The Truth Behind the Legend of the Tower of London Ravens

There are currently seven ravens in the Tower of London. Tradition says that there should be six, so one is viewed as the 'spare'.

The fact that they've become a tourist attraction in their own right meshes well with the apparent pandering to legends. Rationally minded Beefeaters - military men and women all - can brush away any accusation of superstitious thinking, by stating that visitors expect ravens.

But don't be fooled. It's all about the legend.

One Beefeater - the nickname given to the Tower of London guards - is employed to look after the ravens there. The current Tower Ravenmaster is Chris Skaife, who even Tweets regular messages about the birds in his care.

The Tower of London ravens are kept extremely well. They each enjoy hearty meals - each one getting 500g of meat every day, alongside bird biscuits soaked in blood and regular chopped apples - as well as the best veterinarian care in Britain.

At night, they live in cages, but only because foxes crawl through the sewers and have been known to attack them. First thing in the morning, Skaife does his rounds, letting them out of their aviaries alongside the White Tower and the Wakefield Tower.  Then the ravens fly free all day.

To a given value of 'free' that is. All of the ravens in the Tower of London have one wing clipped. This allows them to take to the air, but not very far.  Often it's only up to land on a low perch. Some struggle to make it as high as the turrets atop this ancient London landmark.

But why all that effort in care and captivity?  That's because of the old saying, 'if the ravens leave the Tower, the kingdom will fall'; yet the warning may not be as venerably ancient as is often assumed. Then again, it might.

It is now believed that the tradition of keeping captive ravens in the Tower of London has, at its root, a fashion fad from 1845.

That was the year when Edgar Allan Poe published his famous poem The Raven. It inspired the keeping of ravens as pets amongst the well-to-do throughout the Western world. Which possibly included some of those resident in the Tower of London.

The fortress had long been a popular roosting place for ravens, but this was something different. This ensured that when tourists flocked through the doors to hear gruesome tales of the Tower's brutal history, it was against a backdrop of ravens cawing.

Ravens have an ancient association with death within the British psyche. Native Celtic stories are full of them, while the coming of the Anglo-Saxons and the Normans didn't precisely calm things down. For those Victorian thrill-seekers, it was all too perfect.

It is assumed that some entrepreneurial 19th century Beefeater invented the Charles II legend, and all others since have merely repeated it. It titillated tourists, without anyone having to admit that was the actual point.

Among his other interests, the 2nd Earl of Dunraven became a patron of Iolo Morganwg. This scholar and poet probably did more than any other figure in recent history to re-ignite interest in Druidism. Even if he did forge half of his sources.

Dunraven became convinced that Glamorgan Castle was being visited by the Celtic God Bran, in His atavistic form of a raven. 

Part of the legends surrounding Bran the Blessed is that the land cannot fall while his head is facing the seas. It was a story pertaining to Harlech in West Wales, and the erstwhile invaders being frightened away were Irish slavers and raiders.

There is another story that Bran's head was removed - thus facilitating the invasions of the Romans, Anglo-Saxons and Normans respectively - until it was found again and placed under White Hill in London.  That is, underneath where the Tower of London now stands.

It's a legend which seems to stem from the time when Dunraven's grandson was importing captive ravens to the Tower of London; and stories were suddenly springing up that Britain will fall unless the ravens remain.

It doesn't take a conspiracy theorist to put the clues together. It's not the ravens per se who protect the land, it's a Celtic God transplanted from Wales to London. It's Bran the Blessed, in raven form, staking a claim for neo-Druidism in the Tower, as devised by the Earls of Dunraven.