LONDON – With Covid-19 destroying the UK, Brexit wreaking havoc and support for growing Scottish independence, the British hardly need folk prophecies to tell them that their country is in a difficult situation.
But 2021 gave them one anyway.
Legend has it that at least six crows must be kept in the Tower of London or the kingdom will fall. On Wednesday, he announced that one of those birds, Merlina, has disappeared and may be dead.
This means that cruelty to the tower crows – the appropriately Gothic collective noun for birds – has dropped to seven, so dangerously close to the minimum.
“My concern is obviously to take care of the kingdom,” Chris Skaife, master of crows at the Tower of London, told the BBC on Thursday. “If the crows leave the tower, a great evil will fall on the kingdom, it will disintegrate into dust,” he said, before clarifying with a laugh: “Of course, this is all myth and legend.”
The history of crows is generally attributed to King Charles II, who ruled in the mid-1600s. Legend has it that he insisted that the birds be kept in the tower after he was told it would fall if they left.
Dating from 1070, the Tower of London has functioned as a fortress, prison and palace at various points in history. At least one king and perhaps two young princes have been murdered within its walls.
Today it is home to the crown jewels – a collection of tunics, crowns and other royal insignia worth billions of pounds – and, of course, the legendary crows. It is one of the main tourist attractions in the world, with more than 3 million visitors every year in times without coronavirus.
Skaife, who has raven tattoos on her calves and lives inside the tower walls, said in previous interviews that the raven myth was invented by the tower itself in the 1880s as a marketing ploy.
As one of the palace guards, known as yeoman guards, it is your job to care for the birds by feeding them meat from the local market and cookies dipped in blood.
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Skaife was putting the crows to sleep just before the UK entered its last national block earlier this month and realized that Merlina had not returned.
She has been missing for two weeks and her “continued absence indicates that she may have sadly died,” the Tower of London said in a statement. She was the “undisputed ruler of the perch,” he said, calling her “Queen of the Tower Ravens”.
Six of the remaining seven crows are named on the tower’s website: Jubilee, Harris, Gripp, Rocky, Erin and Poppy.
“We hope that a new puppy from our breeding program will rise to the formidable challenge of continuing his legacy,” said the statement.
