Sung by Derek B. Scott, Professor of Critical Musicology, University of Leeds, to his own piano accompaniment.
Professor Scott comments that this is a song that highlights the vulnerability of children who have no stable home. It may be noticed that the “worshippers” in this song restrict their action to making the sign of the cross as they pass by the orphan, nobody offers her food or shelter.
Theodore Piccolomini helped to establish the ballad of Roman Catholic character in the drawing rooms of the 1880s, and “Ora Pro Nobis” (Pray for Us) takes it refrain from the Latin prayer Ave Maria.
Bibliography
Scott, Derek B. The Singing Bourgeois: Songs of the Victorian Drawing Room and Parlour. 2nd ed. Aldershot, Hampshire; Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2001.
Last modified 31 December 2011