Oxford Girl- Addie McClard (MO) 1913 Belden B
[From Ballads and Songs, Belden 1940. His notes follow. Belden gives info about Bloody Miller but not the 1744 info given by Cox.
R. Matteson 2016]
The Oxford Girl
The story of the girl murdered by the man who has seduced. her takes many forms in street balladry, as it has done, no doubt, in our social history. The earliest that I have come upon is that in the Pepys collection, The Bloody Miller (Rollins III 118-22), a piece of ballad journalism on the murder of Anne Nicols on the 10th of February, 1684[1]. The murderer here is a miller, but the place is Hocstow near Shrewsbury, not Oxford or Wexford, and there is no fence stake and no drowning. Bleeding figures, but it is at the trial, not on his return from the murder. The nearer antecedent of the American ballad is the English broadside of The Berkshire Tragedy, or, The Wittam Miller, found in the Douce and Roxburghe collections (Roxburghe Ballads VIII 629-31, where Ebsworth says it is 'originally of date circa 1700') and printed in the nineteenth century by Pitts, Such, Catnach, Birt, and no doubt by others. Here the scene is at Wittam near Oxford (sometimes Wexford, and in one print preserved in the British Museum it is at Maidstone in Kent), the man is a miller or a miller's apprentice, the girl is beaten with a stick pulled from a hedge and then thrown in the water to drown, and the man explains (either to his master or his mother or his servant) the blood on his clothes as due to nose-bleed. These features persist, for the most part, in the versions from tradition listed below and also (with a change of place-name) in the early nineteenth century Boston broadside of The Lexngton Miller (for which see JAFL XLII 249-50). For distinct American pieces on the same theme see Oma Wise and. Florella, later in the present volume.
The Onf ord, Girl, under various names, has been reported. from tradition in Norfolk (JFSS VII 23), Dorset (JFSS VII 44-5), Newfoundland (BSSN 119), Nova Scotia (BSSNS 293-4), Vermont (VFSB 88-90), Virginia (SharpK T 409, SCSM 161-2), West Virginia (FSS 311-3), Kentucky (SharpK, 407-9), Tennessee (JAFL, XLV 725-30, FSSH 214-9), North Carolina (JAFL XIII 247-8,
290, Xiivi 29-30, SCSM 160-1, 162-4, FSSH 219), Mississippi (JAFL, Xxxix 725-9, FSM 141-3), Illinois (TSSI 150), and. Texas (PFLST VI 212-4). probably derived from this, tho lacking the special features listed above as diagnostic, are two texts, one (The Old, Shawnee) from Nebraska and the other (On the Banks of the Old Pedee) from Wyoming, in ABS 108-9.
B. 'The Oxford Girl.' Written out in the summer of 1913 for Miss Jennie F. Chase of St. Louis by Addie McClard of French Mills, Madison County, whom Miss Chase heard sing it there. I have made the line and stanza divisions and have indicated what I take to be gaps.
'Twas in the town of Vago
Where I did live and dwell,
'Twas in the town of Oxford
I owned a flowery mill.
I fell in love with an Oxford girl;
She had dark rolling eyes.
I promised her I would marry her
If me she didn't deny.
I went into her sister's house
At eight o'clook one night.
I asked that fair one to walk with me
And view the meadows so gay,
That we might have some pleasant talk
And point the wedding day.
'We walked along, we talked along,
Till we came to level ground;
I pieked a piece of edgewood[2] up
And knocked that fair one down.
She fell upon her bended knees:
'O Lord, have mercy!' she cried;
'Oh, Willie dear, don't murder me here,
For I'm unprepared to die.'
I paid no heed to her dying calls;
I beat her more and. more,
Till the ground all around and around
Was covered with her bloody gore.
I picked her up by her long yellow hair
And slung her round and round
I slung her in the river
That flows through Oxford town.
'Lie there, lie there, you Oxford girl;
To me you never be tied;
Lie there, lie there, you Oxford girl;
You'll never be my bride.'
I went into my father's house,
It being late at night;
My mother woke in an awful fright
Of being weary at night.
'My son, my son, what have you done
To bloody your clothes and hands?[3]
The answer I gave her
Were bleeding at the nose.
I asked her for a candle
To light my way to bed.
No candle did they give me
To light my way to bed.
For the murdering of my own true love
Was rushing through my head.
No one to entertain me,
No one to go my bail.
I rolled, I tumbled,
No comfort could I find,
For the gates of hell was open wide
And in my eyes did shine.
1. According to Paul Slade the date 1684 from Rollins should be 1683. Slade's date has been corrected by Tom Pettitt and it is now 1684 again :)
2. Derived from hedge wood
3. Should evidently be 'hands and clothes,'to rime with the last line.