The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #138235   Message #3163924
Posted By: MorwenEdhelwen1
01-Jun-11 - 05:48 PM
Thread Name: Lyr Add: Murder in de Market (Caribbean)
Subject: RE: Lyr Add: Murder in de Market (Caribbean)
i have the songbook "Folk Songs of Barbados" collected by Trevor Marshall, Peggy McGeary, and Grace Thompson. They include the song and its melody, unfortunately no accompaniment :( and the date of the events, stating that "Betsy Thomas, the common-law mate of one Thomas Payne, allegedly murdered him during a quarrel". There is a mention of the song in Trinidadian songbooks. What I find interesting is how distanced the folk version is from the events, compared with "Stone Cold Dead in The Market", which is from a first-person perspective, and is, in my opinion, one of the best songs about battered woman syndrome ever, done before battered woman syndrome was ever named or recognised. Also in the case of murder ballads based on true stories, how does a person find information on the actual incident? Because some American murder ballads seem to have a large proportion of people on this forum who have information about the real incident.