THREE SISTERS

Three sisters went to gather flow'rs,
Three sisters went to gather flow'rs,
Three sisters went to gather flow'rs,
Down by the bonnie banks o' Airdrie, O.
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A. Reid, Rymour Club Misc. II (1910), 78, with tune. Sung by little girls
at Kingarth, Bute. This is the opening of the ballad "Babylon, or The Bonnie Ba
nks o' Fordie" (Child 14); on which see also Bronson, I.248; this tune, p. 251,
is connected to the "Hind Horn" tradition (see ibid., 254 ff.). Opies Singing G
ame
(1985),263, with tune (a variant of the Bute), from the Gallowgate in Glasg
ow, which accompanied a dramatic version of the ballad. The Opies compare Herd'
s incipit (Herd MS. I.38): There wond three ladies in a bower,/Annet and Margret
and Marjorie,/ And they have gone out to pu' a flower,/ And the dew it lyes on
the wood, gay
ladie. Close is a Vermont version in Flanders & Olney, Ballads Migrant in New E
ngland (1953), 61-3, beginning "There were three sisters picking flowers/ High
in the lea and the lonely O."


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