The Crabfish
"The Crabfish" is a ribald humorous folk song of English origin. It is one of the most widespread English-language folk songs, being found in almost every English-speaking country and still being sung to the present day. The oldest known mention is in the seventeenth century, appearing in Bishop Percy's Folio Manuscript as a song named "The Sea Crabb" based on an earlier tale. The moral of the story is that one should look in the chamber pot before using it.
Owing to the coarseness of the lyrics, this ballad was excluded from Francis James Child's The English and Scottish Popular Ballads as well as many other academic publications.
Synopsis
A man brings a crabfish home as a gift for his wife and puts it in the chamber pot. Some time in the night his wife answers a call of nature and the crustacean grabs her private parts. In the ensuing scuffle the husband gets bitten too in some versions.Text
This is one version of the song, as sung by John Roberts and Tony Barrand:Variants
"Johnny Daddlum" is the Irish version of this song. There are some variants in which the coarse language is more clear-cut than in others, and other variants where the language is masked with another word yet implied through the rhyme. In some variants the wife is pregnant, having previously told her husband about her craving to eat crabfish meat.Selected commercial recordings
- Harry Cox, "The Catfish"
- Dave Sear and Oscar Brand, "The Codfish Song"
- John Pearse and Frank Purslow, "The Crabfish"
- Roberts and Barrand, "The Crayfish"
- Jerry Bryant and Richard "Salty Dick" Docker, "The Crabfish"