"The Three Ravens" is an English folk ballad

Ballad

A ballad is a form of verse, often a narrative set to music. Ballads were particularly characteristic of British and Irish popular poetry and song from the later medieval period until the 19th century and used extensively across Europe and later the Americas, Australia and North Africa. Many...

, printed in the song book Melismata compiled by Thomas Ravenscroft

Thomas Ravenscroft

Thomas Ravenscroft was an English musician, theorist and editor, notable as a composer of rounds and catches, and especially for compiling collections of British folk music.He probably sang in the choir of St...

 and published in 1611, but it is perhaps older than that. More recent versions (with different music) were recorded right up through the 19th century. Francis James Child

Francis James Child

Francis James Child was an American scholar, educator, and folklorist, best known today for his collection of folk songs known as the Child Ballads. Child was Boylston professor of rhetoric and oratory at Harvard University, where he produced influential editions of English poetry...

 recorded several versions in his Child Ballads

Child Ballads

The Child Ballads are a collection of 305 ballads from England and Scotland, and their American variants, collected by Francis James Child in the late nineteenth century...

 (catalogued as number 26). A common derivative is called "Twa Corbies" ("Two Ravens" or "Two Crows"), and it follows a similar general story, but with a cynical twist.

The ballad takes the form of three scavenger birds conversing about where and what they should eat.