ON THE SHORES OF A MUDDY RIVER

Library of Strange Folktales, No. 004

“I’m going to sing the first song that ever I learnt when I was a little boy. In St. Louis … it’s taken well up there, and I’ll sing it first.”

Like many pieces of American folklore, ‘Lady Gay’ has many versions that stretch all the way back to Old World origins. The song has gone by many titles; the Scots version of the poem, as recorded in the Oxford Book of English Verse uses the title ‘The Wife of Usher’s Well,’ a name by which the song is recorded in the Child catalog of Ballads (#79). Joanna Newsom recorded the song under the title ‘Three Little Babes’ on her 2004 album The Milk-Eyed Mender (while holding true to the thematic roots of the tale, her version seems to have changes and amendments that make it an interesting and original rendition).

The song is a well-known one in Ozark folklore, where John Quincy Wolf, Jr. recorded and cataloged various versions, eventually codifying it in a repository publicly available from Lyon College. Like the Appalachian region further to the East (from which many people emigrated to the Ozarks), the folklore of the Ozarks is one of the more rarefied examples of American arcana. Relatively sparse populations and mountainous terrain left both regions just isolated enough that they continue to have, in many ways, unique cultural (and linguistic) features that, over the course of the last century, were blended into and subsumed by greater American culture in many other regions (as partially evidenced in how American culinary culture has changed).

I find the example of ‘Lady Gay’ particularly interesting for several reasons: as a folktale it contains references to magic, God, Christian symbolism, and even serves as a cautionary and explanatory myth. All versions of the tale tell the same story: a woman sends her three children away and, not long into their absence they all die. Her grief is inconsolable, and she mourns for much longer than the proscribed period. One winter’s night, sometimes told as Christmas or Martinmas (Nov. 11th, by the by), her children return to her. Elated by their presence she calls for food to be brought, a feast set, and their beds prepared. Instead of taking part, however, the children tell her that they are not there to stay, only to tell her that they are with God, irretrievable, and that she must quit her mourning (in some versions this is cautionary — her failure to do so results in her death, though this could be taken as evidence of her dying from sadness rather than as a kind of punishment). The devil is in the details, however, and the different versions of the story make different points in a way that is not only fascinating, but probably hints at the different storytelling priorities of the contexts in which the story has been told.

Take, for example, the first verse from Mattie James’s version, as recorded by Wolf:

There was a little lady; she was a lady gay,
And children she had three.
She sent them off to the North Summeree
To learn their gramaree.

Whilst all versions contain the idea of the eponymous Lady (or Wife) sending her children away (‘O’er the sea’ in the Oxford Book of English Verse rendition), more often than not the versions in the Ozark tradition specifically mention that she sent them off to ‘learn their gramaree.’ Archaically, ‘grammar’ (spelled gramarye) can simply mean learning in general, but it also has the meaning of occult knowledge, magic, or necromancy (OED entry*). Thus the death of the children takes on a new element — not simply random tragedy, their loss could also be retribution or a result of their daring to learn, or their mother’s daring to send them to learn, forbidden magic.

Almeda Riddle’s version makes an interesting hint at this notion with the question, at the end of the second stanza, ‘Will their mother understand?’ (Her version is particularly good. I suggest giving it a listen.) Death remains an abstract in the Ozark versions, where he comes by variously ‘spreading’ or ‘sweeping’ over the land (this notion makes me thing of the death of the children as perhaps not isolated; it doesn’t sound as if they’re just picked off — maybe a residual of the Black Death?). But Joanna Newsom’s version, which originally got me on this whole bent, uses an interesting and unique form here, which I found in no other recorded or cataloged verion:

They hadn’t been gone but a very short time
About three months and a day
When the lark spread over this whole wide world
And taken those babes away

The use of the image of the lark was curious, since I didn’t understand why death would be personified as a bird. Also curious, though I did not relate the two at first, was that Newsom’s version makes no reference to Christianity in what is, in pretty much every other form, a very Christian-influenced work. The answer to both of these, of course, is that the lark itself is considered a symbol of Jesus (among other things) in Old World folklore, in much the same way that animals function as intermediaries or avatars acting between people and gods in folklore around the world (especially certain African traditions).

The lamentation aspect of the song comes through in all of the American verions (helped by the fact that it is those versions which survive as material in the form of audio recordings from the source). Especially in the version sung by Mattie James, where lines often take the form of questions. Some of the more dramatic (and, to me, therefore most powerful) details are employed in the version sung by Fred High (from which the opening quote above is taken):

“Rise you up, rise you up,” says the oldest one,
“Rise you up, rise you up,” says he,
“For yonder stands our savior dear,
And Him we must obey.

“Green grass grows at our head, Mother,
Cold clods lie at our feet.
The tears you’ve shed for us, Mother,
Would wet our winding sheet.”

The notion of a benevolent Jesus also appears repeatedly. Like much of Christian mythos that comes to the fore in folklore, the focus is on Jesus and his presence rather than that of God, as he seems to be the vehicle through which the God/Trinity acts on Earth. Another transcription of Fred High singing the song references Jesus himself waiting for the return of the children to Heaven (we assume). The last Child version (#79[C]) has Jesus taking the mother as well, after giving her nine days to repent her ‘wickedness’ of continuing to mourn the loss of her children. Even this is a kindness, though, because she joins Jesus and her children in Heaven (thus her mourning is not wickedness, really, and I suppose is taken as sympathetically understood by the audience).

Ultimately ‘Lady Gay’ is a song about grief, plain and simple. Wrapped in various folk traditions and tropes (though never cliches, I think), it’s one of the most fascinating examples of folk tradition. Also of note, again because of the many forms it’s taken, is the great myriad of dialects that are present in the versions of the story. In the Ozark verses the use of antiquated/medieval vocabulary (something that certain pockets of American English maintained for a strangely long time, though more usually it was the use of antiquated grammatical structures like antiquated forms of ‘to be’ in the subjunctive), and especially Fred High’s use of Ozark dialect is one that I, as someone with a passing interest in dialectical variation, really latch on to.

Lastly, I think we should close with the last three stanza’s of Ms Newsom’s version. If you have not heard it you must; she’s a fantastically talented singer and her ‘Three Little Babes’ is, frankly, haunting:

‘Take it off, take it off!’, cried the eldest one
‘Take it off, take it off!’, cried she
‘For i shan’t stay here in this wicked world
When there’s a better one for me’

‘Cold clods, cold clods inside my bed
Cold clods, down at my feet
The tears my dear mother shed for me
Would wet my winding sheet’

‘The tears my dear mother shed for me
Would wet my winding sheet
Would wet my winding sheet

*For those of you who can’t log in to use the OED: