Lexington Murder- Gertrude Allen (NC) 1923 Brown D
[Partial text from Brown Collection of NC Folklore, volume 2, 1952. Their notes follow.
R. Matteson 2016]
65. The Lexington Murder
Variously known as 'The Oxford Girl,' 'The Wexford Girl,' 'The Lexington Girl,' 'The Knoxville Girl,' 'The Bloody Miller,' and in England as 'The Wittam Miller' and 'The Berkshire Tragedy,' this ballad tells a story similar to that of 'The Gosport Tragedy' and also to that of the American 'Florella,' 'Poor Naomi' ('Omie Wise'), 'Pearl Bryan,' 'Nell Cropsey,' and others. See the headnote to 'The Gosport Tragedy,' and also FSS 311 and BSM 133-4, both of which give extensive references showing the diffusion of the ballad; add also Davis, FSV 271-2 for texts from Virginia, Morris, FSF 336-9, for texts from Florida, and Randolph, OFS II 92-104 for texts from Missouri and Arkansas. The texts selected for presentation here are reckoned to belong to the tradition of 'The Wittam Miller' because of the names under which they are known in North Carolina or because they are, most of them at least, marked by the killer's excuse for his appearance that it is due to "bleeding at the nose." Most of them also remember that the murderer is a miller or a miller's apprentice. The ballad about Nellie Cropsey, a North Carolina girl murdered early in the present century (see no. 307, below), is in most of its texts modeled very closely on 'The Lexington Murder.'
D. 'Lexington Murder.' Reported by Miss Gertrude Allen of Taylorsville, Alexander county (later Mrs. R. C. Vaught). The tune was recorded in June 1923. The text agrees with A stanza by stanza except for a few slight variations and verbal rearrangements. Possibly the reading of the first two lines of stanza 8,
I ran my fingers through my hair
To hide away my sin,
whereas in A he seizes the girl by her "cold black" hair, means that he wiped his bloody hands on his hair. Nosebleed does not figure in this text.