Talk:Raven Branwen/@comment-26258854-20180529114147/@comment-4010415-20180531232103

"As blind as a bat" actually came from shortening the phrase "As blind as a bat at noon", the time of day at which bats suffer the most from their poor day vision. It's like how "Jack of all trades, master of none" and "Blood is thicker than water" suffer misunderstandings through having been shortened. The first one was originally "Jack of all trades, master of none, but still better than a master of one", and the second was originally "The blood of the covenant is thicker than the water of the womb." Both have people thinking they mean the opposite of what they're actually supposed to.

Fun fact: Crows and ravens were seen as harbingers of war and were thought to predict death because they were intelligent enough to recognize that, wherever an army went, bloodshed would follow, meaning there would be plenty of corpses to eat. Thus, they followed armies to their battlefields and awaited their feast.