Mr. Husk, who had access to a remarkably good collection of carols, had met with no copy of 'The Carnal and the Crane' of earlier date than the middle of the eighteenth century. Internal evidence points us much further back. The carol had obviously been transmitted from mouth to mouth before it was fixed in its present incoherent and corrupted form by print. The well-informed Crane instructs his catechumen, the Crow, in several matters pertaining to the birth and earliest days of Jesus: the Nativity, the conference of Herod with the Wise Men. including the miracle of the roasted cock; the Flight into Egypt, with the Adoration of the Beasts and the Instantaneous Harvest; the Massacre of the Innocents. Of the apocryphal incidents, the miracle of the cock has been spoken of under 'Stephen and Herod' (No. 22). The adoration of the beasts is derived from the Historia de Nativitate Mariae, etc. (Pseudo-Matthaei Evangelium), and is of course frequent in legendaries of the infancy of the Saviour, but is not remarkable enough to be popular in carols. The miraculous harvest by which the Holy Family evaded Herod's pursuit, is, on the contrary, a favorite subject with popular poetry, as also, like the bowing of the palm-tree, with pictorial art.
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