7369 old music 2402 - KET

long as the birds are lit, say it over and over, and when they rise and fly, that part of
the poem will be your fortune.”
Well, I learned the little rhyme and ran back out and sat under the tree every day
for two weeks, but the birds never came back. My boys said, “That’s a terrible
story; it has no ending.” But the next night they said, “Tell us that story again about
the bluebirds,” and the next night, and in a week or two we had a tune and worked
it out to be a song.
When I was a young thing, once on a day,
Dreaming under my apple tree,
A great flock of bluebirds sailing through the sky
Espied my tree as they passed by
And Oh! it was a wonderful sight to see
When they settled down to rest in my apple tree.
Count them, said my mother; “How?” said I,
And out of the window came this reply:
Refrain:
“One, you’ll have sorrow. Two, you’ll have joy.
Three, get a present. Four, get a boy.
Five, receive silver. Six, receive gold.
Seven’s a secret that’s never been told.
Eight, a love letter with promises three.
Nine means your true love’s as true as can be!”
Only once in a lifetime, the old folks say,
The vision of the bluebirds will come your way.
But only if you’re dreaming, only if you’re still,
Only in an apple tree on a green hill.
So stop all your hurrying and worrying away
And take time for dreaming on a sunny day.
Wait for the bluebirds, and when they come along,
Tell your fortune with the bluebird song.
Refrain for boys:
One, you’ll have gladness. Two, you’ll have strife.
Three, get a present. Four, get a wife.
Five, receive silver. etc.
Skin and Bones
(Jean Ritchie)
Here’s one you may have heard because it’s now in many school books all over
the country. It was put in those books by the permission of my family. We called it
“The Scary Song” and sang it mostly around Halloween time, but it was a good one
to sing any time of the year, whenever anyone would come to see us who didn’t
know it. We’d wait till night and blow the lamps out, crowd around that child, and
scare him or her with that song.
Sometimes we’d dare each other and all creep across the branch in the
moonlight, go up on the hillside to our little graveyard and sing it soft and shaky.
One night we were doing that, standing under the big cedar tree there, and had just
started to sing when an old hoot owl up in the tree went, “A-Hoo, A-Hoo, A-Hoo-
Ahhh!” And we fell all over each other getting out of there, down the hill and home!
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