Hunting a poem’s history:
When I was a wee thing, a tiny toddler who loved stories read and had parents willing to oblige, my mother used to recite a short little poem to me at night. This same poem that we call Lady Moon was told to her by her mother. My mum is 85 and we must be talking about a poem that is at least 80 known years old but might go back even further to my grandmother’s childhood. I’ve used this poem in A Thousand Glass Flowers and in fact the Lady Moon is a defined character both in that manuscript and in the novel The Last Stitch.
I searched high and low for a history of the poem, for the poet’s name, for anything really – via the internet, libraries, poetry anthologies and the like, and came up with nothing. So I’m throwing it out there in the hope that someone somewhere can help me. Hs anyone even heard it?
The Lady Moon
The Lady Moon came down one night,
She did you shouldn’t doubt it.
A lovely lady dressed in blue, I’ll tell you all about it.
They hurried my sister and I to bed and Auntie said
Well maybe,
That lovely moon up over head will bring you down a baby.
It’s lovely–simple and sweet and a little haunting…has the cadence and feel of a nursery poem. I haven’t ever come across it before, though–good luck with your hunt! Perhaps someone in your family wrote it?
I have never heard it either, but it’s lovely. I’d be interested to hear any feedback.