I believe I read somewhere that the phrase "a murder of crows" comes from when the bubonic plague was rampant in Europe; the site of a flock of crows often meant they were feeding on a corpse of a human. Hence a murder of crows.
I would imagine this would make them a rather unpleasant critter to the humans at that time. And humans may have had a propensity to remove them from their presence, or at least wish they weren't hanging around......
Cheers Dave Lauten On 3/23/2015 11:50 AM, Joel Geier wrote:
there is some cultural evidence that this was the case for ravens as well as wolves in Europe. In Old English (Anglo-Saxon) battle poems from the last few centuries leading up to the Norman Conquest, one recurring motif involves the three "beasts of battle" (raven, wolf, and apparently White-Tailed Eagle) which would show up on battle sites to grab an easy lunch after the humans did their thing. For example (from "The Battle of Brunanburh"): "Leton him behindan hraew bryttian sealwig-padan, thone sweartan hraefn hyrned-nebban, and thone hasu-padan, earn aeftan hwit, aeses brucan, graedigne guth-hafoc, and thaet graege deor, wulf on wealda." which can be translated: "They left behind them, to enjoy the corpses, the dark coated one, the dark horny-beaked raven and the dusky-coated one, the eagle white from behind, to partake of carrion, greedy war-hawk, and that gray animal, the wolf in the forest."
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