A Lady Gay- Thompson (KY) 1917 Sharp K
[My title, replacing the generic Child title. Single stanza w/music from Cecil Sharp; English Folk Songs from the Southern Appalachians; Sharp/Karpeles I; 1932. The 1932 Edition notes follow.
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.
K. [A Lady Gay] Sung by Mrs. VESTIE THOMPSON at Pineville, Bell Co., Ky., June 2, 1917
Hexatonic (no 6th).
There was a lady, and a lady gay,
And children she had three;
She sent them away to the northern countree
To learn those grammaree.