Two Crows- Bingham (KY) c.1888 Roberts
[From: In the Pines; Roberts; 1978. Several other versions have the "Chewing Gum" stanza including Morris, Florida 1950 and Hudson (Bronson 19).
Roberts', Agey's notes follow.
R. Matteson 2014]
The ballad has been sung throughout America, Coffin making about fifty-five entries in his bibliography, and arranging them into five story types. Its variations extend all the way from tragic and lyric to quartet parody. It has been collected in Nova Scotia, Maine, Vermont, and down Appalachia in Pennsylvania, West Virginia (FSS, no. 6), Virginia (TBV, no. 10, 17 printed of
27; MTBV, no. 13, 3 texts; SharpK, no. I l, 3 texts); North Carolina (NCF, II one), Mississippi, Missouri, Ozarks, Oklahoma. Lawless lists 20 in print.
The present text, without music, I hesitated to include until I noticed others of about the same length and of infinite variety in other collections. Not one has this "chewing gum" motif. The only other versions I have seen from Kentucky are two in Niles (BB, no. 17) and one in KFR, 6(1960):127. This one was turned in by Georgia Lloyd in 1955 from the singing of J. T. Bingham, who heard it from his father in about 1888, all of Knox County.
There were two crows a-sittin' in a tree,
These two crows were as hungry as two crows could be,
Said one old crow to his chum,
"What shall we do for chewing gum?"
There's a horse in yonder lane,
For chewing gum we will use his mane,
We will fly upon his bare back bone,
Pick his eye balls out one, one by one.