Three Little Babes- Landers (NC) 1916 Sharp B
[My title, replacing the generic Child title. From Cecil Sharp; English Folk Songs from the Southern Appalachians; Sharp/Campbell I, 1917; also Sharp/Karpeles I; 1932. The 1932 Edition notes follow.
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.
B. [Three Little Babes] Sung by Miss LINNIE LANDERS at Carmen, N. C, Sept. 5, 1916
Pentatonic. Mode 2.
1. They hadn't been there but a very short time,
Till children they had three.
They sent them a way to the north country,
To learn their grammaree.
2 They hadn't been there but a very short time,
Scarcely six weeks and three days,
Till sickness came into that whole town
And swept her babes away.
3 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 their home.
4 She spread them a table on a milk-white cloth
And on it she put cake and wine.
Come and eat, come and eat, my three little babes,
Come and eat and drink of mine.
5 No mother, no mother, don't want your cakes,
Nor neither drink your wine,
For yonder stands our Saviour dear
To take us in his arms.
6 She fixed them a bed all in the back side room
And on it she put three sheets,
And one of the three were a golden sheet,
Under it that the youngest might sleep.
7 Take it off, take it off, dear mother, they said,
For we haven't got long to stay,
For yonder stands our Saviour dear,
Where we must shortly be.
8 Dear mother, dear mother, it's the fruit of your poor pride heart
That caused us to lie in the clay.
Cold clods at our heads, green grass at our feet
We are wrapped in our winding-sheet.