Miss Brown - Frank Harte (Dublin) 1975 REC
[From: "And Listen To My Song" Frank Harte's third LP in 1975 for Hummingbird Records. This is the same title Ewan MacColl gave to his recording of the ballad. MacColl's was based on Jeannie Robertson's recording.
See also "Irish Street Songs" Riverside RLP 12-613 by Patrick Galvin "The Dublin Murder Ballad" and a cover of the ballad "The Dublin Murder Ballad" by Ed McCurdy, 1956 Electra EEL 108 (Mono) in the LP, Blood Booze 'n Bones.
This ballad, loosely based on the early 1800's broadside "Polly's Love," or traditional versions thereof, surfaced in the early 1900s and was recorded in the 1950s-- both in Ireland and Scotland. This is the first recording made --titled, "Miss Brown of Dublin City," by Scottish traveller, Jeannie Robertson and was recorded in September of 1953 at the time when Robertson, from Aberdeen, was staying at Alan Lomax's flat in London.
Robertson said in 1953 that she learned the ballad "over thirty ago" when she was about nine from and old woman in Aberdeen. Since Robertson was born in 1908 that would date the ballad about 1917. If I assume that the "old woman" knew the ballad when she was young, it would take it back to the mid-1800s.
The first two line of the last stanza are based on "Green Grows the Laurel."
R. Matteson 2016]
Frank began collecting early in life and he remembered buying ballads from a man who sold them by the sheet at the side of the Adelphi Cinema and by the end of his life had assembled a database of over 15,500 recordings. As a young man, Frank encountered many songs in his father's pub, 'The Tap', in Chapelizod, County Dublin.
"Miss Brown." As sung by traditional Irish singer Frank Harte (14 May 1933 – 27 June 2005).
Oh in Dublin's fair city, in Dublin's fair town,
In Dublin's fair city, there dwelt a Miss Brown.
And she courted a sailor for seven long years,
And from the beginning, he called her his dear.
And one morning very early, all by the break of the day,
He came to her cottage and to her did say:
"Rise up, lovely Mary, and come along with me.
Strange things they will happen; and strange sights things we will see."
Well he took her over mountain;and he took her over dell,
And she heard through the morning the sound of a bell.
All over the ocean, all over the sea,
Ye fair maids of Dublin, take warning from me.
"O sailor, o sailor, come spare me my life,"
When out of his pocket, he drew a sharp knife.
And he ripped her and tore her and cut her in three,
Then he laid his poor Mary underneath a green tree.
Oh green grows the laurel and red grows the rose
And the raven will follow, wherever he goes;
A cloud will hang over this murderer's head
He shall never rest easy now that Mary be dead.