The Disappearance of Merlina the Raven

Elah Feder: Hey, Dylan.

Dylan Thuras: Hello. How are you, Ella?

Elah: I’m doing well. How are you?

Dylan: I’m doing good. You know, it’s summer. The kids are home. It’s a little chaotic around here, but like all is well, all is good.

Elah: That’s good to hear. I want to take you back to a less pleasant time. January of 2021. This was deep COVID. In England, it was yet another damp, gray winter. They’d gone through Brexit. They had entered their third national COVID lockdown. And then they had to go through a pandemic. They had to go through a pandemic. And then they had to go through a pandemic. And this is the moment when the Tower of London, sensing that the world needed more bad news, announced that Merlina the Raven had gone missing. Does that mean anything to you?

Dylan: Not Merlina! Not really. I’m guessing it has, this is a national bird of some sort, but no, I don’t know what this is.

Elah: Okay. Merlina is a very important bird. She’s actually part of a group of ravens that live in the Tower of London, which by the way, is more of a palace or a fortress than a tower. Anyway, these ravens, they didn’t just fly onto the grounds. It’s actually an elite group that was purposely brought to the tower and cared for by a professional raven master.

Dylan: Yes. I’ve seen one of these raven masters and the ravens. They’re like these personable, charismatic British birds. People know about them. They’re excited about them.

Elah: So Merlina is one of these ravens and she was very, yeah, very entertaining. Apparently she would imitate crow calls, they think, to get crows to come down and play with her. She also had this habit of playing dead in front of tourists. So she’d flop over on her back and pretend to be—which could actually be a stress response, but people thought this was hilarious. She was also a very soulful raven. So she was at one point bonded to another female raven. And apparently when that raven died, Merlina would not leave her side. They took the body away and Merlina stood on the north wall of the tower, just not moving, silent, for three days. Her well ran deep.

Dylan: Yeah. Very stoic raven behavior, appropriately moody and broody. Okay. So this Merlina then went missing like in the middle of COVID.

Elah: Yes. It wasn’t actually that unusual for her to leave the tower. She did go for these little trips, but she never went away this long. In part because, you know, these ravens have a great life in the tower, but also because since her old companion, the female raven, died, Merlina, at least from her perspective, was basically dating the raven master. His name was Chris. And they had this very sweet relationship. They would apparently call back and forth to each other throughout the day, sounds like—they were a bonded pair. Chris was married, but I don’t think she knew that. So after weeks of her being gone, no sign of her, Merlina was feared dead, understandably.

Dylan: Is this like a big—I mean, honestly, like, that sounds terrible, but like, ravens can fly.

Elah: Yes.

Dylan: She flew away. She didn’t come back? That’s concerning. Like, how bad is this? Like, why is it such a big thing?

Elah: Because according to legend, the future of the British monarchy depends on the safety of these ravens.

I’m Dylan Thuras, and this is Atlas Obscura.

And I’m Elah Feder, and this episode is about the ravens of the Tower of London: the legend, the truth, and what happened to Merlina.

This is an edited transcript of the Atlas Obscura Podcast: a celebration of the world’s strange, incredible, and wondrous places. Find the show on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and all major podcast apps.

Dylan: So, these ravens live in a pretty important historical site. It’s been around for 870 years. The Tower of London has been a palace, famously it’s been a prison, an armory. Queen Elizabeth I, before she became queen, she was held prisoner there for a bit. So, you know, it’s like a big deal site. It’s got a lot of exciting and sometimes gruesome history, yeah?

Elah: It does, yeah. One of the things it’s most famous for are the many, many executions. It’s mostly not a happy history, although it was a palace at one point, so, you know, there were good times too. So today, if you go for a tour of the Tower, you would learn all about that. But one of the main attractions are these ravens. And even if you’re not into birds, I think you might be enticed by ravens. They’re really, really smart.

Dylan: Crazy smart. They’re like wild, crazy little tool users. They do all kinds of nuts stuff.

