There were three Ravens: sublime love and ridiculous riddles

The earliest surviving record of There were three Ravens is in Melismata, a book of songs compiled by Thomas Ravenscroft, published in 1611. Since Ravenscroft did not write this anonymous song, this article describes his role in bringing it to print.

The story told in the song is that a knight lay dead in a field; three ravens were prevented from predating on his body by his faithful hounds and hawks guarding him; his pregnant lover found his body, carried him and buried him; then she died from the strain. Within this simple tale is a centuries-old tradition of profound symbolism and meaning, which is explored.

There were three Ravens includes some nonsense syllables – “downe a downe hey downe hey downe” – so the next section puts this in the context of rhythmic vocalising in renaissance and traditional music.

In the modern era, Ravens has been interpreted in ways that are so bizarre and incongruous they are genuinely hilarious. The logical pitfalls and absurdities are explained.

In the oral tradition, variants of Ravens were collected in the intervening centuries in England, Scotland, the USA and Canada. A second article, Three Ravens and Twa Corbies: the transformations of a traditional song from the 17^th to the 20^th century, explores this song tradition.  

We begin with a video performance of There were three Ravens as published by Thomas Ravenscroft in 1611, performed with 4 voices and 4 lutes.

The music: Thomas Ravenscroft’s role

There had never been commercially printed books like Thomas Ravenscroft’s Pammelia, 1609, Deuteromelia, also 1609, and Melismata, 1611. In the introduction to Pammelia, he explained his purpose: to bring to the wider public songs that were sung privately. By this time, there were many books of art song on the market by such composers as John Dowland, for voices and lute or viols, but “this more familiar mirth and jocund melodie” was new to print, so “that fault being now mended, this kind of Musicke also is now commended to all mens kind acceptation.”

In the introduction, the Apologie, of his 1614 treatise, A Briefe Discourse, Ravenscroft explained that the songs in Pammelia, Deuteromelia and Melismata were not of his making, that “those former Harmonies by mee published in my Infancy … those Workes for the most part were not Compos’d by My selfe, but by divers and sundry Authors, which I never the lesse compil’d together, in regard of the generall delight men tooke in them.” The songs in the books are entirely anonymous and, for a great many of them, prior versions can be traced in sources from previous decades (as will be done in a dedicated article on Thomas Ravenscroft’s work, to appear on this site later this year). This means that the contents of Ravenscroft’s three books are, as we would now call it, folk song or traditional song: sung domestically, passed down the generations, changing form as they do so, their purpose social rather than commercial.

This means that Ravens had a life prior to publication, but of it we know nothing, as Melismata is the earliest recorded evidence of its existence. The contents of Melismata are organised into “Court Varieties”, “Citie Rounds”, “Citie Conceits”, “Country Rounds”, and “Country Pastimes”. No reasoning is given for the organisation, but the obvious explanation is the origin of the music, the places from which they were collected. Ravens is one of the “Country Pastimes”, and it appears in Melismata as follows.

There are 4 voices: treble, medius, tenor and bassus. The treble voice carries the melody. There are 10 verses, which I made 5 in the video which begins this article by collapsing every 2 verses into 1, replacing repetitions in odd-numbered stanzas with the words of the next stanza. For example, stanzas 1 and 2 …

There were three Ravens sat on a tree,
Downe a downe, hay downe, hay downe.
There were three Ravens sat on a tree
with a downe,
There were three Ravens sat on a tree,
they were as blacke as they might be,
with a downe derrie, derrie, derrie, downe, downe.

The one of them said to his mate,
Downe adowne, hay downe [hay downe],
The one of them said to his mate,
with adowne :
The one of them said to his mate
Where shall we our breakefast take?
with adowne dery [dery dery downe] downe.

… becomes the first …

There were three Ravens sat on a tree,
Downe a downe, hay downe, hay downe.
they were as blacke as they might be,
with a downe,
The one of them said to his mate,
Where shall we our breakefast take?
with a downe derrie, derrie, derrie, downe, downe.

As we see on the right, the only vocal line printed for the medius, tenor and bassus parts is the “Downe a downe”s, which we might wrongly assume to be a method to help singers orient themselves, to ensure that they are singing the rest of the unprinted words to the correct notes. However, in common with the other “Country Pastimes” in the book, all for 4 voices, there are insufficient notes for the words not indicated, which therefore cannot be sung. This can only mean that those notes which do not fit the syllables and for which no words are given are to be played on instruments. Ravenscroft therefore printed these songs for 4 voices accompanied by 3 or 4 instruments, depending on whether an instrument doubles the treble, just as an instrument must double the syllables in the other 3 voices, rather than stop and start.

The poem: sublime love

The story of There were three Ravens is that a dead knight lay in a field, observed by three ravens who wished to scavenge on his corpse. They could not, because his body was guarded by his faithful hounds and hawks. His beautiful and heavily pregnant lover lifted his bloody head, kissed his wounds, carried him on her back, and buried his body. By the end of the day, she also died. To give its full meaning justice, we will have to switch between the literal meaning, the song on the surface, and its symbolic meaning, the deeper layers that draw upon centuries of literary tradition, which contemporaneous 16^th and 17^th century singers and listeners would automatically have understood, not requiring the explanation that follows for 21^st century readers.  

Each stanza is a rhyming couplet in a solo voice, punctuated by “Downe a downe” syllables sung in 4 polyphonic voices. We will explore each couplet in turn. The “Downe a downe” lines are the subject of the following section.

There were three Ravens sat on a tree,
they were as blacke as they might be

Animal symbolism has been part of human communication since prehistory, evidenced by cave paintings dated to 47250 BC. In this poem, we have the symbolism of the ravens, hounds, hawks and fallow doe, all explored below. To understand the song, we must appreciate animal symbolism generally, and raven symbolism specifically.

In Genesis, the first book of the Christian Bible, the first story after the creation is the Fall of humanity in the garden of Eden, featuring an evil talking serpent who tricks Eve, and by extension Adam, into disobeying God, committing the Original Sin which leads to the introduction of death into the world for all creation, not just for humans. The clear message for our purpose is that animals have symbolic meaning, personalities, and they represent moral qualities. In Revelation 12:9 and in subsequent Christian commentary, the serpent is identified with Satan, the great dragon, the deceiver, the ruler of hell where the souls of sinners are sent to be punished for all eternity.

This is illustrated in Adam and Eve by Lucas Cranach the Elder (1472–1553), painted 1500–50 (private collection, shown on the right). We see Eve holding a branch of the forbidden Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil, Adam about to take the fruit, and the serpent in the tree, looking at Eve who he has just deceived. On the ground are a male and female lion, a stag, two birds and rabbit, to show that, before the Fall, all animals lived in harmony and everything that lived was vegetarian: killing only started after the serpent’s deception, before which there was no death. Genesis 1:29–30: “Then God said [to Adam and Eve], “I give you every seed-bearing plant on the face of the whole earth and every tree that has fruit with seed in it. They will be yours for food. And to all the beasts of the earth and all the birds in the sky and all the creatures that move along the ground – everything that has the breath of life in it – I give every green plant for food.” And it was so.”

Bestiaries were mid to late medieval compendiums of beasts which took their information from authorities, being other Christian writings, often several centuries before, mixed in with references to Greek and Roman mythology and teachings from The Bible. The purpose of a bestiary was not primarily to understand animals naturalistically – such naturalistic information as was available was in any case often repeated hearsay, heavily influenced by Greek, Roman and Christian mythology – but to understand God’s purpose for humanity. Every animal is an allegory, a moral message from God about how we should lead our lives, a sign exhorting Christian righteousness or a warning against sin.

These manuscripts, written in Latin and often illustrated, were compiled in western Europe from the mid-12^th century. They were most popular in the 13^th century, and decreased in number during the 14^th century. Their decline in quantity did not signify a reduction in influence: in the 15^th and 16^th centuries, they were translated into the vernacular in print, and the cultural currency of their animal symbolism remained. In the renaissance, there was in influx of Greek speakers into western Europe (see the article on L’homme armé), and this provided the opportunity for ancient Greek bestiaries to be copied and translated.

One such late 16^th century copy of an ancient bestiary goes back to the very roots of the phenomenon, as it was one of the key texts all later bestiaries relied on: Physiologus, written in Greek, probably in Alexandria, in the 3^rd or 4^th century. Its author is unknown and has been variously ascribed, including to Epiphanius, a 4^th century Bishop of Constantia, Cyprus. A printed book of Physiologus was published in Rome in 1587, then again in Antwerp the next year, with commentary by Ponce de Leon. It includes 25 chapters of Physiologus in its original Greek with a Latin translation, Ponce de Leon’s commentary in Latin, and each chapter has a half-page copperplate illustration, in place of the miniatures that often accompanied medieval manuscript bestiaries. The book also includes an account of the life of Saint Epiphanus, assumed author of Physiologus, and his sermon about Palm Sunday.

Due to the longevity of bestiaries’ cultural influence, it is not anachronistic to cite a mid-13^th century English bestiary, now shelf-marked MS Bodley 764, for the symbolism of the ravens, hounds, hawks and doe in the song published by Thomas Ravenscroft. Indeed, it is only in citing the bestiary that the meaning of the song becomes obvious, using symbolism that is replicated in late 16^th and early 17^th century sources contemporaneous with Ravenscroft, as we will soon see.

Translated from Latin to English, MS Bodley 764 states that the raven “pecks the eyes out of corpses before attacking the rest of the body.” Other bestiaries further explain that the eyes are pecked out first so the raven can reach and eat the brain. The Christian moral that follows is that just as the raven first pecks out the eyes, destroying physical sight, so the devil first removes the ability to judge correctly, destroying moral or spiritual sight, leaving the mind open to attack.

The Taymouth Hours, above right, has an instructive detail in the image. Flying above the black raven scavenging on a corpse is a white dove with an olive branch in its beak. Not only would this bring to mind for bestiary readers the contrast between its description of the raven, symbolising the devil who destroys moral insight, and its description of the dove, likened to a faithful preacher who builds moral insight, it would also remind readers of the flood story in Genesis chapters 6 to 9, which features both birds. God sent the flood to wipe out the wickedness of humanity on the Earth, drowning everyone except Noah and his family, who rode the flood in the wooden ark God had instructed them to make, with a representative sample of all animal species. After 150 days, the waters had receded sufficiently for the ark to come to rest on Mount Ararat, and Noah waited another 40 days for the waters to retreat further. He sent out a raven, which kept flying with nowhere to land, showing that life could not be sustained. He then sent out a dove, which also found nowhere to land but, being faithful, it returned. After 7 days, he sent the dove out again, and it returned with a freshly plucked olive leaf in its beak, meaning it had found somewhere to land and life could now be sustained. The contrast between the dove and raven is one of light and dark, life and death, faithful and unfaithful, godly and satanic. 

This idea is further emphasised in MS Bodley 764. Citing Proverbs 30:17, it states, “The raven signifies the blackness of sinners, as Solomon tells us: ‘The eye that mocks the father … the ravens of the valley shall pluck it out.” A fuller citation of that verse is, “The eye that mocks a father, that scorns an aged mother, will be pecked out by the ravens of the valley, will be eaten by the vultures.” The saying uses the habit of the raven that pecks out eyes as an example of God’s punishment for sinners. MS Bodley 764 explains, “The raven is the blackness of sin or unfaithfulness”.

