Early Pearly

DESCRIPTION: "Early pearly snow on the ground, the wind was bitter and cold; A poor little beggar boy out in the snow, came knocking at the lady’s door." The woman takes him in. He asks a blessing for his dead mother
AUTHOR: unknown
EARLIEST DATE: 2009 (recording, Margaret Gardham)
KEYWORDS: begging mother death rescue lullaby | snow
FOUND IN: Britain(England(North))
Roud #258
RECORDINGS:
Steve Gardham, "Early Pearly" (Piotr-Archive #304, recorded 10/11/2022)
CROSS-REFERENCES:
cf. "The Soldier's Poor Little Boy" [Laws Q28] (source of this song)
NOTES [104 words]: This is a bit of a conundrum, because by origin it is not a separate song. It is simply a floating fragment of "The Soldier's Poor Little Boy" [Laws Q28] with an unusual chorus. However, Steve Gardham's family used it as a lullaby, which is obviously not how it is normally treated, and recently it has been rewritten as a song of a sailor who comes home and begs from his old love, who does not recognize him. The latter should probably count as a distinct song, but it is not traditional. So this entry is here to, in effect, say that this title and its first few lines are used as part of two distinct but related songs. - RBW
Last updated in version 6.7
File: DPio304

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