#murder ballads

[murder-ballad-ballot]

murder ballad ballot poll tournament

welcome to the murder ballad ballot!

the playlist with all (or most) of the submitted songs and recordings can be found here.

song propaganda is more than welcome, either in the reblogs or through the askbox

polls for round 3 will be posted once per day, starting on tuesday, july 25th

each poll will stay active for a week

all songs were submitted by followers

full list of matchups under the cut

results

round 1

rain and snow vs pretty polly

greenwood sidey vs jellon graeme

how came that blood vs knoxville girl

poor ellen smith vs long lankin

henry lee vs banks of the ohio

the bonnie banks o' fordie vs tom dooley

the cruel lowland maid vs frankie

down in the willow garden vs polly vaughn

wind and rain vs rolling of the stones

willie's fatal visit vs the twa sisters

omie wise vs lady diamond

child owlet vs the murder ballad

matty groves vs the bramble briar

false sir john vs stagolee

frankie silvers vs little sadie

hiram hubbard vs lord randall

round 2

pretty polly vs jellon graeme

how came that blood vs long lankin

henry lee vs tom dooley

frankie vs down in the willow garden

wind and rain vs the twa sisters

omie wise vs the murder ballad

matty groves vs stagolee

little sadie vs lord randall

round 3

pretty polly vs long lankin

henry lee vs frankie - tie

wind and rain vs omie wise

stagolee vs lord randall

round 4 (semifinals)

henry lee vs long lankin vs frankie

wind and rain vs stagolee

matchups

round 5 (finals)

long lankin vs henry lee; long lankin vs frankie

wind and rain vs stagolee

#murder ballads #folk music #tournament poll

[authorafterhours]

I can see Will and Hannibal inspiring a murder ballad or two after the fall. The POV could be different depending on what version of the story people wanna believe. Would it speak of Hannibal as a corrupting devil, and Will the victim? Or would it be a tale of two monsters who are human enough to love each to the point of obsession, who you're never quite sure died but still haunt society's heart? Something else, somewhere in between? In the end, the truth is what you believe late at night, when lost among the crooning of the lyrics, a twig is heard snapping or footsteps are falling. It's too far away to pinpoint where it is, but not far away enough for comfort.

#hannigram #hannibal lecter #will graham #nbc hannibal #murder ballads #nbc hannibal spoilers #tangent but I wanna write a fic where Will sings one #i imagine he learned some sea shanties from old fishermen and sailors and that started it #with his own morbid curiosity he would learn about murder ballads and other local folk songs as he traveled #im relistening to old gods of Appalachia again #musings

[thefugitivesaint]

Arthur Rackham (1867-1939), 'May Colven', ''Some British Ballads'', 1919 Source

#arthur rackham #english artists #may colven #some british ballads #british illustrators #vintage art #vintage illustration #murder ballads

[diana-andraste]

See That My Grave Is Kept Clean by Bob Dylan

#bandcamp #bob dylan #see that my grave is kept clean #1960s #folk music #murder ballads

[tickingoftheclocks]

Appalachian Murder Ballad Hatsune Miku.

One of the things I’ve ever drawn.

#clocks fanart #hatsune miku #hatsune miku fanart #miku #miku art #miku fanart #murder ballads #appalachain gothic #how the hell do i tag this #what is this #is there even an audience for this sort of thing??? #who knows. #posting it anyway

[dahliaduvide]

I've been digging into the life of Jeremy Wade Delle, beyond just the day of his death that is immortalized in the Pearl Jam song we all know so well.

One thing Jeremy Delle and I have in common is that we both spent time in a psych hospital in our teenage years. We both ended up in adolescent wards of large chain hospitals. My experience wasn't completely negative, but I don't think it helped anyone but my mother.

Jeremy Delle was hospitalized in April of 1990 after what is believed to have been his first suicide attempt.

His parents put him in Timberlawn Psychiatric Hospital where he started seeing a doctor that continued to treat him until his death by suicide on January 8, 1991. He actually had completed a session with his doctor the afternoon before he died.

The redacted police report gives only a small amount of information about the doctor that Jeremy Delle was seeing. His name is given as Dr. Bob H####, and as Dr. Robert H#### on a card that the police found in Mr. Delle's wallet. This card lists two phone numbers for the doctor. The first if the general number for the Timberlawn facility, but the other number is likely a direct line to the doctor's office.

The information given in the July 1990 list of hospitals printed in D Magazine, a local Dallas publication, about Timberlawn is "4600 Samuell Blvd, Dallas. 381-7181. Psychiatric hospital; 232 beds; offers chemical dependency treatment, occupational therapy, and psychiatric unit". That's the same as the first phone number listed on the card on Jeremy Delle's wallet card. The second is 381-6327.

