ᘛ·∘᪥ … ꜱᴇᴠᴇɴ ꜰᴏʀ ᴀ ꜱᴇᴄʀᴇᴛ ᪥∘·ᘚ
【 please view in full-size 】
I’m trying to get back to when my production speed wasn’t one-drawing-per-month, so it’s not perfect but I’m still pleased.
At least that was the idea until that fucking magpie came along.This is another illustration for @longstoryshortikilledhim’s a m a z i n g Jane Eyre AU Sᴏᴍᴇ Sᴛʀᴀɴɢᴇ ᴀɴᴅ Uɴɴᴇʀᴠɪɴɢ Eᴠᴇɴᴛꜱ because I love it to pieces and am so proud to have the privilege to help her out with it. The magpie folklore is one of my
many manyfavourite parts of that fic so I wanted to do something really artsy with them, full of symbolism and stuff.The quote is a paraphrase of a rarer variant of the Oɴᴇ ꜰᴏʀ ꜱᴏʀʀᴏᴡ rhyme (one which is probably American in origin, since it uses crows instead of magpies) that goes like this:
- One crow sorrow; two crows mirth;
- Three, a wedding; four, a birth;
- Five brings silver; six takes wealth;
- Seven crows a secret, more I can nae tell.
⸨Piet [/ˈpʌɪət/] is a Scottish/Irish word for magpie; other spelling variants are piot, pyet and pyot. The more you know!⸩
The deal with the bird silhouettes is two-fold; partly to bring the number up to seven and partly to add more ill omens. They form the Merkstave (i.e. reverse) of the Algiz rune [Ψ] — okay, that’s the Greek character psi but it’s basically the same shape and it will show on most browsers unlike the runes, so please ignore that. In rune divination Algiz stands for protection and life so the inversion obviously means that all hell’s about to break loose.
Don’t ask me what Norse runes are doing in Victorian England, maybe the magpies are Swedish expats, please just go with it.The omnious, fey magpie with the creepy eyeshine is also holding the broken and sap-bleeding twig of a wych elm. The tree has a long association with death in folklore and was incidentally the wood of choice for coffins.
Another piece of British folklore (which I couldn’t incorporate into the drawing, boo!) is the belief that magpies have a drop of the Devil’s blood underneath their tongues. If you scratched their tongue and placed a drop of human blood there, it was said they’d be able to speak. So there’s some corvid trivia for you! ᕕ( ᐛ )ᕗ
Mind you, I don’t have a single clue how to draw birds, not a one. How do birds work? What are wings? How do I fowl? Is avian anatomy real? What is feather? Oh god, the feathers. *anguished fox wail*
I am however very proud of the amount of Victorian Melodrama Brooding™ I managed to cram into this drawing, stormy sky and all. °˖✧◝(⁰▿⁰)◜✧˖°
〖 Graphite and Cretacolor’s glorious Nero pencils on Bristol paper. 〗
Jules' Kylux Stuff 
