is that a crow, a rook, a raven, and a jackdaw are all basically crows. Of those four names for a bird that is powerful, beautiful, and tenacious, only raven can be used as a complimentary term. Remember the Disney show entitled “Raven” or the lead character’s name was Raven? Maybe you have to have offspring similar in age to mine to even know of what I refer. Can you imagine a parent naming their child “Crow”? What’s in a name? Why did this bird get a bad reputation?
In honor of the week before Halloween, I was going to treat you to the stanzas of Mr. Poe’s classic “Once upon a midnight dreary…” but in looking thru Bartlett’s Familiar Quotations, I found some stanzas of a poem called “The Jackdaw of Rheims” by Richard Harris Barham written in 1840 that was tremendous fun to read. Here is an except…
“The Cardinal rose with a dignified look,
He called for his candle, his bell, and his book!
In holy anger, and pious grief,
He solemnly cursed that rascally thief!
He cursed him at board, he cursed him in bed,
From the sole of his foot to the crown of his head!
He cursed him in sleeping, that every night
He should dream of the devil, and wake in a fright;
He cursed him in eating, he cursed him in drinking,
He cursed him in coughing, in sneezing, in winking;
He cursed him in sitting, in standing, in lying;
He cursed him in walking, in riding, in flying;
He cursed him in living, he cursed him in dying! –
Never was heard such a terrible curse!
But what gave rise to no little surprise,
Nobody seemed one penny the worse!”
You can visit here to read the rest of this entertaining poem and to find out just to whom all that cursing was directed. Also of interest to me are the significance of bell, book and candle (remember that movie with Jimmy Stewart? I loved that movie and Bewitched which I always assumed was inspired from it) and Jem Crow (have to read the whole poem). Guess I need to do more research.

Here is my finished tapestry of the rook. I resisted the desire to go into photoshop and straighten the skewed edges so I present it to you flaws and all, my first weaving in several months. I went into the weaving with a needle and floss to mimic the sketch lines of my original watercolor.
What I have not discovered is how to “return” on WordPress without inserting a line break. Any help out there?