The association of the raven with blackness and death continued in the same vein centuries later with Thomas Ravenscroft’s contemporaries. In the late 16^th and early 17^th century, playwrights, poets and musicians reflected the raven in the popular imagination back to audiences who went to the theatre, read books, and listened to or sang/played music. There follows examples from William Shakespeare, Edmund Spenser, Michael Drayton, and John Dowland.

In Act 2, Scene 3 of Titus Andronicus, first performed in 1593, William Shakespeare wrote several references to ravens. The first is when Lavinia says that an ugly valley is a fitting place for the ugly acts of Tamora, Queen of the Goths, and her secret lover, Aaron the Moor:   

And let her joy her raven-colour’d love;
This valley fits the purpose passing well.

He is “her raven-colour’d love” not only because he is a Moor, but because he will engage in the barbarism and death associated with the black raven. Tamora then describes the valley in a way that associates the raven with night and death: 

Here never shines the sun; here nothing breeds,
Unless the nightly owl or fatal raven

When Lavinia states that …

Some say that ravens foster forlorn children,
The whilst their own birds famish in their nests

… she is referencing the belief in the medieval bestiaries that ravens do not feed their own lighter offspring until they turn black. MS Bodley 764 states: “It is said of this bird that it does not feed its newly hatched young properly until it can see that they resemble itself and have the same dark feathers. As soon as it sees that their feathers are black, it recognises them as its own offspring and feeds them more copiously.”

In Romeo and Juliet, Act 3, Scene 2, first performed in 1595–96, Juliet longs for Romeo with words that emphasise the colour of the raven and its association with night:

Come, night. Come, Romeo. Come, thou day in night,
For thou wilt lie upon the wings of night
Whiter than new snow upon a raven’s back.

When Juliet learns from her nurse that Romeo has killed Tybalt and is banished, she makes use of the contrast between the natures and colours of the dove and raven, saying of Romeo:

Beautiful tyrant, fiend angelical!
Dove-feathered raven, wolvish-ravening lamb!

In other plays, Shakespeare makes the same association of the raven’s colour with night and with death by predation.

In Julius Caesar, Act 5, Scene 1, 1599, Cassius tells how

ravens, crows, and kites
Fly o’er our heads and downward look on us
As we were sickly prey.

In Macbeth, Act 1, Scene 5, 1606, Lady Macbeth says

The raven himself is hoarse
That croaks the fatal entrance of Duncan
Under my battlements.

The raven is not only linked by Ravenscroft’s contemporaries with death by predation, but also death by disease contamination. Othello, in the play of 1604 that bears his name, exclaims in Act 4, Scene 1:

O, it comes o’er my memory,
As doth the raven o’er the infected house,
Boding to all.

In The Tempest, Act 1, Scene 2, 1610–11, the servant Caliban curses his master, the magician Prospero, and his daughter, Miranda, with:

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

In Much Ado About Nothing, Act 2, Scene 3, 1598, Benedick says to himself, “I had as lief have heard the night-raven, come what plague could have come after it”, meaning “I would rather have heard a night-raven even if a raven brings the plague with it.”

In Edmund Spenser’s epic poem, Faerie Queene, 1590, extended 1596, he wrote in book 2, canto 7:

And after him Owles and Night-ravens flew,
The hatefull messengers of heavy things,
Of death and dolour telling sad tidings

In canto 12, he describes

The hoars[e] Night-raven, trump of dolefull drere

In book 5, stanza 42 of his poem, Barons’ Wars, 1596, revised 1603, Michael Drayton reinforces the idea of the raven as the bringer of fear: 

The ominous raven often he doth hear,
Whose croaking him of following horror tells.

The same imagery is employed by England’s greatest lutenist, John Dowland, in his signature tune, Lachrimae. Lachrimae began life as an instrumental pavan for lute in 1596. In 1600, he published his melody with words to be sung under the title, Flow my teares fall from your springs, in his Second Booke of Songs or Ayres. In 1604, he extended the composition further in a book of consort music with 7 variations on the melody: Lachrimae, or seaven teares figured in seaven passionate Pavans … set forth for the Lute, Viols, or Violons, in five parts. It was quite literally his signature tune: as we see on the right, he once signed his name in Latinised form, “Jo: Dolandi de Lachrimae”, because Lachrimae and its associated song, Flow my teares, were internationally popular.

The words of the song are intensely melancholic, expressing that all hope is gone, that the inhabitants of hell are more happy than those who feel the spite of the world. The opening stanza sets the scene …

Flow, my teares fall from your springs
Exilde for ever :  let mee morne
where nights black bird hir sad infamy sings,
there let mee live forlorne.

Given the historical and contemporaneous imagery, it is difficult to imagine that “nights black bird” who sings “hir sad infamy” could be any other than the raven, associated in this song as elsewhere with night, despair, death and hell. 

In summary, a 16^th or 17^th century singer or listener of the first couplet would hear them as:

There were three Ravens, harbingers of death, sat on a tree,
they were as blacke, as representative of night, sin, unfaithfulness, suffering, the devil and hell, as they might be

The one of them said to his mate,
Where shall we our breakefast take?

And so to the reality of ravens.

As we see on the right, raven chicks are lighter in colour than juveniles and adults, with flecks of white which become black as they grow. In this, the bestiaries are correct, but they follow this with the false information that therefore parents do not feed their chicks: they do, and male and female parents share the task.

We have seen above that there is a millennia-long convention of stories with talking animals. While it is clear that this song is in the tradition of animals taking on human attributes and representing moral qualities, it is at least possible there is a little more to it in this case. Ravens are among the birds that can mimic human speech, including repeating words when bred in captivity, as the video below illustrates. 

One of the ravens “said to his mate” which, in historical context, could have either of the meanings of “mate” in modern English. The word in Middle English from the mid 14^th century meant an associate; from the late 14^th century it meant a habitual companion or friend; and, in early modern English from the 1540s, one of a married pair.

In the song, it is likely to mean the latter, a sexual mate. Ravens typically mate for life and stay in pairs all year round. The third raven in the song may be their offspring or any additional raven, since they often stay in pairs or small families, and flock together in large groups. They roost in trees, as described in the song, or on cliff ledges, or on structures made by humans. 

Ravens are diurnal, active during the day. The common and mistaken belief that they are nocturnal – as in the “wings of night”, “Night-ravens” and “nights black bird” above – is due to their colour, associated symbolically with night, and the confusion of their hoarse, throaty call with other nocturnal creatures. Ravens may arrive at or depart from their roost at dawn or dusk, but they lack the specialised night vision of nocturnal birds such as owls.

Ravens are the largest of the corvids, a category of 135 species of bird which includes crows, rooks, magpies and jackdaws. The size of a raven is impressive, 60–68 cm long, with a 120–150 cm wingspan. They use their powerful beak to tear carrion, the largest part of their diet. They also hunt small live prey and eat insects, grains and berries.

“Where shall we our breakefast take?”, asks one raven to his mate, who replies …

Downe in yonder greene field,
There lies a Knight slain under his shield

… meaning they see an opportunity to eat the dead knight as carrion.

The observation of the bestiaries that ravens peck out eyes is true. Their prey is not only carrion, the already dead, but newborn lambs and calves, and farm animals in confined spaces which therefore cannot escape predation.

The size and power of the raven and its proportionately large beak are perfectly suited for its method of attack: they gouge and tear the softest and most vulnerable parts of the body to make their prey helpless – eyes, tongue, nose, navel, rectum, the udders of ewes and cows, and any puncture wounds they have made throughout the body. Their beak is so powerful that they can peck through the eye to cause brain damage, which can result in bleeding to death. They attack singly or in groups. During lambing, one raven distracts the ewe while the other or others attack her newborn lamb. They do not always kill outright, but can feed on the eyes, tongue and wounds while the animal lives, which then has to be put out of its misery by the farmer.    

Cam Hill, a Livestock Protection Program Coordinator, observes that “Ravens are quick and deadly. One producer was watching a cow calving on a grassy hillside when he saw a raven land near the cow. The calf was still in the birth canal. The raven hopped onto the calf, and all it takes is one quick peck to the eye. The rancher didn’t realize at first what had happened, but as soon as the calf was fully born, he drove up to the pair and found the calf was dead and its eye was gone. The year I examined 37 cases regarding calves and lambs which were killed by ravens, it was almost always the same scenario: the eyes, rear vents, anus, navel and soles of the feet were pecked away. Often all of those sites were pecked, or sometimes just a couple, but in 95% of cases the eye was the first strike area.” (Source: see bibliography, Thomas, Heather Smith, 2022.)

From such observations, it is easy to see why ravens have been associated with sin, suffering, death, the devil and hell.

Three symbolic colours run through the song. The first was the ravens “as blacke as they might be”, symbolic of sin and death. In this couplet we have the second: the ravens spy the knight “Downe in yonder greene field”. In medieval and renaissance art, symbolic colours could have more than one meaning, depending on context. Green was typically the colour of fertility and life, which contrasts with the deathly black ravens. Green was also a reminder of the shortness of life, that the season of green turns to grey, which is surely the case here.

The association of greenery with the shortness of life is seen most obviously in the tradition of foliate heads in church architecture. They began to appear in high status English churches in the 12^th century in the new Norman style, and then in greater numbers in Gothic churches of the 13^th to 16^th centuries. Foliate heads were used in Christian art to remind viewers of the words of Job 14:1-2, “Man, who is born of woman, is short of days and full of trouble. Like a flower, he comes forth, then withers away; like a fleeting shadow, he does not endure”; and of Isaiah 40:6-8 (also cited in 1 Peter 1:24-25), “All flesh is like grass, and all its glory like the flowers of the field. The grass withers and the flowers fall when the breath of the Lord blows on them; indeed, the people are grass. The grass withers and the flowers fall, but the word of our God stands forever.”

Foliate heads are often visibly associated with discomfort, as we see on the inner roof of the reredos (altar screen) of Beverley Minster, carved in the late 1330s or early 1340s. Four of the six heads in the reredos have their mouths painfully stuffed, two with in-growing foliage (above) and two with roof beams. The remaining two heads emerge from foliage with their tongues out (below), the medieval and renaissance artists’ indication of foolishness: they are too foolish to understand the brevity of mortal existence, the inevitability of green life fading to grey death, of our return to the ground from which God created Adam, and therefore the need for Christian moral rectitude in preparation for divine judgement. It is because of these associations that foliate heads appear in Christian churches and as death heads on tombs.

(For a refutation of the obvious fakelore that foliate heads are a pagan survival in churches, an idea put forward by Lady Julia Raglan in an easily-debunked article of 1939, in which she called them green men, click here and go to the subheading, Foliate heads.) 

In the “greene field”, the knight is “slain under his shield”. What was a knight? And why was he slain?

The structure of Elizabethan society had developed from the medieval feudal and manorial system, under which a person’s social status was predicated on their relationship to land. In theory, all land belonged to the monarch, who leased allotments of land to land-holders, down the hierarchy as long as conditions were met. The conditions of land-holding were different according to status.

