Three crows are a symbol or metaphor in several traditions.
Crows, and especially ravens, often feature in European legends or mythology as portents or harbingers of doom or death, because of their dark plumage, unnerving calls, and tendency to eat carrion. According to Druid tradition they're also believed to bring upon new changes (death to one phase of your life and the birth to another)
A version of the three crows is probably based on the three ravens folk tale where three crows plot to devour the corpse of a dead knight. Then they are thwarted by the knight's hawk, hound and mistress. [1]
Three crows are also often implicated in the parliament of crows where three crows preside over a larger number of crows and sit in judgment over the fate of another crow.[ citation needed ] The verdict sometimes results in a crow being set upon by all the other crows. This behavior and their tendency to show up at battlefields and the scenes of murders may be explain the collective term for crows as being a 'murder of crows'. [2]
Three crows also refers to a tale of three crows (a father, mother and son crow) bothering the king. [3]
There are also several references to the three crows in the German folklore. A number of these were included in the collection of stories by the Grimm brothers, Jacob and Wilhelm. There is, for instance, the legend of Faithful John, which told of three crows who warned faithful John about a series of misfortunes that would befall his king. [4] The Grimms also recorded a story called Three Crows, which involved a tale that characterized the crows in the same light. In the story, a man called Conrad was robbed of his money and beaten hard so that he became blind. He also overheard three crows talking, which gave him information that significantly improved his life. [5]
The Three Crows (三羽烏) may refer to the group of three Go players who are part of the triumvirate of certain eras in Go history. These players include Hideyuki Fujisawa, Keizo Suzuki, and Toshiro Yamabe (1940s). Although, since Suzuki died young, he was replaced by Takeo Kajiwara. Hashimoto Utaro, Murashima Yoshinori, and Shinohara Masami (1950s). Fujisawa Hosai, Takagawa Kaku, and Sakata Eio (1960s). Ishida Yoshio, Kato Masao and Takemiya Masaki (Kitani dojo). In Japanese the term is used of triumvirates of other fields as well, for example sumo and baseball. In the Kwantung Army of Imperial Japan for instance, the Three Crows refer to the Triumvirate of Army War College 24th class graduate Kenji Doihara, Army War College 28th class graduate Itagaki Seishiro and Army War College 30th class Military Sword Club member Kanji Ishiwara: the main masterminds of the Mukden Incident and the subsequent invasion of China.
Stock market investors sometimes refer to a three crows as a pattern of successive declining stock prices over three days often identified by overlapping candlestick patterns. Three crows are often seen as a warning of a period of powerful selling pressure on the stock market. [6] There are those who recommend, however, that investors should not be alarmed since an identical three crow pattern in a primary uptrend will likely break out downward but reverse in a few days. [7]
The Brothers Grimm, Jacob (1785–1863) and Wilhelm (1786–1859), were German academics who together collected and published folklore. The brothers are among the best-known storytellers of folktales, popularizing stories such as "Cinderella", "The Frog Prince", "Hansel and Gretel", "Town Musicians of Bremen", "Little Red Riding Hood", "Rapunzel", "Rumpelstiltskin", "Sleeping Beauty", and "Snow White". Their first collection of folktales, Children's and Household Tales, began publication in 1812.
A fairy tale is a short story that belongs to the folklore genre. Such stories typically feature magic, enchantments, and mythical or fanciful beings. In most cultures, there is no clear line separating myth from folk or fairy tale; all these together form the literature of preliterate societies. Fairy tales may be distinguished from other folk narratives such as legends and explicit moral tales, including beast fables. Prevalent elements include dragons, dwarfs, elves, fairies, giants, gnomes, goblins, griffins, merfolk, monsters, talking animals, trolls, unicorns, witches, wizards, magic, and enchantments.
Mother Goose is a character that originated in children's fiction, as the imaginary author of a collection of French fairy tales and later of English nursery rhymes. She also appeared in a song, the first stanza of which often functions now as a nursery rhyme. The character also appears in a pantomime tracing its roots to 1806.
The "Town Musicians of Bremen" is a German fairy tale collected by the Brothers Grimm and published in Grimms' Fairy Tales in 1819.
A skeleton is a type of physically manifested undead often found in fantasy, gothic, and horror fiction, as well as mythology, folklore, and various kinds of art. Most are human skeletons, but they can also be from any creature or race found on Earth or in the fantasy world.
