Magpie

One of my long-term projects is a story in which one of the central characters is a magpie, at least some of the time. This has led me to develop an interest in magpies generally, but especially in their folklore status, and wherever they appear in literature and art. I have learnt a lot. For instance, I am sitting in bed now typing this and I can hear a magpie chattering outside my window. I can’t see it, but now I recognise their call. Like other members of the corvidae family, magpies tend to have sinister associations in Western folklore (in the East they are considered helpful and lucky). I wonder if their bad rep is influenced by their unnerving humanlike qualities. Magpies, for example:

• are highly intelligent
• can mimic speech
• have a call which sound like a demented human laugh (listen on the RSPB magpie page)
• are famously attracted to shiny items (the plot of many old ballads, a Tintin comic and an opera hangs on this)
• can recognise themselves in a mirror (video)
• are omnivorous, like us

A little too close for comfort, perhaps? Especially framed by the common association of birds with human souls in myths from all over the world. Who exactly is watching you through those little black eyes?

The story is taking shape slowly, and I’m drawing on a bit of local information (intriguingly there’s a ‘Magpie Hill’ marked on some old maps of Epping Forest, although there’s no hill to be found) but mostly I’m making use of folklore and legends to add a magical element to a story otherwise set in the real world today.

I’ve made a Spotify playlist of songs that I associate with some of the themes and the mood of the story. There’s some good stuff on there, from Siouxsie, The Shins, Patrick Wolf, Talking Heads, Ladytron, PJ Harvey, Magazine and the Dead Kennedys. You can have a listen here: Magpie Writing Songs.

This Mythmaking blog post and this Squidoo lens have been useful in getting some magpie folklor leads going. If you know of any interesting stories, essays, pictures or historical sources which feature magpies, please share them with me!