Three Little Babes- Williamson (VA) 1932 Davis DD
[From: More Traditional Ballads of Virginia; Davis 1960. His notes follow.
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.
DD. "The Three Little Babes." Phonograph record (aluminum) made by A. K. Davis, Jr. Sung by Mrs. Kit Williamson, of yellow Branch, Va. Campbell County. August 4, 1932. Text transcribed by P. C. Worthington. Tune noted by Winston Wilkinson. First stanza with tune noted by Mrs. Paul Cheatham sent in by Miss Juliet Fauntleroy, of Altavista, Va. March 15, 1934. (Cf. TBVa, J, pp. 287, 576.)
1 There was a lady, lady gay,
Who had children,[1] one, two, three,
She sent those babes to the northern country,
To learn the[2] grammaree.
2 They hadn't been there but a month and a day,
Before swift death came on,
Before swift death came on,
And taken those babes away.
3 There's a King that lives in heaven,
Where he used to wear a crown,
Pray send me back those three little babes,
Night or in the morning soon.
4 Come in, come in my three little babes
And eat this bread and wine.
"O mother I can [neither] eat your bread
Nor can I drink your wine."
1. MS. has "babies."
2. MS. has "their."