Lady Gay- Pope (KY) 1917 Sharp J
[My title, replacing the generic Child title. Single stanza w/music from Cecil Sharp; English Folk Songs from the Southern Appalachians; Sharp/Karpeles I; 1932. The 1932 Edition notes follow. Additional text from Sharp MS.
R. Matteson 2015]
No. 22. The Wife of Usher's Well.
Texts without tunes:—Child's English and Scottish Popular Ballads, No. 79. Journal of American Folk-Lore, xiii. 119; xxiii. 429; xxx. 305; xxxix. 96. Cox's Folk Songs of the South, p. 88.
Texts with tunes:—E. M. Leather's Folk-Lore of Herefordshire, p. 198. Davis's Traditional Ballads of Virginia, pp. 278 and 576.
See also The Cruel Mother (No. 10), Tune B. McGill's Folk Songs of the Kentucky Mountains, p. 5. Texts A and B are remarkable in that the children cite the mother's 'proud heart' as the reason that has caused them to 'lie in the cold clay', a motive which is absent from other English and Scottish versions.
J. [Lady Gay] Sung by Mrs. MINNIE POPE at Clear Creek, Wasioto, Bell Co., Ky., May 1, 1917
Hexatonic (no 6th).
There was a lady, lady gay,
Three babes, she has three,
She sent them off to the foreign countree,
For to learn both grammaree.
And on old Christmas times was drawing near
While the nights was dark and cold,
She fixed a table in her dining-room
And on it put cakes and wine.
She fixed a bed in her parlour
And on it put a linen sheet.
Come eat, come sleep, my three little babes,
Come eat, come sleep with me.
Mother, says the oldest one,
I cannot eat or sleep with you.
My Saviour's here and I must go,
A marble stone is at my head
And the green grass growing at my feet,
I cannot eat nor sleep with you.