Waco Girl- Dorothy Ledford (CA) 1938 Sonkin REC
[From Library of Congress recording of "Waco Girl, The, sung by Fred Ross, Arvin, Calif., coll. by Chas. L. Todd and Robert Sonkin, 1940. Voices from the Dust Bowl: The Charles L. Todd and Robert Sonkin Migrant Worker Collection, 1940 to 1941.
R. Matteson 2016]
Waco Girl -sung by Fred Ross, Arvin, Calif., FSA Camp, on August 1, 1940. Learned from a migrant girl named Dorothy Ledford at Indio Camp in 1938.
It was down around bout Waco town
I used to live and dwell;
It was down around bout Waco town
I owned a flourin' mill.
I fell in love with a Waco girl
With dark and rolling eyes,
I asked her would she marry me
And me she would despise[1].
I called on her sister's house
At eight o'clock one night
I asked her if she'd walk with me
And view the meadows so bright.
We walked along and we talked along
'Till we came to the level ground,
I picking up a stick of hedge wood
I stoked that fair maid down.
And down she fell on her bending knees
"O mercy me," she cried;
"O Willie, my dear, don't murder me here;
I'm not prepared to die."
I paid no attention to what she said,
But stoked her as before
I stroked her 'till the ground around
Was covered in her gore.
Then picking her up by the yellow hair
I swung her round and round
And drug her to the waterside,
And threw her in to drown.
I went back to my mother's house
At twelve o'clock that night,
My mother was awoken
And in an awful fright.
"O son, O son what have you done
To dirty your hands and clothes?"
The answer that I gave her
Was bleeding at the nose.
I called out for a handkerchief
To bind my weary head.
And also for a candle
To light me off to bed.
I kicked, I rolled and I tumbled down,
No mercy could I find;
The fires of hell around me
Right in my eyes did shine.
'Bout three weeks or later
The Waco girl was found
A-floating down the waters
Which ran through Waco town.
They taken me on suspicion
They locked me up in jail;
I had no one to comfort me,
No one to go my bail.
Her sister swore against me,
She swore my life away,
She swore I was the very young lad
That'd taken her sister away.
O Lord, they're going to hang me;
It is the day to die;
O Lord, they're going to hang me
Between the earth and sky.
1. The text is corrupt here from "the truth I won't deny" or "If me she won't deny" or "And she believed my lie" from originally "If with me she would lie".