Hanged I Shall Be- "Shepherd" Taylor (Nor) 1921 Moeran
[From: Songs Collected in Norfolk by E. J. Moeran, A. G. Gilchrist, Frank Kidson, Ralph Vaughan Williams and Lucy E. Broadwood From Journal of the Folk-Song Society, Vol. 7, No. 26 (Dec., 1922), pp. 1-24 English Folk Dance + Song Society. Their notes follow.
Also Everyman's Book of English County Songs. Ed. R. Palmer. London, 1979, No. 57 -- from Moeran, JFSS.
Ekefield town seems like a corruption of Oxford= Oxfield= Okfield= Ekfield. It's more modern interpretation of the Berkshire reduction as indicated by "meadows gay" found in modern reductions.
R. Matteson 2016]
Mr. Sharp has noted in America (English Folk Songs from the Southern Appalachians) a similar ballad " Poor Omie," which is possibly an American version of the same tale. Poor Omie is found " In the bottom of Siloty, Below the mill-dam," and it is said of the murderer, James Luther:
They have got him in Ireland
Bound to the ground;
And he wrote his confession
And sent it around.
" Go hang me or kill me,
For I am the man
That drowned little Omie
Below the mill-dam."
The "Elk River" of the American version is possibly confused with "Ekefield Town."--A. G. G.
16. HANGED I SHALL BE.
NOTED BY E. J. MOERAN. SUNG BY MR. "SHEPHERD" TAYLOR, AT HICKLING, NORFOLK, OCTOBER, 1921.
1. As I was bound apprentice, I was bound unto a mill,
I served my master truly for seven years or more.
2 Until I took up courting with a girl with a rolling eye,
I told that girl I'd marry her, if she would be my bride.
3 I asked her if she'd take a walk through the fields and meadows gay,
And there we told the tales of love and fixed the wedding day.
4 As we were a-walking, and talking of things that grew around,
I took a stick all out of the hedge and knocked that pretty maid down.
5 Down on her bended knees she fell and loud for mercy cried:
"0, come spare the life of an innocent girl, for I am not fit to die!"
6 Then I took her by her curly locks and dragged her on the ground
Until I came to the river-side that flowed to Ekefield town.
7 That ran so long in distance, that ran so deep and wide,
And there I plunged that pretty fair maid that should have been my bride.
8 When I went home to my parents' house, about ten o'clock that night,
My mother she jumped out of bed, all for to light the light.
9 She asked me and she questioned me, "What stains your hands and clothes?"
And the answer I gave back to her-" I been bleeding at the nose."
10 No rest, no rest all, that long night, no rest could I find,
For the sparks of fire and brimstone all round my head did shine.
11 And it was about two days after, this fair young maid was found
A-floating by the river-side that flows to Ekefield town.
12 The judges and the jurymen, on me they did agree
For murdering of this pretty fair maid; so hanged I shall be.