“Ben Fisher”

Description

"Ben Fisher had finished his day's hard work, And he sat at his cottage door; And his good wife Kate sat by his side, And the moonlight danced on the floor." They look back on their twelve years of marriage; they are not rich but are as happy as anyone

Supplemental text

Ben Fisher
  Partial text(s)

          *** A ***

From Emelyn Elizabeth Gardner and Geraldine Jencks Chickering,
Ballads and Songs of Southern Michigan, pp. 288-289. "[O]btained
in 1916... from Mrs. Mary Ellen Kenyon Baker."

Ben Fisher had finished his day's hard work,
And he sat at his cottage door;
And his good wife Kate sat by his side,
And the moonlight danced on the floor.
And the moonlight danced on the cottage floor,
For its moonbeams were as pure and as bright,
As when he and Kate twelve years before
Talked love in a mellow light.

(6 additional stanzas)

Notes

Standard nineteenth-century treacle, with a bit of a temperance message ("Ben Fisher had never a pipe of clay, Nor never a dram drank he, So he loved at home with his wife to stay"). - RBW

References

1. Gardner/Chickering 118, "Ben Fisher" (1 text)
2. ST GC118 (Partial)
3. Roud #3699
4. BI, GC118