Under the medieval monarch were the aristocracy or gentry, those considered of gentle birth, hence gentleman. They paid the monarch for their land by being called upon as mounted knights giving military service, with their own soldiers. Under a gentleman were the vassals, permanent tenants of the lord of the manor, obliged to be his soldiers, to serve and protect their lord and be prepared to fight for him in battle. Under them were freeman, rent-paying farmers, tenants who owed little or no service to the lord. Under them were the bondmen, serfs or villains, unfree tenant farmers who were not allowed to hold land, and themselves belonged to their lord along with the land they worked, so that if the land changed hands, so did the unfree tenant bondmen.

By the time of Queen Elizabeth’s reign, there had been substantial changes to this system. When Henry VIII took power from the Catholic Church and abolished the monasteries in the 1530s, monastic land was sold, making the buyer the outright land-owner rather than land-holder. Armies were increasingly professionalised, so the medieval knight and his vassal soldiers were no longer part of warfare. In Elizabethan England, the title of knight – which had to be bestowed by a monarch or military leader, and could not be inherited – was a general title of honour, no longer specific to military service. A knight was one of the class of gentlemen, a status marked by living off the income from land rents, so that they did not have to engage in manual labour. In the renaissance social hierarchy, an esquire was the lowest status among gentlemen, above them the knight, then progressively the baron, viscount, earl, marquis, duke and monarch.

In either period, being a knight was inseparable from being a Christian and having Christian values. The image on the right is in the tradition of the Christian knight, the Just Man, armed with his Christian virtues and the shield of faith, from William Peraldus, Summa de vitiis, England, 1225–75 (British Library, Harley MS 3244, folio 28r). The same symbolism continued through the centuries and is used in the title of a renaissance treatise on living the Christian life by Dutch theologian and educationalist, Desiderius Erasmus. In his Enchiridion Militis Christiani (Manual of the Christian Knight or Handbook of the Christian Soldier), 1501, he expressed it thus: “we need to have in mind always that the life of mortal men is nothing but a certain and perpetual exercise of war … without ceasing we are besieged with so great a number of armed vices … Heaven is promised to him that fights lustily … nothing pertains so much to the discipline of this war than what you surely know, and presently have recorded and exercised in your mind always, with what kind of armour or weapons you ought to fight, and against what enemies you must encounter and joust … Prayer and knowledge are the chief armour of a Christian man.”

The words of Ravens give no date, no time period, so it is not possible at this point in the analysis to state whether we should understand knight in the medieval sense, militia in armour on horseback, or the renaissance sense, an honorary title. Nor are we informed why the knight was “slain under his shield”. There is no mention of other bodies, no horse as for a medieval mounted knight, and the presence of his hounds and hawks discounts that he has died on a battle field. We could speculate that he died in a duel. In this period, a duel was a way of resolving, by one-to-one combat, an insult to one’s honour, reputation, or disputes in love. A duel was over when the winning party was satisfied with the result and the losing party accepted it: that could be the submission, injury, or death of the opponent.

The missing details in the poem – what era of knight he was, why he had been fighting, who killed him – are not truly absent, but implied by the symbolic imagery with which contemporaneous singers and listeners were familiar, as we will see in the analysis to follow.

His hounds they lie downe at his feete,
So well they can their Master keepe,

The longest entry in the mid-13^th century English bestiary, MS Bodley 764, is for dogs. “There is no creature cleverer than the dog: they have more understanding than any other beast. They also know their name and love their master. Dogs are of various kinds: some track wild beasts in the forests, others guard flocks of sheep from the attacks of wolves, other guard the houses and wealth of their master, lest they are robbed at night by thieves, and will lay down their lives for their master.”

The next part of the description of dogs in the bestiary reflects the story of Ravens. “They go willingly to hunt with him and will guard his dead body, never leaving it. In short, their nature is such that they cannot live without human company. We read how dogs love their masters very greatly, as in the case of King Garamantes, who was captured by his enemies and led into captivity, but two hundred hounds forced their way as a body through the enemy line and brought him back, resisting all opposition. When Jason was killed, his dog refused all food, and died of hunger. The dog of King Lysimachus hurled itself into the flames when its master’s funeral pyre was lit. When a dog could not be separate from its condemned master in the days of the consul Apius Junius Pictimus, it accompanied him to prison, and when he was executed soon afterwards it followed him to the scaffold, barking loudly. The people of Rome took pity on it, and gave it food, but it took the food to its master’s mouth. Finally the corpse was thrown into the Tiber, and the dog tried to bring it ashore.”  

The three hungry ravens could not use the knight’s body as carrion, could not peck out his eyes and tear his flesh, because his faithful hounds guarded his body. In the bestiaries, and in Ravens, dogs are a man’s best friend, symbolising the Christian virtues of faithfulness and steadfastness.

His hawks they flie so eagerly
There’s no fowle dare him come nie

In MS Bodley 764, hawks also symbolise Christian virtues: “The hawk is the image of the holy man, who seizes the Kingdom of God. It is written in the book of Job: ‘Does the hawk fly by your wisdom, and stretch her wings toward the south?’ However intelligent one of the elect may be, the Holy Spirit will stretch out his wings by inspiring his thoughts, and he will cast off his old raiment to take flight by virtue of his new feathers … they lose their old feathers and put on new ones, just as a monk, once he is confined to the cloister, will put off his previous vices and adorn himself with the clothing of a new man … The hawk’s perch signifies the rectitude of life under the monastic rule, because it is suspended above earthly things, and separates monks from earthly desires. He who firmly holds to the statutes of monastic life sits bound to his perch … The hawk is accustomed to have jesses on its feet lest it takes the opportunity to fly away when it is released. Just as the feet of the hawk are humbled and restrained by jesses, so men are restrained by the fear of judgement and the pain of punishment.”

Taken literally, the knight, with his hounds and hawks for hunting, had the accoutrements of the nobility; and the hounds protected his body from predation on the ground, the hawks from predation from the air, that is, from the ravens. On the symbolic level, together they are metaphors for the Christian virtues of faithfulness and self-discipline, on guard against the ravens which symbolise unfaithfulness, sin, suffering, and the devil.

Down there comes a fallow Doe
As great with yong as she might goe

The fallow doe is as symbolic as the hounds and hawks. But whereas the hounds really are dogs and the hawks really are birds, the fallow doe is not a deer, but a woman.

The likening of a sexually appealing woman to a doe has a long history. The first part of the book of Proverbs (1:1–22:16) in the Christian Old Testament, the Jewish Tenakh, states that it was written by King Solomon. If this is correct, it can be dated to 970–931 BC. In Proverbs chapter 5, Solomon the father gives advice to his sons to keep away from adulterous women, to choose the faithful woman who is a “loving doe, a graceful fawn, may her breasts satisfy you always, may you be captivated by her love forever” (5:19).  

The metaphor of the doe as an attractive woman, and of the forester or keeper hunting the doe as sexual pursuit, penetrating her with his arrow, was well-established in the poetry of the renaissance and baroque periods. Two examples prior to Ravens are in the Henry VIII Book or Henry VIII Manuscript, compiled 1510–20 (British Library MS Additional 31922), so-called because this anthology of 112 pieces of music includes 33 of the King’s compositions. The Henry VIII Manuscript has three songs about foresters, which make an instructive comparison, as the first is to be taken literally, the second two metaphorically.

The song to be taken literally is the anonymous I am a joly foster [forester], folios 69v–71r, which includes the lines:

I cane bend and draw a bow
and shot well enough.

I have strengh to mak it fle
and kyll bothe hart and hynd.

I can blow the deth of a dere
as well as any that ever I see.

No metaphors there. Blow thi thorne, hunter on folios 39v–40r is a song by William Cornysh, who was appointed in Henry’s court to provide music and drama, and as Master of the Children of the Chapel Royal. The burden (repeated chorus) of the song is …

Blow thi horne hunter and blow thi horne on hye
ther ys a do [doe] In yonder wode [wood] in faith she woll not dy
now blow thi horne hunter
and blow thi horne Joly hunter.

The doe will not die because the deer penetrated with the hunter’s arrow is a metaphor for intercourse. All the stanzas of Blow thi thorne play on double entendres in various ways, such as …

Sore this dere strykyn ys.
and yet she bledes no whytt. [bleeds not at all] 
she lay so fayre. I cowde nott mys.
lord I was glad of it.

As I stod under a bank:
the dere shoffe [shoved forward] on the mede. [meadow]
I stroke her so that downe she sanke.
but yet she was not dede.

Here I leve and mak an end.
now of this hunters lore.
I thynk his bow. ys well unbent:
hys bolt may fle no more.

The third song is on folios 65v–66r. I have bene a foster [forester] by Robert Cooper uses similar imagery to describe an aging man who has become sexually impotent. Though female deer are not mentioned, selected stanzas are worth citing to illustrate that being a forester, keeper or hunter is used as a metaphor for the sexual chase and act.

I have bene a foster
long and many a day
foster wyl I be no more
no lenger shote I may
yet have I bene a foster                                     

Every bowe for me ys to bygge
myne arow ny [now] worne ys.
The glew ys slypt frome the nyk 
[the glue on the arrow has failed]
when I shuld shoote I myse
yet have I bene a foster                                  

Lady venus hath commaundyd me
owt of her courte to go.
Ryght playnly she shewith me
that beawtye ys my foo. [foe]
yet have I bene a foster                              

My berd ys so hard god wote 
[god wote: God knows, only God knows]
when I shulde maydyns kysse
Thay stand abak and make it strange. [strange: estrange, they remove themselves]
lo age ys cause of this.
yet have I bene a foster                                   

So we see that a century before Thomas Ravenscroft published Ravens in 1611, with its “fallow Doe As great with yong as she might goe”, any reader or listener would have understood doe as a reference to a sexually attractive woman who was heavily pregnant because she had been metaphorically pursued and penetrated by the arrow of a forester, keeper or hunter. 

After the publication of Ravens, other songs continued to use the millennia-old metaphor of the doe as a sexually attractive woman, including in broadside ballads. A broadside ballad was a song printed on a broadsheet on cheap paper, without music but indicating the tune by its title, sold in the street from the 16^th to the 19^th century, particularly popular in the 17^th century. (Each broadside following will be referred to in brackets by its number in the online English Broadside Ballad Archive – EBBA – and by its holding institution, collection and shelfmark, e.g. EBBA 19607, Magdalene College, Pepys Collection 1.391.)

As we have seen with the Henry VIII Manuscript, in some broadside ballads we should take the fallow doe literally. One such is The Noble Fisher-Man, 1686–88 (several surviving copies, including EBBA 33332, National Library of Scotland, Crawford.EB.683), in which we have the lines:

This Out-law was weary of the wood-side
and chasing of the Fallow Deer.

No symbolism there. In other broadsides the fallow doe is clearly a metaphor. One such is John Robinsons Park, Or a merry fit of Wooing, a broadside of uncertain date, possibly 1700 (EBBA 31852, University of Glasgow Library, Euing Ballads 144; and EBBA 32068, Magdalene College, Pepys Ballads 358(8)). The summary introductory verse, not to be sung, reads:

Within a Park a young Man met a Maid
With courting and sporting the Damsel with him staid
In pastime and pleasure she uttered her mind
Saying pray thee sweet hony be loving and kind.

There is no mention of any fallow deer there, nor do they appear in the woodcuts that decorate the broadside (below). But they dominate the stanzas, and it is worth citing several of them to show how the metaphor works.

Sweet hony make much
of thy Fallow Deer,
To hunt them and chase them
thou needst not to fear;
Take pleasure at home
to content thy mind,
And I pray thee sweet hony
be loving and kind.

