The Knoxville Girl
{{Short description|Song performed by Outlaws}}
{{For|the punk band|Knoxville Girls}}
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| genre = Murder ballad
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"The Knoxville Girl" is an Appalachian murder ballad.
Origins
It is derived from the 19th-century Irish ballad "The Wexford Girl", itself derived from the earlier English ballad "The Bloody Miller or Hanged I Shall Be" (Roud 263, Laws P35) about a murder, in 1683, at Hogstow Mill, {{convert|12|mi}} south of Shrewsbury. This ballad was collected by Samuel Pepys, who wrote about the murder of Anne Nichols by the Mill's apprentice Francis Cooper. Other versions are known as the "Waxweed Girl", "The Wexford Murder". These are in turn derived from an Elizabethan era poem or broadside ballad, "The Cruel Miller".{{cite book|last=Thomson|first=Graeme|title=I Shot a Man in Reno: A History of Death by Murder, Suicide, Fire, Flood, Drugs, Disease, and General|publisher=A&C Black|date=2008|location=New York/London|pages=59
|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=sjPUAwAAQBAJ&q=I+Shot+a+Man+in+Reno%3A+A+History+of+Death+by+Murder%2C+Suicide%2C+Fire%2C+Flood&pg=PR4
|isbn=978-0826428578}}
Possibly modelled on the 17th-century broadside William Grismond's Downfall, or A Lamentable Murther by him Committed at Lainterdine in the county of Hereford on March 12, 1650: Together with his lamentation., sometimes known as The Bloody Miller.{{citation needed|date=March 2017}}
Lyrics
I met a little girl in Knoxville, a town we all know well
And every Sunday evening, out in her home, I'd dwell
We went to take an evening walk about a mile from town
I picked a stick up off the ground and knocked that fair girl down
She fell down on her bended knees, for mercy she did cry
"Oh Willy dear, don't kill me here, I'm unprepared to die"
She never spoke another word, I only beat her more
Until the ground around me within her blood did flow
I took her by her golden curls and I drug her round and around
Throwing her into the river that flows through Knoxville town
Go down, go down, you Knoxville girl with the dark and rolling eyes
Go down, go down, you Knoxville girl, you can never be my bride
I started back to Knoxville, got there about midnight
My mother, she was worried and woke up in a fright
Saying "dear son, what have you done to bloody your clothes so?"
I told my anxious mother I was bleeding at my nose
I called for me a candle to light myself to bed
I called for me a handkerchief to bind my aching head
Rolled and tumbled the whole night through, as troubles was for me
Like flames of hell around my bed and in my eyes could see
They carried me down to Knoxville and put me in a cell
My friends all tried to get me out but none could go my bail
I'm here to waste my life away down in this dirty old jail
Because I murdered that Knoxville girl, the girl I loved so well
Recordings
=Samples=
- Plan B in the bootleg mash-up "Paint It Blacker" (2007) as a reference to violent music existing before modern rap.
=Parodies=
- Patrick Sky on his album Songs That Made America Famous, as "Yonkers Girl".
- GG Allin on his album Carnival of Excess, as "Watch Me Kill".
Uses in other media
The song features prominently in If Ever I Return, Pretty Peggy-O, the first book in the Ballad mystery series by Sharyn McCrumb.
Bibliography
- Collin Escott. Roadkill on the Three-chord Highway: Art and Trash in American Popular Music. New York: Routledge, 2002.
References
{{Reflist|30em}}
External links
- [http://www.planetslade.com/knoxville-girl1.html Essay on the historical roots of "knoxville Girl."]
- {{cite web |title = The Knoxville Girl |website = discogs.com
|url = https://www.discogs.com/search/?type=all&track=The+Knoxville+Girl}}
{{Francis James Child}}
{{Authority control}}
{{DEFAULTSORT:Knoxville Girl, The}}
Category:The Louvin Brothers songs