Waxford Girl- Lily Delorme (NY) 1942 Flanders
[From a recording in the Helen Hartness Flanders Ballad Collection at Middlebury College Special Collections & Archives. Classification #: LAP35. Track 09. Dated June 18, 1942.
Listen: https://archive.org/details/HHFBC_tapes_D28A (time: about 44.05)
The quality of the recording is reasonable. She's an excellent singer and one of Flander's best informants. “Grandma” Lily Delorme, of Hardscrabble on the Saranac, NY, learned songs from parents and her grandfather, Gideon Baker, who fought in the War of 1812. Delorme was one of the best informants of Flanders and Olney (also Porter who recorded 100 of her songs). Most of her ballads date back into the 1800s since she was born in 1869 in Schuyler Falls, New York and learned them from her family. Mrs. Lily Delorme's offficial residence was Cadyville, New York. Her father was born in Starksboro, Vermont; her mother, in Schuyler Falls, New York.
R. Matteson 2016]
Waxford Girl- sung by Lily Delorme of Hardscrabble, Cadyville (NY). Dated June 18, 1942. Many of Delorme's ballads date to her childhood and to her father from Vermont in the early to mid-1800s.
Twas in the town of Wickalow[1]
Where I did live and dwell
Twas in the town of Waxford
I ran a flourin' mill.
Twas there I find a fair maid
With a dark and rolling eye
I ask-ed her to marry me,
Her love I would supply.
I call-ed at her father's house
About eight o'clock at night,
I ask-ed her to walk-ed me out
Our wedding to appoint.
We walk-ed and we talk-ed
Till we came to level ground;
Where with a stake pull'd out the fence,
I knocked this fair one down.
She on her bended knees did fall,
For mercy Lord, did cry,
Said, "Willie dear don't murder me,
I'm not prepared to die."
Not paying no attention,
I beat her more and more;
Until the ground around us,
Was covered in bloody gore.
I took her by the yellow locks,
And dragged her o'er the ground,
And threw her in the river,
That ran through Waxford town.
Saying, "Lie there you Waxford girl,
You thought to be my bride,
But you never can enjoy me,
Or unto me be tied."
When I return-ed home again,
About twelve o'clock at night,
My mother dear she met me,
Here in an awful fright.
Cryin', "Son, oh son, what have you done,
That's bloodied all your clothes?"
And the answer that I made to her,
Was, bleeding at the nose.
I call-ed for a candle
To light myself to bed;
Likewise a pocket handkerchief,
To tie my weary head.
In tying it and to my bed[2],
No comfort could I find
The flames of hell around me,
So brightly they did shine.
Bout three long days or after that
He body it was found
A-floating in river
Around to Waxford Town.
And everyone who saw her
Said, She was a beauty bride
That was good enough for any young girl
Who was brought out in the night[3].
I was taken on suspicion,
And hurried off to jail
With no one there to bring me out,
No one to go my bail.
Her sister swore my life away
And that's beyond a doubt
She said I was the very young man,
That took her sister out.
1. It is very difficult with just the recording to correctly identify this town- if it's even a real place. This is similar to John Galusha's town name- Wicklow. John is from the same area.
2. hard to hear; usually it's: "I rolled and tumbled all night long" or similarly.
3. This line appears similarly in "Hanged I Shall Be," a Vermont version from the 1800s. The inference is possibly found in John Galusha's version also from NY which appear similarly, "Who was fit for a lord or a knight."