The Jersey Girl
I met a little girl in Knoxville
A town we all know well
And every Sunday evening
Out in her home I’d dwellWe 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
That’s the first couple of verses to “The Knoxville Girl”, a particularly bloody murder ballad well-known by fans of bluegrass and traditional country music. As wikipedia points out, but unfortunately doesn’t elaborate upon, the song is based on a much older, much more explicit ballad that dates back to Elizabethan England and known by titles like “the Wexford Girl”, “The Wexford Tragedy”, or “the Oxford Tragedy.”
As you’ll see if you read the lyrics, there’s not much reason given for the murder of this poor young woman: that’s because prurient Americans tended to gloss over or completely disregard the pre-marital sex and pregnancy that the British songs usually provide as motive.
When I first started listening to old country music, I was given a copy of Nicholas Dawidof’s In the Country of Country, which was a series of interviews with legends like Johnny Cash, Earl Scruggs, and many more. Doc Watson was interviewed and made very important remark, which I will paraphrase. Back in the late 19th century and early 20th century, communications weren’t like they are now. There were no TVs, radio still hadn’t been invented, and few people had access to a daily newspaper. Thus, songs that told stories were often the only way news was spread. Watson spoke at length about Tom Dooley, whose family had been friends with Watson’s grandparents, saying that Dooley (actual name, Dula) was framed by his wife for Laura Foster’s murder. Mrs. Dooley apparently caught syphillis thanks to Tom’s cheating on her with Ms. Foster. Dooley was hanged, and soon after Mrs. Dooley married the sheriff who had him executed, the truth came out. I believe the sheriff committed suicide.
A more recent song in this vein is on the Stanley Brother’s “the Story of the Lawson Family”, about how Charlie Lawson came home from work and murdered his wife, his kids, and then himself. An older song is “Poor Ellen Smith”, written by the murderer himself and set to the old hymn, “How Firm a Foundation”: the outrage this song set off in the area of North Carolina where the murder took place led to the song being banned by the state.
It sounds so backwards when you hear these stories in the stilted language of a century ago or more, and yet this kind of stuff goes on every day, through our tv news 365 days a year.
This morning I read about a grisly and horrible murder that took place just across the river. The story is depressingly familiar: the baby discovered on a doorstep, the arrest of two men, and the police dredging the Pennsauken Creek looking for the body of the murdered teenage mother, allegedly bludgeoned to death with a piece of wood. All I could hear was Ira and Charlie Louvin.
The two men drove the mother and child to a secluded parking lot at a nearby industrial complex, where Mandichak pulled out a piece of wood and beat Felicia Mikels to death, Ottenberg said. The men wrapped her body in a tarp and threw it into Pennsauken Creek, he said.
Mandichak and Mikels considered also throwing the baby into the creek, but instead left her on the front lawn of a Cherry Hill home, Ottenberg said.
Christopher Mikels told police he believed he was the child’s father. He persuaded Mandichak to let the baby live, Ottenberg said. DNA from both men was being tested to determine whether either is the baby’s father, he said.
It’s a terrible thing.
