Children's Song- Crowder (NC) 1915 JOAFL
[From: Ballads and Songs by G. L. Kittredge; The Journal of American Folklore, Vol. 30, No. 117 (Jul. - Sep., 1917), pp. 283-369
His notes follow. Footnotes moved to the end.
R. Matteson 2012, 2015]
THE WIFE OF USHER'S WELL (Child, No. 79).
Since Miss Backus's North Carolina version of the ballad ("There was a lady fair and gay") was printed in Child, 5: 294, [2] many variants have been collected in this country, belonging to that same general version. Belden publishes a text (from Missouri) in JAFL 23:429; Emma Bell Miles, one in "Harper's Magazine" for June, 1904 (109: 121-122); Cox (44:388 and 45: 11-12) publishes a fragment and a complete copy, both from West Virginia, and reports other variants (cf. 45: 160; JAFL 29: 400) [3] Miss McGill gives words and tune in her "Folk-Songs from the Kentucky Mountains," pp. 4-8. See also Shearin and Combs, p. 9 ("Lady Gay," closely resembles Miss Backus's text); F. C. Brown, p. 9; Virginia Folk-Lore Society, Bulletin, No. 4, P. 7; No. 5, P. 7; JAFL 27 : 59-62; 28 : 199-202, A peculiar version in Mrs. Leather's "Folk-Lore of Herefordshire " (1912, pp. 198-I99) contains a stanza adapted from "The Carnal and the Crane" (Child, No. 55): [4] -
Then Christ did call for the roasted cock,
That was feathered with his only hands;
He crowed three times all in the dish
In the place where he did stand.
I. Children's Song.
From Professor Walter Morris Hart of the University of California; communicated by Mrs. Agnes McDougall Henry, M. L., formerly of that university. Professor Hart writes, concerning this and other ballads (Dec. 10, 1915): "They were sung to her by the mother of a family in the mountains of western North Carolina, whose name, Ellen Crowder, will recall to ballad-lovers, perhaps not impertinently, the 'blind crouder' of Sidney's immortal comment on Chevy Chace. 'One day,' writes Mrs. Henry, 'while Ellen was absorbed in splitting a broom, I mentioned "Barbara Allen." In that unguarded moment she began to sing the first verse. I found that she and her husband and sisters sang a good many ballads years ago, but they had forgotten all except the four versions I am sending you. When I inquired why they had ceased singing them, the reply was, "No one seemed to take delight in them any more, so we laid them by." It appears that the ancestors of these people were in the mountains of North Carolina before the Revolution, and that they have been illiterate up to the present generation. Even now it is a matter of pride that one or two members of the family are good "scribes." ' "
1. The starry light and the lady bright,
Her children she had three.
She sent them away to the North country
To learn those gramerie.
2. They hadn't been gone but a very short time,
Scarce three months and a day,
Till death came rushing along o'ver the land
And swept those babes away.
3. Their mother came as far to know,
She wrung her hands full sore.
"The less, the less, the less!" she cried,
"Shall I see my babes no more?"
4. "There were a king in heaven," she said,
"That used to wear a crown;
Send all my three little babes to-night
Or in the morning soon."
5. Or Christmas times were drawing nigh,
The nights were long and cold;
Her three little babes came rushing along
Down to their mother's hall.
6. She fixed them a table in the dining room,
Spread over with bread and wine,
Saying, "Eat, O, eat my sweet little babes;
Come eat and drink of mine."
7. " Mama, we cannot eat your bread,
Nor we can't drink your wine;
For yonder stands our Saviour dear,
And to him we'll return."
8. She fixed them a bed in the backmost room,
Spread over with a clean sheet,
And a golden wine upon the top of them,
To make them sweeter sleep.
9. "Take it off, take it off," says the oldest one,
"The cocks they will soon crow;
For yonder stands our Saviour dear,
And to him we must go."
10. "Cold clods lays on our feet, mama;
Green grass grows over our heads;
The tears that run all down our cheeks
Did wet the winding sheets."
Footnotes:
2. Reprinted in JAFL 13: 119-120.
3. Cox (44 : 388) also prints two stanzas of a version corresponding to Child's A, which appears to have been brought to West Virginia from Ireland.
4 Compare Broadwood, English Traditional Songs and Carols, pp. 74-75, 122; Sharp, English Folk-Carols, No. I, pp. 2-4; Journal of Folk-Song Society, I : 183; 4: 22-25; a broadside of about 1780, Worcester [England], J. Grundy (Harvard College Library, 25242.5.5 R49, No. 131); Notes and Queries, 3d series, 3: 94.