‘Nevermore!’ The Story of the Sherborne School Ravens.
Everyone has heard of the ravens at the Tower of London and the legend that if they ever fly away
that the monarchy and the Tower will fall, but what about the ravens of Sherborne School?
The connection between ravens and Sherborne School goes back a very long way. From the year
998 until the dissolution of the monastery in 1539, Sherborne Abbey and the associated school
were run by the Benedictine order of monks whose founder, Saint Benedict, is often depicted with
a raven in reference to a legend in which a raven saved the Saint’s life by carrying away a piece of
poisoned bread that he had been given to eat. It is therefore possible that ravens were kept by
the monks at Sherborne in honour of their Founder.
The earliest evidence of ravens being present at Sherborne School appears in the form of a poem
written about Jack, the School’s resident tame raven, and published in March 1859 in the School
magazine, The Shirburnian. ‘A.B’, the author of the poem, states that Jack had been ‘some time in
this place’ and, as it has been claimed that captive ravens can live for up to 80 years, it is possible
that Jack had arrived several years before the poem was written:
The Raven is a bonnie bird,
With jet-black eye and feather,
The friend of all the upper school,
The fear of all the lower.
He’s not afraid of one his size,
Nor twice his size, nor three times;
He has a beak and sharpish claws,
And if you ‘d like to try them,
You’ve only got to put your hand
Just near enough unto them.
He’s been some time in this same place,
And seen all sorts of weather –
With wind and snow, and rain and hail,
And hoar frost on each feather.
And yet, perhaps, he’ll live to see
Another generation,
Or, may be, two; for, as I’ve heard,
‘Tis a bird of long duration.
And when long years are past recall,
His epitaph shall say,
That “Boys grew men,
And men grew gay,
But Jack outlived them all.
The School ravens made two more appearances in The Shirburnian in 1859, revealing how the
boys regarded them with a mixture of fondness and annoyance at their unsociable antics. In ‘A
Tour Round my Study’, a boy writes of the view from the window of the School House studies
(now the Headmaster’s study building):
‘I gaze for a moment out of my window; the grave old raven is scanning over a Greek
grammar which has been left in the courts. He hops round and round, caws a cry of
defiance, and pecks at a verb, which disappears root and all. What a classic you must be
by this time, you cunning old bird, if you have properly digested all the learning you have
so greedily devoured. I have not forgiven you the bite you tried at my leg on my first
appearance in the school courts, nor the stealthy abduction of one of my shoes, which
you tried to bury deep in the tan at the foot of our gymnastic poles.’
(The Shirburnian, May 1859).
And later in ‘An Old Friend’s Second Appearance’ we learn about Jack the raven’s arrival with a
broken wing and of the subsequent desertion of his partner, Grip (named after the raven in
Charles Dickens’ novel Barnaby Rudge):
‘I was sitting under the old walnut tree in the School courts at about 8.30 pm... There
was the old raven roosting on the post just opposite me ... Old Jack still haunted my
mind. I could still hear him cawing with anger at being disturbed. I wondered what he
was thinking of? Was he thinking of his faithless partner Grip, who had so basely
deserted him? Or was his mind running on the day on which he was first introduced to
these classical courts with a broken wing? How miserable the poor fellow looked whilst
it was being set! How frightened he was when he was afterwards attacked by a cat,
who handled him so roughly that the setting was displaced, and his wing put into that
twisted shape in which it now appears! Ah! You would be a match for twenty cats now,
wouldn’t you, old fellow? I wonder if he remembers all the old fellows who used to pet
and feed him with bits of cheese after dinner. I can answer for it he never forgets those
who were always teasing him! Poor W-, how fond he used to be of Old Jack! Many’s the
time that I have seen him lick fellows for teasing his old favourite.’
(The Shirburnian, October 1859).
In the 1890s, Jack was succeeded by Morloch.
Morloch the raven was brought to the School by
the then Headmaster, the Rev. F.B. Westcott, and
by a boy in School House, Archibald Wrightson (a,
1896-1900). According to The Sherborne Register,
Morloch and his successive wives (he was
suspected of murdering at least one) were housed
in the Slype, or ‘Ravens’ Nook’, the lean-to
building against the north transept of the Abbey
and the only surviving section of what was the
monks’ dormitory. However, the ravens appear
to have spent most of their time sitting on the
chapel steps where they pecked latecomers to
chapel and destroyed the hymn books!
The Rev. Westcott was obviously very fond of the
School ravens for amongst The Songs of Sherborne
School (published c.1903) is one written by him
entitled ‘The Ravens’. With music composed by
the School’s music master, Berthold G. Thorne,
‘The Ravens’ tells the story of Morloch and one of
The Rev. F.B. Westcott
Headmaster of Sherborne School 1892-1909.
his many wives. It recounts how the two ravens ‘brought tidy souls to blank despair’, littering the
Courts with torn hymn books, and how the female raven took flight, possibly as a result of the
noise of the Pack Monday fair (‘But there came a day (woe worth that day)/ When bells would
ring, and bands would play,/ And the town went wild with glee’), leaving Morloch croaking ‘I’m
happy, why need you care? Caw! Caw!’
The School ravens in their favourite haunt at the top of the chapel steps, c.1900.
In 1902, the School’s ravens achieved international fame when a photograph of one of them
appeared beside ‘A Story of Sherborne School’ in the boys’ own annual, Young England. The story
was written by the Rev. E.E. Bradford with the help of a School House boy, E.A.R. Wilson (a, 18971902). The photograph shows one of the School ravens sitting on a fence around the Sixth Form
Green outside School House. The story mentions that it is a ‘peculiar old custom to always keep
two of these birds at Sherborne School’.
During his twenty year tenure at Sherborne School, Morloch the raven became something of an
institution, although his untidy and aggressive behaviour was not appreciated by everyone. It is
therefore hardly surprising that in 1910, with the arrival of a new Headmaster who was probably
not as fond of the ravens as his predecessor, that Morloch was expelled from the Courts and from
the School.
Morloch’s departure from the School was commemorated in the April 1910 edition of The
Shirburnian with an anonymous poem that parodied Edgar Allan Poe’s famous poem ‘The Raven’.
Poe’s poem tells the story of a heartbroken young man who is visited by a raven that gradually
drives him mad by answering ‘Nevermore!’ to every question he puts to it. The poem that
appeared in The Shirburnian ends with the following lines:
‘Prophet’, said I, ‘guard from evil – prophet still if bird or devil!
Say what weary fate has driven, driven thee from Sherborne’s door,
Luck of Sherborne School the vaunted, of this desert land enchanted,
Will our School by fate be haunted? Tell me, tell me, I implore
Is the luck of Sherborne parted? Wilt thou never come back more?’
Quoth the raven, ‘Nevermore! Nevermore!’
And so Sherborne School lost its last raven. But the Headmaster’s head did not roll (in fact he
remained in post for eighteen years) and the Gate Tower to the Courts did not fall, so perhaps
there was nothing in the old legend after all ...
Rachel Hassall
June 2011