Knoxville Girl- female singer (NC) pre1943 Brown 4G
[From: Brown Collection of NC Folklore volumes 4, 1957. Notes from Volume 2 follow. This was influenced by recordings but the first part is original- unfortunately it was not wholly deciphered by Brown editors.
R. Matteson 2016]
65. The Lexington Murder
Variously known as 'The Oxford Girl,' 'The Wexford Girl,' 'The Lexington Girl,' 'The Knoxville Girl,' 'The Bloody Miller,' and in England as 'The Wittam Miller' and 'The Berkshire Tragedy,' this ballad tells a story similar to that of 'The Gosport Tragedy' and also to that of the American 'Florella,' 'Poor Naomi' ('Omie Wise'), 'Pearl Bryan,' 'Nell Cropsey,' and others. See the headnote to 'The Gosport Tragedy,' and also FSS 311 and BSM 133-4, both of which give extensive references showing the diffusion of the ballad; add also Davis, FSV 271-2 for texts from Virginia, Morris, FSF 336-9, for texts from Florida, and Randolph, OFS II 92-104 for texts from Missouri and Arkansas. The texts selected for presentation here are reckoned to belong to the tradition of 'The Wittam Miller' because of the names under which they are known in North Carolina or because they are, most of them at least, marked by the killer's excuse for his appearance that it is due to "bleeding at the nose." Most of them also remember that the murderer is a miller or a miller's apprentice. The ballad about Nellie Cropsey, a North Carolina girl murdered early in the present century (see no. 307, below), is in most of its texts modeled very closely on 'The Lexington Murder.'
65. The Lexington Murder
The story of all the versions that follow is very much like that of SharpK i 407, No. 71 A: 'The Miller's Apprentice,' or 'The Oxford Tragedy' ; also BSO 233-5, version C, 'The Murdered Girl.'
4G. 'The Knoxville Girl.' Sung by anonymous female singer with guitar. Recorded, but no date or place given. The only thing in common between this text and that given in II 244 f. is the "dark and rolling eyes" of stanza 6, line 2. Besides this, the structure of our tune definitely requires two stanzas as given in the printed text.
Scale: Hexatonic (4), plagal. Tonal Center: f. Structure: abacabacd (2,2,2, 2,2,2,2,2) = aabaa2 (4,4,4,4).
[I met a girl in Knoxville[1]
A town I] used to live and dwell;
And in that little . . . town
Out on a lonely hill.
I fell in love with a nice li'l girl,
With a dark and rolling eyes,
I promised I would marry her,
But she would never be mine.
We went to take an evening walk
About a mile from town;
I picked a stick up from the ground
I knocked that fair girl down.
We went to take an evening walk,
About a mile from town ;
I picked up a stick from off the ground
And knocked that fair child down.
She fell upon her bended knees,
And 'Mercy,' she did cry.
Said, 'Willie, dear, don't kill me here,
For I'm unprepared to die.'
I did not listen to her words,
I beat her more and more
Until the ground around her
Was but a bloody pour[2].
I took her by her golden curls.
And dragged her 'round and 'round,
And threw her in the water deep
That flows through Knoxville town.
I Started back to Knoxville,
Got there about midnight.
My mother was so worried,
She woke up in a fright
Says, 'Son, oh, son, what have you done?
You've blood [on your hands and clothes]
The answer that I gave her
Was 'Bleeding at the nose.'
They took me to the Knoxville jail
And locked me in a cell.
My friends they tried to get me out,
But none could go my bail.
Her sister swore my life away,
She swore without a doubt
That I was the very man
That laid her sister out.
1. not understood
2. gore