Town of Linsborough- Mary Delaney (Tip) c. 1973
[From Puck to Appleby (MTCD325-6), 2003: Songs and stories from Jim Carroll's and Pat Mackenzie's recordings of Irish Travellers in England. Their notes follow. These recordings were made, with Denis Turner, between 1973 and 1985.
R. Matteson 2016]
Mary Delaney moved east right across London and even into various flats from time to time in order to give her children a better education. A lovely singer, mother of sixteen children and blind from birth, Mary has an enormous repertoire of outstanding songs and ballads that she has known since childhood, as well as a store of humorous yarns that gave us many hours of pleasure.
According to John Harrington Cox, The Wittam Miller is said to describe a murder that took place in 1744 in Reading, in Berkshire, though there are two broadsides dating from sixty and forty-four years earlier with similar titles. An excellent account of how this has been shaped by time and tradition from a long, ungainly broadside entitled The Berkshire Tragedy or The Wittam Miller, to the concise piece that it has become, is to be found in Malcolm Laws’ American Balladry from British Broadsides.
The ballad has travelled widely through Britain, Ireland and particularly America, where it proved hugely popular with country singers and has given rise to other songs on the same theme, for instance Down by the Willow Garden and Omie Wise.
It has been found under many titles, which often identify the place where the murder was supposed to have been committed: The Wexford, Waterford, Oxford, or Lexington Girl to name a few. The murderer has been given a variety of occupations: butcher, printer, miller, or simply apprentice.
Mary’s version is fairly typical of many of the Irish and American texts with the exception of the last line, which is somewhat confusing. In most texts the murderer is found guilty and hanged, but here Mary has used the last line of Father Tom O’Neill (Roud 1013, Laws Q25), an incomplete 8 verse set of which she has in her repertoire. In another recording we made of this, she sang as her two last lines:
His sentence was for his life and then he'd have to settle down,
For no more was said with the treasury only he did go down.
She was unable to explain the meaning of this and it is possible that she had extemporised it. Linsborough is possibly Lanesborough in Co Longford.
Ref: American Balladry from British Broadsides, G Malcolm Laws Jnr, American Folklore Society, 1957; Folk Songs of the South, John Harrington Cox, Havard Univ Press, 1925.
Town of Linsborough-- sung by Mary Delaney of Co. Tipperary around 1973
I’m belonging to Dublin City,
And a city ye all know well.
My parients reared me tenderly
And brought me up quite well.
‘Twas near the Town of Linsborough
Where they bound me to a mill;
It was there I beheld with a comely maid
With a dark and rolling eye.
She promised me she'd marry me
And with her I dwell;
At twelve o'clock that very same night
When I entered her sister’s door.
"Come out, come out, my joy and fair maid
And take a walk with me,
And then we'll sit and chat a while
And 'point our wedding day".
‘Twas with his false and inluded tongue
He coaxed that fair maid out,
And ‘twas from the ditch he broke a stick
And he knocked that fair maid down.
She went down on her bare bended knees,
For mercy she loudly cried,
Oh, saying, "Willie dear, do not murder me,
And I not fit to die".
Then he catched her by those yellow locks
And drew her along the ground;
He catch her by the yellow locks
And drew her along the ground,
‘Til he drew her to a river
Where her body could not be found.
Returning home to his master's house
At twelve o'clock that night,
Saying, asking for a candle
For to show himself some light.
His master boldly asked him,
"What stained your hands and clothes?"
Look how quick he made him an answer,
"I'm bleeding from the nose".
He went into bed, no more was said,
Neither rest nor peace could find,
Only the murder of that fair young maid
Laid heavy on his mind.
Now he was arrested and taken
And tried in London Town.
And the villain, he was transported
And his reverence come home free.