I desire that in my coffin
May be room enough for three;
For my father, for my mother,
And my love to lie with me.
Afterwards above the coffin
We will let a flower grow;
In the morning we will plant it,
In the evening it will blow.
Wayfarers will pause demanding,
"Whose may be the flower there?"
"'Tis the flower of Rosetina,
She who died of love's despair."
Round of Girls in Venice.
No. 11.
Miss Jennia Jones.
This childish drama has been familiar in the Middle States since the memory of the oldest inhabitant. The Scotch equivalent shows that the heroine's name was originally Jenny jo. "Jo" is an old English word for sweetheart, probably a corruption of joy, French joie, used as a term of endearment. Jenny my joy has thus been modernized into Miss Jennia (commonly understood to be a contraction for Virginia) Jones!
The story is originally a love-tale. The young lady, like Rosetina in the Venetian song (a part of which we have translated above) dies of blighted affection and the prohibition of cruel parents. The suitor, in America, is represented by feminine friends. Yet the drama has lived; a proof that in singing and playing love-tales the children rather imitated their elders than followed a necessity of their own nature.
From various versions we select the following:
A mother, seated. Miss Jennia Jones stands behind her chair, or reclines on her lap as if lying sick. A dancer advances from the ring.
"I've come to see Miss Jennia Jones,
Miss Jennia Jones, Miss Jennia Jones—
I've come to see Miss Jennia Jones,
And how is she to-day?"