Hi All

Just found this thread again, I started it back in 2000 before I became a member. I now realize that I should have posted the entire song verbatim as I collect it from Mrs. Timmins of Rathcoole in Co. Dublin. According to 88year old Mrs. Timmins her family have been singing this particular murder ballad for generations.

OLD OAK TREE.

1 Dark was the night, cold blew the wind
And thickly fell the rain
Young Bessie left her native home
And came not back again.
She left her widowed mother's side
And feared not wind and cold
For she was young fair to be seen
And love had made her bold.

2 That very night at ten o'clock
Beneath the old oak tree
She promised James, her own true love,
That with him she would be.
Then heeding not the drenching rain
Nor the tempest loudly roar,
She wrapped her cloak around her
And walked quickly from the door

3 The night went o'er the day did dawn
And Bessie came not home
Which made her weary friends to think
Where Bessie she had roamed.
At length the mother started out
She cried in exert wild
I'll search this wide world o'er and o'er
To find my darling child.

4 Three long weary weeks she spent
A wandering up and down
Her journey proved of no avail
For Bessie was not found
And then to find her lonely home
The poor old mother tried
But worn out with grief and pain
Of a broken heart she died.

5 Then at the end of all these scenes
The owner of the ground
Young James McCullough came one day
To hunt with all his hounds
Up hill, down dale they nobly rode
In gallant company
Until at last they lost the fox
Beneath this old oak tree.

6 'Twas there the dogs began to bark
And sniff and tear the clay
But all that whip or horn could do
Could not drive those dogs away.
The gentlemen all gathered round
And called for pick and spade
They dug the ground and there they found
The missing murdered maid.

7 The blood it oozed out through her clothes
It was a shocking sight
And worms crept out through her eyes
That once were blue and bright
A knife revealed stuck in her breast
To his grief and shame
The gentlemen read off the haft
Young James McCullough's name

8 "I did the deed" McCullough cried
"My soul is food for hell
oh take her cold corpse from my sight
and the truth to you I'll tell
"I own I did love Bessie well
and for my cunning art
I won her to my cruel laws
And broke her mothers heart

9 I asked her then to meet me here
Beneath this old oak tree
The devil whispered take her life
And then you shall be free
The knife that did my dinner cut
I plunged it through her breast
And with the haft I knocked her down
I need not tell the rest

10 He took one look at her cold corpse
A last sad look of pain
He drew a pistol from his breast
And fired it through his brain
He was buried there in the place he fell
No Christian grave got he
No priest was found to bless the ground
Beneath this old oak tree.

It is interesting to note that stanza 7 has echoes of an old Irish superstition that when the corpse of a murder victim is in the presence of it's murderer it will begin to bleed afresh.

Fergus