect with animals and the natural world and shows us the human need for wonder at nature.

Praise for City of Ravens

“Both a delight and a profound illumination of the subject . . . with unexpected and fascinating conclusions.” —Esther Woolfson, author of Corvus

“A wonderful contribution to the modern history and mythology of one of the world’s greatest cities.” —Ronald Hutton, Commissioner of English Heritage

“Boria Sax traces the history of the ravens in the Tower of London with accurate scholarship and engaging stories.” —John Marzluff, co-author of In the Company of Crows and Ravens

“The author delves into the true history and cultural importance of these massive corvids. It’s a lively, entertaining tale, with a few grisly details from real events.” —Anna Sanders, Audubon Magazine

• Language: English
• Publisher: Open Road Integrated Media
• Release date: Jul 5, 2012
• ISBN: 9781468305272

Book preview

Copyright

First published in the UK in 2011 by

Duckworth Overlook

LONDON

90-93 Cowcross Street

London EC1M 6BF

[e-mail]

www.ducknet.co.uk

NEW YORK

141 Wooster Street

New York, NY 10012

for bulk or special sales contact [e-mail]

Copyright © 2011 by Boria Sax

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher.

ISBN 978-1-46830-527-2

Contents

Copyright

Dedication

Preface

Acknowledgements

Part One: How the Ravens Came to the Tower and Why They Stayed

I: In Search of the Tower Ravens

II: Bran and Those Who Followed Him

III: The Earls of Dunraven

IV: City of Ravens

V: Around the Scaffold

VI: Pet Ravens

VII: Jackie the Lucky Raven

VIII: The Killing of McDonald

IX: Mabel and Grip

X: A New Flock

XI: Entering the Twenty-first Century

Part Two: What the Ravens Tell Us About Nature and Humankind

XII: Natsume S seki

XIII: The Terrible Secrets of History

XIV: Invented Tradition, Fakelore, Folklore or Modern Myth?

XV: Becoming Ravens

XVI: The Ravens and the Crown

Epilogue

Appendix

Bibliography

Notes

To Bran the Blessed

Preface

Have you heard the Northern Raven’s basso profundo roiling out from the darkness of woods or through a shroud of fog along a wild shore? Touched with mystery, its call seems to come from the very heart of nature. I know of no other bird so steeped in myth, history and legend. Ranging across the entire northern hemisphere, the Northern Raven has influenced a unique number and variety of cultures.

Where I live along the coast in the Pacific Northwest, the native people have imbued the raven with supernatural powers. It is a central figure in their creation myths and celebrated in their extraordinary art forms for its distinctive features, its sagacious nature and magical powers. For centuries, even millennia, these proud peoples have told wonderful stories about this bird.

In this engaging book, Boria Sax examines an equally powerful collection of raven myths among the British and, in so doing, arrives at some remarkable conclusions. His narrative, not unlike a detective story, reveals to us that the making of myths is an ongoing process, not just something of the remote past. He demonstrates convincingly that, far from being an ancient legend, the myth predicting that Britain will fall if ravens leave the Tower of London is of very recent origin. His investigations also show however that this belief probably evolved from, or at least was influenced by, a thirteenth-century legend of Bran the Blessed. As Londoners confronted terrible new weapons during World War II, they looked to the ravens, spiritual descendents of Bran, to protect them from defeat.

As in his book Crow, Boria Sax contributes significantly to our understanding of how this species affects and defines our thinking and culture. The mythic status of ravens among many people today, from the streets of London to the tundra, is a reminder that species sharing our environment are far more than a collection of weights, dimensions and distribution maps. Boria Sax has not only clarified history but, with his review of the raven’s symbolic presence in Britain, he has revealed it as an enduring metaphor for survival through adversity. By protecting the raven, we are also sustaining ourselves.

