Sea Crab, The

DESCRIPTION: A man stows a crab (lobster) in the chamber pot while his wife is asleep. She gets up to relieve herself; the crab grabs her "by the flue." He seeks to free her; the crab grabs his nose. Caught in this predicament, they send for a doctor to free them
AUTHOR: unknown
EARLIEST DATE: before 1750 (Percy Folio)
KEYWORDS: animal bawdy humorous husband injury marriage
FOUND IN: Canada (Newf,Ont) Britain(England(Lond,South),Scotland) US (Ap,MA,MW,Ro,SE,So,SW)
REFERENCES (15 citations):
Roud/Bishop-NewPenguinBookOfEnglishFolkSongs #104, "The Crabfish" (1 text, 1 tune)
Cray-EroticMuse, pp. 1-4, "The Sea Crab" (2 texts, 2 tunes)
Randolph/Legman-RollMeInYourArms I, pp. 66-73, "The Sea Crab" (4 texts, 1 tune)
Grimes-StoriesFromTheAnneGrimesCollection, pp. 49-50, "The Sea Crab" (1 text)
Sharp-OneHundredEnglishFolksongs 77, "The Crabfish" (1 text, 1 tune)
Karpeles-TheCrystalSpring 109, "The Crabfish" (1 text, 1 tune)
Kennedy-FolksongsOfBritainAndIreland 196, "The Crab-Fish" (1 text, 1 tune)
Greig/Duncan7 1277, "The Jolly Minister" (1 fragment, 1 tune)
Hugill-ShantiesFromTheSevenSeas, pp. 277-278, "Whiskey Johnny" (2 texts, version "D" of "Whiskey Johnny) [AbEd, p. 206]
Logsdon-WhorehouseBellsWereRinging 52, pp. 245-248, "The Sea Crab" (1 text, 1 tune)
MidwestFolklore, Guthrie T. Meade, Jr., "The Sea Crab," Volume 7, Number 2 (Summer 1958), pp. 91-100, "(The Sea Crab)" (4 texts plus a fragment and much analysis)
DT, CRAYPOT, SHECRAB
ADDITIONAL: Renwick: Roger deV. Renwick, _Recentering Anglo/American Folksong: Sea Crabs and Wicked Youths_, University Press of Mississippi, 2001, pp. 116-150, "'The Crabfish': A Traditional Story's Remarkable Grip on the Popular Imagination" (includes sample texts on pp. 117-118, "The Sea Crab"; pp. 120-124, "The Crab," a modern rewrite; p. 129, "The Lobster"; pp. 142-143, "Crabfish," a relatively clean versiion from Sharp)
Frederick J. Furnivall, _Bishop Percy's Folio Manuscript: Loose and Humorous Songs_, printed by and for the Editor, London, 1868, pp. 99-100, "The Sea Crabb" (1 text)
MANUSCRIPT: {MSPercyFolio}, The Percy Folio, London, British Library, MS. Additional 27879, page 462
ST EM001 (Full)
Roud #149
RECORDINGS:
Charlie Chettleburgh, "The Crab-Fish" (on FSBFTX19)
Ernest Poole, "Crab Song" (on MUNFLA/Leach)
Dan Tate, "Little Fisherman" (on OldTrad1, FarMtns1)
CROSS-REFERENCES:
cf. "Cod Fish Song"
ALTERNATE TITLES:
The Crayfish
The Fishy Crab
The Lobster
The Old She-Crab
NOTES [497 words]: This is one of the oldest of English language traditional ballads. F.J. Child deliberately excluded it from his canonical ESPB, presumably because of its indelicate nature. - EC
Kennedy-FolksongsOfBritainAndIreland says of this piece, "...it seems likely to be either French in origin or in imitation of French balladry (at any rate this is a chance to disown it as an English composition)." Meade's article in MidwestFolklore claims a French text version from around 1610 -- close enough to the date of the Percy Folio that it would be hard to claim priority for either version. Sharpe recorded that the French version comes from 'Le Moyen de Parvenir." Meade summarizes the plot of this version. In it, the crab was unnoticed and made it to the chamber pot on its own.
Renwick notes a tremendous number of foreign equivalents, some so distant in time and space that they would almost certainly have to be independently created (unless the story originated back in the days of Homo Erectus. I agree that it's crude and primitive, but I doubt it's *that* crude and primitive!). He does note that the English versions are unusual in that the crab grabs the man by the nose rather than the sexual organs or by the lips.
Meade made up a chart comparing the motifs of the various versions known to him, but since he had just five English tests and the French parallel, I'm not sure how valuable this is. But it does let him note that no version he knew of contained all the motifs, hinting at an earlier, fuller version. His tentative conclusion (p.99), that the source for all of this, was a medieval fabliau, makes sense to me. - RBW
Sharp's version differs from the canonical one in several ways, aside from having been cleaned up. The main theme of the song is that the woman is sick, and craves the crab, so the man goes and buys one. She goes to smell it, and it bites her, then him. Same song, very different emphasis. -PJS
In the illustrated children's booklet by John M. Feierbend, PhD (children's education?), The Crabfish, copyright 2005, is a brief children's poem of the ballad. Per the blurb, he is an established collector of American songs and rhymes and is prof. and chair of music education.
The brief introduction gives: "This story has delighted listeners for more than 600 years in spoken form and more than 400 years as a song. Franco Sacchetti (ca 1330-1400) of Italy is the oldest known teller of the story. Although the story is found in many countries, the song is found only in English-speaking countries (Britain, Canada, Australia, and the United
States.)" - AS
The GregDuncan7 fragment is so brief ("There was a jolly minister, he had a jolly wife, He loved her, he loved her, he loved her as his life, Bawker oodle ....") that I'm not sure it belongs here. It does come close to the beginning of Sharp-OneHundredEnglishFolksongs 77: ("There was a little man and he had a little wife, And he loved her as dear as he loved his life. Mash-a row ..."). - BS
Last updated in version 6.8
File: EM001

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