Lexington Murder- Mrs. Zebulon Baird (NC) 1915 Brown A
{From: Brown Collection of NC Folklore; volumes 2, 1952. Their notes follow. This is the standard text and title in this region and was also sung by Nora Hicks, Betty Bostic, Mary Riddle and others.
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.'
A. 'The Lexington Murder.' Collected by Mrs. Zebulon Baird Vance near Black Mountain, Buncombe county, and received by the Society in April 1915.
I My tender parents brought me up,
Provided for me well,
And in the city of Lexington
They put me in a mill.
2 'Twas there I spied a bright young miss
On whom I cast my eye.
I asked her if she'd marry me,
And she believed a lie.
3 Last Saturday night three weeks ago,
Of course[1], would have been the day.
The devil put it in my head
To take her life away.
4 I went into her sister's house
Eleven o'clock last night.
But little did the creature know
For her I had a spite.
5 I asked her kind to take a walk
A little piece away
That we might have a joyful talk
About our wedding day.
6 We went upon a lonely road,
A dark and lonely place;
I took a stick from off the fence
And struck her in the face.
7 She fell upon her bended knee
And loud for mercy cried:
'For Heaven's sake don't murder me!
Fm unprepared to die.'
8 But little attention did I pay;
I only struck her more
Until I saw the innocent blood
That I could not restore.
9 I run my hand thru her cold black hair;
To cover up my sin
I drug her to the river bank
And there I throwed her in.
10 And on returning to my home
I met my servant John.
He asked me why I was so pale
And why so hurried on.[2]
11 I went upstairs to go to bed.
Expecting to take my rest.
It felt to me that fires of hell
Were burning in my breast.
12 Then all young men this warning take
And to your love be true;
Don't ever let the devil get
The upper hand of you.
1. Usually "Accurs-ed" instead of "Of course"
2. The dialogue between the killer and his man John (or his master, or his mother), given in B F G J, in which he accounts for the blood on his clothes by saying that he has had the nosebleed, has been lost in A and D.