The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #73382 Message #2853001
Posted By: Richie
01-Mar-10 - 09:39 AM
Thread Name: Origins: Lula Viers (Murder Ballad)
Subject: RE: Origins: Lula Viers (Murder Ballad)
Here's the entry from "Native American Balladry"
by G.MALCOLM LAWS, JR.
"Pearl Bryan I" is a good example of the type of ballad for which it is relatively easy to establish a factual basis. Brewster's A version, for instance, gives both the location of the crime and the names of the principals, and describes in some detail the events which occurred both before and after the murder. Investigators have had little trouble in finding court records and newspaper accounts to verify the ballad story. Nothing shows more clearly the dependence of the typical ballad author upon facts than the success which students have had in working from the ballads themselves to a knowledge of the events which inspired them.
A case in point is offered by the ballad "Lula Viers", which Jean Thomas heard sung in Kentucky, in the presence of Lula's cousin. Mrs. Thomas's version follows :
Come all you good people
From all over the world;
And listen to a story
About a poor young girl.
Her names was Lula Vires,
In Auxier she did dwell;
A place in old Kentucky,
A town you all know well.
She loved young John [...]>
Was engaged to be his wife;
He ruined her reputation,
And later took her life.
They went to Elkhorn City,
Sixty miles away;
And put up at a hotel,
Until the dose of day.
And as dark did gather,
They went out for a stroll;
It was in bleak December,
The wind was blowing cold.
They went down to the river,
Cold water was running deep;
John then said to Lula,
"In the bottom you must sleep".
"Do you really mean it, John ?
It surely cannot be.
How could you stand to murder
A poor, helpless girl like me ?"
She threw her arms around him,
"Oh John, please spare my life!
1*11 go back to my mother,
If I cannot be your wife."
She threw her arms around him,
Before him she did kneel.
Around her waist he tied
A piece of railroad steel.
He threw her in the river,
The bubbles they c&d rise.
They burst upon the water,
What a sad and mournful sight.
He* hastened to the depot,
And boarded a train for home,
Thinking that his cnifel crime
Never would be known.
Poor Lula she was missing
Nowhere could she be found.
They searched the country over,
For many miles around.
John [ . . . ] joined the army,
Four months had come and past.
But in the Ohio River
The body was found at last.
They took her from the River,
And to the near-by town;
They could not recognize her,
They could not 'find her out.
They sent for a reporter,
His' name was Arodent.
He printed it in the paper
And around the world it went.
Her mother was seated in her home.
When she read the news.
She quicky left her chair,
To a neighbor told her views.
Saying, "I will send a message,
Or, I will go and see,
If it is my daughter, oh.
It surely cannot be."
She boarded a train for Ironton,
And arrived right at the place.
It was in a morgue there so drear,
She looked on her child's face.
She recognized the clothing,
The poor girl now still wore.
The mother looked upon the corpse.
Fell fainting to the floor.
John [ . . . ] was arrested,
And placed in Floyd County's jail;
But for that awful murder
No one could go his bail.
Soon an army officer came,
And took him off to France.
John . . ] never went to trial,
Nor sought to clear his name! 19
Footnote 19: Ballad Makin' in the Mountains of Kentucky, pp. 144 146. Reprinted with the kind permission of Jean Thomas, "The Traipsin' Woman".
No one hearing or reading this unlyrical and pedestrian chronicle would suppose that the story was, fictional. From beginning to end it has every mark of the journalistic report in ballad form. Because its short traditional life has been confined to the region which produced it, the ballad shows no signs either of corruption or of compression. footnote 20
footnote 20: If this ballad survives in tradition, we might expect a gradual wearing away of the latter portion to produce a piece similar in form to "The Jealous Lover".
In order to verify my belief that the ballad was largely factual, I wrote to the clerk of the Floyd County Court in Prestonburg, Kentucky, and asked him for information about the murder. The clerk, Jarvis Allen, replied in part as follows in a letter dated July 26, 1948:
Lula Viers was killed by John [....] at Elkhorn City, Kentucky, approximately October 1917. She was thrown into Big Sandy River, near Elkhorn City, and was not found until from four to six months later at Hanging Rock, Ohio, near Ironton, Ohio.
At the time of her death she was unmarried but had a [child] whose father was supposed to have been John [...],[.,.] left the [child with a relative] at Auxier, Kentucky, and took Lula Viers to get married which was the last trace the family had of her until they found her body in the Ohio River. [ . . . ] was placed in the Floyd County jail but was later released to join the army. 21
The almost perfect correlation between Mr. Allen's illuminating state ments and those given in the ballad is too obvious to require much comment. The ballad maker's failure to mention Lula's child is in keeping with the conventions discussed early in Chapter III. Whether the accused murderer joined the army before or after he was imprisoned is a minor detail; the statement given in the ballad seems more reasonable.
From the foregoing report it can be seen that long after newspapers have yellowed and their contents have been forgotten, a ballad like "Lula Viers" preserves with remarkable accuracy the details of a shocking crime and keeps them fresh in the memory of the folk.