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🌛Femboy Folklore🌜

18 Apr, 29 tweets, 11 min read

Time for a thread on murder ballads! What are murder ballads? Where do they come from? How have they evolved? What are some of the most well known murder ballads? All of these questions and more will be answered below. There is of course a general content warning for murder. 1/20

First: what is a ballad? Simply put, a ballad is a song (or poem) that tells a story. We are going to be focusing primarily on traditional folksongs, where the ballad originated. Murder ballads are narrative folksongs dealing with murders or similar grisly events. 2/20

Murder ballads as we are familiar with them are found throughout Europe but especially in the British Isles, particularly England. Later on they developed in the Appalachians also. Many murder ballads are based on true events. Kinda like a precursor to the true crime genre. 3/20

Murder ballads are written from a variety of perspectives, with some being sympathetic to either the murderer or the victim or telling a more distanced, matter of fact story. 4/20

Let's look at a few examples of murder ballads now. I will give you a bit of context and provide spotify links. I will go back and reply to individual tweets with YouTube links for versions that I can find on YouTube. 5/20

First we have "The Well Below the Valley." This ballad has long been controversial because of its content relating to murder and incest. In it, a man asks for a drink of water from a well. When he is refused, he reveals that he knows she had born 6 babies and recount who 6/20

the fathers are (who are her relatives) and tells her where she buried the bodies. He tells her she will be transformed into a bell for 7 years and will spend 7 in hell. There are multiple versions of this song, including where the man is Jesus 7/20

Here are two versions of this song:

open.spotify.com/track/1nE5nq4F…

open.spotify.com/track/75VvJYfX… 8/20

"Long Lankin" or in some versions "Lamkin" or another variation, is a well known song with many variations but the story is basically the same. A lord leaves his wife & child at home & the false nurse collaborates with a man (Lamkin) to kill the wife & child 9/20

Here are two versions of the "Long Lankin" version. In this version he has no obviously apparent motive, making him a sort of boogeyman.

open.spotify.com/track/6JqQFrL9…

open.spotify.com/track/3myNChvM… 10/20

Here is a version of the "Lamkin" version. In this version we see Lamkin's motivations. He was a mason who was not paid for his work.

open.spotify.com/track/5mf3HDcS… 11/20

In another song, Lord Randall, from the Anglo-Scottish border, a young lord comes back from a visit with his lover & has a discussion with his mother. Through this discussion we learn he was poisoned. Here are two versions:

open.spotify.com/track/0tPedzWh…

open.spotify.com/track/20Ef1MUg… 12/20

In "the Twa Sisters" or "the Bonny Swans" an older sister kills her younger sister out of jealousy of the affections of a boy. This song has quite the variation in versions, but the basic premise remains the same. 13/20

Here are three versions of the Twa Sisters/the Bonny Swans:

open.spotify.com/track/0CCddoBm…

open.spotify.com/track/3OgKP5i1…

open.spotify.com/track/4ECryv51… 14/20

A few more traditional murder ballads:

Tom Dooley (from the Appalachians) open.spotify.com/track/2qLxtO0i…

The Cruel Mother: open.spotify.com/track/7G0oBZsN…

Lady Isabel and the Elf-Knight: open.spotify.com/track/0RRqCvZd… 15/20

Murder ballads have received some criticism for its portrayals of women as helpless victims in many songs. As a result, women performers started reclaiming murder ballads in the 1940s & writing their own, often with themes of revenge against men who wronged them. 16/20

Here are two of these such songs.

I Didn't Know the Gun Was Loaded by Patsy Montana (TW for implication of rape, gunshot sound effect) (not on Spotify)

The Box It Came In by Wanda Jackson open.spotify.com/track/4yFip3Dr… 17/20

Murder ballads have come a long way & travelled a long distance. Only time can tell how they will evolve in the future. If you've gotten this far in this thread, thank you for reading & I hope you were able to learn a bit! I'll drop more links below for further info/sources 18/20

historyscotland.com/exclusive-cont…

expatalachians.com/rotten-romance…

historynet.com/poor-boy-youre…
sheshreds.com/the-history-of…

A more contemporary list of murder ballads: spinditty.com/playlists/To-D… 19/20

There is a lot I wasn't able to cover just in a Twitter thread, but the links have a lot of good info and they have more about Appalachian murder ballads, which I did not focus on as much. 20/20