Johnny McDowell- Snoah McCourt (WV) 1916 Cox B
[My date, none given. From Cox, "Folk-Songs Of The South," p. 311-313, 1925. Cox's excellent notes, which have been quoted numerous times, follow. The text represents 12 stanzas with divided lines.
R. Matteson 2016]
90. THE WEXFORD GIRL (THE CRUEL MILLER)
In West Virginia this ballad is known as "The Tragedy" and as "Johnny McDowell." It has been found in oral circulation in Virginia and Tennessee (Focus, IV, 370), Missouri (Belden, Journal, xxv, n), and Kentucky (Shearin and Combs, pp. 13, 28). Belden has noted that it is "a reduction of 'The Wittam Miller.'" Of "The Berkshire Tragedy, or, The Wittam Miller" the Harvard College Library has English broadsides of the eighteenth and the early nineteenth century (Stonecutter-street, Fleet Market; J. Evans; Howard & Evans; Turner, Coventry; Pitts; cf. Roxburghe Ballads, ed. Ebsworth, vm, ii, 629). According to an Edinburgh chapbook of 1744 (catalogued by Halliwell, Notices of Fugitive Tracts, Percy Society, xxix, 90), the miller's name was John Mauge and he was hanged at Reading (Berkshire) in that year. An American broadside of the early part of the nineteenth century (Boston, Corner of Cross and Fulton Streets) affords a condensed version of "The Wittam Miller" under the title of "The Lexington Miller." A condensed text, "The Cruel Miller," substantially like the West Virginia version, is found in modern English broadsides (Catnach; Ryle; Such, No. 622); see also Journal of the Folk-Song Society, vil, 23, and cf. Baring-Gould and Sheppard, Songs of the West, IV, xxx.
B. "Johnny McDowell." Contributed by Miss Snoah McCourt, Orndoff, Webster County, May, 1916.
1 'T was in the town of Woxford, where I did live and dwell,
'T was in the town of Woxford I owned a flowery dell[1].
'T was there I courted a pretty fair miss with a dark and rolling eye;
I asked if she'd marry me; these words she did comply.
2 'Twas on one Saturday evening, I came to her sister's house;
I asked her if she 'd walk with me, and the wedding day appoint.
We walked along together, till we came to the level ground;
I drew a stake from the fence and knocked this fair miss down.
3 All on her bended knees, how for mercy she did cry!
"Johnny McDowell, don't murder me, for I'm not prepared to die."
I hated for to kill her, but I beat her all the more;
I beat her till her body lay a-bleeding in the gore.
4 I took her by her yellow locks and dragged her o'er the sand,
And threw her in the water that flowed through Woxford town.
'T was twelve o'clock that very same night, when I came to my mother's house,
I asked for a candle to light me up to bed, also for a handkerchief to bind my aching head.
5 "Son, O son, what have you done? How came this blood upon your clothes?"
The answer that I made to her was, "The bleeding of my nose."
I rolled and kicked and tumbled, but no rest could I find;
The flames of hell so brightly then before my eyes did shine.
6 Her sister swore my life, for reasons I've no doubt;
She swore I was the very identical man that led her sister out.
1. This has occurred in several West Virginia versions but it's "floury" not "flowery" clearly it should be "mill" not "dell."
2.