Bluegrass Messengers

Waco Girl- Dorothy Ledford (CA) 1938 Sonkin REC

[From Library of Congress recording of "Waco Girl, The, sung by Fred Ross, Arvin, Calif., coll. by Chas. L. Todd and Robert Sonkin, 1940. Voices from the Dust Bowl: The Charles L. Todd and Robert Sonkin Migrant Worker Collection, 1940 to 1941.

R. Matteson 2016]

Waco Girl -sung by Fred Ross, Arvin, Calif., FSA Camp, on August 1, 1940. Learned from a migrant girl named Dorothy Ledford at Indio Camp in 1938.

 It was down around bout Waco town
 I used to live and dwell;
 It was down around bout Waco town
 I owned a flourin' mill.

 I fell in love with a Waco girl
 With dark and rolling eyes,
 I asked her would she marry me
 And me she would despise[1].

 I called on her sister's house
 At eight o'clock one night
 I asked her if she'd  walk with me
 And view the meadows so bright.

 We walked along and we talked along
 'Till we came to the level ground,
 I picking up a stick of hedge wood
 I stoked that fair maid down.

 And down she fell on her bending knees
 "O mercy me," she cried;
 "O Willie, my dear, don't murder me here;
 I'm not prepared to die."

 I paid no attention to what she said,
 But stoked her as before
 I stroked her 'till the ground around
 Was covered in her gore.

 Then picking her up by the yellow hair
 I swung her round and round
 And drug her to the  waterside,
 And threw her in to drown.

 I went back to my mother's house
 At twelve o'clock that night,
 My mother was awoken
 And in an awful fright.

 "O son, O son what have you done
 To dirty your hands and clothes?"
 The answer that I gave her
 Was bleeding at the nose.

 I called out for a handkerchief
 To bind my weary head.
 And also for a candle
 To light me off to bed.

 I kicked, I rolled and I tumbled down,
 No mercy could I find;
 The fires of hell around me
 Right in my eyes did shine.

 'Bout three weeks or later
 The Waco girl was found
 A-floating down the waters
 Which ran through Waco town.

 They taken me on suspicion
 They locked me up in jail;
 I had no one to comfort me,
 No one to go my bail.

 Her sister swore against me,
 She swore my life away,
 She swore I was the very young lad
 That'd taken her sister away.

 O Lord, they're going to hang me;
 It is the day to die;
 O Lord, they're going to hang me
 Between the earth and sky.

1. The text is corrupt here from "the truth I won't deny" or "If me she won't deny" or "And she believed my lie"  from originally "If with me she would lie".