Lady Bright- King (TN) 1917 Sharp R
[My title, replacing the generic Child title. Single stanza with music from Cecil Sharp; English Folk Songs from the Southern Appalachians; Sharp/Campbell I, 1917; also Sharp/Karpeles I; 1932. The 1932 Edition notes follow. Additional text from Sharp MSS., 3582/2644.
This is similar to Miles 1904 version from TN published in Harper's.
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.
R. [Lady Bright] Sung by Mrs. KING at Bird's Creek, Sevier Co., Tenn., April 19, 1917
Pentatonic. Mode 2.
1. There were young and lady bright, [1]
And children she had three;
She sent them away to the northest country
To learn those grammar free.
2. They hadn't been gone but a very short time,
About six months and a day
Till death come all over this old world
And swept those babes away.
3. When their dear mother heard of it
She wrung her hands and cried,
Saying: Send my three little babes back home
To-night or in the morning soon.
4. It were along about Christmas time,
When the nights were cold and long,
About middleways one of them cold nights,
Her three little babes came running home.
5. She fixed the table before her babes,
And on it set bread and wine,
Saying: Go along my three little babes,
And eat and drink of wine.
6. O no, mother, I don't want none of your bread,
Nor neither none of your wine,
For green grass growing at my feet
And clay lies at my head.
7. She fixed the bed in the backest room
And- on it spread a white sheet,
And on lop of that put a golden spread,
Saying: Go along, my three babes and sleep.
8. O no, mother, it is almost day,
The chickens they'll soon crow,
And yonder stands our Saviour dear
And to him we must go.