No. 17 Ester, Osh 437
Pentatonic, mode 3 (I II III — V VI —)
Young ladies all, attention give,
You that in wicked pleasures live;
One of your sex the other day
Was call’d by death’s cold hand away.
This lesson she has left for you,
To teach the careless what to do;
To seek Jehovah while you live
And everlasting honors give.
Her honored mother she addrest,
While tears were streaming down her breast;
She grasped her tender hands and said,
“Remember me when I am dead.”
She called her father to her bed,
And thus in dying anguish said:
“My days on earth are at an end,
My soul is summoned to attend;
Before Jehovah’s awful bar,
To hear my awful sentence there;
And now, dear father, do repent,
And read the holy testament.”
The Sacred Harp ascribes the song to John S. Terry and dates it 1869. Terry was a singing-school teacher of Georgia and later lived in Alabama. The singing-school teacher took for his warning song the ‘Lord Lovel’ tune type that has been used for many secular ballads. Among them are ‘Barbara Allen’, Sharp, i., 195, tune O; ‘Gypsy Laddie’, Sharp, i., 237, tune F; ‘Come all Ye Fair and Tender Ladies’, Sharp, ii., 135, tune P. For other tunes of the same type see ‘Dulcimer’ in this collection.