Sc. Also 5–9 corby, 6 corbe. [f. OF. corb, or its derivs. corbin, corbel: in Sc. the ending seems to be assimilated to the hypocoristic -Y, -IE, in Robbie, Sandie, etc.]
1. A raven; also, often, the carrion crow.
c. 1450. Henryson, Tale of Dog, 15. Schir Corbie Ravin wes maid Apparitour.
1513. Douglas, Æneis, XII. Prol. 174. Quhill corby gaspyt for the fervent heyt.
1637–50. Row, Hist. Kirk (1842), 60. A corbie wes sitting on the houses top, crying, Croup, Croup, Croup.
1820. Blackw. Mag., VI. 568. In quest of … the Corbie, the Glede, and the Hawk.
b. Also corbie-crow.
a. 1811. Leyden, Lord Soulis, in Poet. Wks. (1875), 76. But nothing, I wist, he saw, Save a pyot upon a turret that sat Beside a corby craw.
1837. Macgillivray, Brit. Birds, I. 498.
1837. R. Dunn, Ornith. Ork. & Shetl., 81.
2. Corbie messenger: one who returns too late, or not at all: in allusion to the raven in Gen. viii. 7. (Cf. CORBIN quot. 1300.)
a. 1455. Holland, Houlate, lxiii. How Corby messinger … Thow ischit out of Noyes ark … Taryit as a tratour, and brocht na tythingis.
c. 1610. Sir J. Melvil, Mem. (1683), 170 (Jam.). His Majesty alledging that I was Corbie’s Messenger.
1637–50. Row, Hist. Kirk (1842), 448. He proved Corbie messenger (as it is in the proverb) to his master the Pope; for he himselfe … wes converted to the trueth; and … became one of the Reformers.
1822. Hogg, Perils of Man, II. 91 (Jam.). I wadna like that we were trowed to be corbie messengers.
3. Comb. corbie-gable, a gable having corbie-steps; corbie-steps, projections in the form of steps on the sloping sides of a gable; occurring in old houses in Scotland, the north of England, and on the Continent.
[This term appears in Jamieson’s Dict., 1808, as a modern Sc. vernacular name, with the synonym cat-steps (also G. katzentreppe); another form, not given by Jamieson, is craw- or crow-steps, used in the south of Scotland. These names have app. no literary history, and are evidently popular designations, meaning steps such as only a perching or climbing animal, like a crow or cat, could get at or use. Jamieson, however, offered the conjecture that corbie-steps might be a corruption of ‘corbel-steps’ (of the existence of which he had no evidence whatever), and this merely fictitious form has been adopted in some Dictionaries, etc.]
1808. Jamieson, Corbie-steps, the projections of the stones, on the slanting part of a gable, resembling steps of stairs.
1851. Turner, Dom. Archit., I. i. 24. Gable ends … are not unfrequently drawn with corbie-steps. Ibid. (1853), II. 25. That corbie-gables should be so common in Scotland is readily accounted for.
1888. Freeman, in Jrnl. Archæol. Institute, XLV. 16. The slope of the aisles is cut into two stages so as to give the whole rather the air of great corbie-steps.
