The Rural Ethicist: The Nun of Assembly

By Katharine Adams

April 2025

A murder of crows zipped past my upstairs bedroom window on a bright spring morning, shrieking their rank and file orders to one another, rankling the fur on the cat’s back.

Startled, she dropped down and held fast to the wood floor, legs splaying at angles like a giraffe at a watering hole. Eyes popping wide, scanning the ceiling above, Suzy’s feline instincts kicked into high gear to avoid being plucked by a set of talons.

I felt privileged to witness this raw, instinctual behavior; one I’d rarely have a chance to spy out in nature, where a small animal’s instincts outwit their predator.

The expression, a “murder of crows,” is one of many colorful “nouns of assembly” used in the English language, believed to stem from the late Middle Ages. During this time, English-speaking aristocrats invented poetic and humorous collective nouns. Whimsical, often macabre, these terms evolved to describe groups of animals.

Woodcut, Wynkyn de Word 1496 edition,  Boke of Seynt Albans (public domain)

Crows, long associated with death and the supernatural due to their inky feathers and scavenger style, likely inspired the term “murder.” The cat knew this before I did.

Similarly vivid expressions for animal groups, such as “an exaltation of larks” or “a parliament of owls,” became a quirky part of the English language. Just as a “pride of lions” evokes the nobility of the species, the sweet birdsong of larks is perceived as emanating from the Heavens, while the watchful, measured consideration of owls forms a judgment panel.

Also known as “terms of venery,” these expressions took part in the compiled essays of the Boke of Seynt Albans (Book of St. Albans) in 1486, among the earliest printed works in England. This manual reflected the interests of English nobility during the time. Some of its essays were attributed to Explicit Dam Julyans Barnes (Dame Juliana Berners), a learned nun at the Abbey of St. Albans.

Said to have been Benedictine prioress at the Priory of St. Mary of Sopwell, near St Albans, in Hertfordshire, Berner’s evident education and ardor for field sports indicated she was likely born into nobility; however, her very existence has been questioned by some scholars.

“There is no such person to be found in the pedigree of the Berners family, but [notably] there is a gap in the records of the priory of Sopwell between 1435 and 1480,” grants hertsmemories.org.uk/content/herts-history/people/dame-juliana-berners.

Berners is also credited with authoring A Treatyse of Fysshynge wyth an Angle (1496), the earliest known volume on sport fishing. The American Museum of Fly Fishing states that “although no documents have been found to support her existence, the [supposed] myth of a noble-born, fly-fishing nun will forever be part of women’s history.”

Myth? My ærs. I think the missing documentation is a likely example of history’s patriarchal structures having marginalized the contributions of legions like her. Numerous women’s fly-fishing clubs in North America and Europe honor Berner’s legacy, by name, as the first author of the sport. In his book The Fly, Dr. Andrew Herd fairly acknowledges that while there may be no concrete evidence for her existence, there’s also no proof she did not exist, either.

Covering a variety of subjects, including heraldry, hunting and falconry, one of the Book of St. Albans’ most notable sections, “the compaynys of beestys and fowlys,” compiles over 150 collective nouns of assembly for animals, most intended to reflect their behavior or mythology.

Some lesser-known group nicknames in the wild kingdom include a crash of rhinos, a rhumba of rattlesnakes, a congress of salamanders, a business of ferrets, a confusion of guinea fowl, and a wisdom of wombats. A “gaggle of geese” refers to the creatures contained to land or water, while a “skein of geese” describes their being in flight.

Some terms survive, while others fade, in a language that evolves in playful ways beyond just practical communication.

I wonder what the prioress might have thought, while out fysshynge in the Medieval English mist, of a school of scholars pondering her very life?

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

The Rural Ethicist is a column about the culture of the daily mundane. It tolerates an occasional spider, values the bull in horse sense and seeks the gleaming, stainless steel wisdom beneath a film of cooking grease. Above all, it cherishes the gem of our shared existence: family. ruralethicstudio.com