Knoxville Girl- Lily Brown (MI) 1910 Gardner A
[From: "Ballads and Songs of Southern Michigan" by Chickering and Gardner, 1939. Their notes follow.
This version equal 14 stanzas as most versions are edited. It has the handkerchief not found in print and only in the Scottish versions.
R. Matteson 2016]
THE KNOXVILLE GIRL
For references and a discussion of this song, which is found in several English broadsides of the early nineteenth century and which Belden notes is derived from the eighteenth-century broadside, "The Wittam Miller," see Belden, JAFL, XXV, ir; and Henry, JAFL, XLII, 247-253. See also Eddy, No. 125; Greenleaf and Mansfield, p. 119; Henry, JAFL, XLV, 125-130; Hudson, pp. 25-26; Scarborough, pp 159-164; and Sharp, I, 407-409.
Version A is from the manuscript of Mrs. Russell Wood, Kalkaska; she learned the song from her sister, Miss Lily Brown, who had memorized it about 1910 in Tawas City, Michigan.
A. [Knoxville Girl]
1 I was born and raised in Knoxville, a place you all know well;
I was born and raised in Knoxville, among the flowery dell.
I fell in love with a Knoxville girl, she had dark and roving eyes;
I told her that I'd marry her if me she would never deny[1].
2 I told her that we would take a walk and view the meadows gay,
And perhaps we would have a pleasant talk and appoint our wedding day.
We walked quite easily till we came to level ground;
I drew a club from out the brush and knocked this fair maid down.
3 She fell upon her bending knees, "O Lord, have mercy," she cried,
"O Willie dear, don't murder me here, for I'm not prepared to die."
I paid no attention to what she said but beat her all the more,
Until the ground which she lay on was in a bloody gore.
4 I took her by her curly locks; I dragged her round and round,
I threw her into the water that ran through Knoxville town.
"Lie there, lie there, lie there, you Knoxville girl, my bride you never shall be;
Lie there, lie there, you Knoxville girl, you never will be tied to me."
5 I went into my mother's house about twelve o'clock at night;
Mother being worried, woke up in a dreadful fright.
"O Willie dear, how came there are blood stains on your clothes?"
And then in a lie I replied, "Been a-bleeding at the nose."
6 I called for a handkerchief to bind my aching head;
I called for a candle to light my way to bed.
About three weeks or later this Knoxville girl was found
A-floating on that water that flows through Knoxville town.
7 Her sister swore my life away; she swore without a doubt
That I was the very lad that led her sister out.
They locked me up on suspicion; they locked me up in jail
For one or two or three hours, and no one to go my bail.
1. From "if she would with me lie"