How the "Hanging Tree" Song Links The Hunger Games and "Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes"

"The Hanging Tree" is a plea from one lover to another to come meet them at the titular tree. They ask their lover to meet them there at midnight so they can run away together. The narrator also tells the story of a man who was hung from the tree, giving the tree its moniker. "The dead man called out for his love to flee," they sing.

But Katniss eventually comes to realize in the books that the narrator of the song is actually the man who was killed, and he's calling for his love to come to him and die too. He wants her to make her own necklace of rope — her own noose — to join him.