The Songs My Grandmother Sang

My grandmother was the quintessential grandmother. She was jolly, rotund, and since we could never get her angry, we never tried. One of the things I will never forget about her, is how she suddenly would burst into song. Sometimes it was a hymn; “Come Thou Almighty King” was a frequent, or songs from long ago wars such as “Tramp, Tramp, Tramp, the boys are marching;” from the Civil War or “I have come to say goodbye Dolly Gray,” from the Spanish American War, a time she experienced as a child. The frustrating thing about these tunes, was she would usually only belt out the first lines or perhaps, in the case of a hymn, the first verse.
Often the songs she sang were from her school days. “Dicky Bird, Dicky Bird, Dicky Dicky Bird; How I’d like to fly with you; Dicky, Dicky Bird,” would come echoing out of the old camp window into the surrounding beech wood, where she and my grandfather lived. “Up the airy mountain, down the rushy glen; We dare not go a’hunting for fear of little men,” I later learned was from a poem by William Butler Yeats. “A hunter on the hill, who gallops forth at early dawn to shoot the startled deer; All fresh at early dawn;” was a German folk song, “Der Jaeger aus Kurpfalz.” Her elementary education predated World War I when things German fell out of fashion.
But there was one little song she sang, and again, only the first verse, that always touched something with me. “Come little leaves, said the wind, one day; Come over the meadows with me and play.” I could always picture the leaves of past summers being blown over the fields as summer ended. Even now I remember the tune, and recently found the entire poem, which I am attaching. If I close my eyes, I can still recall past autumns and meadows, long since disappeared under construction, and hear my grandmother singing to us the lament of a dying summer.
Come Little Leaves
COME LITTLE LEAVES
by George Cooper

"Come, little leaves" said the wind one day,
"Come over the meadows with me, and play;
Put on your dresses of red and gold;
Summer is gone, and the days grow cold."

Soon as the leaves heard the wind's loud call,
Down they came fluttering, one and all;
Over the brown fields they danced and flew,
Singing the soft little songs they knew.

"Cricket, good-bye, we've been friends so long;
Little brook, sing us your farewell song-
Say you're sorry to see us go;
Ah! you are sorry, right well we know.

"Dear little lambs, in your fleecy fold,
Mother will keep you from harm and cold;
Fondly we've watched you in vale and glade;
Say, will you dream of our loving shade?"

Dancing and whirling the little leaves went;
Winter had called them and they were content-
Soon fast asleep in their earthly beds,
The snow laid a soft mantle over their heads.