Flock
A group of ravens is traditionally called an unkindness, and a group of crows a murder. Both names come from a medieval game of words rather than from anyone who watched birds, and naturalists simply say flock. Japanese has one word for all of them, mure.
群 (mure): a flock, a herd, a crowd.
It is built from 君, a ruler, and 羊, a sheep: a flock gathered behind its leader.
The English names come from the Book of St Albans, printed in 1486, which lists “terms of venery”: fanciful collective nouns that well-bred people were expected to know. Among them are a murder of crows and an unkindness of ravens. The unkindness probably comes from an old belief that ravens were harsh to their young. The murder needs little explaining for a black bird that gathers where things have died. A conspiracy of ravens, also heard today, is a much more recent invention.
An English ballad printed in 1611, The Three Ravens, begins with three ravens sitting in a tree, wondering where to find their breakfast. They spot a knight lying slain in a field below, but his hounds guard his body, his hawks circle above him, and a doe comes to lift his head and bury him. The ravens go without. In a darker Scottish version, The Twa Corbies, two ravens find a knight no one has come to mourn, and plan their meal.
Crows and ravens are at their most striking together. In Japan, crows gather each winter evening at shared roosts, sometimes thousands to a single stand of trees, and the sight and sound of them flying home at dusk is part of the Japanese evening. Ravens themselves are more solitary, and seeing three at once is rarer than the names suggest.
The Mure Tee draws three ravens in single-line outline across the back, printed in white.
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