The Three Little Babes- Fletcher (NC) 1914 Brown C
[From the Brown Collection of NC Folklore, Vol. 2, 1952 with supplementary music in Vol. 4. Their notes follow. Associated with the Brown Collection are the Abrams Collection and the I.G. Greer collection. Greer has nearly a dozen music sheets of this ballad - mostly they are rewrites of one or two versions. Greer and his wife sang a version recorded in 1929 (unissed) and 1941.
R. Matteson 2015]
25. The Wife of Usher's Well (Child 79)
This admirable ballad has lasted better in America, for some reason, and especially in the South, than in the land of its birth. See BSM 55-6, and add to the references there given Florida (SFLQ VIII 152-3), Missouri (OFS I 122-4), Ohio (BSO 46-7), Indiana (BSI 97), and Michigan (BSSM 146). All American texts belong to one version, with a strong religious coloring. The North Carolina collection has nine texts, but not all need be given here.
C. 'The Three Little Babes.' Fletcher's second text is somewhat longer, lacks the intrusive orphan school, does not indicate the sex of the child that speaks, and presents the whole experience as a fact, not a dream. And it retains the idea that the tears of mourners incommode the dead in their graves. Dr. Brown notes on the manuscript that it can be sung to the tune of 'Barbara Allan.'
1 There was a lady, a lady gay,
And children she had three.
She sent them away to the North Countree
To learn their grammarie.
2 They hadn't been gone but a very short time,
Scarce three weeks and a day,
When there came a sickness o'er the land
And swept those babes away.
3 When their mother dear came this to hear
She grieved her heart awful sore.
She cried, 'Alas! What shall I do?
Shall I see my babes no more?
4 'There is a king who rules above,
Who wears a heavenly crown.
I pray the Lord will me reward
And send my three babes down.'
5 It was a-comin' near Christmas time,
The nights were long and cold.
When her three babes came running down
To their dear mother's hall.
6 She set a table before them then
Spread o'er with bread and wine.
Saying, 'Come and eat, little babes,
Come eat and drink of mine.'
7 'We cannot eat your bread, mammie.
We cannot drink your wine,
For in the morning by break of day
With our Saviour we must dine.'
8 She spread them a bed in her backmost room.
Spread o'er with clean white sheets,
And over the top a golden one,
That they might soundly sleep.
9 'Take it off, take it off, mammie,
Take it off, we say again.
A woe, a woe to this wicked world
So long since pride began.
10 'Cold clods He at our heads, mammie,
Green grass grows at our feet,
And the tears come running down your cheeks
To wet our winding sheet.'
11 'Rise up, rise up,' says the oldest one,
'The rooster soon will crow.
Oh, yonder stands our Saviour dear
And to him we must go.'