Laura Wright 
A single crow lands on the fence outside your house.
It watches.
Its black eyes follow movement through the yard.
Then it calls.
Caw.
Another answers somewhere beyond the trees.
To us, it may be nothing more than communication between two remarkably intelligent birds.
To generations before us, it could mean something considerably more important.
Good fortune.
Bad fortune.
A visitor.
A warning.
A message from the dead.
Or death itself.
Few ordinary animals have accumulated as much supernatural baggage as the crow.
Across cultures separated by thousands of miles, these black birds have been connected with battlefields, gods, spirits, ancestors, prophecy and the world of the dead.
Perhaps that shouldn’t surprise us.
Crows have always seemed to be watching.
And sometimes, they appear to remember exactly what they have seen.
Crow or Raven?
Crows and ravens are close relatives belonging to the genus Corvus, and folklore doesn’t always distinguish between them very carefully.
Generally, ravens are larger, with heavier bills and different calls, while crows are smaller and produce the familiar caw.
Old legends, translations and regional names make the distinction considerably murkier.
A bird described as a crow in one source may become a raven in another.
That matters when examining folklore because many of the beliefs surrounding one have gradually migrated to the other.
What they share is more important.
Both are black.
Both eat carrion.
Both are exceptionally intelligent.
And both have spent thousands of years living remarkably close to human beings.
A Murder of Crows
Even the collective name sounds ominous.
A group of crows is traditionally called a murder.
The term fits the reputation so perfectly that it seems almost designed for them.
But crows didn’t acquire their association with death merely because someone invented an unsettling collective noun.
For most of human history, death wasn’t hidden.
Battlefields remained littered with bodies.
Animals died in fields.
Executions were public.
People died at home.
Carrion birds arrived afterward.
Again and again, human beings encountered crows and ravens in places where something had died.
Eventually the birds themselves became omens.
Perhaps the crow didn’t bring death.
Perhaps it simply knew when death had already arrived.
There is a difference.
Although folklore doesn’t always make it.
The Intelligence of the Crow
One reason crows have inspired so much folklore is that they behave in ways that can seem almost disturbingly deliberate.
They recognize individual human beings.
They learn.
They solve problems.
They hide food.
They communicate with one another.
Some corvids even manufacture and use tools.
The New Caledonian crow, for example, is famous for fashioning implements used to extract food. Your original also mentions crows using breadcrumbs as bait to catch fish and notes their ability to store food in preparation for changing conditions.
Then there is something more unsettling.
They remember us.
Research has shown that crows can recognize particular human faces and retain those associations.
In practical terms, annoy the wrong crow and it may know who you are later.
Calling that a grudge anthropomorphizes the behavior somewhat.
But when the crow sitting above your driveway remembers your face, the distinction may not be particularly comforting.
They Talk Differently, Too
Your original mentions another fascinating characteristic.
Crow calls can display regional variation.
The noises made by one population aren’t necessarily identical to those made by another.
To earlier people, who lived much more intimately with the natural world than most of us do today, those differences would have been noticeable.
The crow wasn’t merely making noise.
It appeared to be communicating.
Perhaps that helps explain why so many traditions eventually transformed the bird into a messenger.
And sometimes the message came from somewhere other than this world.
The Morrígan
In Irish mythology, the crow and raven are strongly associated with the Morrígan, a figure connected with warfare, fate and death.
Her presence frequently accompanies battle.
One of the most memorable traditions concerns the great Irish hero Cú Chulainn.
After his final battle and death, the Morrígan is associated with a raven or crow settling upon him. The image beautifully captures the ancient relationship between these birds and the battlefield.
The warrior falls.
The battle ends.
Then the black bird arrives.
To someone watching from a distance, it isn’t difficult to understand how the crow became more than a scavenger.
It became a witness.
Perhaps even an emissary.
“You’ll Follow Crows for It”
Your original preserves an old Irish expression:
“You’ll follow crows for it.”
The meaning was that something would be missed after it was gone.
Again, the crow stands somewhere between presence and absence.
It appears after something has left.
After the battle.
After the harvest.
After the animal dies.
After someone is gone.
There is something almost liminal about it.
The crow belongs to the moment immediately afterward.
Cornwall and the Other World
In Cornish folklore, crows became associated with the supernatural and the Otherworld.
They were birds to be treated respectfully.
That detail is important.
The crow wasn’t always regarded as evil.
Something can be supernatural without being malevolent.
The bird might carry knowledge unavailable to ordinary people.
It might travel between boundaries.
It might know things.
And if something possesses knowledge you don’t understand, politeness is rarely a bad strategy.
Especially when it remembers faces.
The Crows of Wales
Welsh folklore provides some particularly wonderful crow superstitions.
A single crow could be an omen of misfortune.
Two could reverse the meaning entirely.
An old Welsh rhyme reduced the matter beautifully:
One for sorrow. Two for mirth.
Other traditions made two crows seen before beginning a journey a favorable omen.
But a lone crow crossing someone’s path could be ominous.
And one circling above a person’s head carried an especially gruesome meaning.
It could foretell decapitation.
That is considerably more specific than ordinary bad luck.
Brân the Blessed
The relationship between Welsh tradition and corvids runs much deeper.
Brân the Blessed is one of the great figures of Welsh mythology. His name itself is generally translated as crow or raven.
After his death, Brân’s severed head was supposedly carried to London and buried beneath the White Hill, facing outward to protect Britain from invasion.
Later tradition connected the location with the Tower of London.
And, of course, ravens still live at the Tower.
According to the famous legend, if they ever leave, Britain itself will fall.
There is a complication, however.
The familiar Tower raven legend in its modern form may be considerably younger than people assume, possibly developing during the Victorian period.
