Three Little Babes- Hicks (NC) c1940 Brown J REC
[From the Brown Collection of NC Folklore, Music of the ballads from Vol. 4, 1957. 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.
Nora Hicks version likely dates well back in the 1800s. She represents the Mast's Gap Hicks. Many of her ballads were learned from her grandmother Fanny Hicks. 5 verses were recorded:
http://omeka.library.appstate.edu/files/original/c7a493ee274c1c37a6d00a393f556217.mp3
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.
J. 'The Three Little Babes.' Sung by Mrs. Nora Hicks. Recorded at Mast's Gap, Watauga county. No date. The singer is the mother of Mrs. Calvin Hicks and the daughter of Aunt Becky Hicks, who lived back of Willowdale Church near Sugar Grove. This song resembles very closely the Lloyd Church version (25C) as well as Greer's second version (25E(i)). The text is the same as for the latter.
For melodic relationship cf. **SharpK I 151, No. 22B ; OFS i 122, No. 19A; BT 155; FSKM 5; *BSO 46, No. 14. Scale: Mode II, plagal. Tonal Center: d. Structure: abb1a1 (2,2,2,2).
Three Little Babes [text from Greer collection- resembling Hicks version- after the first two verses the text is Greer's MS.]
Listen: http://omeka.library.appstate.edu/files/original/c7a493ee274c1c37a6d00a393f556217.mp3
There was a lady of beauty bright,
And children she had three;
She sent them off to the north countree
To learn their grammaree.
They hadn't been gone a very long,
Scarcely three months and a day,
When there came a sickness all over the land
And took them babes away.
And when she came this for to know,
She wrung her hands full sore,
Saying alas! alas! what shall I do,
I'll see my babes any more.
Ain't there a king in Heaven,
Who used to wear a crown?
I pray the lord will me reward
And send my three babes down.
It was a-comin' near Christmas time,
And the nights were long and cold,
When her three little babes come runnin' down
To their dean mother's home.
She set a table for them there,
All covered with cakes and wine,
And said, Come eat, my dear little babes,
Come, eat and drink of mine.
We do not want your cakes, mamee,
We do not want your wine;
For in the morning by break of day,
With our Saviour we must dine.
She fixed them a bed in the backmost room,
All spread o'er with clean white sheets,
And on the top a golden one,
That they might soundly sleep.
Take it off, take it off, mammee, they said,
Take it off we say again.
A woe, a woe to this wicked world,
So long since pride began.
Cold clods lie at our heads, mammee,
Green grass grows at our feet;
The tears come running down your cheeks
To wet out winding-sheet.
Rise up, rise up, said the oldest one ,
I hear the rooster crow;
Oh, yonder stands our Saviour dear,
And to him we must go.