From The Traditional Ballad Index:.

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: c. 1620 (Percy Folio Manuscripts)
KEYWORDS: animal bawdy humorous husband injury marriage
FOUND IN: Canada (Ont) Britain(England,Scotland) US (Ap,MA,MW,Ro,SE,So,SW)
REFERENCES (7 citations):
Cray, pp. 1-4, "The Sea Crab" (2 texts, 2 tunes)
Randolph-Legman I, pp. 66-73, "The Sea Crab" (4 texts, 1 tune)
Sharp-100E 77, "The Crabfish" (1 text, 1 tune)
Kennedy 196, "The Crab-Fish" (1 text, 1 tune)
Hugill, pp. 277-278, "Whiskey Johnny" (2 texts, version "D" of "Whiskey Johnny) [AbEd, p. 206]
Logsdon 52, pp. 245-248, "The Sea Crab" (1 text, 1 tune)
DT, CRAYPOT, SHECRAB
ST EM001 (Full)
Roud #149
CROSS-REFERENCES:
cf. "Cod Fish Song"
ALTERNATE TITLES:
The Crayfish
The Fishy Crab
The Lobster
The Old She-Crab
Notes: 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 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)." - 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
File: EM001

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The Ballad Index Copyright 2009 by Robert B. Waltz and David G. Engle.

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Percy's Folio Manuscript version is HERE.

~Masato