[1] A longer version of the rhyme recorded in Lancashire continues: Eight for a wish, Nine for a kiss, Ten a surprise you should be careful not to miss, Eleven for health, Twelve for wealth, Thirteen beware it's the devil himself.

[2] The rhyme has its origins in ornithomancy superstitions connected with magpies, considered a bird of ill omen in some cultures, and in Britain, at least as far back as the early sixteenth century.

[4] The rhyme was first recorded in Samuel Johnson and George Steevens's 1780 supplement to their 1778 edition of The Plays of William Shakespeare with the lyric: One for sorrow, Two for mirth, Three for a wedding, Four for death.

[5] One of the earliest versions to extend this was published, with variations, in Michael Aislabie Denham's Proverbs and Popular Sayings (London, 1846): One for sorrow, Two for luck (varia.

The first track on Seanan McGuire's album Wicked Girls, also titled "Counting Crows", features a modified version of the rhyme.

Sir Humphry Davy attributed the connection to joy and sorrow in his Salmonia: or Days of Fly Fishing (1828), in which he wrote that 'For anglers in spring it has always been regarded as unlucky to see single magpies, but two may be always regarded as a favourable omen; [...] in cold and stormy weather one magpie alone leaves the nest in search of food; the other remaining sitting on the eggs [...] when two go out [...] the weather is warm [...] favourable for fishing'.

Daphne du Maurier's 1936 novel Jamaica Inn references the nursery rhyme in the scene at Launceston between Jem Merlyn and Mary Yellan.