Georgia Town- anon (NY) pre1940 Thompson B

Georgia Town- anon (NY) pre1940 Thompson B

[Single stanza from: Body, Boots, & Britches: Folktales, Ballads, and Speech from Country New York by Harold William Thompson Harold Thompson, pp. 387-388, 1940. His notes follow.

R. Matteson 2017]



There are many variants, of course, even in naming the scene of the tragedy; one of my best versions refers to Georgia Town, describes the suicide as done with "her own bed-rope," and has this additional stanza before the girl goes upstairs:

There is a bird up in a tree;
Some says he's blind and cannot see.
I wish the Lord had done so with me
Before I met such company.