Poor Nell- B.C. Reavis (NC) 1920 Brown M
[From the Brown Collection of NC Folklore volumes 4, 1952. This is adapted to the murder of Nell Cropsey in 1901.
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.'
M. 'Poor Nell.' A single stanza reported in 1920 by B. C. Reavis, with the tune. Apparently conceived to belong to 'Nell Cropsey,' but clearly it is a stanza of 'The Lexington Murder.'
My father tried to rear me right,
Provided for me well,
Until we came to Lexington
And placed me in the mill.