In the Europe 1 program "Historically yours", Stéphane Bern examines the roots of an expression of everyday life.

Tuesday, he is interested in the origin of the very French metaphor of the "crow", this author of letters of threat or denunciation who prefers to hide his identity and not to sign his writings.

Stéphane Bern offers every day, in 

Historically yours

 with Matthieu Noël, to discover these expressions that we use on a daily basis without necessarily knowing their origin.

Tuesday, the host explains to us the roots of the metaphor of the "crow", an ominous bird which designates a threatening anonymous author.

When, in a remote village of the France of the bell towers, a bad guy has fun by mail saying bad things about other people (or when "gromoche69" on Twitter says worse than hanging from a YouTuber), we can talk about a crow".

A crow is therefore an anonymous person who will threaten or denounce things often in a malicious way.

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The idea that this bird reveals a painful truth dates back to Roman mythology and to the god Aesculapius, the god of medicine.

Her mother, Coronis, cheated on her father Apollo while she was pregnant.

A crow, which incidentally was white, will reveal adultery to Apollo.

The latter, mad with pain and jealousy, has Coronis assassinated.

She will have just enough time to give birth to Aesculapius, before she dies.

Roman mythology and the Tulle affair

Apollo later considering that the raven had done a bad deed in revealing the truth to him will make him black, which explains why they have this color today.

The legend of the raven has remained.

Since then, we speak of a crow to designate the one who announces bad news.

But it is another story, more recent, which will popularize the term in the French language.

In Tulle, a city dear to François Hollande, between 1917 and 1922, a multitude of anonymous letters were sent throughout the village.

Everyone takes it for their rank and everyone will end up suspecting everyone.

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Why do we give ourselves "bird names" when we insult ourselves?

It is a collective dictation given to the whole village which will make it possible to find the culprit.

A film by Henri Georges Clouzot called

Le Corbeau

, with Pierre Fresnay and Ginette Leclerc, will tell this story and will complete the popularization of the expression.

Henceforth, the anonymous bird of bad omen will be called in France a crow.