Hi Tom: Margaret Atwood here. (No, really, it's me.) I wrote the Ballad myself. In those times, news was frequently conveyed to the general street-level public by balladeers and street singers, who would compose ballads like this one, usually in this form (4-line stanzas), sing them on the street, and sell broadsheet copies. The balladeers and their audiences liked sensational events such as murders, executions, and shipwrecks -- and, later, train wrecks or huge fires.

I based the ballad on the accounts in newspapers of the time -- about the murders, and also the trial.

The late great Studs Terkel tried to find this ballad before our radio interview.

You could sing it to any 4-line, 4-foot/3-foot/4-foot/3-foot ballad tune.