Star Lore Of All Ages/Corvus

by William Tyler Olcott

Corvus

The Crow

Corvus

Corvus
The Crow

The figure of a crow seems pecking at him.
Aratos, referring to Hydra. 

On most of the ancient star maps, the Crow is generally depicted as perched on the coils of the great water snake Hydra, and apparently "pecking at him," as the poet puts it.

The ancient Akkadians, according to some authorities, seem to have regarded this constellation as representing a horse, but nearly all the other ancient nations saw in this group of stars a bird.

With the Chinese it was "the Red Bird," the last constellation in their zodiac. The Romans and Hebrews called this constellation "the Raven," the name it was known by in Chaucer's time, and Brown tells us that in the valley of the Euphrates there was a connection between Tiamat, the Serpent of Night, and the Demon Ravens. It was known there as "the Great Storm Bird," "the Bird of the Desert," "the Bird of the Great Seed," and "Storm Wind."

It is said that the crow was once of the purest white, but was changed to his present sable hue for talebearing.

Thus is the fact immortalised in verse:

The raven once in snowy plumes was drest,
White as the whitest dove's unsullied breast,
Fair as the guardian of the capitol,
Soft as the swan, a large and lovely fowl;
His tongue, his prating tongue, had changed him quite,
To sooty blackness from the purest white.

According to the Greek fable, the crow was made a constellation by Apollo. This god being jealous of Coronis (whom he loved), the daughter of Phlegyas, and mother of Æsculapius (who is represented in the skies by the figure of the giant Ophiuchus), sent a crow to watch her behaviour. The bird perceived her criminal partiality for Ischys, the Thessalian, and immediately acquainted Apollo with the fact, which so fired his indignation that:

His silver bow and feather'd shafts he took,
And lodged an arrow in her tender breast,
That had so often to his own been prest.

To reward the crow he placed it among the constellations, but just why it was located on the back of the Hydra does not appear.

It is a curious fact that we find elsewhere among the constellations birds closely associated with other figures. Thus the Crane is shown as pecking at the Southern Fish. The Pleiades or Doves flock together on the back of the ferocious Bull, and ancient Chinese maps depict the Eagle on the Dolphin's back. Design clearly enters into these grotesque arrangements.

Some say that this constellation takes its name from the daughter of Coronæus, King of Phocis, who was transformed into a crow by Minerva, to rescue the maid from the pursuit of Neptune.

Allen gives the following classical legend respecting Corvus: It appears that the bird being sent by a god with a cup for water, loitered at a fig tree till the fruit became ripe, and then returned to the god with a water snake in his claws, and a lie in his mouth, alleging the snake to have been the cause of his delay. In punishment he was for ever fixed in the sky with the Cup and the Snake, and, we may infer, doomed to everlasting thirst by the guardianship of the Hydra over the Cup and its contents. Hence the constellation has been called "Avis Ficarius," the "Fig Bird," and "Emansor," one who stays beyond his time. There is a belief in early folk-lore that the crow alone among birds does not carry water to its young.

Corvus, Crater, and Hydra are generally associated together in the ancient myths and legends. Swartz, early in the 19th century, endeavoured to prove that the constellations were nothing but a sort of symbolical geography of the west shore of the Caspian Sea. He imagined that these three constellations represented strangely enough the petroleum wells of Baku. The long extended Serpent, with its coils and folds, represented to him the slow, oily flow of crude petroleum. The Cup is placed there to indicate the receptacle or reservoir for the oil, and the Crow is indicative of the inky blackness of the colour of the oil.

Dr. Seiss regards the Crow as the Bird of Doom, and it has been likened to Noah's Raven flying over the waste of waters, or alighting on Hydra, as there was no dry land for a resting place.

This association of the Crow with the bird that went forth from the Ark connects this constellation with several others that many authorities believe form a graphic account of the Deluge, and, just as in the Perseus and Andromeda group we seem to find a serial story, here is depicted in a like group the story of the Flood.

It certainly seems plausible that primitive man should have sought to record the greatest and most important events known to him for the benefit of posterity, and it may have occurred to some ancient patriarch, and possibly Noah, to inscribe his record on the enduring scroll of night, and burn the legend deep with the fire of the silver stars.

At any rate, there is a significant arrangement of constellations in this region of the heavens, that requires little imagination to convey a fairly good record of the Deluge story, as we have it in Genesis.

Here we have the Ship (the Ark), Argo, stranded upon a rock. Two birds hover near-by, the Raven and the Dove, the birds sent forth by Noah. We have a sacrifice offered up by a person who has gone forth from the Ark, the Centaur, and we see in the sky the Altar, and smoke arising from it represented by the Milky Way. Curiously enough we also find a Bow set in a cloud, not the rainbow, but the Bow of the Archer, set in the Milky Way, the cloud of smoke. This connection of Sagittarius with the group of Deluge pictures may seem a bit far fetched, but even without it the picture of the Flood and the story in Genesis are well borne out in the constellations, and we find in this group the best of evidence that they were combined and placed here as a record for all time.

In addition to the constellations named as belonging to this group, Aquarius and Eridanus have been said to represent the Deluge, and Pisces and Cetus, the fishes and whale swimming in the "deep waters."

In Genesis, as Maunder points out, Noah is represented as a man. In the constellation picture, he who issues forth from the Ship is a Centaur, one who partook of two natures. There is certainly a significance in these figures of the Centaurs. They were a very ancient people, regardless of the fact whether such creatures ever existed, or whether, as has been supposed, they were people who tamed horses, and appearing on horseback, an uncommon sight, resembled at a distance a figure half man, half horse.

The significance of these figures in the heavens lies in the fact that the inventor of the constellations was familiar with the figure of a horse, which we find depicted in Pegasus and the distinct figure of the ancient Centaur, half man, half horse.

Corvus was known to the Arabs as "the Camel," and "the Tent." It forms the 11th Hindu lunar station, known as "Hasta," meaning the "Hand." Schickard thought Corvus represented Elias's Crow.

The Arabs called Alpha Corvi "Al-Chiba," which was also the Desert title for the constellation. Ulugh Beg and other Arabian astronomers called it "the Raven's Beak."

Delta Corvi, called by the Arabs "Algorab," is a beautiful double star, a fine object for a small telescope, the colour contrast, yellow and purple, being especially pronounced.