So, it goes like this:

“Children do you love each other?

Are you always kind and true?

Do you always do to others

as you would have them do to you?

Little birdies in their next agree,

tis a shameful sight to see,

Children of one family,

fall out, and chide and fight.”

And Sister Lorita got it… I think she must have gotten it from her own family. But she was a good friend of my moms and after she died, she came over and visited a lot. She worked at Mercy Hospital, they were really close… she ran the alcoholism unit at Mercy, but anyway she always said it whenever we’d argue about something.

Informant 2, age 22, son of Informant 1:

“Children do you love each other?” I remember mom saying it. But not Sister Lorita. Just like whenever we were fighting.

context: In a one on one conversation with informant 1, my father, I asked him if he remembered all the words to this poem that we often heard when we were fighting.

thoughts: Informant 2, did not remember all of it, probably because for him and our family, my mom, who got it from Sister Lorita, only needed to say the first few lines and we would stop what we were doing or just complain about the poem.

Sister Lorita was a great friend to my dad’s family after his mom died and so visiting her was a big part of Informant 2’s and my childhood, though he may not remember.