Giles Collins- Hubbard (MS) c. 1855 Hudson A
[My date, assuming she learned it as a little girl. From: Ballads and Songs from Mississippi by Arthur Palmer Hudson; The Journal of American Folklore, Vol. 39, No. 152 (Apr. - Jun., 1926), pp. 93-194. Hudson's notes follow. This is one of three versions published in the JAF in 1926. An additional version was published in Folksongs of Mississippi in 1936.
R. Matteson 2012, 2015]
5. LADY ALICE.
(Child, No. 85.)
Three texts. For other texts from the South, see Cox, No. 17; Campbell and Sharp, No. 22; Reed Smith, pp, 117-118.
A. "Giles Collins." Communicated by Mrs. Mims Williams, Magee, Mississippi, who obtained it from Mrs. Belle Holt Hubbard. (See note on "Sir Hugh" at bottom of this page)
1. Giles Collins said to his mother one day,
"Oh, mother, come bind up my head,
And make me a pot of water gruel,
For tomorrow I shall be dead."
2. His mother she made him the water gruel,
And stirred it around with a spoon.
Giles Collins drank that water gruel
And died before it was noon.
3. Lady Annie she sat at her window,
Plying her needle and kyfe [coif ?],
She said, "There comes the prettiest corpse
That ever I saw in my life.
4. "Whom bear you there, ye six strong men,
Upon your shoulders so high?"
"We bear the body of Giles Collins,
Who for love of you did die."
5. "Set him down, set him down, ye six strong men.
Upon the grass so green.
Tomorrow before the clock strikes seven,
My body shall lie by his'n."
6. They put Giles Collins in the east,
Lady Annie in the west.
There grew a flower from Giles Collins
That touched Lady Annie's breast.
7. There came a cold north-easterly wind,
And cut the lily in twain.
The like was never seen before,
And will never be seen again.
Communicated by Mrs. Mims Williams, Magee, Mississippi, with the following note:
"Obtained from Mrs. Belle Holt Hubbard, Terry, Mississippi, aged 79; sung to her in her infancy at her home in Woodville, Wilkinson County, Mississippi. "I am not satisfied with this 'Jew's Garden,' but am sending it as her daughter took it down. It isn't exactly like she told me. The first verse seems different, and I know some lines or words were repeated. It is remarkable that Mrs. Hubbard has remembered the ballads at all. Her early life was spent in surroundings quite different from the ones supposed to foster the making and preservation of such songs. The Holts are of English ancestry and came to Mississippi in territorial days via one of the older Southern states. They are people of culture and had considerable wealth before the Civil War. When Mrs. Hubbard says she learned 'The Jew's Garden' in infancy, she means it was used by her mother to sing her to sleep. This is probably the reason the bloody part was omitted. Still, it's rather a gruesome lullaby yet. Has a 'the goblins will get you if you don't look out' sound."