I Had Four Brothers- (NE) pre1915 Pound
[My title. A fragment from Folk-Song of Nebraska and the Central West- A Syllabus by Louise Pound; 1915, pg. 70. Her notes follow.
R Matteson 2014]
Compare a fifteenth century song in Wright's Songs and Carols (Percy Society), and a nursery rhyme ("The Four Sisters") in Halliwell's Popular Rhymes and Nursery Tales, p. 150. There seems also to be some slight relationship to "Captain Wedderburn's Courtship" (Child, 46).
12. Fragment.
I had four brothers who lived over the sea
And each sent a present unto me,
Parta quartum pera de
Centum pera werre dictum domine.
The first sent a chicken without any bones,
One sent me cherries without any stones.