"Hansel and Gretel" is a German fairy tale collected by the Brothers Grimm and published in 1812 as part of Grimms' Fairy Tales. It is also known as Little Step Brother and Little Step Sister.
A changeling, also historically referred to as an auf or oaf, is a human-like creature found throughout much of European folklore. A changeling was a substitute left by a supernatural being on kidnapping a human being. Sometimes the changeling was a 'stock', more often the changeling was a supernatural being made magically to look like the kidnapped human. Supernatural beings blamed for stealing children included fairies, demons, trolls, nereids and many others. Usually, the kidnapped human was a child; but there were cases, particularly in Scandinavia and Ireland, where adults were taken.
The Aarne–Thompson–Uther Index is a catalogue of folktale types used in folklore studies. The ATU Index is the product of a series of revisions and expansions by an international group of scholars: originally composed in German by Finnish folklorist Antti Aarne (1910), the index was translated into English, revised, and expanded by American folklorist Stith Thompson, and later further revised and expanded by German folklorist Hans-Jörg Uther (2004). The ATU Index, along with Thompson's Motif-Index of Folk-Literature (1932)—with which it is used in tandem—is an essential tool for folklorists.
Grimms' Fairy Tales, originally known as the Children's and Household Tales, is a German collection of fairy tales by the Grimm brothers or "Brothers Grimm", Jacob and Wilhelm, first published on 20 December 1812. Vol. 1 of the first edition contained 86 stories, which were followed by 70 more tales, numbered consecutively, in the 1st edition, Vol. 2, in 1815. By the seventh edition in 1857, the corpus of tales had expanded to 200 tales and 10 "Children's Legends". It is listed by UNESCO in its Memory of the World Registry.
"The Six Swans" is a German fairy tale collected by the Brothers Grimm in Grimm's Fairy Tales in 1812. It is of Aarne–Thompson type 451, commonly found throughout Europe. Other tales of this type include The Seven Ravens, The Twelve Wild Ducks, Udea and her Seven Brothers, The Wild Swans, and The Twelve Brothers. Andrew Lang included a variant of the tale in The Yellow Fairy Book.
"The Seven Ravens" is a German fairy tale collected by the Brothers Grimm. It is of Aarne–Thompson type 451, commonly found throughout Europe.
"The Juniper Tree" is a German fairy tale published in Low German by the Brothers Grimm in Grimm's Fairy Tales in 1812. The story contains themes of child abuse, murder, cannibalism and biblical symbolism and is one of the Brothers Grimm's darker and more mature fairy tales.
"The Three Spinners" is a German fairy tale collected by the Brothers Grimm in Grimm's Fairy Tales. It is Aarne–Thompson type 501, which is widespread throughout Europe.
The youngest son is a stock character in fairy tales, where he features as the hero. He is usually the third son, but sometimes there are more brothers, and sometimes he has only one; usually, they have no sisters.
"Trusty John", "Faithful John", "Faithful Johannes", or "John the True" is a German fairy tale collected by the Brothers Grimm and published in Grimm's Fairy Tales in 1819. Andrew Lang included it in The Blue Fairy Book.
"The Brave Little Tailor" or "The Valiant Little Tailor" or "The Gallant Tailor" is a German fairy tale collected by the Brothers Grimm. "The Brave Little Tailor" is a story of Aarne–Thompson Type 1640, with individual episodes classified in other story types.
In folklore and fantasy, an enchanted forest is a forest under, or containing, enchantments. Such forests are described in the oldest folklore from regions where forests are common, and occur throughout the centuries to modern works of fantasy. They represent places unknown to the characters, and situations of liminality and transformation. The forest can feature as a place of threatening danger, or one of refuge, or a chance at adventure.
"Thumbling," published in German as "Daumesdick" is a German fairy tale collected by the Brothers Grimm in Grimm's Fairy Tales in 1819. The Grimms included another, similar story, "Thumbling's Travels." Both stories are related to the English Tom Thumb and often share its title when translated into English.
The Facetious Nights of Straparola, also known as The Nights of Straparola, is a two-volume collection of 75 stories by Italian author and fairy-tale collector Giovanni Francesco Straparola. Modeled after Boccaccio's Decameron, it is significant as often being called the first European storybook to contain fairy-tales; it would influence later fairy-tale authors like Charles Perrault and Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm.
"The Legend of Knockgrafton" is an Irish folk tale/fairy tale published by T. Crofton Croker in Fairy Legends and Traditions of the South of Ireland (1825).