Early American Ballads. 1 19
The Wife of Usher's Well. These ballads do not contain much poetry to redeem their sav- agery ; I cannot, therefore, deny myself the pleasure of citing the version of the " Wife of Usher's Well " (Child, No. 79) communicated to his work by Mrs. E. M. Backus, as sung by " poor whites " of Polk County, N. C. (Child, v. 294). The ballad, in its original form, seems to have recited that the three sons of a noble lady have been sent to a distant land, according to the usual rule of chivalric educa- tion, which prescribed foreign service for young men ambitious of distinction. The youths fail to return, and the mother grieves over their absence to a degree which prevents the spirits from lying tran- quilly in their graves ; in the season of the long nights they return, and present themselves in the form of life, are received with joy, entertained, and bedded, but before morning are compelled to obey the law of ghosts, and retire to their distant graves. It seems to be a touch of modern change which has altered the lads from the period fit for acquiring knighthood to babes ; in this form the ballad made a warmer appeal to the maternal heart. Otherwise, however, the version excites astonishment by its antiquity and completeness. There are touches of mediaeval manners; the table is "fixed," that is placed on its trestle, according to the practice of the Middle Age, and we read of the golden cloth with which the bed was formerly covered.
There was a lady fair and gay,
And children she had three : She sent them away to some northern land,
For to learn their grammaree.
They had n't been gone but a very short time,
About three months to a day, When sickness came to that land,
And swept those babes away.
There is a king in the heavens above,
That wears a golden crown : She prayed that he would send her babies home
To-night or in the morning soon.
It was about one Christmas time,
When the nights was long and cool, She dreamed of her three little lovely babes,
Come running in their mother's room.
The table was fixed and the cloth was spread, And on it put bread and wine : " Come sit you down, my three little babes, And eat and drink of mine."
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