Moravian Song- Granny (NC) 1921 Sutton/ Brown G
[From the Brown Collection of NC Folklore, Vol. 2, 1952 with supplementary music in Vol. 4. Their notes follow. Associated with the Brown Collection are the Abrams Collection and the I.G. Greer collection. Greer has nearly a dozen music sheets of this ballad - mostly they are rewrites of one or two versions. Greer and his wife sang a version recorded in 1929 (unissed) and 1941.
First six stanzas from F. Cox A is also titled "Moravian Song."
R. Matteson 2015]
25. The Wife of Usher's Well (Child 79)
This admirable ballad has lasted better in America, for some reason, and especially in the South, than in the land of its birth. See BSM 55-6, and add to the references there given Florida (SFLQ VIII 152-3), Missouri (OFS I 122-4), Ohio (BSO 46-7), Indiana (BSI 97), and Michigan (BSSM 146). All American texts belong to one version, with a strong religious coloring. The North Carolina collection has nine texts, but not all need be given here.
G. 'Moravian Song.' This text Mrs. Sutton found in Yancey county. "The singer was an old woman in the county home who had lost all trace of who she really was. She was known as 'Granny' and sang it in a cracked, quavering old voice. She called it 'Moravian Song.' I don't know why." Mrs. Sutton notes that she has found this ballad also in Henderson and Rutherford counties, but not in Caldwell. It differs from preceding texts chiefly in the closing stanzas (7-10), which run:
1 There was a lady lived near by,
And babies she had three.
She sent 'em away to a cold, cold land
For to learn their grammaree. [1]
2 They had not been gone but about three months,
I'm shore it was not four,
Until there came a sickness to that cold, cold land
And the babes rose no more.
3 She prayed to Jesus in the heavens up above —
He is wearin' of a golden crown —
That he would send her three babes home
Tonight or in the morning soon.
4 It was about one Christmas time,
When the night was long and cool.
She dreamed she seen her three little babes
Come running to their mother's room.
5 She fixed the table with a fair white cloth
And set on it bread and wine.
'Come set you down, my little babes,
And eat and drink so fine.'
6. 'We cannot eat your bread, our maw.
Nor can we drink your wine.
King Jesus won't let us go back
To live up in heaven so fine.'
7 The bed was fixed in the back room ;
She made it long and wide.
She spread her own cloak on the bed
And she sat down beside.
8 And then the red red cock did crow
And up and crowed the grey.
The oldest to the youngest said,
'It's time we were away.'
9 'Lie still, lie still a little while.
Lie still but if we may,
For when our mother finds us gone
She'll go mad in the day.
10. 'Green grass grows at our head, mother.
And green grass grows at our feet.
The tears you shed for your little babes
Won't wet our winding sheet.'
1. stanzas 1-6 from Brown F