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288 Ballads and Songs of Michigan
118 BEN FISHER
For an almost identical form see Beadle's Dime Song Boo\ (New York and London, 1859), No. 4, pp. 9-10.
The present version was obtained in 1916 by Mr. H. Parkes Pinson, Ecorse, from Mrs. Mary Ellen Kenyon Baker, who had learned the song fifty years earher from hearing it sung by Miss Helen Carelton, East China Township, St. Clair River.
i Ben Fisher had finished his hard day's 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.
2 Ben Fisher had never a pipe of clay, Nor never a dram drank he;
So he loved at home with his wife to stay,
And right merrily chatted they.
Right merrily chatted on the while
Her babe slept on her breast;
A cherub rogue with a rosy smile
On his father's knee found rest.
3 Ben told how fast his potatoes grew, And the corn in the lower field;
That the wheat on the hill had grown to seed
And had promised a glorious yield,
A glorious yield in harvest time;
That his orchard was doing fair,
That his sheep and his cattle were in their prime,
And his farm all in good repair.
4 Kate said that her garden looked beautiful, That her fowls and her calves were fat;
That the butter that morning that Tommy churned
Would buy him a Sunday hat;
That Jenny for Pa a new shirt had made,
And it was done, too, by the rule; |
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