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5 "The Crabftsh" A Traditional Story's Remarkable Grip on the Popular Imagination At the address http://www.harrier.net/hashes/, an internet surfer will find the website of the Pike's Peak, Colorado, chapter of the Hash House Harriers, an organization with branches all over the world whose core membership has historically been composed of British expatriate and British Commonwealth citizens. Even in the present day's more globally interconnected world, that membership still generally shares an orientation that could be described as Anglophile, even when a chapter is as far away from Britain as Colorado Springs, where the Pike's Peak group makes its home. A social club, the Hash House Harriers emphasize outdoor activities, especially long-distance communal runs, but they are also known for their parties, at which much beer is drunk and bawdy songs are sung, a custom common among other traditionally male-centered organizations with British ancestry, like rugby football clubs and college societies. Not untypically, the Harriers have even put out their own anthology of such bawdy songs, accessible at a link to the address above. This essay is about a risque story, a version of which appears in the Hash House Harriers' collection versified as "Lobster Song." What folklorists call a ballad, the "Lobster Song" (Roud 149) has a tale to tell: a man buys a lobster for the family dinner, brings the creature home, and stores it temporarily in the toilet bowl—but without telling his wife. When she unknowingly uses the commode, the lobster attaches itself to her pudendum . She calls to her husband for help, and together they loosen the crustacean 's grip by attacking it with a broom, eventually killing it (Roud "THE C R A B F I S H " 117 i994b-present). I first heard this song as an undergraduate almost forty years ago at my McGill University fraternity house, where one of the members—an Englishman—occasionally broke into a "Lobster Song" refrain ("Roll tiddley oh / Shit or bust / Never let your bollocks / Dangle in the dust"). But he sang it only in the confines of our fraternity house and only on all-male occasions, since we dubbed it "obscene" in its employment of language and topics considered inappropriate in "mixed company." Of course, that was in 1960. Today, that "fraternity"has both men and women members, as does the once all-male Hash House Harriers , a modernization reflected in the Pike's Peak chapter's full name, Hash House Harriers and Harriettes. Has the latter's presence altered the bawdy quality of the group's social song repertoire? Evidently not; as we shall soon see, however, the "Lobster Song's" ability to cross the barrier dividing different gender tastes is not really surprising, since throughout its lengthy life it has crossed all kinds of other boundaries.1 Additional MS 27879 ca. 1650 is another "address," though of ahandwritten manuscript occupying physical shelf space in the British Museum rather than of a digitally encoded assemblage of information in cyberspace. Also known to bibliophiles as "Bishop Percy's FolioManuscript ," the literary artifact, probably compiled between 1620 and 1650, contains what David Fowler (1968: 132-3) thinks were typical minstrel performance pieces from an even earlier age. On its four hundred and sixty-second pageis the followingsong: THE SEA CRABB [i] ITT: was a man of Affrica had a ffaire wiffe, ffairest that euer I saw the dayes of my liffe: with a ging, boyes, ginge! Ginge, boyes, ginge! Tarra didle, ffarradidle, ging, boyes, ging! [2] This goodwiffe was bigbellyed, & with a lad, &. euer shee longed ffor a sea crabbe. ginge &c. [3] The goodman rise in the morning, &. put on his hose, He went to the sea syde, & ffollowed his nose, ginge &c. [18.216.190.167] Project MUSE (2024-04-23 14:29 GMT) n8 "THE CRABFISH" [4] Sais, "god speed, ffisherman, sayling on the sea, Hast thou any crabbs in thy bote for to sell mee"? Ging file. [5] "I haue Crabbs in my bote, one, tow, or three; I haue Crabbs in my bote for to sell thee." Ginge &c. [6] The good man went home, & ere he wist, &. put the Crabb in the Chamber pot where his wiffe pist. Ging &c. [7] The good wiffe, she went to doe as shee was wont; vp start the Crabfish, & catcht her by the Cunt. Ging file. [8] "Alas!" quoth the goodwiffe, "that euer I was borne, the devill is in the pispott, &has me on his home." Ging &c. [9] "If thou be a crabb or crabfish by kind, thoule let...

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