The Three Little Babes- Starke (VA) 1931 Davis CC
[From: More Traditional Ballads of Virginia; Davis 1960. His notes follow.
R. Matteson 2015]
THE WIFE OF USHER'S WELL
(Child, No. 79)
A mother sends her children away to school. They die before their return home. The mother grieves and prays that they may come back to her. They return at Christmas, of course as ghosts, though the mother seems unaware of this. They refuse to eat or drink. They depart at daybreak, sometimes warning their mother against worldiness and suggesting that her excessive grief for them may disturb their repose.
Child prints only four texts of the ballad, three from Britain and one from America (North Carolina). No additional texts have appeared in English collections since Child's time, according to Miss Dean-Smith, nor have recent texts been found in Scotland or in British America. But the United States is richly supplied with versions or variants, and a great many have been collected, chiefly in the Southern states. For example, Sharp-Karpeles (I, 150-60) present eighteen tunes with texts or partial texts from the Southern Appalachians. The Brown Collection (II, 95-101, and IV, 48-53) reports nine texts, not all of them printed, and seven tunes. TBVa prints twelve texts of thirteen available, with two tunes. In contrast, Barry presents no traces from Maine or the Maritime Provinces of Canada. Belden's Missouri collection (pp. 55-57) presents only two texts, and the Ozark collection (I, tzz-24) only two texts with tunes. More recent Virginia collecting has produced ten additional items of the ballad, of which only five are here presented, four of them with tunes.
Most, if not all, of the American texts, including the Virginia texts, are more closely related to Child D (V, 294) than to any other Child text, perhaps naturally since Child D comes from North Carolina. Belden (pp. 55-56) has listed the six particulars in which the American texts are to be distinguished from Child A, B, and C. He even suspects some printed source as the explanation of the likeness of the American texts, but he (and others) have been unable to find one. Belden seems to overestimate likeness and to ignore significant variations in the American texts. Perhaps Gerould (p. 172) is on sounder ground when he remarks: "Unquestionably the song has been created anew, as it has been transmitted from singer to singer and has travelled from Scotland to Virginia."
The Virginia texts share with Child C (from Shropshire) as well as with Child D the strongly religious coloring: the presence of the Saviour and the sinfulness of pride, and perhaps the suggestion that the return is made in answer to the mother's prayer. But there are pagan elements also: the belief that spirits return in order to calm the persistent lamentations of the bereaved, the vanishing of the ghosts at cock-crow, and the folk-belief that tears for the dead disturb their rest by wetting their winding-sheet- the note on which all the full texts that follow end.
If Child A from Scott's Minstrelsry is the best known and perhaps the most poetic version of the ballad, other versions, including the American, have their poetic claims as well. The essential poetic appeal, shared by all the versions, is the tragic pathos of the mother's failure to understand or unwillingness to believe that her sons are mere ghosts and must depart so soon. It is Child who says (II, 78), "Nothing that we have is more profoundly affecting." At least three of the four tunes that follow, all three of them transcribed from records, are both musically interesting and fitting musical vehicles for the poetry of the ballad. See the individual headnotes.
CC. "The Three Little Babes." phonograph record (aluminum) made by A. K. Davis, Jr. Sung by Mrs. W. F. Starke, of Crozet, Va. Albernarle county. November 11, 1932. Text transcribed by P. C. Worthington. Tune noted by E. C. Mead, who comments : "Fascinating rhythm. The melody is different for each stanza, although a melodic skeleton is discernible; 'durchkonrponiert.' " Text and tune independently collected by Fred F. Knobloch, of Crozet, Va. May 2, 1931. The stanzaic irregularities apparently reflect the melodic irregularities, or vice versa.
1 There was a lady and a lady gay,
And children she had three
But sent them away to the north country
To learn their grammaree.
2 They had not been gone so very long,
Perhaps three months and a day,
When cold death came hastening along
And stole those babes away.
3 Christmas time was drawing nigh,
Those three little babes came tripping along,
Down to their mother's home.
"I'll rouse you up," said the eldest one,
"I'll rouse you up, I say,
For the chickens are crowing for day."
4 In the back room she set the table,
On it she put bread and wine,
Saying, "Come eat, come drink, my sweet little babes,
And keep your mother company."
5 But the eldest said, "Put a marble stone at my head,
Put cold clay at my feet,
And the tears my mother will shed for me
Will wet my winding sheet."