Off your head.

[Boreades]

The crow is watchful of intruders and predators. Samhain was the Celtic new year, which survives to this day as Halloween. As part of the Samhain celebration, the goddess Morrigan presides over the festivities, bestowing those born on the holiday with oracular traits. Morrigan assumes the shape of a raven during the celebrations.

[Boreades]

Which might be why Morgana (in Robin Hood) is so often dressed in black.

[Boreades]

I had a surprise in the garden last night. While I was putting our hens to bed, there was a sudden commotion in a nearby tree. A Barn Owl was being mobbed by a Crow. Fortunately for the Owl, it did escape by weaving low and fast around the bushes in the garden, and the crow gave up the chase. I've never seen anything like that with a Barn Owl before. Maybe the crow had caught the barn owl in the act of trying to grab a baby crow. Do our resident crow experts have an opinion? Or perhaps I should bother the Spring Watch people?

Or I might have seen Blodeuwedd.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blodeuwedd

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Math_fab_M ... 8branch%29

[TisILeclerc]

Dear me, what the Welsh got up to.Whoever would have believed it.

Still, in England we've got Worzel Gummidge and the Crowman.

[Boreades]

Arr, proper job!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t8GOup-hZQE

[TisILeclerc]

Oooh aar lad.

And there we 'ave it. The man on the cross what comes to life, flocks of crows or perhaps rooks, and the holy man in his large hat weaving spells and magic.

[hvered]

Penzance, the nearest town to St Michael's Mount in Cornwall, has revived a May Day tradition, blowing tin horns, whistles and fifes at midnight on May Day Eve. Mounts Bay is posited as the start of the 'Michael Line' that crosses the country southwest to northeast.

The main characters in the procession are the lord and lady of the May and Old Ned, a crow, led or goaded by a Teazer http://www.cornishculture.co.uk/mayhorns.htm



The event has certain elements that seem to have found their way into Christian practices, rather bizarrely

Old Ned, The Penzance crow will die three times on route, overcome by the devil of winter, to revive him must blow loudly our horns and whistles until he leaps back to life

[Boreades]

Old Ned, The Penzance crow will die three times on route, overcome by the devil of winter, to revive him must blow loudly our horns and whistles until he leaps back to life

Bizarrely, "Old Ned" was the original theme of Steptoe and Son. Which could also be viewed (sic) as a "death and resurrection" story, but of the rag & bone man recycling kind?