Knoxville Girl- Florence Mathis (TN) 1906 Boswell
[From: Folk Songs of Middle Tennessee--George Bowell Collection notes by Wolfe follow.
Regardless what date the informant gave, it seems likely this is derived from a recorded version -- although there are enough differences- especially the last verse-- which are not in the standard recorded versions.
Wolfe's notes are very good.
R. Matteson 2016]
31. The Knoxville Girl
The best-known of all traditional Tennessee murder ballads, "The Knoxville Girl," has a history as long and complex as that of any folk song. For almost three hundred years it has circulated on crudely printed broadsides, in cheap songbooks, in newspapers, in the oral tradition, on the radio, on phonograph records, and in country songbooks. It has made its way from London to New England, from the Appalachian Mountains to the old Southwesr, from Texas to Califomia. It has been parodied by people who were embarrassed by its violence and vilified by people honified at its victimization of women. It is still known and sung around the South today, and its elemental message and haunting melody still appeal to a wide variety of singers.
Contrary to popular belie{ the ballad does not describe any real murder that occurred in Knoxville. The earliest known version of the song, entitled "The Berkshire-Tragedy, or the Wittam Miller," is found in a crudely printed broadside of the early 1700s, printed in London's "stonecutter-street." It tells the story of a boy from "near famous oxford town" who was apprenticed to a
miller "in the town of wittam." There he met an "Oxford lass" and courted her; when he leamed that she was pregnant and that she would insist on marriage, he took her out on the heath a few weeks before Christmas and beat her to death. For the next hundred or so years, the ballad circulated in England and Scotland, sometimes under such titles as "The Cruel Miller," "The Butcher Boy," and "The Prentice Boy," and eventually made its way across the waters. By the early 1800s, it was being printed in Boston under the title "The Lexington Miller." Before long it was being called "The Oxford Girl" (in reference to the Oxford of the original) or "The Lexington Girl" (in reference to the town near Boston). The complex history of the song is traced by Laws in chapter four of his American Balladry from British Broadsides. Americans, as they adapted British ballads, tended to alter place names and geographical details. As this ballad made its way across the country, from east to west, the title and location continually shifted. While a few versions retained the old Oxford site, others changed the location to something more familiar: "The Lexington Girl" (New England), "The Knoxville Girl" (Appalachian Mountains), "The Export Girl', (named for a town on the Arkansas-Louisiana line), and eventually "The Waco Girl" (after a town in Texas). Eventually, according to Laws, this piece became "one of the most widely known ballads in America." Sharp was able to find five versions, most using Knoxville as a locale, although he dubbed the song "The Miller's Apprentice; or the Oxford Tragedy."
'Tennessee's early generation of folk-song hunters in the 1930s found many versions of the song in the eastern part of the state. As "The Knoxville Girl," there are versions in Crabtree (62-63), Duncan (136), Haun (121), Perry (20I), and Kirkland (unpublished collection, three versions from Knoxville). As "The Wexford Girl," there are versions in Anderson (62) and the Archive of American Folksong field recordings (Austin Harmon and Edith Harmon, from Cades Cove).
Boswell found nine versions of the song, mostly dubbed "The Oxford Girl." Phonograph records and radio played a key role in maintaining the song's popularity. In 1927, two radio singers from Knoxville, "Mac and Bob," (Mac McFarland and Bob Gardner) recorded the song for Brunswick and popularized it among close-harmony duet singers-- especially after the team gained nationwide popularity over WLS radio in Chicago. In the 1930s, the Blue Sky Boys recorded it again for RCA's Bluebird label, as did the famous Carter Family (who called it 'Never Let the Devil Get the Upper Hand of you,'). In the 1950s, yet another singing duet, the Louvin Brothers, popularized the song anew from the stage of the Grand Ole Opry. In the 1980s, key Tennessee ballad singers like Hamper McBee and Delta Hicks performed the song at many folk festivals. In most of the versions Boswell collected, the grim eighteenth-century fatalism of the original has been replaced by Victorian diction and localized details. Some examples, however, still refer to the mill in the original. A 1949 version from Winchester, from Johnny Weddington, begins:
Down in a little Knoxville town, I used to live and dwell,
Down in a little Knoxville town, I owned a flour mill.
Knoxville Girl- from Florence Mathis, from Franklin County, who learned it about 1906.
1. There lived a girl in Knoxville,
A girl who loved me well,
And every Sunday evening,
In her dear home I'd dwell.
2. We went to walk one evening,
We walked a mile or more,
I drew a stick from 'neath her feet,
And knocked that very girl down.
3. All down upon her bending knees,
"Oh mercy!" she did cry
"Oh Willie my dear, don't murder me here,
For I'm not prepared to die."
4. I did nor listen to what she said,
I beat her all the more,
Until the ground where she did lay,
Were in a bloody flow[1].
5. I took her by her yellow hair,
And drug her across the ground,
I threw her in the river,
That flowed through Knoxville town.
6. I returned to my dear mother's house
At twelve o'clock that night,
My mother, being excited,
Arose in a terrible fright.
7. "Oh son, oh son, what have you done,
To bloody your hands and clothes?"
The answer what I gave her was,
"A bleeding at the nose."
8. I asked her for a handkerchief,
To tie my aching head,
And also a candle,
To light my way to bed.
9. I rolled and tumbled the whole night long,
But slumber could not find,
For hell inflaming all around,
And in my eyes did shine.
10. They took me on suspicion,
And bound me down to jail,
My friends and relations,
Refused to go my bail.
11. Her sister swore my life away,
She swore without a doubt,
She swore that I was the very boy,
Who took her sister out.
12. Come all ye boys of Knoxville,
And listen to what I say,
If ever you have a true lover,
Don't treat her in this way.
1. usually "gore."