Within thy own Park, Love
thou hast a pure Doe,
To hunt at thy pleasure
full well thou dost know,
Then take thy fill
to content thy mind,
Then I pray thee sweet hony
be loving, &c,

For many a time
abroad I did go
To see my Hounds run
after a wild Doe,
Though now I confess
it hath done me much harm,
Now Il stay at home hony
to keep my love warm.

Come all you brave Huntsmen,
that loves Fallow Deer
Unto this my story
I pray lend an ear.
If hunting the Doe
come to you by kind,
The sound of the Horn
will run still in your mind.

Concluding if any
desire to know
What is the true meaning
of this Fallow Doe;
Or why this Theam
doth run so in mind
To say pray the sweet, &c.

As late in an evening
I chanced to walk
I heard a young couple
most lovingly talk.
But what they did else
It must stay behind,
Saying, &c.

Their sport being ended
a way they did go
This gallant brave Keeper
and his Fallow Doe.
For sporting and courting
he had pleased her mind,
Saying pray thee sweet honey
be loving and kind.

In John Robinsons Park, Or a merry fit of Wooing, fallow doe is a metaphor for a sexually appealing woman, and hunting the fallow doe symbolises sexual pursuit. The broadside advises its readers, singers and listeners that promiscuity is not advisable – “For many a time abroad I did go To see my Hounds run after a wild Doe, Though now I confess it hath done me much harm”. Instead, the broadside writer favours sexual activity within a committed and stable relationship – “Now Il stay at home hony to keep my love warm … Take pleasure at home to content thy mind” – so that monogamous sexual pursuit is “loving and kind”.

Why a fallow doe in particular? Fallow deer are native to Europe, taking their name from their fallow (pale brown) upper body. It is not clear why this particular species of deer was used as a symbol of attractive women and sexual pursuit. It may have been their graceful movements and placid temperament, or simply that, being numerous, they were familiar enough for the hunting symbolism to be recognised.

She lift up his bloody hed
And kist his wounds that were so red

In this couplet there are further symbolic inferences that would have been obvious for contemporaneous singers and listeners. 

The wording that the woman “kist his wounds that were so red” is a very particular detail which has two associations: of the colour red, and of kissing wounds.

The ravens, as we have seen, are “as blacke as they might be”, black in renaissance symbolism being the colour of night, sin, unfaithfulness, suffering, the devil, and hell. The ravens see the knight “Downe in yonder greene field”, green being the colour of life and its transitory nature. Now we have the knight’s “wounds that were so red”, the colour of power and authority in some contexts, and in others, as here, the colour of passion and sacrifice, particularly relating to the wounds of Christ or a saint. Given that, are we to understand that the knight has sacrificed his life for the pregnant woman? Has he been in a duel to defend and fight for her, and lost? 

It is now clear that the nature of the relationship between the woman and the knight is that of lovers. The tenderness and intimacy she shows him in death, lifting up his head, kissing his wounds, indicates that she was the knight’s fallow doe, and that the child she carries is his.

The kissing of wounds is, on the literal level, a heart-breaking detail that shows her attachment, devotion and care. On the symbolic level it takes us, like the colour symbolism and the animal symbolism, back to Christian theology.

Catherine of Siena (1347–80) had visions of receiving Christ’s wounds and heart from him. She was canonised in 1461, and her story was depicted in religious art of the 16^th and 17^th century, contemporaneous with Ravens, showing her kissing the wounds of Christ. One example is below, a print from an engraving made by Flemish artist Pieter de Jode I, after Italian artist Francesco Vanni, published by Italian printer Matteo Florimi in 1597.

Below are two more examples. On the left, an engraving from 1588 by Italian artist, Ventura Salimbeni, of Christ inviting Saint Catherine to kiss the wound in his side and drink his blood (Wellcome Collection 4606i). On the right, a painting by Flemish artist Antoon van den Heuvel (1600–77), Saint Catherine of Siena Kissing the Wounds of Christ (Museum of Fine Arts Ghent, Inv. 1929-AX).

If the woman kissing the wounds of the knight reminds singers and listeners of devotion to Christ, does this mean that the knight in some way represents Christ? The answer, as we will now see, is an empathic yes: Ravens is an extension of a story template that had persisted since the 12^th century, that of the self-sacrificing lover-knight as a metaphor for Christ.

An exemplum (Latin for example) is a real or fictitious story used as a moral example. In the medieval period, there were manuscript books of exempla (plural) for use in sermons and, from the 12^th century, the allegory of Christ the lover-knight was ubiquitous. There were several versions of the story, which not coincidentally had parallels in the chivalric romances of King Arthur, in which an evil-doer captured a lady, who was fought for by a knight, and was saved by his heroism, fighting prowess and endurance.

One rendering of the Christ the lover-knight story is in the Ancrene Riwle or Ancrene Wisse – meaning Rule or Guide for Anchoresses – written c. 1225–40 in Herefordshire for the spiritual instruction of nuns who had chosen a life of religious seclusion. In this version of the allegory, a lady in a castle was surrounded by enemies. The knight tried to woo her, but she rejected him. Nonetheless, he rode out on his horse to joust for her freedom and was killed. His body acted as a shield to protect her, analogous to Christ’s self-sacrifice on the cross.  

The same story is told in more detail in a 14^th century preaching manuscript (British Library, Harley 7322, folio 26r–v). Translated from the Latin, the story is:  

It is said in some chronicles that there was a certain noble lady named Faustina, besieged on all sides by her enemies, whom nevertheless a noble king fell in love with. He therefore sent to her solemn messengers with letters expressing his love for her, along with various gifts. However, she herself received the gifts, refusing love. But the king sent other more solemn messengers with letters and gifts, which he did as before and she completely despised his love. Then this faithful and congenial king approached her in person, showing her his power and promising her that she would be queen in his kingdom and that she would love him from her heart. But she, miserable, completely despised him. To whom the king said tearfully: Woman, I sympathise with your misery since you are besieged on all sides by enemies, and you cannot escape in any way. Nevertheless, I will fight for you and endure the blows if you still wish to love me after death. Spiritually, by this queen I understand human nature cast out of paradise and besieged in this foul valley by the devil, the flesh, the world, and other enemies. Therefore, this good and gracious King is Christ, who loved our daughter so much that he was willing to die for her, and who does not care to love him back in life or death.

These two versions of the Christ as lover-knight story are unusual in that they are the only surviving exemplars to focus on the knight or king’s attempt to woo the lady before combat and death. In all other variants, the emphasis is on the lady’s response after the knight has died for her. This is what we find, for example, in the sermon for the Gospel on Easter Sunday in The Vernon Manuscript (Bodleian Library, Oxford, MS. Eng. poet. a. 1, folio 185v), a large volume of religious and didactic texts in Middle English, c. 1390. A knight with a large amount of land had a wife, and “More he louede hire þen his lyf” (More he loved her than his life). When he had to go overseas, a man tried to take advantage of his wife, “to defoule hire ȝif he may”, which suggests attempted wooing rather than attempted rape because he didn’t succeed and never would have done, “So wel heo loued hire lord euere” (So well she loved her lord ever). On his return, the knight sought out and fought the interloper, but was himself killed. The story continues (original Middle English followed by the same in modern English in italics) … 

Him ouer com . to deþe him þraste
Þat kniht hedde also . mony wounde.
Þat dye he moste . in a stounde.

He [the interloper] overcame [the knight], to death him thrashed
That knight’s head also had many wounds
That die he must in a short time.

Gret serwe . heo hedde in herte.
Þat he for hire . schulde dye so smerte.
And glad heo was . also forþi.
Þat he hedde ouercome . hire enemy.

Great sorrow he had in his heart
That he for her should die in such a state of pain
And also glad he was therefore
That he had overcome her enemy.

If we take the story literally, it doesn’t seem to make sense that the knight had overcome his wife’s enemy. The very opposite appears to be the case, as the knight was wounded to the point of death and the interloper lived. But this paradox does make sense as an allegory of Christian theology: Christ the knight-lover had overcome the interloper, the devil, by fighting him on the cross, by giving his own life as a sacrifice for humanity’s Original Sin in the Fall (described above in the explanation for the first couplet), thus depriving the devil of his power over humanity. This parallel explains the wife’s response in the story, an allegory for Christian devotion. The verse continues (modern English translation): 

For sorrow she was certain what to do,
That he so much by his nature acted so.
She took his shirt that same time,
All bloody with many a wound,
And hung it at the foot of her bed
With weeping and likewise with mourning,
So she would ever have remembrance
Of that constancy in love and that event,
To worship him and for him pray,
Always to her ending day.
And when she was tempted by anything,
To think of any wretched sin,
She looked soon upon that shirt.
And it was completely wretched and painful
When she thought on his constancy in love,
That her lord acted so she was equipped,
That he would, completely according to his nature,
Fight and die for her love.
And when this thought came upon her,
She rejected all wickedness instantly.
Forever she had it in her mind
That he had done a deed in accordance with his nature.
So should every Christian man
Think on Jesu, the only God.

The figurative interpretation continues, exceeding the length of the story of the knight and lady, describing Christ being crucified in terms of an allegorical knight. Medieval knights were armoured for battle, so if Christ was a knight, what was he armed with? What follows gives one version of the answer in this well-established literary tradition (in Middle English then modern English).

And Ih[es]u soone . for gret loue.
Þat he to Monnes soule . wolde p[ro]ue.
Tok vppon hym . þat Batayle.
Þe false fend . to Asayle.
He Armed hym . ful douhtily.
Siker to beo . of þat enemy.
Monnes cloþyng . he dude vp on.
Flesch . and Blood . In Marie he nom.
For þe fend . him schulde not knowe
Ar he hym toke . and brouhte lowe.
For and þe fend . he wuste miht.
Þat he haue met scholde . wiþ þat kniht

And Jesu soon, for great love,
So that he would prove man’s soul worthy,
Took upon himself that battle
To assail the false fiend [Satan, the devil]
He armed himself, with complete braveness,
Securely toward that enemy.
He put on man’s clothing,
He took flesh and blood in Mary
So the fiend would not recognise him
Before he took hold of him and defeated him,
So that he can guard the fiend with supernatural power,
That he has his measure of scalding with that knight

There follows an extended description of Christ the lover-knight, using the knight in battle as an allegory of the crucifixion. A more condensed version is found in a 14^th century book of sermons, written in Latin interspersed with Middle English phrases (Balliol College Archives and Manuscripts, Oxford, MS Balliol 149, folio 32v). In modern English:

I understand this soldier, Christ, who was born of a noble family because he was the most valiant son of God, was, as it was evident today, in the war against the devil. And behold how wonderfully this soldier was armed to proceed to war. First he had his clean body, and for his hauberk [chainmail shirt] which is full of holes, he had his body full of wounds; for a helmet, he had a crown of thorns on his head, and for a plate armour, he had two nails fixed in his hands; for spurs, he had a nail fixed in his feet. For a horse, he had a cross on which he hung; as a shield, he placed his side and thus advanced against the enemy with a spear, not in his hand but a putrefied wound in his side.

