Warning- C. H. Williams (MO) 1906 Belden B
[From "Ballads and Songs" edited by H.M. Belden, Missouri Folklore Society, 1940. His notes follow.
R. Matteson 2017]
Little Sparrow
This is a fairly stable and apparently American compound of age-old elements. Commonly the forsaken girl begins 'Come all ye fair and tender ladies' and proceeds to compare the fickleness of men to the stars of a summer morning that 'first appear and then are gone' or to a day that starts fair and then turns to rain. Then she wishes she were a little sparrow (sometimes swallow) so that she could, fly to him and nestle against his breast and, unbeknown, hear what he says[1]. This sparrow motif has made its way into another song, the lament of a convict in the state prison (given by Sandburg, ASB 218-9, as known in Ohio), who if he had the wings of a sparrow would fly away to the arms of his mother and there lie down and die. Little Sparrow, under various titles and with considerable variation of texts but with one and generally both of the elements mentioned above, has been reported as traditional song in Virginia (SharpK II 136, J. Fischer & Bro.'s Choral Compositions 6737, SCSII 313), West Virginia (FSS 419-2I), Kentucky (LT 55-7, DD 82-3, FSKII 23-5, SharpK II729,132-5, FSSH 259-60), Tennessee (JAFL XIII, 101-2, ETWVMB 61, 98, SharpK II 128-30, FSSH 258-9,260-1), North Carolina (SharpK II 728, 130, 131, I34, FSSH 257-8), Georgia (JAFL XXIX 200), Mississippi (FSM 167; see also 151), and Indiana (JAFL XXIX 183-4, compounded with matter from The Butcher Boy). See also the last two stanzas of The Rambling Beauty C, above, and stanza 4 of The Blue-Eyed Boy A, below.
B. 'Warning.' From C. H. Williams, Bollinger County, 1906, who says: 'I was very young when I learned this and don't remember who I heard sing it first.'
Come all ye fair and tender ladies,
Take warning how you love young men;
They are like the star of a summer's morning,
First appear and then they are gone again.
Once I thought I had a lover,
Indeed I though he was my own;
Straightway he went and courted another
And left me here to grieve and moan.
I wish I were some little sparrow,
One of those would fly so high;
I'd fly away to my false lover
And when he talked I'd be close by;
All in his breast I would flutter
With my little tender wings,
Ask him whom he meant to flatter,
Whom he intended to deceive.
But as it is, I'm no sparrow,
Neither wings to fly so high.
I'll sit me down in grief and sorrow,
Sing, and pass my trouble by.