The Three Ravens

The story

"The Three Ravens" (Roud 5, Child 26) is an English folk ballad printed in Melismata, a songbook compiled by Thomas Ravenscroft and published in 1611; the song may be older. Three scavenger birds talk over where and what they shall eat. One tells the others of a knight newly slain, but they find him guarded by his loyal hawks and hounds. Then a "fallow doe", a figure for the knight's pregnant lover or mistress, his "leman", comes to the body, kisses his wounds, carries him away and buries him, leaving the ravens without their meal, and the ballad closes by wishing every gentleman such hawks, such hounds and such a lover.

The 1611 text can be sung straight through in stanzas of four lines, or in stanzas of two lines with the first line repeated three times, which seems to be the more usual way; the refrains of nonsense syllables are sung in every stanza. Newer versions, with different music, were taken down up to the 19th century, and Francis James Child printed several of them as number 26 of his Child Ballads.

"The Twa Corbies", in the Scots language, was clearly derived from it, though nobody knows how early it was first sung. Child quotes a letter of 8 August 1802 from Charles Kirkpatrick Sharpe to Walter Scott, saying that Sharpe had it from Miss Erskine of Alva, who had written it down from the recitation of an old woman at Alva; so it was already known in Scotland by then. Scott first published it in his Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border in 1803, and William Motherwell printed it in Minstrelsy Ancient and Modern in 1827. Its tone is darker and more cynical. There are only two birds; the knight's hawk and hound have forsaken him for other game, his lady has already taken another lover, and nobody else knows where he lies or even that he is dead, so the birds can plan their meal in gruesome detail. It speaks of the fragility of life, of life going on after a death, and of loneliness and despair. It was one of 25 traditional works in Ballads Weird and Wonderful (1912), illustrated by Vernon Hill.

Both ballads have been translated into many languages, most often to the tune of "The Twa Corbies" or of the Breton song "An Alarc'h" ("The Swan"). In 1828 Aleksandr Pushkin published a partial Russian version of "The Twa Corbies", made from a French translation of Scott's ballads; his "Scottish Song", which ends on the lady waiting for a lover who is alive, became very well known among Russian speakers and was set by many composers of the time. The Danish folklorist Svend Grundtvig and Theodor Fontane translated the ballads in the 19th century, Nathan Alterman and Yaakov Shabtai into Hebrew, and the Basque poet Jon Mirande into Basque, sung by Imanol Larzabal. Folk and rock bands across Europe have adapted them since, from Steeleye Span's "Corbies" to the German band Subway to Sally, who moved the story to the present and made the knight a soldier.

The ballad turns up in later writing and film. Lady Mevrian sings it in mourning for her brother in E. R. Eddison's fantasy novel The Worm Ouroboros (1922), and Dorothy L. Sayers quotes its last two lines in her mystery novel Clouds of Witness. A version by John Harle is heard in Simon Schama's A History of Britain, and the song was chosen for the film My Cousin Rachel (2017), where it is sung at a Christmas feast, and for Firebrand (2023), where Henry VIII sings it.

What it says

A ballad of faithfulness beyond death. Three ravens looking for a meal find a slain knight, but his hounds lie at his feet and his hawks keep the birds away, and a doe heavy with young, the knight's lover, lifts his head, kisses his wounds, carries him off to bury him and dies herself before evening. The ballad ends by wishing every gentleman such faithful companions and such a love. The mood is grave and tender, set off by a lilting refrain of nonsense syllables.

The words