Crow and Pie
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Crow and Pie (Roud 3975, Child 111) is an English-language folk song.[1] It is one of the oldest preserved ballads, dating to c. 1500. Pie is the now-obsolete original name for the magpie, a bird often connected with sorrow and misfortune. The crow is a scavenger, often thought of as feeding upon the bodies of men hanged or slain in battle, and thus associated with unhallowed and violent death.
A man encounters a woman in the woods and tries to seduce her, first offering her his love, then a ring and a velvet purse. In each case she repulses him, saying "the crow shall byte yow" (bite you). He rapes her. She requests first that he marry her, then that he give her "some of your good" (representing either a token of the lover's identity, or the "nurse's fee" for raising a bastard child), and finally that he tell her his name. In each case he refuses her, saying "For now the pye hathe peckyd yow" (clearly a sexual metaphor). Finally, she curses him, saying that she will not despair and will "recouer my harte agayne" (recover my heart again). The ballad contains a warning to young women to be suspicious, and avoid being raped.
Motifs
This ballad contrast with Child Ballad 5, Gil Brenton, where the woman is able to prove the identity of her child's father by the tokens he gave her.[2]