Tony Angell, co-author with John Marzluff of In the Company of Crows and Ravens

Acknowledgements

Some of the material in the following articles is incorporated in this book: ‘Black Birds of Doom’, History Today (January 2005: 38–39); ‘How Ravens Came to the Tower of London’, Society and Animals (15.3/2007b: 267–81); ‘If Ravens Leave the Tower, Will Britain Fall?’, Corvi Chronicle (Fall 2008: 3–6); ‘Medievalism, Paganism, and the Tower Ravens’, The Pomegranate: The International Journal of Pagan Studies (9.1/2007: 62–77); ‘The Tower Ravens’, ISAZ Newsletter (28/2005: 5–8); ‘The Tower Ravens as Mascots of Britain in World War Two’, in Tiere Im Krieg: Von Der Antike Bis Zur Gegenwart, ed. Rainer Pöppinghege (Paderborn: Schoeningh-Verlag, 2009, 199–216); ‘Jackie the Lucky Raven’, History Magazine (June 2010); ‘The Tower Ravens’, Storytelling, Self, and Society 6, no. 3, (Fall 2010); ‘Ravens as Sentinels in World War II’, in Animals in War, ed. Ryan Hediger (publisher not yet established).

Mercy College in Dobbs Ferry, New York, provided me with a stipend, which helped me to complete work on this book. I would like to give special thanks to the Warders at the Tower of London, specifically former Ravenmaster Derrick Coyle, former Assistant Ravenmaster Tom Trent, Assistant Ravenmaster Shady Lane and former Apprentice Ravenmaster – and now Ravenmaster – Ray Stones. They graciously showed me how the ravens are kept, answered many questions and provided me with records in the Tower that pertained to the ravens. Jeremy Ashbee, Inspector of Ancient Monuments at English Heritage, provided many insightful suggestions, as did Bridget Clifford, Senior Archivist at the Tower of London Libraries. Geoffrey Parnell, Keeper of Tower History at the Royal Armouries, who independently came to conclusions similar to mine, also contributed many references. John Wantling provided me with references as well, including one of the oldest and most important. All responsibility for the conclusions in this book is, of course, entirely my own. Tony Angell, an artist and an authority on corvids, has read a version of the book and made many helpful corrections and suggestions, in addition to allowing me to use his drawings as illustrations. John Marzluff and Bernd Heinrich, two scientific authorities on ravens, also provided me with many valuable insights and suggestions. William Brandon helped me with proofreading. Thanks are also due to my agent, Dianne Littwin, particularly for her understanding and persistence. I would most especially like to thank my wife, Linda Sax, for her steady encouragement, which helped me to persevere in writing this book in spite of innumerable crises and distractions, as well as help with editing.

Part One

HOW THE RAVENS CAME TO THE TOWER AND WHY THEY STAYED

I

In Search of the Tower Ravens

There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio,

Than are dreamt of in your philosophy.

Shakespeare, Hamlet, Act 1 Scene V

The ravens at the Tower of London are now so beloved that nobody seems to care much if they steal an occasional sandwich, and they have long been forgiven for allegedly pecking the eyes from the severed head of Lady Jane Grey. According to the guidebooks, Charles II (reigned 1660–85) ordered that the wings of six ravens be clipped so they could not fly away, and their successors strut around on the field behind the White Tower to this day.¹

A flyer entitled ‘A Guide to the Tower Ravens’, published by the Tower of London in about 1997 and distributed free to tourists, announces: ‘For many centuries, ravens have guarded the Tower of London and, since they are said to hold the power of the Crown, it is believed that the Crown and the Tower will fall, if ever the ravens should leave. Fortunately, these respected residents, since the reign of King Charles II, have been protected by royal decree.’²

And why did Charles II protect the ravens? The usual answer, as stated in one popular history of the Tower of London, is that Charles II and his royal astronomer Sir John Flamstead were looking through telescopes, when ‘some ravens flew overhead and bespattered the telescopes. These ravens must go! he said. But, Sire, it is very unlucky to kill a raven, replied Flamstead. If you do that the Tower will fall and you will lose your kingdom, having only just got it back! Charles, being a pragmatist, thought for a moment and said: The Observatory must go to Greenwich and the ravens can stay in the Tower.’ The author of this retelling, a lot more cautious than most others, concludes his account by admitting that he ‘cannot vouch for its accuracy.’³

The anecdote is not just questionable but absurd. For one thing, ravens are diurnal, so they would not have interfered with the astronomer’s observations at night. The story seems to confuse ravens with bats, perhaps because both are popularly associated with witchcraft and Gothic castles. Furthermore, it is hard to see how moving the observatory to Greenwich could have solved the problem, since that area had the same birds as London. Killing all of the ravens in the sky at the time would have been far beyond the power even of a king. And if these birds had been numerous enough to seriously impede astronomical observations, trimming the wings of six birds would hardly have been necessary to ensure their continued presence. The one thing that the anecdote about Charles II does reflect accurately is the difficulty of keeping ravens at the Tower, particularly since the mid-twentieth century. They are no respecters of tradition or ceremony, and at times drop excrement on tools, antiquities and the heads of visitors.

