Three Little Babes- D. Shelton (NC) 1916 Sharp D
[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 stanzas from Sharp MS 3193/2340.
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.
Sharp diary 1916 page 233. Tuesday 1 August 1916 - Allanstand: In the afternoon Campbell and I walked up the creek to Mrs. Dora Shelton who after some persuasion sang Wife of Usher’s well — a very good tune, and one or two others.
D. [Three Little Babes] Sung by Mrs. DORA SHELTON at Allanstand, N. C, Aug. 15, 1916
Pentatonic- Mode 2.
1. Pretty Polly hadn't been married but a very short time,
When she had her three little babes;
She sent them a way to the North country
To learn their grammaree.
2. She dreamed a dream when the nights were long,
When the nights were long and cold,
She dreamed she saw her three little babes
Come walking down to the home.
3. She spread a table with a milk-white cloth
And on it she put bread and wine.
Come and eat, come and eat, my three little babes,
Come and eat and drink of wine.
4. Take it off, take it off, dear mother, said they,
For we hain't got long to stay.
For Yonder stands our Saviour dear
Where we must shortly be.
5. She spread a bed in the backside room
And in it she put three sheets.
And one of the sheets was a golden sheet
And under hit they must sleep.
6. Take it off, take it off, dear mother, said they,
For we hain't got long to stay.
For it was the pride of your own heart
That caused us under the clay.
7. We was buried on yonder old Blue Knob,
We was buried side by side;
Cold clods at our head, green grass at our feet,
We was wropped in a winding-sheet.