ung ravens which cry" (Psalm cxlvii. 9). We are told,
too, in Job, "Who provideth for the raven his food? when his young ones
cry unto God, they wander for lack of meat" (xxxviii. 41). Shakespeare,
in "As You Like It" (ii. 3), probably had the words of the Psalmist in
his mind:

"He that doth the ravens feed,
Yea, providently caters for the sparrow."

[316] "Ornithology of Shakespeare," p. 107.

The raven has from earliest times been symbolical of blackness, both in
connection with color and character. In "Romeo and Juliet" (iii. 2),
Juliet exclaims:

"O serpent heart, hid with a flowering face!
Did ever dragon keep so fair a cave?
Beautiful tyrant! fiend angelical!
Dove-feather'd raven!"[317]

[317] Cf. "Midsummer-Night's Dream," ii. 2; "Twelfth Night," v. 1.

Once more, ravens' feathers were formerly used by witches, from an old
superstition that the wings of this bird carried with them contagion
wherever they went. Hence, in "The Tempest" (i. 2), Caliban says:

"As wicked dew as e'er my mother brush'd
With raven's feather from unwholesome fen
Drop on you both!"

_Robin Redbreast._ According to a pretty notion,[318] this little bird
is said to cover with leaves any dead body it may chance to find
unburied; a belief which probably, in a great measure, originated in the
well-known ballad of the "Children in the Wood," although it seems to
have been known previously. Thus Singer quotes as follows from
"Cornucopia, or Divers Secrets," etc. (by Thomas Johnson, 1596): "The
robin redbreast, if he finds a man or woman dead, will cover all his
face with moss; and some think that if the body should remain unburied
that he would cover the whole body also." In Dekker's "Villaines
Discovered by Lanthorn and Candlelight" (1616), quoted by Douce, it is
said, "They that cheere up a prisoner but with their sight, are robin
redbreasts that bring strawes in their bills to cover a dead man in
extremitie." Shakespeare, in a beautiful passage in "Cymbeline" (iv. 2),
thus touchingly alludes to it, making Arviragus, when addressing the
supposed dead body of Imogen, say:

"With fairest flowers,
Whilst summer lasts, and I live here, Fidele,
I'll sweeten thy sad grave: thou shalt not lack
The flower that's like thy face, pale primrose, nor
The azured harebell, like thy veins; no, nor
The leaf of eglantine, whom not to slander