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]

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.