" The Three Ravens " ( Roud 5 , Child 26 ) is an English folk ballad , printed in the songbook Melismata compiled by Thomas Ravenscroft and published in 1611, but the song is possibly older than that. Newer versions (with different music) were recorded up through the 19th century. Francis James Child recorded several versions in his Child Ballads (catalogued as number 26).
6-412: The ballad centers three scavenger birds conversing about where and what they should eat. One tells the others of a newly slain knight, but they find he is guarded by his loyal hawks and hounds. Furthermore, a "fallow doe", a metaphor for the knight's pregnant ("as great with young as she might go") lover or mistress (see " leman ") comes to his body, kisses his wounds, bears him away, and buries him, leaving
12-505: Is what is illustrated below. The refrains are sung in all stanzas, but they are only shown here for the first. Written in the Scots language , there is no record of how early "The Twa Corbies" was first performed. Child (I, 253) quotes a letter from Charles Kirkpatrick Sharpe to Walter Scott (August 8, 1802): "The song of 'The Twa Corbies' was given to me by Miss Erskine of Alva (now Mrs Kerr), who, I think, said that she had written it down from
18-420: The corbies see that the hawk and the hound have forsaken their master, and are off chasing other game, while his mistress has already taken another lover. The ravens are therefore given an undisturbed meal, as nobody else knows where the man lies, or even that he is dead. They talk in gruesome detail about the meal they will make of him, plucking out his eyes and using his hair for their nests. It contains themes of
24-595: The fragility of life, life going on after death, and a more pessimistic viewpoint on life. The loneliness and despair of the song are summed up in the final couplets; There are a few different versions of this anonymously authored poem. The full text of at least one version of the poem is as follows: This ballad was one of 25 traditional works included in Ballads Weird and Wonderful (1912), illustrated by Vernon Hill . Both "The Three Ravens" and "Twa Corbies" have been translated to other languages, typically sung to
30-463: The ravens without a meal. The narrative ends with "God send euery gentleman / Such haukes, such hounds, and such a Leman". These lyrics to "The Three Ravens" are transcribed using 1611 orthography. They can be sung either straight through in stanzas of four lines each, or in stanzas of two lines each repeating the first line three times, depending on how long the performer would like the ballad to last. The second method appears to be more canonical, so it
36-597: The recitation of an old woman at Alva." This indicates that it was already known in Scotland at that date. It was first published in Walter Scott's Minstrelsy in 1803. It has a more dark and cynical tone than the Three Ravens, from which its lyrics were clearly derived. There are only two scavengers in “The Twa Corbies”, but they begin the same way. Rather than commenting on the loyalty of the knight's beasts,
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