From Kate_Early_at_Erie2_1@facs.org Mon Sep 15 08:24:17 1997 Return-Path: Received: from facs.org (facs.org [204.242.159.2]) by almaak.usc.edu (8.8.4/8.8.4/usc) with ESMTP id IAA12944 for ; Mon, 15 Sep 1997 08:24:16 -0700 (PDT) Received: by firegate.facs.org id <13442-1>; Mon, 15 Sep 1997 10:23:21 -0500 Date: Mon, 15 Sep 1997 11:14:54 -0500 From: "Kate Early" Message-Id: <97Sep15.102321cdt.13442-1@firegate.facs.org> To: Ed Cray Subject: Re[4]: songs about abortion Status: RO X-Status: Howdy, Ed, The age of the revenants is, I think, vital to the ballad theme in "Cruel Mother." (If such a word is at all useful.) Or, if you prefer, the "gestalt." I think it does represent, at you note, the what-might-have- been. I think that is what we grieve when anyone dies young. Don't you? Yes, indeed. We are sad, but not surprised, when the old die, but shocked when the young die. Just where did your father sing "Today is the day"? Rosalie Sorrels first sang that lullaby (she still sings it in performance) ca. 1960 for me. The text is slightly bawdy (as is everything I touch, apparently): Today is the day they give babies away With a half a pound of tea If you know any ladies who want any babies, Just send them around to me. Dad sang the first two lines, repeating the "with a half a pound of tea" phrase a couple times to us in our house in Oak Park, IL, in the late 50s and early 60s when we kids were young and annoying. He used the same bouncy, jig-time, tune to sing: "I love to go swimmin' with bowlegged women And dive between their knees," another song that he never sang all the way through. I think the second half of Rosalie's version comes from the racy song about Yan Yansen who lives in Visconsin and vorks in da lumbermills dere, recorded by Carl Sandburg. I believe Yan is offering to supply the ladies with babies, not to take their existing babies off their hands... Kate