A Lady Gay- Reynolds (VA) 1918 Sharp N
[My title, replacing the generic Child title. From Cecil Sharp; English Folk Songs from the Southern Appalachians; Sharp/Karpeles I; 1932. The 1932 Edition notes follow. The informant is probably a friend or relative of the Shelor/Blackard families.
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.
N. [A Lady Gay] Sung by Mrs. VIRGINIA REYNOLDS at Meadows of Dan, Va., Aug. 29, 1918
Pentatonic. Mode 2.
1. There lived a lady, a lady gay,
And children she had three,
She sent them a way to the northem school
To learn their grammars three.
2 They hadn't been gone but a very short time,
Scarcely three weeks and a day,
Till death, sweet death come hastening along
And stole those babes away.
3 There is a king in heaven, cried she,
A king of the third degree.
Send back, send back my three little babes,
This night send them back to me.
4 She made them a bed in the backward room,
And on it put a neat white sheet,
And over the top a golden spread,
Much better that they might sleep.
5 Take it off, take it off, cried the oldest one,
Take it off, take it off, cried he,
For what's to become of this wide wicked world
Since sin has first begun.
6 She spread them a table of bread and wine,
As neat as neat could be,
Come eat, come drink, my three little babes,
Come eat, come drink with me.
7 I cannot eat your bread, says one,
Neither can I drink your wine,
For my Saviour dear is standing near,
To him we must resign.
8 Cold clay, cold clay hangs over my head,
Green grass grows over my feet;
And every tear that you shed for me
Doth wet my winding sheet.