Without a last name, I couldn't search for any other mentions of the doctor in public records (and I didn't find anything relevant using the phone number), but there were certainly a few articles about Timberlawn. More than a few, I had to winnow them down to the ones that seemed most relevant to what Jeremy Delle might have experienced during his stay there.

This article from June 1990 explains the sudden growth in the industry in Texas. The financial motivations behind it have very distinct consequences that the article outlines: patients rarely stay longer than their insurance foots the bill.

When the money runs out everyone- adult, teenager, addict, seems to be miraculously cured.

There are several claims of misconduct by care providers throughout the time surrounding Jeremy Delle's stay at Timberlawn.

May 1988: A Dallas woman is admitted to the substance abuse program at Timberlawn. In February 1996, when she is in her early 30s, she alleges misconduct by her doctor during her stay at Timberlawn.

May 1991: In March 1993, a patient alleges he was pursued by his doctor after seeking treatment at Timberlawn for depression after the end of his marriage. He also alleges that she initiated an inappropriate romantic and sexual relationship which lasted from November 1991 to February 1992.

Obviously, Mr. Delle would have been, or at least should have been, housed in separate adolescent areas from any adult patients, but he might have seen the same doctors. Particularly because he was treated for substance abuse. I have some doubts about whether he was actually using any drugs or not, but I'll put that together in another post with some supporting documents.

I also found these court documents from 2009 relating to a patient that was hospitalized in the Timberlawn facility as a minor. She claims to have been raped by an older male patient due to inadequate supervision of the patients by staff and a lack of private space available to patients. No dates or ages are given, however, so it's impossible to know if this happened within the early 90s. However, if Jeremy Delle had survived until 2009 he would have been in his mid-20s, which is when childhood traumas begin to be understood by a maturing mind.

I'm not a lawyer and couldn't even pretend to be one on the internet, so I won't claim to understand anything about what is happening, but I can read through it and capture other facts about who, where, when, etc. If anybody with a better understanding of USA or Texas state law wants to shed some light on this that would be helpful.

I wasn't able to find any further information about the progress or outcomes of these cases, so I've chosen not to include the names of the staff accused, but they are included in the media coverage if anyone would like to search through news databases that aren't freely available online. I can only research the documents I can find, and unfortunately I don't have access to any academic databases at the moment, either.

My personal opinion is that whatever started Jeremy Delle down a troubled path started before he got to Timberlawn and the care of Dr. H.

I do think this line of research is important for understanding whether or not Mr. Delle received effective or adequate care as his mental illness spiraled out of control.

It strikes me that these stories about Timberlawn confirm and debunk some of the conceptions we have about this particular young man's life from the song written about him in 1991 by Eddie Vedder and Jason Ament. Jeremy Wade Delle was failed by everyone in his life with the power to help him as he started to sink under the waves of his illness. But his parents didn't ignore it completely, they tried to get him help. Maybe not when his illness first manifested, but as soon as his first 'cry for help' came in the form of a suicide attempt, they put him in a hospital that was known to be the best in their area. One with a developing, supposedly cutting edge, program for adolescents and those suffering from substance abuse. They most likely brought him home when the hospital said he was better. Sadly that might have had more to do with how long the hospital knew that insurance would foot the bill and not Mr. Delle's actual mental health.

The story is no less tragic than the story Pearl Jam spins in their song, but it's far more nuanced.

And it's still a great song.

#motivation & inspiration #jeremy delle #gun violence #murder ballads #suicide #depression #medical abuse #psychiatric exploitation #texas #jeremy wade delle #timberlawn #timberlawn psychiatric hospital #original post

[tafadhali]

Destroying Angels — a Yellowjackets fanvid

A murder ballad.

Made for FanWorks 2023. Cross-posted (with content notes) on AO3.

#my 100th AO3 post! #yellowjackets #vid #fanvid #vidding #fanworks 2023 #jackie x shauna #shauna shipman #jackie taylor #murder ballads #Youtube

[i-should-be-so-lucky]

Nick Cave & Kylie Minogue , 1996

#kylie minogue #the one and only kylie #kylie #photoshoot #90s #1990s #1996 #nick cave #murder ballads #where the wild roses grow #photography

[desolationarchivist]

inside every girl are two wolves: english folk punk & american murder ballads

#both are gay #music #folk music #folk punk #murder ballads #country music

[rustbeltjessie]

My girl, my girl, don’t you lie to me—

Where Did You Sleep Last Night (also known as “In the Pines,” “Black Girl / Black Gal,” and “My Girl”) is a bit of a confusing one. Is it a murder ballad, or a death song? Someone in it is dead, and has died in a horrific way, but exactly who has died changes depending on the version you’re listening to, as does the way in which the victim died, and who is responsible for their death. And who is singing this song? The killer, someone that knows the killer, an omniscient third party? There are point-of-view shifts all over the place. My girl, my girl, don’t lie to me / tell me where did you sleep last night? That’s how the song begins. In the pines, in the pines, where the sun don’t ever shine, she replies, I shivered the whole night through. Most of the stanzas in the version I am referencing follow this formula, alternating between the person speaking to the ‘girl,’ and the girl’s responses. All save one, which starts: Her husband was a hard working man. In that one verse, the singer takes a different point of view entirely.

