Now that Christmas is over, it's time to turn from innocent babies who escape massacre by emigrating to Egypt to a more common traditional theme: innocent babies who don't make it to adulthood.
In the early 1960s, the late Professor Johannes Reidel taught folk music at the University of Minnesota Music Department. One of his students said that she had an aunt from North Dakota in a nursing home, named Alma Lien, who knew old songs. He sent her to collect what she could on tape, and she came back with the usual material from real folk: An eclectic mix of old ballads, Civil War songs, parlor songs, and sentimental songs of unrequited love and/or early death. These tapes have since been deposited in the Archives of Folksong at the Library of Congress, where they make up part of a small collection of Minnesota traditional music.
Reidel gave us a copy of the tape, and one song caught my ear for a couple of reasons: The tune was ridiculously easy, and the words were so concise that I'd learned the song before I knew what I was doing. Since then, I've sung it for various reasons, including release from boredom while driving and, ironically, as an effective lullaby for young children. It always seemed too simple to bother doing in public, though.
I was reminded of the song by a recent CD: Gems: Lily Mae Ledford Rare Concert and Studio Recordings, 1968-1983 (June Appal 0078). Ledford (1917-1985) led the Coon Creek Girls, one of the first all-female string bands, through the 1940s and 50s at the Renfro Valley Barn Dance in Kentucky. A Sunday version of the show was even broadcast for a few years over a local Minneapolis station. On one concert cut, Ledford sings Babes in the Woods using almost the same tune and words as Mrs. Lien from North Dakota. I wondered about the similarity, since, as far as I know, it was never released on an old record, the usual suspect for cases of widespread song distribution. Then I remembered that, at last year's Chicago Folk Festival, Bob Copper and his family from England (who claim to have sung the same songs in their family for hundreds of years) also used similar tune and words.
Although ignored by the "classical" folk music scholars, it was allegedly composed in England by one Rob Yarrington in 1601, collected as a traditional song by Samuel Pepys and published by Percy in 1765. It was republished as a broadside many times, and has been extensively collected in the Ozarks and Appalachians. The words and tune (when given) are usually close to the Ledford/Lien versions. Only a single version collected in Virginia in 1918 has different words, meter, and tune.
The traditional story behind the song is that an uncle, guardian of the two babes, wants their inheritance, so he hires two rascals to take them into the woods and kill them. One of the thugs kills the other and, too tender-hearted to murder the babies, abandons them to starve to death. Unlike Hansel and Gretel, they didn't leave a trail of bread crumbs, and no one finds them in time.
If the uniformity of tune and words only existed in America, I might think it had been published in one of the parlor songbooks that was popular early in the twentieth century. The Copper version from England makes me think that the tune is consistent just because it's so easy to remember. The version I give here is from Ledford (words) and Lien (tune). I intend to sing it in public someday, but at the rate I'm doing that, you're welcome to beat me to it. Meanwhile, if you have babies handy that need care, it somehow works like magic to put them to sleep.
Complete lyrics:
My friends, have you heard, how a long time ago,
Two little children whose names I don't know,
Were stolen away on a bright summer's day,
And left in the woods, I've heard people say.
Chorus:
Poor babes in the woods,
Poor babes in the woods,
Oh don't you remember
Poor babes in the woods.
And when it was night, so sad was their plight,
The sun went down, and the moon gave no light,
They sobbed and they sighed, and they bitterly cried,
Then the poor little things, they laid down and died.
And when they were dead, the robins so red,
Brought strawberry leaves and over them spread,
And all the night long, the branches among,
They mourned as they whistled, and this was their song....
One thing both of us can count on is that we'll never get any feedback from these articles, so I was pleasantly surprised when the May, 2001 issue of Inside Bluegrass had a nice letter commenting on this song:
A letter to one and all,
I read my April 2001 issue of Inside Bluegrass and immediately
noticed the warm greeting from Jed Malischke. Jed said a MBOTMA member
greeted him at the recent Mid-Winter Bash and mentioned the minutes of
the Board Meeting is what that person reads first in this magazine. (I
read 'em but I won't tell you when.) What I read first is the editorial
and secondly, the Old Songs page. I'm always hoping to see a unique
rare song I've become attached to. January, 2001, it happened.
Lyle Lofgren wrote all about Babes in the Woods. What a revelation to me now to know the derivation and history of a song I used to play with such gusto and pleasure in the late Sixties and early Seventies.
Babes in the Woods was a very well-known and much-danced-to tune here in East Central Minnesota by one Arnie Hohn and His Concertina Orchestra. I played regularly with Arnie and his wife Ruth in all the local dance halls and lake resorts which had dance floors (whether real or imagined). When we had a Saturday night dance at the Paladium in Brook Park, the folding chair rack at the entrance would be empty before 9:00 p.m. The booths and tables on the dance floor were full. All the extra chairs were interspersed among each available nook and cranny and fully occupied by the early-arriving clientele who were dined and slightly wined and ready to dance.
I said all that to say this. The evening dances were played in sets of three. If we started with a set of waltzes, "Babes in the Woods" was always the second song of the evening. The intent of any decent orchestra leader was to get his hall dancing, and Arnie used to do just exactly that.
We played "BITW" in a wonderfully lilting, danceable style and the crowd loved it -- often filling the dance floor on the second dance. Arnie would comment, more than once, "If they only knew how sad that song is... I wonder if they would still be so eager to dance like that to it. They don't even know the words."
Late in the evening we'd slip it in again, depending on the crowd. Ruth Hohn, who played electric piano and did some vocals, was known to sing the lyrics once in a while. I have her version of the words written out longhand. They are much the same as Lofgren's text. I revised my rhythm guitar style and now I am a flatpicker... but... still see and hear clearly in my mind's eye and my mind's ear, the figure of Arnie and that shiny concertina leaning back, oh so far back, drawing in the air, like the huge breath a small donkey lets in to let out a bray. (With an errant concertina button mashed down, the up beat sounded similar.) In one fell swoop, the entire crowd on the floor was in motion. Hundreds of happy people all starting out at the exact same moment laughing and clapping like crazy for more at the end, calling out, "One more, just like that one!" Babes in the Woods did that for Arnie, Ruth, and me.
I sing BITW now and then at the local jam, pretty nondescriptly I might add. Stop over some time and I'll play you Arnie and Ruth Hohn's version recorded live on New Year's Eve at the Old Ann Lake Resort in Ogilvie, 1973. Hearing is believing.
Thanks to Lyle L. and thanks to you for listening. I hope you heard some of it like I remember.
Tedi Schmoll
Ogilvie, MN