The imagery is striking: the holes in chain mail are analogous to the wounds in Christ’s skin from the lashes before he was crucified; the knight’s helmet is his thorny crown of humiliation; the metal of armour is the metal of the nails in his hands; his spurs, the nails in his feet; the knight’s mount, his horse, is Christ mounted on a cross; the knight’s protective shield is Christ’s own battered body protecting others; his spear is not to wound others, but his own wound from a soldier’s spear. Everything is an inversion: weapons are wounds; the vanquished is the victor; the dead is the eternally living.

The paradoxical metaphor of Christ the lover-knight is so ubiquitous in medieval sermons and literature, in Latin, Middle English and Middle French, that what follows is the briefest pick from further examples.

In the epic poem by William Langland, Piers Plowman, written c. 1380, Christ the knight wore his human flesh as his armour to joust to the death with “þe foule fende” (the foul fiend, the devil). He did so by riding the cross like a horse (as we have seen above). This is not, as is usual in the tradition, for a lady who is analogous to humankind, but directly “for mankynde sake”. Once crucified, he rose again to storm the castle, being the gates of hell. The souls who died between the creation of Adam and Eve and the time of Christ’s crucifixion could not enter heaven, since Christ had not yet brought salvation: his harrowing of or descent into hell in the time between his crucifixion and resurrection redeemed and freed the righteous souls. Since Christ came disguised as a lowly man rather than a high king, the devils did not recognise him (again, as we have seen above) and thus were unprepared for the harrowing of hell. 

A version of the story appears in Dives and Pauper, written anonymously in c. 1405–10, an exposition in verse of the 10 Commandments. It survives in five manuscripts, and was printed by Richard Pynson in 1493, popular enough to be reprinted by Wynkyn de Worde in 1496. The Dives and Pauper variant of the story is that of the husband who fights and dies for his wife. As he is dying, he sends her a letter (MS Douce 295, first half of 15^th century, folio 142v):

Beholde myn woundis and have hem in þine þouȝte
For al the good þat ben þine with myn blod I have hem bouȝhte.

Beholde my wounds and have them in your thought
For all the good that was yours, with my blood I have them bought.

She receives the bloodied shirt of her dead husband and is approached by suitors. She tells them:

Whil I have his blod in myn mende
Þat was to me so goode and kende,
Schal I nevir husbonde take
But hym þat died for my sake. 

While I have his blood in my mind
That was to me so good and kind,
Shall I never husband take
But him that died for my sake. 

The trade guilds of most major towns performed their own unique cycle of miracle plays about the lives of saints, and mystery plays, vernacular dramas which told the whole story of Christian redemption from the creation to Christ’s birth, death and resurrection, ending with the Final Judgement. The drama was broken up into a cycle of up to 48 plays, each performed by a different trade guild. The earliest evidence is from 1210, when the municipal authorities had taken over the general running of the mysteries. They continued until the 16^th century, when a series of measures by the monarchy led to them being partially and then completely suppressed on the basis that they represented the ‘old faith’ of Catholicism. (For more detail on the forced demise of the mystery plays, see the article about Coventry Carol.)

In the Towneley (Wakefield) play of The Crucifixion, c. 1450, the imagery of Christ on the cross as a knight in a jousting match is present in the words of Christ’s torturers. They taunt him, saying that since he called himself a king he must joust in a tournament riding the cross as his horse, and he is promised he will “bydys a shaft”, suffer a lance. In the York cycle, 15^th century, Jesus describes “Myne armoure riche [lavish] and goode [righteous] … Of maydenes flessh and bloode”.

In summary, there are two components to the Christ as lover-knight tradition.

The first is the analogy of the knight who fought an enemy who threatened a lady, and was killed in the duel. He did so either to woo a lady who continued to reject him, or to defend the honour of his wife who, upon his self-sacrificial death, sorrowfully pledged her lifelong loyalty.

The second component of the tradition is the explanation of the analogy, full of jousting or battling knight metaphors to describe Christ defeating the devil by his death on the cross. Sometimes this second component is independent, without the story of the knight and his lady, and sometimes it extends the story to Christ the knight-warrior harrowing hell between his crucifixion and resurrection, defeating the devils and releasing the captive souls.   

It is the first component on which Ravens is based. To be clear, the knight in the song is not Christ, but a metaphor for Christ, just as the ravens are not sin and suffering, but metaphors for sin and suffering. The template of the tale of the lover-knight typically begins with the knight’s battle on behalf of his lady, with the emphasis on her sorrowful and faithful devotion in response to his death. This is the emphasis in Ravens, in which the story begins when the knight is already dead. The song has taken the template and, as previous writers had done, given it new and original details, not slavishly repeating the prior source. In Ravens, it is the enormity of the woman’s acts in response to her lover’s death that is new: that is the apex of the song, and its most affecting detail.

So far in the story, we have seen that she lifted up his bloody head and kissed his wounds. The next couplet continues …

She got him up upon her backe,
And carried him to earthen lake, 

This takes the medieval tradition of Christ the lover-knight one stage further: not only was the woman he died for grateful for his sacrifice, she showed it by honouring his dead body, removing it from the field. Since she was heavily pregnant, to either drag him or to carry him on her back would have been her only options, but such an act would put such strain on her that it would threaten her physical safety. Adding to the centuries-long tradition of the knight slain for love as a metaphor for Christ, she now mirrors the knight’s sacrifice with her own gargantuan effort, faithfulness, physical endurance, and love.

She carried him to an earthen lake, which is not a term in geography. There is an earthen pond, meaning a pond created by excavating soil, lined with natural materials such as clay to hold water, so we may theorise that an earthen lake is a deeper equivalent. The difference between a pond and a lake is depth: ponds are shallow, allowing sunlight to penetrate to the floor, whereas lakes are deeper so sunlight cannot reach all the way down, thus creating different ecosystems. However, if we assume this meaning for earthen lake, the problem remains that such a term for a body of water does not exist.   

In English of the 14^th to the 16^th century, lake (lak, lace, lac, laik, lacke, lack) had more than one meaning: either an expanse of water, equivalent to the modern word lake; or a pit, shaft, or hole, figuratively a grave or burial chamber. For example, in Ludus Coventriae (Coventry Play), a cycle of mystery plays written in 1475 (British Library, Cotton Vespasian D.8), lake in the sense of pit or grave appears 6 times in 4 different plays of the cycle, as follows. The original Middle English is followed by modern English in italics.   

In play XXXI: Pilate’s Wife’s Dream, Satan speaks of his fear of Christ coming to hell to free the captive souls: 

Therfore I xal go warnyn helle that thei loke abowte,
That thei make redy chenys to bynd hym with in lake.

Therefore I shall go warn hell that they look about,
That they make ready chains to bind him with in a pit.

In play XXXV: The Resurrection, the third soldier recalls of Christ: 

whan he dede ryse out of his lake,
Than was ther suche an erthe-quake,
That alle the worlde it gan to shake

when he did rise out of his grave,
Then was there such an earthquake,
That all the world it began to shake

In play XXXVII: Christ Appearing To Mary, she says of him …

I kan nat se hym, alas! alas!
He is stolyn awey owt of this lake.

I cannot see him, alas! alas!
He is stolen away out of this grave.

… and then …

A, woful wrecche! whedyr xal I go?
My joye is gon owth of this lake.       

Ah, woeful wretch! wherever shall I go?
My joy is gone out of this grave.       

In play XLI: The Assumption of the Virgin, an angel tells Mary that nothing is impossible for God, as …

Into the lake of lyonys to Danyel the prophete

Into the pit of lions He sent Daniel the prophet

… and not a hair of his head was harmed. Later in the play, the apostles bear the body of the Virgin Mary. John says:

Now rest we us, brother, upon this pleyn lake

Now we rest ourselves, brother, upon this perfect grave

The same meaning of lake is found in several other texts, such as “Daniell in ye lake of lyouns” in The miroure of mans saluacionne, a 15^th century translation into English of the Speculum humanae salvationis (Mirror of human salvation), originally written in Italy in c. 1310–24, soon popular all around western and central Europe, as the 400 manuscript copies surviving today testify. One copy of the English translation from Beeleigh Abbey, Maldon, Essex, is dated c. 1600 (sold at Christie’s in 2000 and now privately owned).

Therefore the most likely and obvious contextual meaning of the couplet …

She got him up upon her backe,
And carried him to earthen lake, 

… is that she carried him to his earthen grave, that she buried him in the ground. This also makes poetic sense, as back, pronounced /bæk/ (as written in the International Phonetic Alphabet), does not rhyme with lake, the body of water, pronounced /leɪk/, but it does rhyme with lake, meaning a pit or grave, pronounced in the 16^th and 17^th century without the final e, so /læk/, as it is pronounced in the video which begins this article (also accessible by clicking here). 

She buried him before the prime,
She was dead her selfe ere even-song time

The immense exertion of carrying a corpse continued as the pregnant woman single-handedly buried her lover’s body. The point is that the enormity of her effort was in equal proportion to the enormity of her love, the exertion of which ultimately resulted in her own death from the strain and exhaustion, leading to the point of the story in the next and final couplet.  

Christian symbolism has been foundational throughout the song and, in this couplet, the passing of time is marked by the hours of the liturgy. The liturgy is a set form of worship, and the Liturgy of the Hours (Liturgia Horarum), also called the Divine Office (Divinum Officium), is set prayers at 7 points in the day, called the canonical hours. A book called a breviary or book or hours consists of these prayers.

“She buried him before the prime”, Prime being the First Hour of prayers, said at sunrise, the first hour of daylight. “She was dead her selfe ere even-song time”, even-song being the singing of Psalms and ecclesiastical chant near the hour of twilight. In other words, it took the length of a day, the hours of daylight, for the pregnant woman to die from the exertion and heartbreak of carrying and burying her love.

As we have seen, the song calls her “a fallow doe”. The mid-13^th century English bestiary, MS Bodley 764, states that “Deer by nature like to change their homeland, and for this reason seek pastures, helping each other on the journey … The nature of deer is like that of members of Holy Church who leave this homeland, that is, the world, because they prefer the new pastures of heaven, and support each other on the way; those who are more perfect help their lesser brethren through their example and good works, and support them.” This aptly describes what happens in the song. She “leave[s] this homeland, that is, the world”, for “the new pastures of heaven”, because of her effort to honour and protect the knight’s body, in return for him fighting for her: she repaid his ultimate sacrifice for love with her own ultimate sacrifice for love. And that is the meaning of the final couplet:

God send every gentleman
such haukes, such hounds and such a Leman 

In the final line, a leman (lemman, lemon, lemmon, lemmande, lefmon) is a male or female lover, either betrothed, or more specifically a wife. The word was in use in Middle English from c. 1225, and the word or variants of it survived into the 19^th century, as we see, for example, in the broadside ballad published between 1814 and 1844, Sweet Lemminy, which entered the oral song tradition with variants of the word, Lemeney, Lemony or Lemady, and continued to be sung into the 20^th century.

Now we reach the meaning of the story, which can only be understood with the detailed historical context given above. 

The basis of the story is the metaphor of Christ as the lover-knight, sacrificing his life for his lady, and the symbolic meanings of animals found in the bestiaries. Both are medieval in origin, but they retained cultural currency into the renaissance.

