There Was a Lady Fair and Gay- (NC) 1896 Backus- Child D
[Found in Volume X (1898) of the The English and Scottish Popular Ballads edited by Kittredge who labeled it version D. Notes from JAF XIII (1900) are at the bottom of this page.
R. Matteson 2012, 2015]
There Was a Lady Fair and Gay- Communicated, 1896, by Miss Emma M. Backus, of North Carolina, who notes that it has long been sung by the "poor whites" in the mountains of Polk County in that State. It has the mother's prayer for the return of her children, as in C, III, 513, but is in other respects much nearer to A. In the last stanza we should doubtless read "They wet our winding sheet," or the like. In 43 the Manuscript has louely or lonely, perhaps meant for lovely.
1 There was a lady fair and gay,
And children she had three:
She sent them away to some northern land,
For to learn their grammeree.
2 They hadn't been gone but a very short time,
About three months to a day,
When sickness came to that land
And swept those babes away.
3 There is a king in the heavens above
That wears a golden crown:
She prayed that he would send her babies home
To-night or in the morning soon.
4 It was about one Christmas time,
When the nights was long and cool,
She dreamed of her three little lonely babes
Come running in their mother's room.
5 The table was fixed and the cloth was spread,
And on it put bread and wine:
'Come sit you down, my three little babes,
And eat and drink of mine.'
6 'We will neither eat your bread, dear mother,
Nor we'll neither drink your wine;
For to our Saviour we must return
To-night or in the morning soon.'
7 The bed was fixed in the back room;
On it was some clean white sheet,
And on the top was a golden cloth,
To make those little babies sleep.
8 'Wake up! wake up!' says the oldest one,
'Wake up! it's almost day.
And to our Saviour we must return
To-night or in the morning soon.'
9 'Green grass grows at our head, dear mother,
Green moss grows at our feet;
The tears that you shed for us three babes
Won't wet our winding sheet.'
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Notes from the 1900 JAF XIII;
The W1fe Of Usher's Well.
These ballads do not contain much poetry to redeem their savagery; I cannot, therefore, deny myself the pleasure of citing the version of the " Wife of Usher's Well" (Child, No. 79) communicated to his work by Mrs. E. M. Backus, as sung by "poor whites" of Polk County, N. C. (Child, v. 294). The ballad, in its original form, seems to have recited that the three sons of a noble lady have been sent to a distant land, according to the usual rule of chivalric education, which prescribed foreign service for young men ambitious of distinction. The youths fail to return, and the mother grieves over their absence to a degree which prevents the spirits from lying tranquilly in their graves; in the season of the long nights they return, and present themselves in the form of life, are received with joy, entertained, and bedded, but before morning are compelled to obey the law of ghosts, and retire to their distant graves. It seems to be a touch of modern change which has altered the lads from the period fit for acquiring knighthood to babes; in this form the ballad made a warmer appeal to the maternal heart. Otherwise, however, the version excites astonishment by its antiquity and completeness. There are touches of mediaeval manners; the table is "fixed," that is placed on its trestle, according to the practice of the Middle Age, and we read of the golden cloth with which the bed was formerly covered.