A Lady Fair- Doss (VA) 1921 Stone/ Davis E
[My title. From Traditional Ballads of Virginia; Kyle Davis Jr., 1929. Davis' notes follow. Davis, I'd wager, instructed Stone not to name all the versions he collected, "Wife of Usher's Well." Instead Stone named them all "The Lady Gay," whether or not "the lady gay" was part of the text or not.
R. Matteson 2015]
TRADITIONAL BALLADS OF VIRGINIA
THE WIFE OF USHER'S WELL
(Child, No. 79)
The Child title is unknown in Virginia, where the ballad is called "The Lady Gay," "The Three Little Babes," "The Beautiful Bride," or (once) "Lady Gains." The Virginia variants all belong to the same version, which is neither Child A, B, nor C. The religious cast of the Virginia version seems to relate it to Child C, but in other respects it is nearer to Child A. It is practically identical with the American text printed in Child, V, 294, except that the mother's prayer for the return of the children is not usual in the Virginia texts; indeed, appears only once. The motive for the children's return - to forbid the mother's obstinate grief - is found in most of the Virginia variants, as in other American texts, but not in Child A. In practically all Virginia texts the ghosts disappear for two reasons: the crowing of the cock and the summons of the Saviour. In this respect they are like West Virginia B. The Virginia texts do not add much except minor variations to the texts already published from America.
The story of the composite Virginia text runs as follows: - A lady gay sends her three children to school in the north country, where, after a time, they die. (The mother grieves for her children and prays for their return.) About Christmas time they appear to her. She prepares a feast for them, but they refuse to eat, because the Saviour forbids. She spreads a bed with rich covering for them, but they bid her take it off, as it represents mere worldly pride. With the approach of dawn and by appointment with their Saviour, they depart, warning the mother that her tears but wet their winding sheet. The Virginia and other American texts are more sternly puritanical and have less human warmth than Child A. Another interesting feature of the Virginia texts concerns the sex of the babies. In old-country texts the children are always sons. In Virginia the sex is normally unspecified; they are simply "children" or " babes." But occasionally they actually become girls. See F 6, line 2, and G 5, line 4. Perhaps the same change of sex is indicated by the " normal school " variant of C 1, line 3.
For American texts, see Belden, No. 77; Brown, p. 9 (North Carolina); Bulletin, Nos. 3-5, 9; Campbell and Sharp, No. 19 (North Carolina, Tennessee); Child, X, 194 (North Carolina); Cox, No. 14; Hudson, No. 12 (and Journal, XXXIX, 96; Mississippi); Journal, XIII, 119 (Newell, North Carolina); XXIII, 429 (Belden, Missouri); XXX, 305 (Kittredge; California, Nebraska, Kentucky, Tennessee); XXXII, 503 (Richardson, West Virginia); McGill, p. 5; Pound, Syllabus, p. 10 (fragment); Pound, Ballads, No. 7; Shearin and Combs, p. 9. For additional references, see Journal, xxx, 305.
E. [A Lady Fair] "The Lady Gay" collected by Mr. John Stone. Sung by Mr. Jeff Doss, of Damascus, Va., who learned it from his mother. Washington County. November 8, 1921.
1 There was a lady and a lady fair,
And children she had three;
She sent them away to some low countree
To learn them their grammaree.
2 They hadn't been gone but a very short while,
Scarcely three months and a day,
Till sickness spread over the whole town
And swept those babes away.
3 It being nigh about Christmas time,
When the nights grew long and cold,
Here come all three of her sweet little babes
Down through their mother's room.
4 She fixed them a table of her own,
Put cake and wine on it.
"Go eat and drink, my three little babes,
Go eat and drink of mine."
5 "We'll neither want your cake
Nor drink your wine,
For early in the morning at the close of day
We'll join our Saviour here."
6 She fixed them a bed in the most back room,
Clean sheets she spread on it,
And on the top spread a golden cloth,
To make those ventures sleep.
7 "Take it off, take it off," says the oldest one.
"Take it off again, I say;
For pride [1] has been the cause of your three little babes
Now lying in cold clay.
8 "Cold clay, cold clay, lies at our feet,
Green grass grows at our head;
And for the tears you have shed for us
Would have wept[2] those winding sheets."
1. (My footnote) the pride of life (see Davis A)
2. For wet. And there are other confusions.