Elah: I was reading that they hold grudges. They’ve done tests where they remember, like, who screwed them over, like among the other ravens and who’s been cooperative, and they will not cooperate with the bad ravens. The tower birds themselves are pretty good at mimicry. When Vladimir Putin came to visit, apparently one of them greeted him with a good morning, which really startled him. So like, they’re fun. They’re smart. They’re a little bit creepy. They’re a big hit with the tourists. But it’s not just about entertainment. There is a legend that if there were ever to be fewer than six ravens at the Tower, the crown of England would fall. And the Tower itself would disintegrate into dust.

Dylan: It’s pretty serious stuff. That’s bad. So, I mean, obviously, this would have been scarier for British people historically. Maybe they would have put more stock in this. Now the royals are like figureheads. They’re kind of like gossip magazine characters. And a lot of people want to get rid of, like, the crown altogether. Does anyone care about this? Does anyone actually care about this?

Elah: Well, some versions of the legend say the whole kingdom will fall along with the crown. So not great, even if you don’t like the royals. But either way, I think it’s mostly just like a fun legend nowadays. But in the ’40s, there was this one raven named Mabel who went missing, suspected to be kidnapped. And I do wonder, like, you know, what were they trying to achieve there? Was this an attempt to topple the throne?

Dylan: Yeah, steal three ravens, the whole monarchy goes down. It’s like a good bargain.

Elah: It seems more doable than any kind of other attempt. Yeah. So, you know, it’s a fun story that people tell, although the tower does take this responsibility very seriously. They take really good care of these ravens. The raven master lives in an apartment in the tower. Apparently work starts before dawn. He will feed the ravens mice, rats, quail. One of their favorite treats is blood soaked dog biscuits. And then at night, he has to bring them all back into these open air cages. Sometimes he has to climb up towers to get them. So this is like this, they take this very seriously.

Dylan: This isn’t like a goofy job or something. This is pretty high prestige, no joke kind of thing. Okay, so where does the notion that the monarchy depends on them come from? That is a very specific idea to have about these ravens.

Elah: So there are a few different versions of the basic story. And what you’ll generally hear if you go to the tower is that it dates back hundreds of years. King Charles II, so sometime in the mid 1600s, he is said to have heard an ancient prophecy that if the ravens were ever to leave the tower, the crown would fall (or Britain would fall). And he agreed that there always had to be at least six ravens on site. But who told Charles that?

Dylan: Right.

Elah: Isn’t really specified. But it probably actually doesn’t matter who told Charles or where it came from, because it’s totally made up. You’ll be shocked.

Dylan: I mean, you know, these things accrue in sort of weird and surprising ways. But okay, so if it’s not some ancient prophecy told to Charles II, like where did it come from? When did it start?

Elah: Well, okay. So a historian actually dug into this and he was able to figure out that this ancient prophecy is actually a pretty recent invention.

Dylan: Go on. Like how recent? Like TikTok?

Elah: Like, your parents might have been around recent.

Dylan: Oh wow, okay.

Elah: So all of this is based on the investigations of a historian named Boria Sax. I couldn’t reach him, unfortunately, for an interview, but he’s written pretty detailed accounts of his investigations. So Boria was initially a believer. I mean, he believed not necessarily that the tower would fall, but that this was an actual ancient legend. But then when he started looking through old documents, he couldn’t find any mention of it. And in fact, he couldn’t find any mentions of even just ravens being at the tower before the late 1800s. So no magic, empire protecting ravens, not even random visitor ravens, just no mention of ravens, which actually, it kind of makes sense. Ravens were considered a threat to livestock and they were aggressively hunted throughout most of Britain. And by the 18th century, they were pretty much gone from London. So it makes sense that you wouldn’t see a lot of raven mentions.

Dylan: Fully less than six—zero is fully less than six ravens.

Elah: Indeed. So Boria does start seeing mentions of ravens at the tower starting in the late 1800s, early 1900s. But like, still, nothing about this legend until close to the end of World War II. And I actually have a newspapers.com account, so I started looking at old newspapers.

Dylan: Yes.

