The Jew Lady- (VA-AL) pre1912 Smith/ Pound B / Scarborough
[Pound's title. First published in the University of Virginia Magazine, December, 1912, and also in Professor Smith's 1916 article in the Musical Quarterly. Then it was reprinted by Pound (Pound B) and again by Scarborough (On The Trail Of Negro Folk-Songs; 1925). Smith's notes follow.
R. Matteson 2015]
The following interesting version without the music was handed me by a student at the University of Virginia who learned it in childhood from his negro mammy on a plantation a few miles from Montgomery, Alabama:
[The Jew Lady]
1. My ball flew over in a Jew's garden,
Where no one dared to go,
I saw a Jew lady in a green silk dress
A-standing by the do'.
2. "Come in, come in, my pretty little boy,
You may have your ball again."
"I won't, I won't, I won't come in,
Because my heart is blood."
3. She took me then by her lily-white hand,
And led me in the kitchen,
She sot me down on a golden chair,
And fed me on sugar and rice.
4. She took me then by her lily-white hand,
And led me in the kitchen,
She laid me down on a golden plank,
And stobbed me like a sheep.
5. You lay my Bible at my head,
And my prayer book at my feet,
And if any of my playmates they ask for me,
Just tell them I've gone to sleep.