The Three Little Babes- Yeatts (VA) 1932 Davis AA
[From: More Traditional Ballads of Virginia; Davis 1960. His notes follow.
Eunice Yeatts McAlexander was collected by Mike Yates and other collectors (see Digital Appalachia). She went to school with Ms. Ruby Bowman (Plemmons) another ballad informant.
R. Matteson 2015]
THE WIFE OF USHER'S WELL
(Child, No. 79)
A mother sends her children away to school. They die before their return home. The mother grieves and prays that they may come back to her. They return at Christmas, of course as ghosts, though the mother seems unaware of this. They refuse to eat or drink. They depart at daybreak, sometimes warning their mother against worldiness and suggesting that her excessive grief for them may disturb their repose.
Child prints only four texts of the ballad, three from Britain and one from America (North Carolina). No additional texts have appeared in English collections since Child's time, according to Miss Dean-Smith, nor have recent texts been found in Scotland or in British America. But the United States is richly supplied with versions or variants, and a great many have been collected, chiefly in the Southern states. For example, Sharp-Karpeles (I, 150-60) present eighteen tunes with texts or partial texts from the Southern Appalachians. The Brown Collection (II, 95-101, and IV, 48-53) reports nine texts, not all of them printed, and seven tunes. TBVa prints twelve texts of thirteen available, with two tunes. In contrast, Barry presents no traces from Maine or the Maritime Provinces of Canada. Belden's Missouri collection (pp. 55-57) presents only two texts, and the Ozark collection (I, tzz-24) only two texts with tunes. More recent Virginia collecting has produced ten additional items of the ballad, of which only five are here presented, four of them with tunes.
Most, if not all, of the American texts, including the Virginia texts, are more closely related to Child D (V, 294) than to any other Child text, perhaps naturally since Child D comes from North Carolina. Belden (pp. 55-56) has listed the six particulars in which the American texts are to be distinguished from Child A, B, and C. He even suspects some printed source as the explanation of the likeness of the American texts, but he (and others) have been unable to find one. Belden seems to overestimate likeness and to ignore significant variations in the American texts. Perhaps Gerould (p. 172) is on sounder ground when he remarks: "Unquestionably the song has been created anew, as it has been transmitted from singer to singer and has travelled from Scotland to Virginia."
The Virginia texts share with Child C (from Shropshire) as well as with Child D the strongly religious coloring: the presence of the Saviour and the sinfulness of pride, and perhaps the suggestion that the return is made in answer to the mother's prayer. But there are pagan elements also: the belief that spirits return in order to calm the persistent lamentations of the bereaved, the vanishing of the ghosts at cock-crow, and the folk-belief that tears for the dead disturb their rest by wetting their winding-sheet- the note on which all the full texts that follow end.
If Child A from Scott's Minstrelsry is the best known and perhaps the most poetic version of the ballad, other versions, including the American, have their poetic claims as well. The essential poetic appeal, shared by all the versions, is the tragic pathos of the mother's failure to understand or unwillingness to believe that her sons are mere ghosts and must depart so soon. It is Child who says (II, 78), "Nothing that we have is more profoundly affecting." At least three of the four tunes that follow, all three of them transcribed from records, are both musically interesting and fitting musical vehicles for the poetry of the ballad. See the individual headnotes.
AA. "The Three Little Babes." Phonograph record (aluminum) made by A. K. Davis, Jr. Sung by Miss Eunice Yeatts, of Meadows of Dan, Va. Patrick County. August 10, 1932. Text transcribed by P. C. Worthington. Tune noted by E. C. Mead, who comments: "Very beautiful tune: amazing fluid rhythmic irregularities, 5/8, 4/8, 3/4. Expressive line; expressive use of the 7th and 3rd degrees as resting points; great variety within pentatonic tonal framework."
1 There is a lady, lady gay,
And children she had three.
She sent them away to the grammar school,[1]
To learn their grammercy.
2 Their hadn't been gone but a very short while,
Scarcely three weeks to the day,
Till death, cold death, came stealing along,
And stole those babes away.
3 "There lives a King in Heaven," she cried,
"A King of a high degree;
Oh, send me back my three little babes,
Oh. send them back to me."
4 Christmas time was growing[2] nigh,
The nights being clear and cold,
She saw her three little babes come back,
Come back to their mother's home.
5 She set a table of bread and wine,
Just as neat as it could be,
"Come eat, come drink, my three little babes,
Come eat and drink with me."
6 "I can't eat your bread," said the oldest one,
"Neither can I drink your wine,
For my Saviour dear is standing near,
To him I must resign."
7 She spread them a bed in the back of the room,
And on it a neat white sheet,
And over the top spread a golden spread,
That they might better sleep.
8 "Take it off, take it off," cried the oldest one,
"Take it off, take it off," cried one,
"What's to become of this wide, wicked world,
Since sin has first begun ?
9 "Cold clay, cold clay, hangs over my head,
Green grass grows under my feet,
And every tear that you shed for me,
Does wet our winding sheet."
1. Possibly "grammercy." [had grammery for music text]
2.- Possibly "drawing."