In summary, the ravens represent “the blackness of sin or unfaithfulness” (MS Bodley 764). They wished to predate on the dead body of a knight, who represents Christian sacrifice: he has been faithful to his lady by defending her, and has been slain by so doing. He lay in a green field, symbol of the shortness of life. His body was guarded by his hounds, symbolising the Christian virtues of faithfulness and steadfastness, and his hawks, symbols of holy self-discipline and shedding of past sins. The woman he died for was a fallow doe, meaning a fertile and attractive woman, his leman, his wife, and she was pregnant with their child. She kissed the wounds on his head, their redness a symbol of his Christ-like self-sacrifice, her kissing them a symbol of her saintliness. She repaid the depth of his love with the depth of her own, not leaving his body for carrion-feeders, but she carried and buried his body though heavily pregnant. As a result of the physical strain and emotional heartbreak, she died by the end of the day, repaying his self-sacrifice with her own.

Several motifs run through the song: the contrast between the sinful, unfaithful, selfish, satanic ravens and the virtuous, faithful, selfless, godly hounds, hawks and leman; between the savagery that kills and scavenges on the dead, and the depth of redemptive love that is willing to die; between those who end life, the ravens and the knight’s killer ‘off-stage’, and the pregnant woman who produces life; between the temporariness of life and the permanence of death.

The chief theme is the long-established metaphor of Christ as the lover-knight, and this song takes it one stage further. Thus …

God send every gentleman
such haukes, such hounds and such a Leman 

… is a wish for everyone who is faithful to the ultimate degree, who gives their life for another as Christ did, to be rewarded in kind with the faithfulness of such exemplars as the knight’s hawks, hounds, and leman. Given the cultural context of the song, this is expressed in Christian terms: the passion of Christ is imitated by the knight, and the knight’s sacrifice is imitated by his leman. Surely this message of selfless protection of those we love is one that anyone of any background can appreciate. This is sublime love.   

sub·lime (sə-blīm′)
adj.
1. Characterised by nobility; majestic.
2. a. Of high spiritual, moral, or intellectual worth. b. Not to be excelled; supreme.
3. Inspiring awe; impressive.
4. Archaic Raised aloft; set high.

The nonsense syllables

There are two ways this song may appear to disguise its depth for a modern listener.

The first is the apparent simplicity of language, within which is centuries-old symbolism, as we have seen.

The second is that in each stanza these couplets are hedged with nonsense syllables, a feature not uncommon in secular and religious songs of the period. They are part of a long tradition in the British Isles of singing meaningless sounds, either as a refrain as in Ravens, or sometimes for a whole song. The nonsense sounds are not words, since they have no meaning, but non-lexical vocables, rhythmic sounds used for singing. They are not completely random sounds, but follow established practice, commonly variations on down a derry, or Fa la la la landtido dilly, or hey (or hay, ay or a), or trolly lolly, or hey nonny nonny.

The downe a downe and derry downe type refrain appears in some other songs in Ravenscroft’s three books of collected songs, including one in the category of “Round or Catch of three Voices” in Pammelia. The catch is called Hey downe a downe, and includes the words “Hey downe a downe … hey downe downe a downe downe a”. 

Many broadside ballads of the 16^th and 17^th century had derry downe type refrains. Some examples follow.

In the broadside by the ballad writer Martin Parker, The Countrey Lasse, 1628 (EBBA 20124, Magdalene College, Pepys Ballads 1.268-269), the refrain after every stanza is:

Downe, downe, derry, derry downe,
hey downe a downe a downe a,
A derry, dery dery, dery, downe,
heigh downe a downe a derry.

The verses of a broadside attributed to the playwright Ben Jonson (?1573–1637), A Strange Banquet Or, The Devil’s Entertainment by Cook Laurel, printed by various publishers between 1647 and 1695 (one of them being EBBA 35766, Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, 2000 Folio 6 95), has the refrain at the end of each stanza, “With a hey down, down, a down, down.”

A New Song to drive away cold Winter, Between Robin Hood and the Jovial Tinker, 1678–80 (in several collections, including EBBA 30379, British Library, Roxburghe C.20.f.9.22-23), has a refrain every other line, indicated in italics below for the first stanza.

In Summer time when leaves grow green,
down, a down, a down,
And Birds sing on every Tree,
hey down, down a down,
Robin Hood went to Nottingham,
down a, down a, down,
As fast as he could dree [dree: do, endure],
hey down a, down a, down.

There are far too many other examples to list here, but a handful more are of particular interest.

Though the woodcut for The Huntsmans Delight. Or, The Forresters Pleasure, printed between 1682 and 1695 (EBBA 21932, Magdalene College,  Pepys 4.271; EBBA 30680, British Library, Roxburghe 2.218, 2.219), shows hunters with dogs chasing a hare, the metaphor is that of hunting fallow deer. The last 5 lines of the first stanza, italicised below, are the repeated burden or chorus.

Come all you young Maidens & lend an Ear
Come listen a while and you shall hear,
How the Keepers did sport with the fallow deer
Amongst the leaves so green a.
Hey down derry derry down
Hey down down, ho down down,
Hey down ho down derry derry down
Amongst the leaves so green a,

The ballad not only has an extensive burden of “Hey down derry derry down”s, it has the very obvious metaphor of a fallow deer as a sexually alluring and fertile woman to have sport with. So while its subject and tone is very different to Ravens, there is an overlap in its symbolic content. This late 17^th century broadside was rewritten in c. 1760 for another broadside, The Frolicksome Keeper. A New Song. The new version has far fewer verses and a slightly different burden. It was so popular that it remained in the oral tradition into the 20^th century, when it was collected separately by folk song enthusiasts Sabine Baring Gould and Cecil Sharp. Sabine Baring Gould published it as A Keeper Went Hunting in his Songs of the West, 1905, but he rewrote the verses to remove any hint of the sexual chase that is the whole point of the song. Cecil Sharp collected the song 6 times, published in his Collection of English Folksongs Vol. 2, 1909. The chorus collected from the oral tradition by Sharp in 1909 still includes the derry downs from the 17^th and 18^th century: 

Jackie boy, Master,
Sing ‘ee well? Very well.
Hey down, Ho down,
Derry derry down.
She’s amongst the leaves of the green O.
To my hey down down,
To my ho down down,
Hey down, Ho down, derry derry down,
She’s amongst the leaves of the green O.

In his book of 1772, Songs, Comic, and Satyrical, English actor, playwright, poet, composer and songwriter, George Alexander Stevens, included Liberty Hall, with the instruction, “Tune – Derry down”, the indicated refrain at the end of each stanza being those two words.

English dramatist and general writer George Colman the younger, in his book, My night-gown and slippers; or tales in verse, 1797, included his Lodgings for Single Gentleman, which he states in the introduction was intended to be sung, but he doesn’t give the tune. At the end of each stanza, the refrain is “Derry down”, and the scansion is the same as Stevens’ Liberty Hall, so they were probably sung to the same melody.

We cannot be certain what that tune was, but since the scansion and refrain is the same as a tune used for several traditional songs in England, Ireland and the USA from the 18^th to the 20^th century, it is credible speculation that the tune is the same. If it is, it requires us to accept that the refrain given above, “Derry down”, is an abbreviation of “Derry down down, down derry down”, and that is entirely within expectation, since in manuscripts and printed matter from the medieval period on, such contractions are commonplace. Those other “Derry down” songs include (click on the blue text to hear the song) Castle Island Song, written in 1776, Red Iron Ore, first evidenced in 1922, Blue Mountain Lake, 1939, and The Coal Owner and the Pitman’s Wife, possibly by William Hornsby, 1952.

The Fa la la la landtido dilly refrain and its close variants is found in such songs as We be Souldiers three in Thomas Ravenscroft’s Deuteromelia, 1609. In this song, there are the same three refrains in each stanza, the first in French, “Pardona moy je vous an pree”, the second in English, “with never a penny of mony”, and the third is the non-lexical vocable, “Fa la la la landtido dilly”. 

This type of refrain also appears in the broadside, The Fryer Well-fitted, 1678–80 (EBBA 37478, British Library, Bagford C.40.m.10.(129.)). The first verse is as follows, with the refrains in italics:

As I lay musing all alone,
fa, la, la. la, la,
A pretty jest I thought upon,
fa, la, la, la, la,
Then listen a while, and I will you tell,
Of a Fryer that lov’d a bonny Lass well
fa, la, la, la, la,
fa, la, la lang tree-down-dilly.

A variation on the same refrain appears three times in every stanza in Courage Crowned with Conquest, usually referred to now as Sir Eglamore, 1672 (many surviving copies, including EBBA 35126, Houghton Library, Huth EBB65H). The first stanza, with the refrain in italics, is:

Sir Eglamore that valiant Knight
with his fa, la, lanctre down dilie,
He fetcht his sword and he went to fight;
with his fa la lanctre, &c.
As he went over hill and dale
All cloathed in his Coat of Male.
with his fa la lanctre, &c.

Another nonsense refrain repeats hey, hay, ay or a. Several are in British Library MS Sloane 2593, dated 1400–1450, including the carols on folios 8v and 23v, both of which have refrains that begin with “A a a a”, the former completed by “Nunc gaudet Maria” (Now Mary rejoices) and the latter by “Nunc gaudet ecclesia” (Now the church rejoices). Another is in British Library MS Additional 14997, folio 44v, dated 4^th October 1500, for which the burden or refrain is “Hay ay hay ay Make we mere [merry] as we may”.

Troly loly and its variants were common. In British Library MS Sloane 1584, 15^th century, on folio 45v is a carol with the burden …

So well ys me begone
Troly lole
So well ys me begone
Troly loly

… and in each stanza there are four lines, the second and fourth always being “Troly loley”.

In a manuscript which includes dates of all the years from 1450 to 1499, MS EL 34 B 60 (formerly EL 1160, now in The Huntington Library, Art Museum, and Botanical Gardens, San Marino, California), there is a burden written sideways in the margin of folio 73v (see right): “hey troly loly hey troly loly I must love our Sur John & I loue eny o lord”.

The Henry VIII Manuscript of 1510–20, described above, has a song by William Cornysh, the burden of which is: 

Trolly lolly loly lo
syng troly loly lo
my love is to the grene wode gone
now after wyll I go.
syng trolly loly lo lo ly lo.

No list of nonsense refrains would be complete without Hey nonny nonny. One such is in the just-mentioned MS EL 34 B 60 (EL 1160), dated 1450–99. On folio 11r is a song with a refrain very much like the one cited above, but instead of “hey troly loly hey troly loly”, it begins with “Hey noyney”, followed by “I wyll love Ser John & I love eny”, very similar to “I must love our Sur John & I loue eny o lord” on folio 73v.

One of the best-known refrains of this type is in It was a lover and his lass by Thomas Morley, in his First Book of Airs to Sing and Play to the Lute with the Base Viol, 1600. Every verse includes the refrains, “With a hay, with a ho and a hay nonie no, and a hay nonie nonie no … In spring time … When birds doe sing, hay ding a ding a ding, hay ding a ding a ding, hay ding a ding a ding, Sweete lovers love the spring.”

The “ding a ding”s of that refrain appear in other songs, such as the catch, Derrie ding, ding Dasson in Thomas Ravenscroft’s Melismata. The entire words are:

Derrie ding, ding Dasson,         
I am John Cheston,                  
we weeddon we wodden,          
we weedon, we wodden,           
Bim bom, bim bom,
bim bom, bim bom.

This brings us to the type of song in which the words as a whole are nonsense, either made entirely of non-lexical vocables, or made of real words that do not have any coherent or contextual meaning, or a mixture of the two.

