“One Crow Sorrow, Two Crows Mirth…”

“And these are they which ye shall have in abomination among the fowls; they shall not be eaten…”  Leviticus 11:13

That passage is refereeing to ravens, of course; to “every raven, after his kind.”  Well, the crow is a close cousin to the raven, and these birds have gotten a bad rap since the beginning of time.   Unclean scavengers, harbingers of death, there’s very little that’s positive which one can bring to mind about crows and ravens.

They even occupy a negative place in our language and culture.  “Eating crow” is a long-used phrase – not Southern in origin, but as well understood here as anywhere it’s used – for having to take something back, to retreat on a position, or to be publicly humiliated or shamed.  Not good, in other words.   No one wants to eat crow in the figurative (much less the literal) sense – ever – so your compiler guesses the Levitical prohibition still holds.   Even in this enlightened Year of Our Lord 2026, we still find crow to be an abomination.

We English-speakers also, for over a thousand years, have used “crow” as a not-too-nice verb, to denote a loud braggart or somebody putting on airs in a most public way.   If someone says your compiler has crowed about something, she is not bragging upon him at all.  Rather, she is implying rather obviously that your compiler is a troglodytic dolt with absolutely no reticence or circumspection, an assessment certain folks who know him well might tend to agree with.

A ghastly habit your compiler has heard of and read about, but never witnessed, was (and perhaps still is) for Southerners to shoot crows and to nail them, wings spread wide, to the side of a barn or to fence posts, presumably to scare off rodents and other pests.   Your compiler personally thinks that having a few pests around would be far better than having to look at and smell deteriorating crow carcasses, but perhaps you differ in that assessment.

Surprisingly, there has been some pretty good press over the centuries about crows and ravens, but one has to take time to find examples.   First is the venerable nursery rhyme used as the title of this column:

One crow sorrow, 

Two crows mirth.

Three for a wedding,

Four for a birth.

Five crows silver,

Six crows gold.

Seven a secret ne’er to be told.

Eight for a wish,

Nine for a kiss,

Ten, a bird you mustn’t miss.

Eleven for hope,

Twelve for health

Thirteen beware of the devil himself.

Next, please consider the Old Testament story of Elijah’s being fed by ravens at the Brook of Cherith (I Kings 17:6).  Or the story in the Song of Solomon (Chapter 5, verse 11), in which the Beloved’s locks of hair are “black as a raven.”   Or finally that Jesus taught His disciples that God feeds the ravens (Luke 12:24).

The one from Song of Solomon leads your compiler to the point of this Talking Southern column: a phrase oft-used by a lady who spent her whole life in his hometown of Brooks, Mrs. F. Wilson (Leola Dingler) Haynes, who lived from 1910 until 2001.  Miss Leola, a pretty wise old lady who knew human nature darn well, knew that every one of us is prone to boast just a tad on occasion – not crowing, but just a little discreet bragging, such as everyone does about his own children or grandchildren.   She had a phrase for that whole phenomenon.  “Well,” Miss Leola would say forgivingly if someone complained about a third person overdoing it a tad in talking about his grandkids, “I reckon everybody thinks his own crow is the blackest.”

Indeed, everyone does.   It’s not bad; it’s just human.  Everyone has thought his own crow was the blackest since the beginning of time, everyone does now, and will forevermore (as opposed to “nevermore,” which is how Mr. Poe quoted the raven who visited him one night.  But if we don’t crow to loudly or too often about how black our crows are, then we should nevermore worry about ever having to eat crow.