Some of these confusing aspects may stem from the fact that the song we now know as “Where Did You Sleep Last Night” is a mashup of two older ballads: “In the Pines” and “The Longest Train.” Some versions of the song reference the train explicitly, and state that the victim was decapitated by a train. In others, such as the one I’m most familiar with, the only reference to a train is that [his] head was found in a driving wheel. And in still others, the cause of death is reattributed and no reference to trains is made at all. Similarly, the person fleeing into the pines changes from version to version. In most, including this one, it is a woman, but why she is fleeing or what she is fleeing from is not made explicit. Is she fleeing her rapist? Is she a murderer, or the witness to a murder? Did she commit some other transgression that she is hiding from the repercussions of? Or are the pines simply a metaphor? My girl could be running from life and into death, or from chastity and into (her) sexuality.

I find that all these inconsistencies and mysteries only add to the song’s beauty and sadness. It’s easier to imagine yourself as the one in the pines when you can ascribe your own personal reasons for running—and your own personal places to run to—to the song’s protagonist, and that makes the song even more haunting. Speaking of: to my ear, Leadbelly’s 1944 recording is the most haunting take—his quavering voice, the scratchy blues guitar—though Nirvana’s 1993 MTV Unplugged version is also essential. Listen, and shiver the whole night through.

—Jessie Lynn McMains, from “I guess there’s just a meanness in this world.” (Murder Ballads and Death Songs) (October 2021)

#jessie lynn mcmains #writing #music #murder ballads #where did you sleep last night #my writing #jessie writes about music #2021

[mack-anthology-mp3]

in a dark wood there is an empty house. it was abandoned long ago.

there is a piano in a dark room it is missing a few keys & has not been played in such a long time but it is mostly in tune.

the piano misses being played the last time somebody played it was when some teenagers broke in but they could not play very well. they also broke a vase and a window.

being in the middle of nowhere, the piano sometimes plays itself, much as a person alone by themself for a long time will start to sing whatever comes to mind.

the wind is delighted to hear music after so long & carries the melody out of the window with it's shutters stretched wide open & the curtains slow dancing, & out into the woods.

the woods is jealous of the music & swallows it up into the darkness & endless tangle of pine needles. the piano does not notice & plays it's music for it's lonesome audience of empty rooms until the keys wear through & the strings rust & the pedals stick & the plants and moss grow their roots upon it & bind it into silence forever.

#anyways #writing #i think i'll turn this into a song #inspired by #murder ballads #and #the starless sea

[murder-ballad-ballot]

round 2, match 7: matty groves vs stagolee

examples & descriptions

matty groves

(this song has too many alternate titles to list here)

"god forbid women cheat on their husbands with a loser who whines about being caught and then loses the duel immediately"

"matty groves is murdered by the local lord for sleeping with his wife"

"infidelity will get you both killed"

fairport convention, sally rogers

stagolee

(alternate titles: staggerlee, stackerlee)

"If You Know What's Good For You You Won't Go Within A Mile Of Stagolee's Hat"

mississippi john hurt

#murder ballads #folk music

[maglorthecrab]

Any American Murder Song fans out there?

#american murder song #murder ballads #bandom #the Donner party #the year without a summer #terrance zdunich #saar hendelman

[forthegothicheroine]

Album mood boards: Murder Ballads by Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds

Lie there, lie there, little Henry Lee Till the flesh drops from your bones For the girl you have in that merry green land Can wait forever for you to come home

#music #nick cave #murder ballads #album mood boards #gif

[tallmadgeandtea]

In the midst of the final weeks of class I’ve managed to see the new THG prequel trailer, and it finally urged me to make a playlist I’ve wanted to make for awhile. Here is a playlist of folk songs that remind me of the hunger games, with stories of love, murder, and rebellion.

Hope you give it a listen and enjoy!

#this is based on recent viewing of the movies btw I haven’t read the books since the initial craze but here it is! #the hunger games #THG #katniss everdeen #the mockingjay #amanda speaks #about her folk music #folk music #murder ballads #Spotify #fanmix #the hunger games playlist

[goblins-and-gloves]

I am once again looking for a piece of Jewish poetry.

This time it’s a murder ballad about a soldier (not sure if specifically a cantonist but probably) who kills his lover and then himself upon finding out they are siblings.

Thanks for any help and I will update if I find it

#cantonists #jewish history #jewblr #jewish poetry #poetry #murder ballads #tw death #help me find this