Lyr Req: Pearl Bryant (murder ballad)

Subject: Lyr Add: PEARL BRYANT (from Dean Gitter)
From: Mrrzy
Date: 07 Jun 02 - 03:52 PM

Also from my Dean Gitter album, I think, also ending in a pun (see the Bloody Nose thread), can anyone fill in the blanks?

In Greencastle lived Pearl Bryant who was known this wide world o'er
Beheaded by Scott Jackson, whom she really did adore
In a cab one rainy evening, just before the close of day
Up rode Walling and Jackson, and with Pearl they rode away
Little did poor Pearl think when she left her home so gay
That the suitcase that she carried would hide her head one day
A farmer passing by her lifeless form he found
Lying there without a head, her blood all over the ground
Next morning the people were excited, and they looked around and they said
Here lays a woman's body but where o where is the head
(then there is something about having to identify the body, I think the Mom faints?)
They arrested Walling and Jackson, and they locked them in the cell
And the people gathered around them, but nothing would they tell
In came Pearl's sister and she fell down on her knees
Pleading with Scott Jackson, give me sister's head, o please
Jackson he was so stubborn that this is what he said
If you meet your sister in heaven, you'll find the missing head
(then I'm missing something else)
So you girls who fall in love, you still may be misled
Don't take any hasty actions, O girls don't lose your head!

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Pearl Bryant (murder ballad)
From: Mrrzy
Date: 07 Jun 02 - 03:54 PM

Sorry: "Her mother then described the clothing that she wore, and when she saw the corpse she fell fainting to the floor" is the line I was thinking of, but it's from another murder ballad.

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Pearl Bryant (murder ballad)
From: Uncle_DaveO
Date: 07 Jun 02 - 05:05 PM

I'd love this song, but the same short tune, over and over and over, is too monotonous to sing, for my taste.

Dave Oesterreich

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Pearl Bryant (murder ballad)
From: masato sakurai
Date: 07 Jun 02 - 10:31 PM

There's a book wholly devoted to this ballad and the murder: Poor Pearl, Poor Girl!: The Murdered-Girl Stereotype in Ballad and Newspaper, by Anne B. Cohen (University of Texas Press, 1973). Various texts included, but I haven't found the Dean Gitter version itself.

~Masato

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Pearl Bryant (murder ballad)
From: Hrothgar
Date: 08 Jun 02 - 07:00 AM

Must have been a popular murder. The versions in "American Folk Poetry" and "Folk Songs of the South" are completely different.

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Pearl Bryant (murder ballad)
From: masato sakurai
Date: 08 Jun 02 - 07:41 AM

There're four "Pearl Bryan" songs in The Traditional Ballad Index.

1. Pearl Bryan (I) [Laws F2]

2. Jealous Lover (I), The (Florella, Floella) (Pearl Bryan II) (Nell Cropsey II) [Laws F1A, B, C]

3. Pearl Bryan (III) [Laws F3]

4. Pearl Bryan (IV)

On the murder and legend, see Headless haunts: After being decapitated, Greencastle's very own Pearl Bryan becomes a legend; and City Scenes, Fort Thomas, Kentucky.

~Masato

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Pearl Bryant (murder ballad)
From: Art Thieme
Date: 08 Jun 02 - 08:44 PM

PAUL CLAYTON recorded "Pearl Bryan" on Riverside Records in the 1950s. And the tune really was interminably boring.

Art Thieme