Tonight while reading "Abe Lincoln Grows Up" by Carl Sandburg to the children, we briefly paused for thought after reading this rather sobering passage:
And there was the ballad of Wicked Polly, who danced and ran wild and told
the old folks, "I'll turn to God when I get old, and He will then receive my
soul." But when death struck her down while she was young and running
wild, she called for her mother and with rolling eyeballs cried, "When I am
dead, remember well, your wicked Polly screams in hell."
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In this beautifully crafted and historically researched story of Abe Lincoln's life for children, Sandburg purports that this was among the ballads that little Abe's mother, Nancy Hanks sang to him. (I'll spare you the ballad in which The Brown Girl puts a little knife through Fair Ellender's throat after he remarks that she is plagued with brown and the Brown Girl's Hero pulls his sword and cuts off her head and then thrusts the sword through his own heart. Might be too gruesome.)
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