The Lady and the Children Three- (NC) 1914 Brown B
[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.
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.
B. 'The Lady and the Children Three.' One of two texts contributed by D. W. Fletcher of Durham in 1914. Observe that the entire experience, after the death of the three children, is represented as a dream, and that the child that speaks is a girl.
1 Once there was a lady and a lady was she,
She had some children — three.
She sent them away to an orphan school
To learn the grammar rule.
2 They hadn't been gone but a very short while,
Some about three months and a day,
'Fore death, sweet death came hasting along
And takend her babes away.
3 The Christmas times were drawing near,
The nights grew long and cold.
She dreamed she saw her three little babes
Come haste to their mother's fold.
4 She fixed them a table of cake and wine,
As neat as neat could be.
'Come, eat, drink, my little babes
Come, eat and drink with me.'
5 'Neither can I eat your cake,' said she,
'Neither can I drink your wine;
For yonder stands my Savior dear.
To him I must resign.'
6 She fixed them a bed by the back side-room
And on it spread a sheet.
And on the sheet was a golden spread
For these little babes to sleep.
7 'Take it up, take it up,' said the oldest one,
'Take it tip, take it up,' said she,
'For every tear they shed for me
Will wet my winding sheet.
8 'Green grass, green grass grows o'er my grave.
Cold pillars on my feet.
What shall become of this wide wicked world
Since when our sins began ?'