We saw a beautiful Raven standing over us in the cove where Trevor rests, in Venniconia, now called Donegal. The Raven is a sacred bird , who follows the spirits of the dead. He is the most wary and intelligent of all British birds. There is an old Gaelic saying of him “Tha fios fhithich aige.” which means in the Beurla or English tongue “He has raven’s knowledge”.

The Raven was sacred to Odin , the principal God of the Scandinavians, so that it is only natural that the Lords of the Isles should have assumed the Raven on  their crest, because of their Norse descent through Ragnhildis, the wife of Somerled or Sorley Boy. The Vikings always carried a Raven with them on their journeys and one is said to have brought them to Iceland, for they had an inherent sense of discerning land.

In Norse mythology, Huginn (from the Old Norse for “thought”) and Munnin (Old Norse for “memory” or “mind”) are a pair of ravens that fly all over the world, Midgard, and bring the god Odin information. Additionally among the Norse, Raven Banner standards were carried by such figures as the Jarls of Orkney, King Cnut the Great of England, Norway and Denmark, and Harald Hanrada.In the British Isles, or Isles of the Pretani, Ravens  were also symbolic. In Ulster mythology, the goddess Morrigan alighted on the hero Cu Chulainn’s shoulder in the form of a Raven after his death. In British mythology they were associated with the Welsh god Bran the Blessed, whose name translates to “raven.” According to the Mabinogion, Bran’s head was buried in the White Hill of London as a talisman against invasion. A legend developed that England would not fall to a foreign invader as long as there were Ravens at the Tower of London.

In Tlingit and Haida cultures, Raven was both a trickster and a creator god. Related beliefs are widespread among the peoples of Siberia and northeast Asia. The Kamchatka, for example, was supposed to have been created by the raven god Kutkh. There are several references to common ravens in the Old Testament of the Bible and it is an aspect of Maha kala in Bhutanese mythology.

In the Jewish, Christian and Islamic traditions, the Raven was the first animal to be released from Noah’s Ark. “So it came to pass, at the end of forty days, that Noah opened the window of the ark which he had made. Then he sent out a raven, which kept going to and fro until the waters had dried up from the earth. He also sent out from himself a dove, to see if the waters had receded from the face of the ground.” The Raven is mentioned a dozen times in the Bible. In the New Testament, Jesus tells a parable using the Raven to show how people should rely on God for their needs and not riches (Luke 12:24). The raven is also mentioned in Quran at the story of Cain and Abel. Adam’s firstborn son Cain kills his brother Abel but he doesn’t know what to do with the corpse: “Then Allah sent a raven scratching up the ground, to show him how to hide his brother’s naked corpse. He said: Woe unto me! Am I not able to be as this raven and so hide my brother’s naked corpse? And he became repentant.”