The Wexford Girl- Angelo Dornan (NB) c.1911 Creighton
[From Folk Songs from Southern New Brunswick, Helen Creighton, 1971. Her notes follow.
Angelo Dornan of Elgin, New Brunswick, a leading informant gave Creighton 135 songs, only three of which were Child ballads. He was raised in New Brunswick - but moved to Alberta when he was about 14 and began farming. When he was a child, he heard both of his parents singing, and it must have made a deep impression on him, as 60 years later, when he retired back to New Brunswick (by 1953 when he contacted Creighton) he remembered 135 songs that his parents used to sing when he was a child. His parents (or possibly grandparents) moved from Northern Ireland to New Brunswick in the 1800s. [adapted from an online source Catherine Crowe]
This version although possibly changed and edited by his parents is unique and provides the names of the murderer and his victim as well as an alternative motive- perhaps this is also a hybrid text.
Listen: https://soundcloud.com/catherinecrowe
R. Matteson 2016]
92. The Wexford Girl- sung by Angelo Dornan, Elgin, N. B. as learned when he was a child about 1911 from his parents who emigrated from Northern Ireland in the 1800s.
1. My name is Edward Gallovan, in Wexford I was born,
For the murder of Mary Riley I die in public scorn,
It is of a beautiful fair one who might have been my wife,
But for the sake of curs-ed gold I took away her life.
2. When first I kept her company her friends did on me frown,
And by her hard industory she saved twenty pounds,
She believed my false vows but I led her quite astray
Saying, "My dear we will sail without delay unto Americay."
[I had not gone one mile with her until Satan tempted me[1]
For to rob her of her money and then her butcher be.]
3. Those words that she had said to me would grieve your heart full sore,
Before that I had murdered her and left her in her gore.
She said, "Dear James here are my keys and in my box you'll find
An order on the savings bank for the sum of twenty pounds."
4. "Your money it will take me unto some foreign shore,"
I then gave her a deadly blow, I need not say no more,
with a loaded whip I murdered her, her body I concealed,
Her blood it cried for vengeance, the murder soon revealed.
5. I was apprehended, as you may plainly see,
May the Lord look to my sinful soul, give me some time to pray,
The judge he made me answer, "You gave no time to pray
To that innocent young creature whose life you took away."
6. Now my song is ended, I mean to drop my pen,
I hope my fate a warning will be to every young man,
I hope my fate a warning to young and old may be
To shun drinking and night walking and keep good company.
1. This additional text was collected, I've inserted it.
____________________________
These lines-
I had not gone one mile with her until Satan tempted me
For to rob her of her money and then her butcher be.
should go in earlier, but the singer was not sure where. The Singer's title for the song was "My Name is Edward Gallovan."
NOTES
For years I was puzzled to know why singers gave me so few lullabies in English. This was answered one day following a Miramichi folksong festival when a young father arrived at the home of Dr. Louise Manny with five children from three to six years of age. They sat on the verandah beneath the pines and spruces, and when asked to sing, their childish voices rendered these sadistic lines from "The Wexford Girl":
He took her by the yellow locks
And drug her o'er the ground.
These lines are missing in the Dornan version. I realized then that any song was a lullaby, and the implication of these words touched them not at all. In the Maritime provinces when folk singing was a way of life in many homes, it was usually the father who sang, and, when chores were done, the family would gather and he would sing whatever came into his head. This is strong stuff to go to sleep on, but it probably did them no harm. For some reason this story of cruelty and punishment has had an exceptional appeal. It is probably found in more collections than any other murder song.
Mr. Dornan learned it at the age of nine. He was sitting in a rocking chair one day and started to sing it, but his mother told him to stop because it was not a nice song. That is why he knows so few verses. Mackenzie says that this song is found in several English broadsides of the early nineteenth century and that Belden surmises it to be derived from the eighteenth-century broadside of "The Berkshire Tragedy" or "The Wittam Miller."
See: Brewster, p. 204; Cox. p. 3ll; Laws, pp. 5, 22, 103, 104, 109, 111 112 122, 267 ,301 ; Mackenzie, p. 293; Morris, p. 336; Peacock, p. 634 A, 8. I.C. record 52A as "The Knoxville Girl." Natl. Mus. tapes 12 (Nova Scotia), 138 (Miramichi, New Brunswick).