Derrie ding, ding Dasson is a mixture of the two. One line does make sense, “I am John Cheston”, but it is not part of a meaningful narrative.

In a catch such as Three blind Mice in Thomas Ravenscroft’s Deuteromelia, every short phrase makes sense on its own … 

Three blind Mice, three blind Mice,
Dame Julian, Dame Julian,
the Miller and his merry olde Wife,
she scrapte her tripe licke thou the knife. 

… but collectively and in sequence there is no coherent narrative. Though not non-lexical vocables, the words carry no meaning, but are unrelated phrases to carry the melody. 

Non-lexical vocables continue to be sung today. Traditional songs, passed down through the oral tradition and nowadays through recordings, have their nonsense refrains, such as Whiskey in the Jar’s “whack fol me daddy o”. Pop music has similar: The Crystals’ Da Doo Ron Ron, The Beatles’ Ob La Di, Ob La Da, The Police’s De Do Do Do, De Da Da Da, and so on.

In the British Isles, there is a form of traditional singing in which it is not just the refrain that consists of non-lexical vocables, but the whole piece. A tune is sung entirely to syllables that are typically dum, diddle and dee. This way of singing has been known variously as diddling, lilting, mouth music (portaireacht bhéil in Irish, port à beul in Scottish Gaelic) or as jigging among English and Welsh gypsies. It can heard in the video below.

Modern commentary: ridiculous riddles

What may have seemed like an extended tangent in explaining the nonsense syllables of Ravens, putting that phenomenon in its historical context, was necessary to give background for what is to follow. Having explained the poetry of sublime love, now for the modern commentary which misses the point of the song spectacularly and, failing to understand the poetry in its historical context, creates fantasy meanings for the song.

The first person to give commentary on Ravens was the English antiquarian Joseph Ritson in his book, Ancient Songs and Ballads From The Reign of King Henry the Third, To The Revolution, published in 1790. His entire entry is shown on the right. In the heading he calls the song a dirge, which is incorrect. The word dirge is derived from the Latin, dirige, meaning direct, an imperative of dirigere, to direct, from the antiphon which began the Catholic Matins service in the Office of the Dead, “Dirige, Domine, Deus meus, in conspectu tuo viam meam”, meaning “Direct, O Lord, my God, my way in thy sight”, from Psalm 5:8. Dirige, in the context of the Office of the Dead, is attested from the early 13^th century, reaching its contracted form of dirge from c. 1400, and the sense of any funeral song from c. 1500. Ravens is not a funeral song. In the more modern and generalised sense, a dirge is a slow, mournful song and, since Thomas Ravenscroft gave no indication of pace, Ritson’s description cannot be said to be true in this wider sense. By dirge, Ritson appears to mean merely a song that includes death. On this basis, a very large proportion of the traditional songs of the British Isles would be classed as dirges, giving the word such a general sense as to render it meaningless. He gives the source of the song correctly and a single sentence of commentary: “It will be obvious, that this ballad is much older, not only than the date of the book [Melismata, 1611], but than most of the other pieces contained in it.” (The melody he gives from Ravenscroft has an incorrect note at the end of the first line.) 

To further his claim of the song’s age, one might imagine Ritson would go on to explain the dating of some of the pieces in Melismata, then by comparison the dating of Ravens, but he doesn’t give his readers any information to justify why his assertion is either “obvious” or true. He offers no historical reference points, no previous version of the song, no proposed earlier date, no analysis whatever, nor even a definition of what he meant by “much older”. It should not need stating that claims of fact need data, not a vague unfounded assertion with no substantiating evidence.

Yet his unjustified assertion is cited by two further writers. William Chappell, in his Popular Music of the Olden Time, 1859, cites Ritson’s brief comment uncritically as it were true (p. 59). Bertrand Harris Bronson, in his The Traditional Tunes of the Child Ballads, Volume 1, 1959, also cites Ritson and adds, “No one who has studied it carefully will be likely to dispute the assertion” that it is the oldest song in Melismata (p. 308). Here Bronson manages to include two logical fallacies in one sentence.

First, it is a circular argument (circulus in demonstrando) that seeks only to confirm itself. If someone objects that s/he has indeed studied the song carefully and does dispute Bronson’s vague assertion of its unspecified age, according to his circular statement Bronson could simply dismiss with ‘since you dispute its age, you cannot have studied the song carefully’, without offering any evidence. His use of the qualifying word “likely” can be discounted, as he gives no indication of the conditions under which a contrary argument would be entertained. The second logical fallacy is that the statement attacks the person (argumentum ad hominem) rather than addressing the facts, as “No one who has studied it carefully” implies that any objector is either ignorant or intellectually deficient, despite the fact that the assertion is ill-defined and without substance.

Bronson then sets out an argument which, he claims, “would move it [Ravens] back into the fifteenth century”, but every part of his contention is erroneous. His case rests on a song called Corpus Christi (Latin: Body of Christ), which is in the form of a carol, a danced song in which the burden is sung first. Corpus Christi entered the oral tradition at some point, generating three later variants collected from singers in the 19^th and early 20^th century (The Heron; Over yonder’s a park; and Down in yon forest). The Corpus Christi version appears in a single source by a London grocer, Richard Hill, a manuscript written between circa 1504 and 1536, titled A Boke of dyveris tales and balettes and dyveris Reconynges &c., now in Balliol College, Oxford, as MS 354.

The words of Corpus Christi are as follows. The repeated burden is first.

Lulley lulley lully lulley
The fawcon [falcon] hath born my mak away [mak: mate, lover, husband, wife]                

He bare hym up, he bare him down,
He bare hym into an orchard brown.

In that orchard ther was an hall,
That was hanged with purpill and pall.

And in that hall ther was a bede,
Hit was hangid with gold so rede.           

And yn that bed ther lythe a knyght,
His wowndes bledyng day and nyght.

By that bedes side ther kneleth a may [maiden],
And she wepeth both nyght and day.

And by that bedes side ther stondith a ston,
Corpus Christi wretyn theron.

Bronson argues that since the imagery of Corpus Christi includes a bird, a similar location to Ravens, a wounded knight and a woman, then Corpus Christi must have been based on a version of Ravens that predates it, which is why he takes the supposed antecedent Ravens back to the 15^th century, before Richard Hill wrote down Corpus Christi between circa 1504 and 1536. He doesn’t consider or explain why it wouldn’t be the other way round, why Ravens is not derived from Corpus Christi, and his argument quickly falls apart under light scrutiny, for the following reasons.

i. Before 1611, there is no evidence of Ravens. Clearly it existed prior to that date, since Ravenscroft collected rather than composed the song, and it likely goes back to the 16^th century, like so many of the other songs Ravenscroft prints for which there is evidence of antecedent versions; but of any previous version of Ravens we know nothing, not its words, nor its music, nor its date.

ii. The details present in Corpus Christi and not in Ravens are the flying falcon, a man carrying a dead or heavily wounded knight, an orchard, a hall, purple funeral cloth, a bed, gold and red cloth, a weeping maid, and a stone inscribed with Corpus Christi – almost the entire contents of the song.

iii. The details present in Ravens and not in Corpus Christi are three ravens on a tree, a green field with a slain knight, his hounds, his hawks, his pregnant wife, her kissing his wounds, her carrying him on her back, her burying him, her death, and the final message – almost the entire song.  

iv. This is not a promising start to claim a dependent relationship. The story of Corpus Christi is completely different to Ravens. Almost all the narrative details differ.

v. Bronson claims that the songs have in common a “disjointed introduction making use of birds without regard to the narrative proper”. This is demonstrably false. The narrative purpose of the falcon in the burden of Corpus Christi is, like much of the song, debatable, but Richard Leighton Greene (1977, pp. 424–5) offers a credible historical reading (which is not necessary to explain here) which makes the falcon integral to the song. In Ravens, the three corvids are also integral to the narrative, for reasons explained in detail above.

vi. Bronson states that between the two songs there is a “comparative particularization of place”, but the place in Corpus Christi is an orchard within which is a hall with rich hanging cloth, whereas the place in Ravens is a green field with a tree.

vii. Both songs do have a bleeding knight, but the wounded or dead knight in Corpus Christi lies on a bed in a hall, next to which stands a stone on which is written Corpus Christi, whereas the knight in Ravens lies dead in a field. Both songs are in the tradition of Christ the lover-knight, in common with a very large body of literature, as we have seen. There is no necessity for literal literary dependence between the songs, and to claim a relationship between them requires a great deal of special pleading to explain why the overlap between the respective narratives is so insignificant, and why the contents of the songs are almost entirely different. 

viii. Both songs do have a woman, but in Corpus Christi she is a maid, a virgin, and in Ravens she is the knight’s pregnant wife, which necessitates a different narrative.

ix. Thus there is no internal evidence that suggests a dependent relationship of any kind. Any notion of a version of Ravens in the 15^th century is Bronson’s speculative fantasy and entirely without evidence.

So how old is Ravens? The antiquity of the concepts in the song has been shown, but this is not evidence of the age of the song. As we have seen, the symbolism persisted for centuries and was still current when the song was published in 1611. It is theoretically possible that the song existed in some form – let’s randomly pick a number – 100 years before Thomas Ravenscroft collected his material for Melismata. Certainly, there is prior evidence in the 16^th century for very many of the songs Ravenscroft published, but of Ravens there is none. It is just as possible that it was composed on the Saturday afternoon before Thomas Ravenscroft collected it on the following Wednesday morning in 1611. Without proof, it is impossible to know anything about the prior life of the song. What we can say for sure is that the earliest evidence of Ravens is in Melismata, and that speculation without evidence is fantasy.  

Neither Ritson, Chappell nor Bronson make any reference to relevant period literature to explain the meaning of the song. If they had known of the literature, they would surely have offered it to their readers. The nearest Bronson comes is his erroneous attempt to link the song to Corpus Christi and then, since he lacks understanding of the fallow doe symbolism, he tries to explain it literally by reference to traditional songs of the 19^th century. (19^th century – not a typo.)

One of the songs is 19^th century French, Complainte de la Blanche Biche (Lament of the White Doe). The song tells the story of a girl or young woman who is human by day, transformed into a white doe at night. Nightly she is hunted by barons and princes with a pack of dogs, a group that includes her brother, Renaud. The thematic connection with the symbolism of hunting the fallow doe of the 16^th–18^th century is obvious, particularly given that a white doe is usually a fallow doe, but this song has a more gruesome ending. One night she is caught, skinned, butchered, and eaten for dinner by her brother and the other hunters.

Bronson uses Blanche Biche to argue that the fallow doe in Ravens is a case of metensomatosis, the transmigration of a soul from one body to another, in the case of Ravens the migration of a woman’s soul into the body of a deer who finds her slain husband and buries him. This is clearly wrong on three counts. First, the Blanche Biche is not an example of metensomatosis: her soul does not migrate, but she is literally and bodily transformed into a doe then torn apart. Second, the sexual symbolism of the fallow doe in Ravens is two or three centuries before the woman who is literally transformed into a doe in Blanche Biche, so the chronology of the idea is the reverse of what Bronson claims. Third, how does a literal fallow doe carry and bury a man?!

