The Three Little Babes- Rawn (NC) 1915 Brown A
[No informant named. 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.
Music is provided from another informant below- the text is nearly identical.
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.
A. 'The Three Little Babes.' From the collection of Miss Isabel Rawn (later Mrs. T. L. Perry), communicated to the North Carolina Folklore Society in 1915. The verse is rough. Miss Rawn did not indicate the source of the text. Who speaks in the first two lines of stanza 5 and in stanza 7 is not clear.
1. There once was a lady, and she lived in Spain,
And children she had three.
She sent them away to [a] far-off country
Oh, there for to learn their grammere. [1]
2. They hadn't been gone but a very short time.
No more than a month or a day.
Till death, cold death come a-sweeping along
And swept those babes away.
3. As soon as the news reached the mother's ears
She clasp[ed] her hands and cried:
'Oh, if there be a King in Heaven above,
Please send them to me this night!'
4. The night wore on; near midnight come,
And Christ was drawing near.
Those three little babes come running home
Right into their mother's room.
5. 'O mother, go and fix them a table
And on it bread and wine.'
'Come, eat and drink, you three little babes,
Come eat and drink of mine.'
6. 'Take it off, take it off, take it off, mama!
Take it off we pray;
For we see our Savior a-standing so near.
And to him we must resign.
7. 'Oh, mother, go and make a bed
And on it spread a clean sheet,
And over the top spread a golden cloth
For the three little babes to rest upon.'
8. 'Take it off, take it off, take it off, mama!
Take it off, we pray;
For we see our Savior a-standing so near.
And to him we must resign.
9. As the proud mother, with trembling hand,
The winding of sheets renfolding,[2]
The three little babes in snow-white robes
All by her side is garbeded.
10. 'Goodby, mamma! Goodby, papa!
Fare you well, we say.
For the gates of heaven are opening wide
And we must enter in.'
Footnotes for A:
1. So spelled in the manuscript ; presumably a three-syllable word rhyming with "three."
2. So the manuscript. One suspects some notion about winding-sheets — but what? [unfolding?]
A. 'The Three Little Babes.' Sung by Mrs. Ewart Wilson. Recorded at Pensacola in September 1929. The last five measures are almost identical with those of the Lloyd Church, N. Hicks, L G. Greer (2nd), and Anonymous versions.
For melodic relationship cf. **FSKM 5; *SharpK i 153, No. 22D. Considering only the basic idea, we find that the Sharp version, measures 4-6, seems to furnish our first phrase a and the former's measures 2-4 our second phrase.
Scale: Mode II, plagal. Tonal Center: d. Structure: aa1ab (2,2,2,2).