Prentice Boy- Caroline (also Carolyne) Hughes (Dors) 1923 MacColl
[From the recording Sheep-Crook and Black Dog (MTCD365-6), CD2, track 9; the 1963 and 1966 recordings made by Ewan MacColl, Peggy Seeger and Charles Parker. Also found in "Travellers' Songs from England and Scotland" as edited by E. MacColl and P. Seeger, London, 1977, pp. 242-6, No. 75 /text pp. 244-6. In the recording booklet, p. 45 it says: "Carolyne said she’d learned it from her grandmother, Alice, who lived to be ninety-eight, and had died forty years back." The recording notes follow the text. Also titled "London Murder," Peter Kennedy.
She was born during October 1900 "in a horse-drawn caravan in Bere Regis, Dorset" according to the record notes and her birth registered in the Wareham District, a town a little to the west of Poole Harbour.
R. Matteson 2016]
The Prentice Boy- sung by Caroline Hughes of Dorset, recorded MacColl/Seeger/Parker about 1963. Hughes learned it about 1923 from her grandmother.
There was once a man he lived in London Town,
Well, he had such a joys for while,
If he spent one pound he spent ten,
It were all for the want of a wife.
Oh, then Jackie went a-walking with his own true love,
Oh, strange thoughts came into Jackie’s mind;
Oh, to murder his own true love
And for slighting in her poor life.
She said, “Jack, my dear, don’t murder me,
For I is not fit to die;
Oh, Jack, my dear, don’t murder me,
‘Cause I’m improving a child by thee.”
Oh, he pulled a stick out of the hedge,
And he beat her across the head;
And the blood came trinklin’ from that innocent girl,
It come trinklin’ all down her sides.
Oh, for he catched hold of her curly locks,
And he dragged her to the ground;
He dragged her to some riverside
Her poor body lays there to drown.
Oh, he went alone to his master’s house,
At eight o’clock at night;
While they come down to let him in
By the strivings of candlelight.
Well, they askèd him, they questioned him,
Oh, what stained his hands with blood?
Oh, the answer he ‘plied back to they:
“Only the bleeding all from my nose.”
Oh, then he went up to get to bed,
Oh, no rest could ever Jackie take;
For out of belching flames of fire all round he flew,
All for murdering his own true love.
It were just a few days after that,
That poor innocent girl she were found;
She come floating by her mother’s door
What did live in old London Town.
Oh, then that young man he was took and tried,
And oh, he was condemned to die;
He said, “My mother died while I were young,
Oh, five children she left small:
Have mercy on me this day,
For I’m the caretaker of the all.”
Spoken: Well, that’s a relegend - but ‘twas a love song.
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A very well-known song indeed, with 355 Roud instances, 98 of which are sound recordings. MacColl & Seeger quote an American source who says that the villain in this song was a John Mauge, who was hanged at Reading, Berkshire, in 1744. But, we know that Waxford Town comes originally from a long 17th-century ballad The Berkshire Tragedy, or The Wittam Miller[1], a copy of which may be seen in the Roxburghe Collection (vol. viii p.629), and it may be that Mauge’s name came to be associated with the earlier ballad because of the similarity of his crime. Later printers tightened the story[2] and reissued it as The Cruel Miller, a song which has ts popularity. Although the supposed 12th-century murder of Hugh of Lincoln has been cited by some scholars as the origin of this ballad, it would seem more likely that it is, in fact, based on even earlier beliefs - mythological rather than historical.
The ballad has remained popular with Gypsies in Britain - an ironic fact when one considers that this is a ballad concerning the persecution of the Jews, being sung by Gypsies, some 2 million of whom died alongside 6 million Jews in Nazi Germany. In several American sets the murderer is even shown to be a Gypsy - a reflection there of the prejudice that is inherent in so many societies.
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1. Wexford or Waxford are not found in the long 17th-century ballad The Berkshire Tragedy, or The Wittam Miller.
2. It an assumption that printers and their writers were the source of the shortened broadside- though they obviously printed it. It could just as easily been done through tradition and captured by the printers.