Mother and father,
both so ill.
Who'll keep our children?
My brother will.
He'll love them as dearly
as babes of his own,
and keep them safe
until they are grown.
But the uncle so cruel
hired two men
to take them and leave them
in the forest so grim.
A long time ago,
I've heard people say,
two little babes
were stolen away.
They sobbed and they sighed,
and so bitterly cried,
then the poor little babes,
they laid down and died.
And when they were dead,
the robin so red,
brought strawberry leaves
and over them spread.
And all the day long,
he sang them this song;
"Poor babes in the woods.
Poor babes in the woods."
................................................................................
My mother's singing of this ballad to a very plaintive tune was certain to stir
pathos. A fellow ballad singer and friend, Cari Norris, suggested that I should
include Babes in the Woods in this project. Her version, learned from her grandmother,
Lily May Ledford, has a different tune and slightly different lyrics from my
mother's version.
The story is connected to a place in Norwich, England, Wayland Wood or "Wailing
Wood" as it was called in olden days. The ballad was first published in Norwich
by Thomas Millington in 1595.
That text relates that a dying father asked his brother to care for his two
infants until they would inherit his fortune at the age of their majority. After
his death, the cruel uncle has another notion and hires thugs to dispatch the
children in the forest. The thugs turn soft at the last moment and instead of
killing the children outright, leave them in the woods to their fate. The two
babes, aged 3 and 2, wander about crying until...well...the remarkably compressed
ballad my mother sang related all you really need to know. ...or so I thought
until I let my mom hear my recording of this song. She insisted that the story
as she sang it needed verses to explain how the babes came to be "stolen away."
I try to be an obedient son, so I wrote the first 3 verses in the text above.
"In Wayland Wood there used to be a huge oak, said to be the place where the
babes actually died. However in 1879 the tree was struck and destroyed by lightning.
It is also believed that nearby Griston Hall, an ancient manor house, was the
home of the wicked uncle." (from a Norwich website)
The babes still haunt the wood, so it's said, and if you happen to be there
after dusk, you may see two little glowing figures, crying as they try in vain
to find their way out of the dark forest.