Wexford Town- David Stacey (Essex) c. 1963 REC
[From: Good Luck to the Journeyman (MTDL660). CD notes follow.
R. Matteson 2016]
David Stacey was born and brought up in Saffron Walden, Essex, in 1943. From his twenties he spent many years alternating between archaeology in Israel and apple and hop picking in Kent. There he met Mary Ann Haynes' son Ted, and Nelson Ridley's nephew Henry - and through them, many other Gypsies and Travellers in the area. He was privy to many of the sing-songs they participated in, and learned a good number of their songs.
Back home, in later life, he encountered a number of other Travellers in north Essex and Cambridgeshire, and a local traditional singer, Walter Jarvis - learning more songs on the way - in addition to the repertoire he'd acquired from books and records.
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A very well-known song indeed, with 365 Roud instances, 98 of which are sound recordings. MacColl & Seeger quote an
American source who says that the villain in this song was a John Mauge, who was hanged at Reading, Berkshire, in 1744. But, we know that Waxford Town comes originally from a long 17th-century ballad The Berkshire Tragedy, or The Wittam Miller, a copy of which may be seen in the Roxburgh Collection (vol.viii p.629), and it may be that Mauge’s name came to be associated with the earlier ballad because of the similarity of his crime. Later printers tightened the story and reissued it as The Cruel Miller, a song which has been collected repeatedly in Britain (63instances) and North America (228 instances - where it is usually known as The Lexington/Knoxville Girl). Somewhere in the past, the story has separated into two versions, and both Laws and Roud differentiate between them, giving Roud 263, Laws P35 for this one and Roud 409, Laws P24 for the other - usually known as The Butcher Boy. However, since Roud includes 365 and 300 examples respectively, it must be clear that there will be many versions which fall into the grey area between them. [weak notes]
Wexford Town- sung by David Stacey of Saffron Walden, Essex; learned about 1963 from travellers.
Now there was a pretty maid in Wexford Town
She fell in love with a miller boy.
He asked her to go walking
Through fields so sweet and green
That they might walk, and they might talk
All for to name their wedding night.
But he took a hedge stake from the hedge
And he beat her to the ground.
“For mercy” cried “I’m innocent,
I’m not fit enough to die.”
Now when he came to his master’s house
It being the middle of the night,
His master rose and let him in
By the striking of the light.
Oh he askèd him, cross-questioned him,
Saying “What are those blood stains
On your hands and clothes?”
The answer, oh what he saw fit,
Was “Sir, it’s the bleeding from my nose.”
But it was just a few days after,
When her body it was found
A-floating past her mother’s door,
Oh, what led to Wexford Town.
And now that young man’s taken up,
He’s bound down in iron strong
And now he do a prisoner
For the murder he have done.