The Carrion Crow

[THIS still popular song is quoted by Grose in his Olio, where it is made the subject of a burlesque commentary, the covert political allusions having evidently escaped the penetration of the antiquary. The reader familiar with the annals of the Commonwealth and the Restoration, will readily detect the leading points of the allegory. The ‘Carrion Crow’ in the oak is Charles II., who is represented as that bird of voracious appetite, because he deprived the puritan clergy of their livings; perhaps, also, because he ordered the bodies of the regicides to be exhumed—as Ainsworth says in one of his ballads:—

The religion of the ‘old sow,’ whoever she may be, is clearly pointed out by her little pigs praying for her soul. The ‘tailor’ is not easily identified. It is possibly intended for some puritan divine of the name of Taylor, who wrote and preached against both prelacy and papacy, but with an especial hatred of the latter. In the last verse he consoles himself by the reflection that, notwithstanding the deprivations, his party will have enough remaining from the voluntary contributions of their adherents. The ‘cloak’ which the tailor is engaged in cutting out, is the Genevan gown, or cloak; the ‘spoon’ in which he desires his wife to bring treacle, is apparently an allusion to the ‘spatula’ upon which the wafer is placed in the administration of the Eucharist; and the introduction of ‘chitterlings and black-puddings’ into the last verse seems to refer to a passage in Rabelais, where the same dainties are brought in to personify those who, in the matter of fasting, are opposed to Romish practices. The song is found in collections of the time of Charles II.]