The Lone Widow- Peterson (NC) pre1933 Brown H
[My date. From the Brown Collection of NC Folklore, Vol. 2, 1952 with supplementary music in Vol. 4. Their notes follow. Associated with the Brown Collection are the Abrams Collection and the I.G. Greer collection. Greer has nearly a dozen music sheets of this ballad - mostly they are rewrites of one or two versions. Greer and his wife sang a version recorded in 1929 (unissed) and 1941.
Belden A is also titled "The Lone Widow." The text supplied is identical to Belden A - also six stanzas- so I've supplied the text.
It aapears to be more than a coincidence that the titles and text are identical.
R. Matteson 2015]
25. The Wife of Usher's Well (Child 79)
This admirable ballad has lasted better in America, for some reason, and especially in the South, than in the land of its birth. See BSM 55-6, and add to the references there given Florida (SFLQ VIII 152-3), Missouri (OFS I 122-4), Ohio (BSO 46-7), Indiana (BSI 97), and Michigan (BSSM 146). All American texts belong to one version, with a strong religious coloring. The North Carolina collection has nine texts, but not all need be given here.
H. 'The Lone Widow.' Contributed by Mildred Peterson of Bladen county, but the manuscript is not dated. This is a reduced version, six stanzas. At the close the children tell their mother:
The tears you have shed, my mother dear,
Would wet our winding sheet.
--------------------
[The Lone Widow- Belden A]
There was a lady neat,
And children she had three;
She sent them away to far countree
To learn their grammaree.
They hadn't been gone but a little while,
About three months, we'll say,
Till death was abroad all over the land
And swept her babes away.
One winter night about Christmas time,
The night was dark and cold,
Her three little babes came running home
Into their mother's room.
It was over the table she spread a cloth
And on it bread and wine,
Saying 'Rise ye up, you three little. ones,
And eat and drink of mine.'
I'll eat none of your bread, mother,
I'll drink none of your wine,
For yonder is our Savior dear
And with him we will join.
'Cold clods lay over our heads, mother,
Green grass grows over our feet;
The tears you have shed, my mother dear,
Would wet our winding-sheet.'