But that doesn’t erase the much older relationship between Brân, corvids and supernatural protection.
Folklore rarely moves in a straight line.
Old stories acquire new stories.
Eventually their roots become intertwined.
King Arthur’s Raven
Another old Welsh and Cornish tradition maintains that King Arthur did not truly die.
Instead, his spirit survived in the form of a raven.
Because of this, killing a raven was considered unlucky in some traditions.
It is a striking transformation.
The legendary king doesn’t disappear.
He watches.
He flies above the landscape he once ruled.
And perhaps one day he will return.
Once again, the black bird occupies the border between death and something that isn’t quite death.
Odin’s Birds
Norse mythology provides another famous example.
Odin possesses two ravens, Huginn and Muninn.
They travel through the world and return to the god with information.
Your original describes the tradition simply and effectively: the birds carry information from this world back to Odin.
Here the corvid isn’t primarily an omen of death.
It is intelligence.
Observation.
Memory.
Knowledge.
The bird flies where the god cannot be.
It sees.
Then it returns.
Considering what we now know about corvid intelligence, the ancient choice seems strangely appropriate.
The Trickster
Far from Europe, similar birds acquired very different personalities.
Your original notes traditions among Aboriginal Australians in which Crow appears as a trickster.
The trickster isn’t necessarily evil.
He disrupts things.
Steals.
Deceives.
Outsmarts others.
Breaks rules.
Sometimes he creates through destruction.
Sometimes his foolishness teaches everyone else a lesson.
And again, there is something remarkably crowlike about the role.
Anyone who has watched one of these birds manipulate another animal, steal food or solve a problem can understand why people imagined a clever personality behind those black eyes.
Crows and the Ancestors
In Hindu traditions, crows have been associated with ancestors and the dead, particularly through rituals in which food is offered in connection with deceased family members.
Your original summarizes this by saying that followers of Hinduism may regard crows as representing their ancestors.
That is another recurring theme.
The bird doesn’t simply predict death.
It connects the living with those who have already died.
Perhaps the crow outside the house isn’t warning that somebody is about to leave.
Perhaps somebody who already left has returned.
The Wicked Become Crows
French folklore gave the crow an especially delicious punishment.
According to the belief preserved in your original article, wicked priests were condemned to become crows after death, while wicked nuns became magpies.
One can only imagine what particularly irritating cleric inspired that tradition.
But it belongs to a larger European tendency to connect black birds with souls, death and moral judgment.
A person’s body dies.
Something remains.
And occasionally, according to folklore, it grows feathers.
American Crow Superstitions
When Europeans crossed the Atlantic, their crow folklore traveled with them.
American communities developed traditions of their own.
Some became contradictory.
That is perfectly normal for folklore.
A dead crow lying in the road could actually be regarded as a sign of good luck.
Elsewhere, the living bird was considerably less welcome.
In New England, your original records the belief that two crows flying from the left could signify approaching misfortune.
And then there is one of the oldest and most persistent associations.
Death.
The Crow Over the House
According to American folk belief, a crow flying over a house could mean that death would soon visit the household.
Crows gathering in churchyards carried similarly ominous associations.
It is easy to explain such traditions away.
Crows congregate around places where food is available.
Their black plumage already carries cultural associations with mourning.
Their carrion-eating habits naturally connected them with death.
People remember the omen when someone dies and forget the hundreds of times a crow crossed the roof and nothing happened.
All of that is perfectly reasonable.
And yet old families sometimes tell remarkably specific stories.
A crow appeared.
Someone noticed it.
Someone commented upon it.
Then the telephone rang.
Coincidence?
Almost certainly, most of the time.
But folklore survives because every once in a while the timing is just good enough to make someone remember.
Counting Crows
Perhaps that is why the number of crows became so important.
One bird might mean sorrow.
Two could mean joy.
Three might predict a wedding.
Four could predict a birth.
Versions changed from region to region, and crows and magpies frequently exchanged places in the rhymes.
The important thing was not simply seeing the bird.
You had to count them.
People weren’t merely observing nature.
They were reading it.
The world contained signs.
A strange wind meant something.
A dream meant something.
The direction in which an animal crossed the road meant something.
And a gathering of black birds could be a sentence written across the sky.
Why the Crow?
Perhaps there is no mystery.
Crows are black.
They eat carrion.
They appeared on battlefields.
They’re intelligent enough to behave in ways that seem intentional.
They remember human beings.
They communicate.
They gather around their dead.
Human beings noticed.
Then we created stories.
That explanation is perfectly adequate.
But it doesn’t quite capture the feeling of encountering one.
Especially alone.
Especially when it seems to be watching you.
There is an uncomfortable intelligence behind the crow’s behavior.
Not human intelligence.
Something older and stranger.
The bird studies you for a moment.
Then it calls.
Another crow answers from somewhere you cannot see.
Perhaps they’re discussing food.
Perhaps they’re warning one another that a human is nearby.
Science gives us perfectly good reasons for both behaviors.
Our ancestors had another possibility.
Perhaps they’re talking about you.
Crow: Legend and Lore
For thousands of years, human beings have watched black birds gather above battlefields, cemeteries, farms and houses.
We have made them servants of gods.
Messengers of death.
Tricksters.
Ancestors.
Prophets.
Guardians.
Kings who refused to die.
Perhaps all of those stories tell us more about human beings than they do about crows.
Or perhaps our ancestors noticed something about these birds that we have forgotten.
The crow remains one of the few wild animals that can live beside us, study us and remember individual members of our species.
It knows our routines.
It recognizes danger.
It tells other crows what it has learned.
And sometimes it simply sits outside the window.
Watching.
There is no reason to think that means anything.
But if there is only one crow out there…
Old Welsh wisdom might suggest waiting for a second.
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