Knoxville Girl- Minnie Church (NC) 1930 Brown G
[From the Brown Collection of NC Folklore, volume 2, 1952. Their notes follow. This is a cover version of a recording by Arthur Tanner, "The Knoxville Girl" in June 1925 (Silvertone 3515) Chicago, Illinois or “Knoxville Girl”, by Arthur Tanner & His Corn Shuckers (Columbia 15145-D, 1927) Atlanta, Georgia.
Most recordings don't have Tanner's last verse, so it makes this easier to identify.
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.'
G. 'The Knoxville Girl.' One of two texts contributed by Mrs. Minnie Church of Heaton, Avery county, in 1930. It tells the same story as the preceding versions, but with sufficient variation to justify giving it in full.
1 There was a little girl in Knoxville,
A child we all knew well.
Every Sunday evening
Out in her home I dwell.
2 We went to take an evening walk
Abotit two miles from town.
I drew a stick up from the ground
And knocked her back around.
3 She fell down on her bended knees,
For mercy she did cry:
'Oh, Willie dear, don't kill me here.
For I'm not prepared to die.'
4 She never spoke another word.
I beat her more and more,
Stained the ground around her;
Thin her blood did flow.
5 I taken her by her golden curls.
I drug her round and round;
I threw her in the river
Close to Knoxville town.
6 'Go there, go there, Knoxville girl.
Got dark and rolling eyes,
Go there, go there, Knoxville girl;
You'll never be my bride.'
7 I started back to Knoxville,
Got there about midnight.
Mother she was worried.
Woke up in a slight.
8 'Son, oh, son, what have you done?
Here's blood your clothes so.'
The answer I gave mother
Was 'bleeding at my nose.'
9 I called for a candle
To light myself to bed.
I called for me a handkerchief
To bind my aching head.
10 I rolled and tumbled all night through,
Was troubles there for me,
And flames of hell around my bed
And in my eyes could see.
11 They taken me to the Knoxville jail,
They locked me in a cell;
My friends all tried to get me out,
But none could go my bail.
12 Her sister swore my life away.
I'm hell bound without doubt.
I was a single man[1]
That carried her sister out.
1. very same man