214
Lost on the Lady Elgin
Miss Pound (ABS 134-135) has a version of this song which is
almost the same as the one given below. There are two verbal
differences in the chorus and in stanzas i and 2. Miss Pound
does not print the third stanza. The song commemorates a wreck
on Lake Michigan in i860. Wehman printed it as a broadside (No.
988) ; copyright, 1861, by H. M. Higgins.
'Lost on the Lady Elgin.' From the John Burch Blaylock Collection.
1 Up from the poor man's cottage,
Forth from the mansion's door.
Sweeping across the waters
And echoing 'long the shore ;
Caught by the morning breezes,
Borne on the evening's gale,
Cometh a cry a-mourning,
And a sad and solemn wail.
Chorus:
Lost on the Lady Elgin,
Sleeping to wake no more,
Numbered among the three hundred
Who failed to reach the shore.
2 Oh, 'tis the cry of children
Weeping for parents gone,
Children who slept at evening.
NATIVE AMERICAN BALLADS 507
But orphans who woke at dawn ;
Sisters for brothers weeping,
Husbands for missing wives —
Such were the ties to sever
With those three hundred Hves.
Staunch was the noble steamer;
Precious the freight she bore;
Gaily she loosed her cables
A few short hours before.
Grandly she swept our harbors ;
Joyfully rang her bell ;
Little thought that ere morning
'T would ring so sad a knell.