Crime- Songs & Ballads from Overton Co.
[Some individual texts for songs in this chapter are attached to this page on the left hand column. Links from this page may be done at a later date.
R. Matteson 2014]
CHAPTER IV- CRIME
The songs in this section deal with crime and its effect on the individual. It is significant that not one song shows crime without showing the effect it has on the criminal. In most cases there is a feeling of regret, but there is punishment dealt out by law, except in the last division. Death is usually the punishment.
The first division contains poems in which death comes to the criminal; the second, jail in his reward and in the third remorse is the only punishment mentioned, but other punishment is not eliminated-- it may have been received also.
The first division would not be complete with out "The Braswell Boys." Everyone in the county knows of the song and it's occasion. Many of the older people attended the hanging of the Braswell's even though Cookesville is twenty-four miles from the county seat of Overton, and it was in the days of horses, wagons, and buggies. Some of the other songs, though not native, are part of the group because they have been so strongly imbedded in the music of the county
CONTENTS:
The Braswell Boys
Charles Guiteau
The Murder of James A. Garfield
Bad Companions
Gambling on the Sabbath Day
John Hearty
Rose Conna Lee [Rose Connelly]
Knoxville Girl
Knoxville Girl (2)
Frankie and Johnny
Jesse James
Twenty-One Years
Twenty One Years [Answer to Twenty-One Years]
My Walking Cane
The Boston Burglar
Prisoner No. 999
Mary Phagen [Fagan]
Ommie Wise
Little Omi Wise
When the Lilies Bloom
Prisoner's Song
Prisoner's Song (2)
Moonlight and Skies
New Birmingham Jail
When It's Lamp Lighting Time in the Valley
In the Jailhouse Now
Ninety-Nine Years
The Drunkard's Dream
Drunkard's Hell
My Tender Parents