The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #53514   Message #824209
Posted By: masato sakurai
12-Nov-02 - 11:20 AM
Thread Name: Lyr Req/Add: My Pretty Crowing Chickens
Subject: Lyr Add: PRETTY CROWIN' CHICKENS
It's a "Grey Cock" (Child #248) version. The last stanza is posted at this thread: Penguin: The Grey Cock.

PRETTY CROWIN' CHICKENS
(Hattie Hicks Presnell, 1951)

The moon it shines bright, and the stars they give light,
While this fair miss she worries alone.
There's something in the way that is causing him to stay,
It's I am worried alone, 'lone, 'lone,
It's I am worried alone.

Her true love come at last, and he come very fast,
Come tripplin' through the plain.
This fair miss she rose, and she threw on her clothes,
For to let her old true lover in, in, in,
For to let her old true lover in.

"My pretty little chicken, my pretty crowin' chicken,
Say, don't you crow before day.
I'll make your wings of a yeller beading gold,
And your comb of the silver so gay, gay, gay,
And your comb of the silver so gay."

This chicken proved false-hearted to her,
And crowed one hour too soon.
She sent her love away, before it was day,
And he traveled by the light of the moon, moon, moon,
And he traveled by the light of the moon.

She saddled up her milk white horse,
And also her dapple grey.
She rode through the dark wilderness,
At the length of a long summer day, day, day,
At the length of a long summer day.

"My old true love, my sweet turtledove,
Oh, when shall I see you again?"
"When the moon and the stars enters in yonders green,
And the sky, it shall shed no more rain, rain, rain,
And the sky, it shall shed no more rain."

SOURCE: Anne Warner, Traditional American Folk Songs from the Anne & Frank Warner Collection (Syracuse UP, 1984, pp. 225-226; with music)

~Masato