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Comment by jbattle | Hacker News Reader

In the 'Once and Future King', the boy who will be King Arthur looses an arrow into the air, just for the joy of it. A crow comes out of nowhere and grabs the arrow. Art's foster brother believes the crow was actually a witch (Morgan le Fay?).

I'm just saying - keep an eye out for witches ;)

  "Just as [the arrow] had spent its force, just as its ambition had been dimmed by destiny and it was preparing to faint, to turn over, to pour back into the bosom of its mother earth, a portent happened. A gore-crow came flapping wearily before the approaching night. It came, it did not waver, it took the arrow. It flew away, heavy and hoisting, with the arrow in its beak."

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I love this book so much, thanks for reminding me of this part! One of my favorite quotes ever comes from Merlin in this book:

> The best thing for being sad is to learn something. That's the only thing that never fails. You may grow old and trembling in your anatomies, you may lie awake at night listening to the disorder of your veins, you may miss your only love, you may see the world about you devastated by evil lunatics, or know your honour trampled in the sewers of baser minds. There is only one thing for it then — to learn. Learn why the world wags and what wags it. That is the only thing which the mind can never exhaust, never alienate, never be tortured by, never fear or distrust, and never dream of regretting. Learning is the only thing for you. Look what a lot of things there are to learn.

I had to look it up — a gore crow or gorcrow is a carrion crow and it’s called that because if its diet.

However, the first result on Google, excerpted for my benefit, was this:

> Gore crows are a form of Dead Hand, involving any number of normal crows killed by a Necromancer, then imbued with a spirit from Death. This may be one spirit shared among the entire flock, or simply a single crow with a single spirit. The more crows share a spirit, the more quickly the corpses erode.[0]

And we wonder why people believe crazy shit!

[0]: https://oldkingdomwiki.fandom.com/wiki/Gore_Crows

Corvids are all over mythology, their obvious intelligence and association with death, especially livestock, is ripe for making myth. It is unfortunate that they were maligned as the cause of death instead of following and cleaning up after it, humans have been unnecessarily cruel to corvids for a long time.

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