Three Babes- Hill (AL) c1898 Arnold
[From: Byron Arnold, Folksongs of Alabama, 1950, p 56. This was "Sung by Lena Hill, Lexington, Alabama, in 1947".
Hill wrote the text written when a girl. Her father was James J. McGee, born in Lauderdale County Alabama, October 11, 1851. His parents were Irish. He was a farmer of those good old days. Hill says "I was born on March 4, 1884. I am sixty-two years old and lived with my father and mother until l was twenty-two then I married to Mr. Thomas C. Hill.
Arnold wanted to have hill recorded her songs: "When I left on these last trips [1946] I got authorization to take the singers to local radio stations to make recordings of their songs. Unfortunately this plan did not work, as Callie Craven of Gadsden, from whom I got twenty-two songs in 1945, died two weeks before I arrived there. Lena Hill of Lexington flatly refused to go to a radio station, saying, "I'm not goin' up thar to have them laugh at my songs." In Mobile, Corie Lambert's son had suddenly died of a heart attack and I could not ask her to sing. These ladies were the three richest sources of folk songs last year."
R. Matteson 2015]
"Three Babes" Sung by Lena Hill, Lexington, Ala. From singer's MS., made in childhood.
1. Once there was a fair and a beautiful bride
And of children she had three.
She sent them away to an Northing school
To study grammerree.
2. They had not been gone but a very short time
Just three months to a day,
When sickness came all over that land
And it took her little babes away.
3. There was a King in the heaven's above
Who choosed to wear a crown,
And I wish he would send home to see my babes
Tonight or in the morning soon.
4. The Christmas time was drawing nigh
And the nights both long and cold
When those little babes come running home
All in to their mother's room.
5. She fixed the table in a backward room
And over it spread a snow white cloth,
And over it set each bread and wine
Where yonder her babes might eat.
6. "Come eat, come eat, ye three little babes,
Come eat your bread and drink your wine."
"No, mamma, dear, we cannot eat your bread
No neither can we drink your wine."
7. She fixed the bed in a backward room
And over it spread a snow white sheet,
And over it run a golden cover
Where yonder her babes might sleep.
8. "Wake up, wake up," said the older one
"For the fowls are crowing for day
And yonder stands our Savior dear,
To Him we must retire.
9. Farewell to mamma and papa, too
Farewell to the kitty and the queen
But as far as to be in this wickedsome world
I never expect to be."