Bee - Carrion Crow IS a children's song. I have been singing it for
several years and get requests for it from both children AND adults
regularly.

There is a note on my CD to the effect that I discovered this song in a fourth-grade elementary music class where it is part of the Texas elementary music cirriculum - across the state, I believe - where it is classified as a folksong from,...you guessed it - Nova Scotia. There is also mention of the time I started the song in an Irish pub and a young girl jumped up and cried, "Daddy, I know that song." Later she told me she was in the, "fourth grade."

I'm not going to pretend to know, but I've read that the song goes back to England, and I've read that the song goes back to Scotland; either way, both accounts stated that it was written as a political comment on the spat between one of the English kings (I think Charles II) and the Quakers or some other religious group that was at odds with the Church of England at the time.

As for me, I will continue to sing the song with the following
chorus which comes from the Texas elementary songbook:

Kye me leemo / kye my keemo / kye me leemo / kye mo
To me bump, bump, bump jump polly wolly lee
Lin-come killy-come kye mo

There is a long history of gruesome and gore in childrens songs and I, personally, don't find this song to be offensive in the least.
At any rate, if I haven't cleared anything up, well, maybe I've stirred the pot a bit. Either way, I'll be singing it in Jackson, Mississippi next week on the children's stage at the Mississippi Celtic Festival. See you there? Cheers.