“The Highwayman”, based on a poem by Alfred Noyes and sung by Loreena McKennitt, among others. I guess Bess’ death would technically be a suicide, but not in the way you usually think of suicide. It’s included in a collection of traditional English ballads I have from , but was apparently written in 1906 and set to music sometime after that. Let’s hear it for for insta-history.
“The Twa Sisters” or “The Cruel Sister” or “The Bonnie Mill Dams of Binnorie” or “The Miller’s Melody” from the seventeenth century with many variations through the years. Two sisters visit the seashore, and the elder pushes the younger in. The younger promises the elder all sorts of things if she’ll save her, but she doesn’t. In some variations, it’s over a man, but sometimes the elder sister is just a bitch, I guess. The younger sister’s body usually gets caught in a mill dam, and the miller makes a fiddle from her various body parts, which, when played, sings farewell to her mother and father and accuses her sister of murder.
*And when he stole the car
Nobody dreamed that he would
Try to take it so far
He didnt mean to hit the poor man
Who had to go and die
It made the judge cry
Sunny came home with a list of names.
She didn’t believe in transcendence.
“It’s time for a few small repairs”, she said.
Sunny came home with a vengeance.
Sunny burns down her house, but I don’t think anyone was physically harmed.
In contast, in the Dixie Chicks’ “Goodbye Earl” we are told that “Earl had to die”. Also, in the (very fictional) “The Night Chicago Died” by Paper Lace, it is reported that “'Bout a hundred cops are dead”.
And then the punches flew, and chairs were smashed in two.
There was blood and a single gunshot, but just who shot who?
At the Copa, Copacabana, the hotest spot north of Havanna
At the Copa, Copacabana, she lost her love.
And in Dylan’s masterpiece “Lily, Rosemary & The Jack of Hearts,” Lily is the only one who isn’t killed–even Big Jim gets it.
Steely Dan: Don’t Take Me Alive (“Well, I shot my old man back in Oregon”)
The Clash: Somebody Got Murdered (“Goodbye, for keeps, forever”)
Genesis: Robbery, Assault and Battery (“With that he fired, the other saying as he died, ‘You’ve done me wrong!’”)
Bee Gees: I’ve Gotta Get a Message to You (“Well, I did it to him, now it’s my turn to die”)
Fairport Convention: Matty Groves (I didn’t want to mention any more traditional murder ballads, as there are just too many of them, but I couldn’t resist this one: “A grave, a grave, Lord Darnell cried, to put these lovers in/But bury my lady at the top, for she was of noble kin.”)
Believe it or not, Johnny Cash actually *cleaned up * his version of “Cocaine Blues”, Billy Hughes’ 1947 version is far more gruesome, featuring two murders - his old lady and a rounder who comes calling for her (he “opened up the door and blew out his brains”). The Sherriff who comes to arrest him (in El Paso) sympathises ("they may have had it coming, but this looks bad for you) and Hughes is utterley unrepentant ("under those conditions, I’d do it again).
What I always found odd about the song is that the guy gets 99 years in jail (in both versions) and not the DP.
Oysterband’s The Oxford Girl takes the traditional Oxford Girl/Wexford Girl song and approaches it from another angle. Lyric writer John Jones said he wanted to make a change from the songs that told the story from the point of view of the killer.
More cynical people would suspect that I Am Henry the Eighth I Am is about murder.
He aims it at the Sailor
Shoots him down dead on the floor
Oh, you shouldn’t
do that
Don’t you know you’ll stain the carpet
Don’t you know you’ll stain the carpet
And by
the way man, have you got a dollar