ISSUE 59, CURIOSITIES, Part 3: Live Bird Pie

Live Bird Pie

Many I’m sure recall the nursery rhyme of the “Four and Twenty Blackbirds” that began to sing when the king breached the crust. I’ve always thought living singing birds suriving the heat to bakc the top crust of the pie entirely fanciful. Maybe I am defective in imagination. I certainly began to question my presumption when I encoutered this extraordinary obituary published in 1898 of Harriet Dickman, and 103 year old former slave who served a live bird pie to Lafayette in Charleston during his visit there on March 15-17, 1825. She was 32 years old at the time an had been manumitted. Lafayette banquetted on the 16th with the City Corporation and on the 17th with the Society of the Cincinnati; it is at this later, more private affair that the bird pie was brought forth as an amusement.