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Wexford Murder/ Knoxville Girl [Laws P35]
ARTIST: Walter "Paddy" Church of Bedfordshire. Walter Church emigrated briefly to Canada around the turn of the 19th/20th centuries, and learned enough songs from Irish friends there to earn the nickname "Paddy" when he returned to England.
CATEGORY: Fiddle and Instrumental Tunes DATE: 1889 (US Versions); 1684 (English Versions)
OTHER NAMES: "The Wexford Girl;" “The Oxford Tragedy;” “The Expert Girl;” Johnny McDowell,” “The Prentice Boy;” “Never Let the Devil Get the Upper Hand of You (Carter Family version);” “Cruel Miller;” “Printer's Boy;” “Butcher/Butcher's Boy;” “Hanged I Shall Be;” “Prentice Boy;” “Poor Ex-Soldier;”
RELATED TO: Lexington Murder ; Berkshire Tragedy ; Oxford Girl ; Waco Girl ; Danville Girl ; Oxford Tragedy ; Down in the Lone Green Valley
RECORDING INFO: Mildred Tuttle, "Expert Town (The Oxford Girl)" (AFS; on LC12); American Balladry from British Broadsides, Amer. Folklore Society, Bk (1957), p267 (Wexford Girl); Birch, Amy. English Folk Music Anthology, Folkways FE 38553, LP (1981), cut#3.03 (He Pulled a Dagger); Blue Sky Boys. Original and Great: Early Authentic Country Recordings, Camden CAL 797, LP (1964), cut# 4 (Story of the Knoxville Girl); Blue Sky Boys. Bluegrass Mountain Music, Camden ADL-2-0726, LP (1974), cut# 8 (Story of the Knoxville Girl); Clayton, Paul. Bloody Ballads, Riverside RLP 12-615, LP (1956), cut#B.02 (Miller's Boy); Copeland Family. Music of the Ozarks, National Geographic Soc. 0703, LP (1972), cut# 14; East, Earnest; & the Pine Ridge Boys. Old Time Mountain Music, County 718, LP (1969), cut# 11; East, Scotty. New River Jam: One, Mountain 308, LP (197?), cut# 5; Ford, Brownie. Stories from Mountains, Swamps & Honky-Tonks, Flying Fish FF 90559, Cas (1990), cut#B.04; Lilly Brothers. Country Songs, Rounder SS002, LP (198?), cut# 12; Louvin Brothers. Tragic Songs of Life, Rounder SS012, LP (199?), cut#B.04; Mac and Bob (Lester McFarland & Robert A. Gardner). Mac and Bob's Great Old Song's - Vol 1, Old Homestead OHCS-158, LP (1985), cut#A.07; McBee, Hamper. Raw Mash, Rounder 0061, LP (1978), cut# 11; McBee, Hamper. Tennessee: The Folk Heritage, Vol. 2. The Mountains, Tennessee Folklore Soc. TFS-103, LP (198?), cut# 5; Smith, Betty. For My Friends of Song, June Appal JA 0018, LP (1977), cut# 12
SOURCES: Laws P35, "The Wexford Girl (The Oxford, Lexington, or Knoxville Girl; The Cruel Miller; etc.)" (Laws gives three broadside texts on pp. 104-112 of ABFBB); Randolph 150, "The Noel Girl" (12 texts, 5 tunes); Eddy 104, "The Murdered Girl" (8 texts, 2 tunes, but Laws assigns the B text to "The Banks of the Ohio" and omits the others. It would appear that Laws' A and C texts belong here); Doerflinger, pp. 288-290, "The Wexford Girl" (2 texts, 1 tune); Leach, pp. 785-787, "The Lexington Murder" (2 texts); Friedman, p. 225, "The Wexford Girl" (1 text+5 fragments of another text) Warner 7, "The Waxford Girl" (1 text, 1 tune); Cohen/Seeger/Wood, pp. 150-151, "Knoxville Girl" (1 text, 1 tune); Botkin-SoFolklr, p. 737, "The Knoxville Girl" (1 text, 1 tune); Kennedy 327, "The Oxford Girl" (1 text, 1 tune); Abrahams/Foss, pp. 115-116, "Knoxville Girl" (1 text, 1 tune); JHCox 90, "The Wesford Girl" (2 texts) MacSeegTrav 75, "The Wexford Girl" (1 text, 1 tune); Silber-FSWB, p. 224, "Knoxville Girl" (1 text); BBI, ZN1624, "Let all pretending Lovers"; ZN3196, "Young men and maidens all, give ear unto what I relate;" Andress, Bobby. Sweet Bunch of Daisies, Colonial Press, Bk (1991), p 30; McAllister, Marybird. Anglo-American Folksong Style, Prentice-Hall, Sof (1968), p6-9; New Lost City Ramblers. Old-Time String Band Songbook, Oak, Sof (1964/1976), p150;
NOTES: “The Knoxville Girl” is the US version of the “Wittham Miller/Berkshire Tragedy/ Cruel Miller” large group of songs from the British Isles, originating as "The Bloody Miller" in 1684. In the US it is known as "The Wexford Girl," “The Oxford Tragedy,” “The Expert Girl,” Johnny McDowell,” “The Prentice Boy,” “Never Let the Devil Get the Upper Hand of You” (Carter Family version) as well as many similar names. Many of the country/bluegrass versions include fiddle solo and breaks.
