Two Little Babes- Gentry (NC) 1916 Sharp E
[My title, replacing the generic child title. Single stanza w/music. Gentry probably knew the whole ballad but the text was not taken down. From Cecil Sharp; English Folk Songs from the Southern Appalachians; Sharp/Campbell I, 1917; also Sharp/Karpeles I; 1932. The 1932 Edition notes follow. This is one of the latter stanzas, so evidently he did not write text since it's not in his MS.
Bronson adds: Mrs. Gentry used the same tune when she sang "Young Hunting" for Sharp on the following day.
R. Matteson 2015]
No. 22. The Wife of Usher's Well.
Texts without tunes:—Child's English and Scottish Popular Ballads, No. 79. Journal of American Folk-Lore, xiii. 119; xxiii. 429; xxx. 305; xxxix. 96. Cox's Folk Songs of the South, p. 88.
Texts with tunes:—E. M. Leather's Folk-Lore of Herefordshire, p. 198. Davis's Traditional Ballads of Virginia, pp. 278 and 576.
See also The Cruel Mother (No. 10), Tune B. McGill's Folk Songs of the Kentucky Mountains, p. 5. Texts A and B are remarkable in that the children cite the mother's 'proud heart' as the reason that has caused them to 'lie in the cold clay', a motive which is absent from other English and Scottish versions.
E. [Two Little Babes] Sung by Mrs. GENTRY at Hot Springs, N. C, Aug. 24, 1916
Hexatonic. Mode 2, a.
Come in, come in, my two little babes
And eat and drink with me;
We will neither eat, sweet Mother dear,
Nor neither drink of wine,
For yonder stands our Saviour dear,
And to him we must join,
And to him we must join.