Crows/Tell the devil

Posted by ESC on March 16, 2001

From "Nora, Nora" by Anne Rivers Siddons (HarperCollinsPublishers, New York, 2000):

Aunt Augusta: ".She stood in the middle of Monument Square the other day yelling 'Go tell the Devil!' at a flock of crows. Floyd Fletcher won't do anything because she's your mother, but believe me, he'd like to."
Frazier: ".She's not crazy, you know, Augusta. The things she says and does have come down a thousand years in the Highlands."
Peyton: "Everybody knows that crows watch all week to see what sins we've committed, and on Friday they go down to hell and tell the Devil. Jaybirds do it, too. Haven't you ever heard of Jaybird Friday?"
Augusta: "I have not, except among the Negroes. It's a Negro superstition, Peyton, not a Scottish one."
Peyton: "They've got crows in Scotland, too."