Elah: And it totally checks out. If you look at newspapers from the 1940s, this legend appears very abruptly. So if you look at papers from 1943, articles will say, “Yes, there are ravens here, yes, they’re being cared for.” Nothing about a prophecy though, they just say like, “Oh, they’re ravens, they’re probably originally here because they were attracted by the executions,” right? Like being scavengers for dead meat. Then if you look at newspapers from a couple of years later, 1945, suddenly every time an article mentions the ravens, they’re like, “Of course, there is this ancient tradition that we must keep the ravens or the empire will fall.”

Dylan: Can I make a prediction?

Elah: Yeah.

Dylan: So I mean, okay, in the 1940s, well, first off, we go to World War II and we fight it with the British, right? So there’s suddenly all these cross-cultural connections. But it’s also like international tourism is starting to pick up, you can take a commercial flight to London, right? You can just get on a plane and go and be a tourist in London. You don’t have to take like a steamer across the damn ocean. And so suddenly you’ve got the very beginnings of a real international tourism boom. And so I’m wondering if, you know, you’ve got to like—this just feels like exactly the kind of patter that a guide makes up as they’re taking people around a tourist site. And then the other guides are like, “Dude, that’s good. That’s good patter. Like, whoa, he incorporated the ravens who are just kind of like some jerks who hang out around here. And like, now we all got to do the bit.” Like, this is my guess. I don’t know if that’s true, but I like I want it to be true.

Elah: I mean, honestly, that sounds pretty plausible to me. Boria thinks it might have something to do with World War II itself. So the ravens, you know, they were there possibly as props for tourists hearing gory stories about executions. But then when World War II comes around and London is getting bombed, Boria thinks that ravens were used as unofficial bomb spotters. Animals are often pretty attuned to scary plane sounds. So you can see how that might kind of morph into a legend of these ravens being great protectors essential for the safety of the kingdom. But yeah, I can totally see a tour guide thinking, like, let’s just make this a really good story. We’ll give like, oh, we’ll give this some extra heft. So they just made this up sometime in the 1940s. But yeah, it’s very clearly made up around 1944. This works out really well for the ravens. They are pampered. They are fed. They are kept safe from predators. Ravens in the wild apparently can live up to 15 years. Tower ravens can live up to 40 years.

Dylan: This raven and this raven master could have had a lifelong relationship at that point, basically. Well, so wait, this gets me back to the question. Hang on. What the hell happened to Merlina? Where’d she go?

Elah: Okay, so sadly, Merlina did not come back. She never came back. She is probably dead. Somebody online speculated that perhaps she had gone away to spare Chris the pain of seeing her die the way that her raven lover had previously died. But yeah, we don’t know. And Chris, the raven master at the time, he was totally crushed. He announced that he was taking a few days off to mourn her passing. So I mean, the love was real.

Dylan: This is sweet. Yeah. And obviously, the crown did not fall.

Elah: It did not fall. Possibly because its fate does not actually depend on the number of ravens in residence at the tower.

Dylan: Well, that can’t be right.

Elah: No. Yeah. The other reason is more likely, which is that the tower had two backup ravens.

Dylan: Right, okay. They still were above the crucial threshold of six.

Elah: And they made sure to reassure the public when they made this announcement. Even without Merlina, they still had a total of seven. They’re very careful about this, right? You can’t take chances. So since 2018, they’ve had a raven breeding program to make sure that they always have ravens in stock.

Dylan: I feel like maybe in my old age, I would like to have a raven. I’ll be a little raven master of my own domain.

Elah: You could get the outfit. It would be very fetching on you. Have you seen the outfit?

Dylan: I have actually. It’s like all brass buttony type thing, right?

Elah: It’s a lot of flourishes and a big shiny top hat. Yeah. It would look lovely on you. I think it’s something to consider.

Dylan: Well, thank you, Elah. Sad story in a way because Merlina, you know, but also like what an interesting history.

Elah: Yeah. It was great to be here. Thanks for having me.

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Our podcast is a co-production of Atlas Obscura and Stitcher Studios. The people who make our show include Dylan Thuras, Doug Baldinger, Kameel Stanley, Johanna Mayer, Manolo Morales, Amanda McGowan, Alexa Lim, Casey Holford, and Luz Fleming. Our theme music is by Sam Tyndall.