Bronson’s commentary is not the most bizarre. For that, we have to read an essay by Vernon V. Chatman III. In his “The Three Ravens” Explicated (1963), he does not draw upon associated and relevant medieval or renaissance literature, nor comparative poetry, nor associated songs. He does not even recognise all the obvious markers of traditional and renaissance verse.

Chatman argues that the fallow doe of the song cannot be a literal female deer, as she wouldn’t get past the knight’s hounds, wouldn’t be able to lift up his bloody head, and wouldn’t be able “to fill his grave (if we assume it already dug)” (p. 177). He doesn’t find a problem with the knight’s grave being already dug, a detail he introduces himself. By who? And why? He then argues that the fallow doe cannot be a woman as, being completely ignorant of the historical literature, he states he doesn’t know the significance of the metaphor (and doesn’t state that he had made any effort to find out). Then he states that “carrying him to a grave requires a strength which is incongruous with her attributes of tenderness and loving concern”, showing that he does not understand that her strength in the song is a physical quality, whereas tenderness and loving concern are emotional qualities, so one does not cancel out the other.

So he presents a third option: the fallow doe is neither a deer nor a woman, but “a centaur-like woman, or to coin a word, a dainefemme (deerwoman)” (p. 177). He argues that a deerwoman could lift up the knight’s head, fill or dig his grave, be both strong and tender, and that this explains the term fallow doe. Then he states that the dainefemme is a spirit. He then claims that dogs can see spirits, so the issue of the deerwoman getting past the hounds would be raised again, but the dogs would recognise that she is as protective of the knight as they, so they wouldn’t hunt her. In any case, “she is semi-divine [so] she can exert influence over the hounds” (p. 178). Yes. Really. He fails to question how a non-physical spirit can physically lift a knight’s head or fill a grave, and he fails to recognise that, on his own terms, a flesh and blood dog cannot harm a non-physical spirit.

If the premise of an argument is wrong, then everything that follows will also be wrong. If someone does not have the insight to see that their premise is not credible, then s/he will not have the insight to realise that what follows from the premise is false and fantastical. Thus the problems above are the least of the issues in Chatman’s fantasy, as follows.

i. Vernon Chatman tries to take the language literally and not symbolically because he has no knowledge of the literature within which the song has its historical meaning. But in trying to take the language literally, he is unable to follow his own logic. On his terms, either the one who kisses and carries the knight is literally a fallow doe, the female of a species of deer in the genus Dama, of the subfamily Cervinae, or she is not and is instead a hybrid spirit deerwoman. He says that her being a deerwoman explains the term fallow doe, but this is an oxymoron, as those words are not interchangeable and mean quite different things: she cannot be both a fallow doe and a deerwoman spirit.

ii. Furthermore, if he is to take the story literally, he should account for crows that hold conversations in English and eat breakfast. According to the song, the ravens are not perched on a tree or standing on the branch of a tree, they are “sat on a tree”. Following his logic, we must believe the ravens in the song are bird-human hybrids, and ask the question: are they sat with their knees up, or legs apart, or crossed legged?

iii. There is no hybrid deerwoman in medieval or renaissance culture. He knows this, so he has to make a special case by referencing modern literature – the Grimm brothers – and a man-elk in a Danish saga of the 5^th or 6^th century, neither of which are his deerwoman or relevant to the 16^th or early 17^th century. He has to create his own word for the hybrid deer-woman-spirit-semigoddess, thus tacitly admitting that, since he doesn’t understand the historical cultural context and symbolism of the fallow doe, he has to make up his own fantasy world.

iv. See the picture right. Even if she were not a semi-divine spirit, does a pregnant deerwoman look, as Chatman claims, like a creature who could dig a grave more easily than a mortal woman?

v. How does Vernon Chatman imagine a hybrid deer-woman-spirit-semigoddess would carry a dead knight on her back, even if her body was corporeal? Imagine the physical contortions his dainefemme would have to make, lifting a dead weight from the height of her woman’s arms above a deer’s body. Then she would somehow have to move that dead weight around and behind her onto her back. And which back? Would she carry her husband’s body on her woman’s back or her deer back? The scene is far more incongruous and unlikely than a pregnant woman straining to carry her dead lover.

vi. How does a mortal corporeal man get a semi-divine non-corporeal spirit deerwoman pregnant? Or how does a man get a deer pregnant? And, since she is part-deer, part-woman, in the fashion of a centaur, does she have a deer womb and a human womb, or only one of these? If she has two wombs, in which is she pregnant? And if only one, which one?

The next article, Three Ravens and Twa Corbies: the transformations of a traditional song from the 17^th to the 20^th century, follows the way this song was developed and transformed by singers in the folk tradition over four and a half centuries. In traditional song, passed orally down the generations from person to person, the “fallow doe” language was replaced by calling her “his lady fair” or “a lady, full of woe,” sometimes adding “as big wi bairn as she can go”. In other words, everyone knew she was a woman: no singer of any version of the song at any point through its history thought “fallow doe” was Chatman’s hybrid deer-woman-spirit-semi-goddess.

Vernon V. Chatman III saves his best work for the nonsense syllables …

Downe a downe, hay downe, hay downe.
with a downe,
with a downe derrie, derrie, derrie, downe, downe. 

… which he turns into a series of ridiculous riddles. He states that “one is hard pressed to ascertain the content of these lines.” Despite writing about a traditional song originating in the renaissance, he has no understanding of traditional or renaissance song with its common feature, the non-lexical vocable (described with many examples above). It is hard to believe that any person writing about traditional music has never come across “derry downe” refrains, doesn’t know how widespread they are, hasn’t heard at least dozens of songs with the same or similar refrain, and doesn’t understand how they fit into the wider tradition of non-lexical vocables. Yet he writes about the “derry downe”s of Ravens as if they are unique to this song, lexical, meaningful and capable of logical explanation.   

“Let us proceed one line at a time. We find in the Oxford Universal Dictionary (1955) that ‘down’ can be used as an adverb either attributively or by ellipsis of some participial word in the sense of “dejected.”’ Also, we find that ‘a’ can be used as a preposition as in ‘a live’ or as an adjective in the sense of “all.”  Further, we find that ‘hay’ can be used as an interjection in the sense of “thou hast (it)” and that it occurs in the phrase ‘to make hay’, this phrase meaning “to make confusion.” Thus, the sense of line two [Downe a downe, hay downe, hay downe] is something like the following: 1) Dejected all dejected, thou hast dejection [thou art dejected?], thou hast dejection; or 2) Dejected all dejected, confused and dejected, confused and dejected.” (p. 178)

Yes. Really. And ‘to make hay’ does not mean ‘to make confusion’, but rather to take advantage of an opportunity while it lasts.

There’s more.

“Line seven [with a downe derrie, derrie, derrie, downe, downe] presents the gravest difficulty; however, it can be surmounted. Checking this time with Encyclopaedia Britannica (1956) we find that Londonderry was once named ‘Derry.’ Derry is an appropriate locale for the scene depicted in “The Three Ravens:” the Scandinavians plundered the city, and it is said to have been burned down at least seven times before 1200; it thus is a site of many battles. Line seven now “means” something like the following: Utterly dejected in Derry, in Derry, dejected, dejected.” (p. 178–9)

There is no indication in the song of a particular time or place, and to use the non-lexical vocable “derrie” to locate the song in Derry is absurd. The history of the city is therefore irrelevant. One could just as well use “downe derrie” to claim that the song is Cornish, hailing from Downderry in Cornwall; or use the repeated “downe” vocable to claim the song is from the Downs, the grass-covered chalk hills of Berkshire, Wiltshire, Hampshire, Sussex, Surrey and Kent; or use “hay” to claim the song is from Hay-on-Wye. 

He continues, “The rendering of ‘derrie’ given earlier implies that “The Three Ravens” is an Irish ballad or rather of Irish derivation” (p. 182), his baseless fantasy being that it was “probably the invention of warriors or was composed for them” (p. 185). He argues for connections between ancient Denmark and Ireland to explain the song. Having decided the song is Irish, he declares that “The three ravens of the ballad are the Morrigan – a Death goddess who took the form of a raven”, from Old Irish Mór Ríoghain, who is sometimes depicted in tripartite form, as “Neman, Badb and Macha” (p. 184).

If we take Chatman’s method to explicate the non-lexical vocables of a genuine traditional Irish song, Whiskey in the Jar, then “whack fol me daddy o” must mean ‘thump the baby horse, o my father’.

We can apply Chatman’s method to a song that appears alongside Ravens in Thomas Ravenscroft’s Melismata: the catch, Derrie ding, ding Dasson, which consists almost entirely of nonsense syllables.

Derrie ding, ding Dasson,         
I am John Cheston,                  
we weeddon we wodden,          
we weedon, we wodden,           
Bim bom, bim bom,
bim bom, bim bom.

I imagine Vernon V. Chatman III’s explanation would go something like this.

Derrie ding, ding Dasson is an Irish song that has its roots in ancient Greece. In Derry (Derrie), there was a car crash (ding, ding) in a Datsun (Dasson, the early modern word for Datsun). The Datsun is driven by John Cheston. He and his passenger urinated (we weeddon) on something wooden (we wodden), then did it again (we weedon, we wodden). The driver’s surname, Cheston, is the clue for the object they “weeddon”: a wooden chest. Since bim is slang for woman, and bom is a large American snake, John Cheston’s passenger is half-woman and half-snake, Echidna of Greek mythology.

On the right we see a faithful representation of the true meaning of the song.

Since Chatman does not know the contemporaneous cultural reference points of renaissance England, he invents his own fantasy context, and since he does not know of the widespread use of non-lexical vocables in renaissance and traditional song, he invents his own fantasy meaning. His essay is a work of great imagination and creativity of the kind that would read well as mythological fiction but, as a commentary on historical literature or musicology, it is ludicrous.

Arthur Knevett (2019) published a reply to Chatman’s article, gently deconstructing and disproving Chatman’s claims about the vocables and the song’s claimed Irish origin. He wrote with admirable restraint. In response, Vernon Chatman made a single undated and untitled webpage (see bibliography) that acknowledged but did nothing to address the critique, then he simply restated his own incongruous claims.

There were three Ravens: Here are three Observations

i. There were three Ravens is a cleverly deceptive song. On the surface, it is a simple story, its appearance made simpler by the repetition of lines and the interjection of non-lexical vocables. Under the surface, it carries a long history of symbolic meaning that would have been instantly understood by its singers and listeners in the early 17^th century. Due to a culture shift in the intervening centuries, the symbolic language and story of the song require detailed analysis to be understood in the modern day. Doing so reveals a song about sublime love couched in Christian symbolism. I do not believe one needs to be a Christian to appreciate its depth and beauty.

ii. From the sublime to the ridiculous. The commentary of Bertrand Harris Bronson, and especially of Vernon V. Chatman III, illustrates the tendency among some 20^th century commentators on traditional song to invent backgrounds for ballads that are not based on evidence and fly in the face of credibility, imposing fanciful interpretations that are not grounded in the song’s historical context. Not all commentators were of this tendency, and one of the chief English folk song collectors, Cecil Sharp, explicitly argues against such baseless speculation in his English folk song, some conclusions (1907).

iii. The song continued in the oral tradition for four and a half centuries. The third observation is arrived at after tracing the transformations of the song in the oral tradition from the 17^th to the 20^th century, in a second article available here.

 

© Ian Pittaway. Not to be reproduced in any form without permission. All rights reserved.

 

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