Raven ghosts

[wolfinthewood]

There are raven ghosts, great black bundles of feathers, for ever in the forest, night-hunting in famine for prey, emitting a last feeble croak at the blush of dawn, and then all at once invisible.

— ‘Celtic superstition’

cited by John Wilson (1785–1854)

in Recreations of Christopher North (1842)


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Comments

[artnouveauho.livejournal.com]

This is very possibly the Gothest thing ever. Do not, do not let any Goth bands see this post or we'll be hearing songs entitled Raven Ghosts from now till Doomsday.

[wolfinthewood.livejournal.com]

After I stopped laughing, I wondered: what makes it quite so Goth, in your view? Is it the sheer excess: not just ravens, not just ghosts, but both at once? And the contradictions: they are at the same time insubstantial, vanishing with the dawn, and rather disturbing - what is it that they hunt? What will ease the perpetual famine of a ghost raven? Wilson doesn't say, and no one else, so far as I know, has recorded this belief.

[artnouveauho.livejournal.com]

Hmmm. I've been thinking about this one, and here's what I've come up with:

Ravens= Goth.
Ghosts=undeath=Goth.
Appearance in time of famine=ill-omened=Goth.
Implication that we could RIGHT THIS MOMENT be surrounded by invisible raven ghosts=Goth.

The rest of it is in the phrasing: "night-hunting in famine for prey," for example, is so fey it's practically a ready-made Crüxshadows lyric. Ditto "a last feeble croak at the blush of dawn". I think you may have laid your finger on it with the question What will ease the perpetual famine of a ghost raven? What indeed?

[wolfinthewood.livejournal.com]

The rest of it is in the phrasing

If you want to sample more of Wilson's remarkable prose, there is a whole volume of it (http://www.gutenberg.org/files/19938/19938-h/19938-h.htm) on Project Gutenberg. I have not read a lot of him, I must admit. He's a bit on the rich side, though I might manage to cultivate a taste for him if I tried. I came across the raven passage in Swainson's Folk lore and provincial names of British birds.