From Mrs Matilda Jenner

Collected by Anne Gilchrist, Ashurst, 1905 (?)

Anne Gilchrist MSS Collection AGG/3/6/9c

Roud 288

The following words are given in The Nursery Rhymes of England, collected by James Orchard Halliwell (1886)
https://www.gutenberg.org/files/32415/32415-h/32415-h.htm

1. My dear, do you know,
   How a long time ago,
   Two poor little children,
   Whose names I don’t know,
   Were stolen away on a fine summer’s day,
   And left in a wood, as I’ve heard people say.
   
2. And when it was night,
   So sad was their plight,
   The sun it went down,
   And the moon gave no light!
   They sobb’d and they sigh’d, and they bitterly cried,
   And the poor little things, they lay down and died.
   
3. And when they were dead,
   The Robins so red
   Brought strawberry leaves,
   And over them spread;
   And all the day long,
   They sung them this song,
   “Poor babes in the wood! poor babes in the wood!
   And don’t you remember the babes in the wood?”