LONDON – As Covid-19 tore through the UK, causing Brexit chaos and growing support for Scottish independence, the British needed scarcely folklore prophecies to tell them that their country was in a difficult place.
But 2021 gave them anyway.
According to legend, at least six crows must be kept at the Tower of London, otherwise the kingdom falls. On Wednesday, it announced that one of these birds, Merlina, had gone missing and possibly died.
This means that the tower’s unkindness of crows – the apt Gothic noun of the birds – is up to seven, so dangerously close to the minimum.
“My concern, of course, is to look after the kingdom,” Chris Skaife, a raven master at the Tower of London, told the BBC on Thursday. “If the crows leave the tower, the kingdom will do great damage, it will crumble into dust,” he said before brightening with a laugh, “Of course it’s all myth and legend.”
The crow story is usually attributed to King Charles II who ruled in the mid-1600s. According to legend, he insisted that the birds be kept in the tower after being told that it would fall if they ever left.
The Tower of London dates from 1070 and has served as a fortress, a prison and a palace at various points in history. At least one king and perhaps two young princes were killed within its walls.
Today it is home to the crown jewels – a collection of robes, crowns and other royal regalia valued in billions of pounds – and of course the legendary crows. It is one of the world’s leading tourist attractions, with more than 3 million visitors each year in non-coronavirus times.
Skaife, who has crow tattoos on his calves and lives within the walls of the tower, said in previous interviews that the raven myth was actually invented by the tower itself in the 1880s as a marketing ploy.
As one of the palace guards, known as the female wardens, it is his job to look after the birds, drop off their meat from a local market and dip cookies in blood.
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Skaife was putting the crows to bed just before the UK was in its latest national exclusion earlier this month, noting that Merlina had not returned.
She has now been missing for two weeks and her ‘continuous absence indicates to us that she is sadly deceased’, the Tower of London said in a statement. She was the ‘undisputed ruler of the sleeping place’, he said, calling her the ‘Queen of the Tower Raven’.
Six of the seven remaining crows are named on the tower site: Jubilee, Harris, Gripp, Rocky, Erin and Poppy.
“We hope that a new chick from our breeding program can present the formidable challenge of continuing her legacy,” the statement said.
