“Remember the Poor”

Description

"Cold winter is coming with his keen cutting breath...." With the fields barren and the cold coming on, the listeners are urged to remember the poor. This is urged both because the listeners have something to spare and because it is the Christian thing

Supplemental text

Remember the Poor
  Partial text(s)

          *** A ***

The Snow Is on the Ground

From Anne Warner, Traditional American Folk Songs from the Anne &
Frank Warner Collection, #161, pp. 365-366. From the singing of
Eleazar Tillett of North Carolina (1951)

Cold winter is come with his keen cutting breath,
And the birds is all dropped from the trees.
All nature seems touched at the finger of death,
And the streams are beginning to freeze.
When the hills and the dales are all covered in white
And Flora attends us no more,
You sit by your fireside reviving and hot,
Will you grumble to think on the poor?

(4 additional stanzas, but of four lines each)

Broadsides

• Harding B 11(843), "Remember the Poor," Angus (Newcastle), 1774-1825
• LOCSheet, sm1877 01347, "Always Remember the Poor", [publisher illegible] (Jersey City), 1877
• Murray, Mu23-y1:079, "Remember the Pooor," James Lindsay (Glasgow), 19C

References

1. Warner 161, "The Snow Is on the Ground" (1 field text plus a songster version, 1 tune)
2. ST Wa161 (Partial)
3. Roud #1121
4. BI, Wa161