+The Text+ is taken from the same manuscript as the last. This
manuscript is ascribed, from the style of handwriting, to the reign of
Henry VI. The ballad is there written without division into stanzas in
twenty-four long lines.
+The Story.+--The miraculous resuscitation of a roast fowl (generally a
cock, as here), in confirmation of an incredible prophecy, is a tale
found in nearly all European countries. Originally, we find, the miracle
is connected with the Passion, not the Nativity. See the _Carnal and the
Crane_.
An interpolation in a late Greek MS. of the apocryphal Gospel of
Nicodemus relates that Judas, having failed to induce the Jews to take
back the thirty pieces of silver, went home to hang himself, and found
his wife roasting a cock. On his demand for a rope to hang himself, she
asked why he intended to do so; and he told her he had betrayed his
master Jesus to evil men, who would kill him; yet he would rise again on
the third day. His wife was incredulous, and said, 'Sooner shall this
cock, roasting over the coals, crow again'; whereat the cock napped his
wings and crew thrice. And Judas, confirmed in the truth, straightway
made a noose in the rope, and hanged himself.
Thence the miracle-tale spread over Europe. In a Spanish version not
only the cock crows, but his partner the hen lays an egg, in
asseveration of the truth. The tale is generally connected with the
legend of the Pilgrims of St. James; so in French, Spanish, Dutch,
Wendish, and Breton ballads.
In 1701 there was printed in London a broadside sheet of carols, headed
with a woodcut of the Nativity, by the side of which is printed:
'A religious man, inventing the conceits of both birds and beasts drawn
in the picture of our Saviour's birth, doth thus express them:-- The
cock croweth _Christus natus est_, Christ is born. The raven asked
_Quando?_ When? The crow replied _Hac nocte_, This night. The ox cryeth
out _Ubi? Ubi?_ Where? where? The sheep bleated out _Bethlehem_' (Hone's
_Every-day Book_).