The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #35197   Message #478821
Posted By: toadfrog
07-Jun-01 - 08:20 PM
Thread Name: Lyr Add: Lady All Skin and Bone
Subject: Lyr Add: LADY ALL SKIN AND BONE
There are two or three short versions of the song in the forum, mostly with screeches & howls interspersed, for Halloween. Here is a somewhat more urbane version, to be sung in harmony. I'll submit the tune when I've worked through ABC some more.

LADY ALL SKIN AND BONE
Author not known

There was a lady all skin and bone,
And such a lady was never known.
It happened on a holiday
The lady went to church to pray.

And when she came unto the stile,
She tarried there a little while,
And when she came unto the door,
She tarried there a little more.

And when she came unto the aisle,
She wore a sad and a woeful smile.
She'd come a long and a weary mile,
Her sin and sorrow to beguile.

And she walked up, and she walked down,
And spied a dead man upon the ground.
And from his nose unto his chin,
The worms crept out, and the worms crept in.

And the lady to the sexton said,
Shall I be so when I am dead?
And the sexton to the lady said,
You'll be the same when you are dead!

As sung by Ewan McColl and Peggy Seeger, on "Two-Way Trip," Folkways Records FW 8755
The liner notes refer the "Theme of death and the lady," and observe that "most of the songs on this theme retain something of the medieval homiletic poem," and refer to JEFDSS, Vol. V, p. 19.
Edinburgh rhymours, Vol I., p. 108. The liner notes are less than clear on several matters, including to what extent this version is a spoof.

Also see Halloween Songs