Among thee tall bushes thee reeds an’ thee rushes
Thee babee look’d sweetlee an’ smil’d.
Recorded from singing of Miss Will Allen Dromgoole, Nashville, Tennessee, as she remembered it sung in 1890 by Mr. Tate, stage driver from Beersheba to Beersheba Springs on Cumberland Mountain in Tennessee. The unusual spelling is an attempt at reproducing the emphatic rhythmic pronunciation of Mr. Tate. The one stanza given above was all Miss Dromgoole remembered. The full text, however, was recorded by Mr. Fred Haun of Newport, Tennessee, from the singing of his mother, Mrs. Maggie Haun, and placed at my disposal by Miss Mildred Haun, his sister. This rather defective text is as follows:
The ladies were wending their way
As Pharo’s daughter stepped down to the water
To bathe in the cool of the day.
Before it was dark she opened the ark
And found the sweet infant was there.
She took him in pity and thought him so pretty;
That made little Moses so glad.