<P> A similar British idiom is to eat humble pie . The English phrase is something of a pun--"umbles" were the intestines, offal and other less valued meats of a deer . Pies made of this were said to be served to those of lesser class who did not eat at the king's / lord's / governor's table, possibly following speculation in Brewer's Dictionary of Phrase and Fable but there is little evidence for this . Early references in cookbooks such as Liber Cure Cocorum present a grand dish with exotic spices . Another dish likely to be served with humble pie is rook pie (rooks being closely related to crows). "Pie" is also an antiquated term for the European magpie, a type of crow . There is a similarity with the American version of "umble", since the Oxford English Dictionary defines crow (sb3) as meaning "intestine or mesentery of an animal" and cites usages from the 17th century into the 19th century (e.g., Farley, Lond Art of Cookery: "the harslet, which consists of the liver, crow, kidneys, and skirts)." </P> <P> A popular Australian demonym for South Australian people is "Croweater". The earliest known usage dates to 1881 in the book To Mount Browne and Back by J.C.F. Johnson who writes: "I was met with the startling information that all Adelaide men were croweaters...because it was asserted that the early settlers...when short of mutton, made a meal of the unwary crow". According to a newsletter of the Australian National Dictionary Centre, early settlers did in fact eat cockatoo and parrots . How they became known as crow eaters instead is unknown but notably this term appears after the American usage in 1850 but does not carry the same idiomatic or pejorative meaning of being proven wrong . </P> <P> The following examples illustrate notable uses of the idiom after its origin in the 1850s . </P> <P> Rudyard Kipling (1865--1936) used this concept as a central metaphor in his short story "The Strange Ride of Morrowbie Jukes" (1885). Morrowbie Jukes, a European colonist in India, falls into a sand - pit from which he cannot escape . Another man, a native Indian, is also trapped there who catches wild crows and eats them, but Morrowbie in his pride declares, "I shall never eat crow!" After days of nothing to eat, his hunger and desperation finally force him to do what he swore he would never do: literally eat crow . </P>

Where does the term eating crow come from