But the statement that the ravens ‘hold the power of the Crown’ does not seem inappropriate in the twenty-first century. The ravens are now treated almost like royalty. Like the Royals, the ravens live in a palace and are waited on by servants. They are kept at public expense, but in return they must show themselves to the public in settings of great splendour. So long as they abide by certain basic rules, neither Royals nor ravens have to do anything extraordinary. If the power in question is political and diplomatic, the Royals now have hardly more than the ravens. But the word ‘power’ here can also mean the aura of glamour and mystery which at times envelops both ravens and monarchs.

On first querying the Tower authorities as to where I might find a copy of the decree of Charles II, I was referred to the Tower’s official website, which simply repeated the familiar stories. Next, I searched in scholarly biographies of Charles II, but there was no mention of the ravens. The ravens seemed to me no less magnificent than before, but I gradually became sceptical about their ancient residence in the Tower.

It was initially difficult for me to believe that all of the tourist guides, websites and even scholarly books could be so blatantly wrong about the origin of the Tower ravens. In addition, my status as a foreigner, an American, made it particularly awkward to challenge a national myth of the United Kingdom. I feared – for the most part, needlessly – that the British might take umbrage at the perceived challenge to one of their institutions. Furthermore, the idea that the ravens were ancient residents of the Tower appealed to my romantic temperament. But my interest in the ravens and their true story overpowered all of my hesitations, and I continued with my research.

I have searched for references to them which might be traced back to the nineteenth century or earlier in old books of history, ornithology, folklore and, most especially, any early guides to the Tower that I could locate. I have pored over books from the Renaissance, as well as web pages and databases from the twenty-first century. I have examined graphics from the Middle Ages through to the nineteenth century. I have also spent days at the Tower of London talking with the Warders, who very graciously provided me with what records were at hand. However I have been unable to find any references, either written or visual, to the ravens in the Tower of London that predate the close of the nineteenth century.

It would be tedious, and not terribly enlightening, to attempt to list the scores of books in which I have searched in vain for references to ravens in the Tower of London. Nevertheless, I will mention a few that seem particularly significant. Among those where one might especially expect to find such references are the early histories and guidebooks written about the Tower such as: The Tower of London by William Benham, published in 1906; The Tower of London by Ronald Sutherland Gower, published in 1902; Her Majesty’s Tower by William Hepworth Dixon, republished several times over the second half of the nineteenth century; and Authorized Guide to the Tower of London by W. J. Loftie, published in 1888. All of these books describe the appearance, history and legends of the Tower in great detail, yet none of them even mentions the ravens in passing.⁴ Even Harrison Ainsworth’s novel The Tower of London, first published in 1840, and which, despite the author’s frequent use of artistic license, takes care to document the appearance and lore of the Tower with great thoroughness, makes no mention of any ravens living within it.⁵ There is also no mention in Birds of Omen in Shetland, with Notes on the Folklore of the Raven and the Owl by Jessie Saxby and William Clouston,⁶ which was privately printed in 1893 but remains arguably the most thorough compendium of raven folklore ever produced. A few scholars before me had noticed this absence of early references to the Tower Ravens and pointed it out in professional publications that attracted little notice and are pretty hard to find.⁷

It is inconceivable that the authors of these books and other visitors to the Tower of London could have failed to mention the ravens if these had been present for centuries. After all, it is not everywhere that one sees huge black birds with trimmed wings bustling about and croaking loudly. If the ravens had been anything like those in the Tower today, they would have been begging for food, stealing baubles and occasionally pecking visitors. It is only through constant vigilance that the Yeoman Warders, who act as both security officers and tour guides at the Tower, manage to keep the ravens safely in the Tower