Sam Hall
The singer-character is hanged at the end.
Well, goodness, it’s just not complete without Tom Lehrer’s Irish Ballad, which has a body count of five (if you don’t count a perhaps ungrateful audience…)
The Foggy Dew- soldiers dying
The Irish Soldier Laddie
“my young brother fell at Cork and my son at Enniscorthy”
“banners flying low to the memory of the dead”
“without our soldier laddie”
The Hills of Gortnamona
“I knew my love was dying far away from me”
Weilya Wailya
-woman kills her children
Whisky on a Sunday
-old Davy dies
Green ribbons
- lover dies, girl vows to wear green ever after
“It will not be long love, til our wedding day”
-she drowns before they marry
The Green Fields of France is my favourite
about soldiers, mainly because it’s so anti-war.
“how do you do, young willie mc’bride
do you mind if i rest here down by your graveside?
…snip
i see from your tombstone you were only 19
when you joined the great fallen in 1916
…snip
did they beat the drums slowly?
did they play the fifes lowly?
did they sound they death march?
as they lowered you down?
did the band play the last post and chorus?
did the pipes play the flowers of the forest?”
and i love “Step it out Mary” because it’s so sinister
with her father telling her to
“step it out mary …
show your legs to the countryman”
before eventually
“they found mary there at midnight,
she’d drowned with her soldier boy”
one popular Irish folksong (Fields of Athenry) has exile and not death as the fate of it’s main character.
so, technically do “Whisky in the jar” and “the Black Ribbon Band”.
Sure they do, if they’re in Never-Never Land.
The Trees They Grow High:
“Make my love a shroud of my finest gown
And with every stitch I put in it, the tears come tricklin’ down
Once I had a true love, now I have a son
He’s young but he’s daily growin’.”
Deep Blue Sea
“Deep blue sea, honey, deep blue sea
It was Willie what got drownded in the deep blue sea”
I sang Green Fields of France in front of an audience for the first time this past weekend, and didn’t even think of listing it.:smack:
You might find it interesting that in the American variant of Step It Out Mary I mentioned earlier in the thread, the wealthy man kills the girl’s beau…then the girl kills him. The jury lets her off, too.
Night of the Johnstown Flood
What about American Pie? It’s about people dying…from a certain point of view.
I’m not sure if they fit the category, but two of my all time favorites (both of these songs were HUGE to me as a kid):
Wildfire - Michael Murphey
They say she died one winter
When there came a killing frost
And the pony she named Wildfire
Busted down his stall
In a blizzard he was lost
Red Headed Stranger - Willie Nelson
The yellow-haired lady was buried at sunset
The stranger went free, of course,
'Cause you can’t hang a man for killing a woman
Whose trying to steal your horse.
Burning of the Winecoff Hotel
Mighty Day (Galveston Flood)
In the Pines
The Train Carrying Jimmie Rodgers Home
Two come to mind hurriedly
Long Black Vail
and, tho it is electric, Dylan’s “Hurricane”, the story of a murder and the jailing of Hurricane Carter.
A better question might be “Are there any folk songs in which no-one dies?”
Adding to the list germaine to the OP:
Henry Martin
The Lily of The West