Bruce Olson has the text of the earliest known (broadside) version at his website. The original version, about a real murder in 1684, is "The Bloody Miller" in Scarse Songs 2 at www.erols.com/olsonw. There are two copies of a late revised version under the same title, "The Bloody Miller" as well as different “Wittham Miller/Berkshire Tragedy/ Cruel Miller” versions on the Bodleian Ballads website.
“The Knoxville Girl/Bloody Miller” story goes like this; boy meets girl, boy and girl go for a walk. They discuss their wedding, boy murders girl with a fence post/stick/piece of hedge, boy throws girl's body in river/pond, boy returns home at midnight and is let in by mother/father/master/miller who has a light, boy is questioned as to where all the blood has come from and in most instances I have come across always answers with the exact phrase "bleeding at my nose." He is taken and hanged.
This is a song that certainly caught the popular imagination in England and, later, America; it has also been found in Scotland and Ireland. Often called The Oxford Girl, this mutated into Wexford, Waxweed and all manner of odd things. Laws assigned it his number P35, and there are 200 versions in no. 263 in Steve Roud's Folksong index. Wexford Girl is a later form of the song, commonly found in America but rarely in England; it would, I suspect, be an Irish localisation of the earlier Oxford Girl. You can find several American tune variants through my first link above; meanwhile, I'll have a look around here; I certainly have one, The Wexford Murder, which Fred Hamer got from Walter Church of Bedfordshire; Church had in his youth (turn of the 19th/20th century) briefly emigrated to Canada, and learnt it from Irish friends there. (Malcolm from Mudcat)
Another version entitled, “Ekefield town” is about a town that does not exist; but this could be a garbled version of Hocstow, the original location. Samuel Pepys, well known for his love of music and singing, assembled a large collection of street ballads, which includes “The Bloody Miller.” Being a true and just account of one Francis Cooper of Hocstow near Shrewsbury, who was a Millers Servant, and kept company with one Anne Nicols for the space of two years, who then proved to be with Child by him, and being urged by her Father to marry her he most wickedly and barbarously murdered her, as you shall hear by the sequel.' This was the ancestor of a great family of songs on the same theme, widely known in Britain and America until recently, under such titles as '7he Cruel Miller' ,'The 'Prentice Boy', 'The Wexford Murder', 'The Berkshire Tragedy' and 'The Wittam Miller'. One motif which invariable appears is that of the guilty bloodstains, explained as a “bleeding at the nose.” H. E. Rollins, the American ballad scholar, found a reference in a contemporary diary which authenticates and dates the original murder: 'I heard of a murther near Salop on Sabb. day y/e [an e printed above an y] 10. instant, a woman fathering a conception on a Milner was Kild by him in a feild, her Body lay there many dayes by reason of y/e Coroner's absence.' (Mudcat)
Ozark folklore links this to the murder of one Lula Noel, whose body was discovered by the Cowskin River in Missouri in 1892. The song, however, is obviously older. Doerflinger traces it to a broadside about a murder committed at Reading, England in 1774. Botkin, following Cox (who follows Belden), traces it to a British broadside, "Berkshire Tragedy" or "The Wittam Miller", circa 1700. Laws also lists this broadside in his catalog (it is, in fact, one of the texts he prints), but adopts his title based on common traditional usage. Laws, in fact, draws a stemma, starting from the "Berkshire Tragedy," and listing a total of seven "recensions" (p. 119), though he considers the broadside to be merely of eighteenth century date. I have a problem with the whole reconstruction, though: It's too literary. Even if one assumes the original ballad was a broadside (and I think Laws assumes this more often than is justified), it does not follow that its entire history is found in the broadsides. The song is so common that one must suspect the larger share of the broadsides to be derived from tradition, rather than being the source of tradition. (From Traditional Ballad Index)
Here are the lyrics to “Knoxville Girl” from Walter "Paddy" Church:
'Twas in the town of Idalo where I did live and dwell,
'Twas in the town of Wexford I owned a flour mill,
There I fell in love with a Wexford girl with a dark and rolling eye,
And I asked her if she'd come with me and along with me comply.
She asked me out to take a walk and to name the wedding day,
And we walked along quite easily as all young lovers may,
And anyone who saw her said she'd make a pretty bride,
For any lord or nobleman or anyone beside.
But I plucked a stake from out the fence and I struck that fair girl down,
And there I had my will of her all on the level ground,
I knocked her to her bended knee, for mercy she did cry,
Oh Willie dear don't murder me for I'm not prepared to die.
I took her by the curly locks and I dragged her o'er the ground,
I dragged her to the river that runs through Wexford town,
Then I heeded not a word she said, but I still beat more and more,
Till the ground all around me was in a bloody gore.
Lie there, lie there you Wexford girl, you'll never be my bride,
Lie there, lie there you Wexford girl to me you'll never be tied,
You thought that you would marry me when I wished to be free,
You thought that you would marry me, but that can never be.
I went back to my mother's house about twelve o'clock at night,
My mother she'd been waiting up and she got a terrible fright,
Oh son, dear son, what have you done, your bleeding hands and clothes,
And the answer that I thought best to give was bleeding at the nose.
I ask-ed for a candle to light me into bed,
Likewise for a handkerchief to bind around my head,
I twisted and I turned about, no comfort could I find,
For a flame of fire shone round me and she lay close behind.
They took me on suspicion, they dragged me down to jail,
There was no one there to plead my cause, no one to go my bail,
Her sister swore my life away without either fear or doubt,
She swore I was the young man that led her sister out.
Now all you gay young fellows wherever you may be,
Never spite your own true love with any cruelty,
For if you do you'll surely rue until the day you die,
You will hang just like this murderer upon the gallows high.
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