Lexington Murder- Wesley Hargis (NC) 1934 Lomax
[From: New World NW 245 (`Oh My Little Darling: Folk Song Types'). Online notes follow.
R. Matteson 2016]
The Lexington Murder performed by Wesley Hargis (voice and guitar) at the State Penitentiary, Raleigh, North Carolina (recorded by John and Alan Lomax). Oh My Little Darling: Folk Song Types [New World Records, Recorded Anthology of American Music, Inc. NW 245]. This song is originally a British broadside (The Berkshire Tragedy) performed here in an American version. Other American broadsides deal with train wrecks or outlaws. An example of a modern American broadside would be Gordon Lightfoot's "The Ballad of the Edmund Fitzgerald. Broadside ballads are so-named after the large sheets of paper (broadsides) upon which they appeared. These publications might typically have the words printed with a small picture at the top and instructions at the bottom suggesting that the words be sung to the tune of a another well-known song. Characteristically, the texts are explicit about where and when the events are taking place, who is involved, and even sometimes who composed the words.
The Lexington Murder- by Wesley Hargis of Raleigh, North Carolina in 1934. Collected by John A. & Alan Lomax.
My tender parents who brought me here
provided for me well,
And in the city of Lexington
they put me in a mill.
Last Saturday night three weeks ago,
oh cursed be the day.
The devil put it in my heart
to take her sweet life away.
I went down to her sister's house
at eight o'clock that night,
And she, the poor girl, seemed to think
at her I had a fight.
I asked her if she would take a walk
a little way with me,
That we might have a little talk,
about our wedding day.
We walked along a path side by side
till we come to some silent place;
I picked a stick up from the ground
and smote her in the face.
She fell down on her bending knees
and there for mercy she cried,
"For heaven's sakes, don't murder me here,
I'm not prepared to die."
I heeded not her mercy cry,
but smote her all the more.
Until I see her innocent blood,
the blood I could never restore.
I folded my hands in her coal-black hair,
to cover up all of my sins,
I drug her down to the riverside
and there I threw her in.
I started on my way back home
and met my servant John,
"Why do you look so very weak
and yet you are forlorn."
And what is the cause of so much blood
upon your hands and clothes?"
As an innocent one I replied,
"Was a bleeding at the nose."
I lit my candle and went to bed
just thinking I'd take a rest.
It seems as if the flames of hell
was burning in my breast.
Young men, young men then take warning,
if your sweethearts are true,
Don't never let the devil get
the upper hand of you.