Expert Girl- Lucile Morris (MO) 1933 Randolph E
[Same title from Randolph D by same informant- apparently a different version. Fragment from: Randolph, Ozark Folksongs; 4 vols. 1946-50; reprinted Columbia, 1980, II, 92. Randolph notes follow. I've renamed some of his versions by creating local titles.
Randolph attributes his versions to the local murder of Lula Noel in 1892 which, according to a report in History of McDonald County, Missouri (1897), is "One of the most appalling crimes ever committed in McDonald county was the murder of Mary Lula Noel daughter of W. H. and S. E. Noel on the 10 day of December, 1892." Lula Noel and William Simmons (the convicted murderer) are not mentioned in Randolph's versions and neither are the locations Lanagan and Joplin.
The attribution is a stretch but in some versions he acquired corresponding testimony (Version B, for example).
R. Matteson 2016]
E. "Expert Girl" Another text, also supplied by Miss Lucile Morris, Springfield, Mo., Feb. 22, 1933, conduded with the following stanza:
Come all you false-hearted lovers, take warning now by me,
And never treat your own true love in any severity,
For if you do you sure will rue the day until you die,
And hanged you'll be upon the tree, a murderer's death you'll die.